Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Yes.”

“And the attendant asked ‘Cohen or Levi’? And we all answered ‘Israel’?”

“I still remember the Cohens putting the shawls over their heads.”

“And I said I’d explain later.”

“You did. Cohens are priests. Levis are temple attendants. Israels are the common herd.”

“Every Jew is automatically one of these three, tracing back in unbroken lines to the days of the Torah. All Jews named Cohen, Katz, Kaplan, Kaganovsky…you can guess the others…they’re all priests who even today enjoy certain privileges. Now your Levys, Levins, Lewisohns, Loewes and the rest…they’re all Levis, and they also have a few privileges.”

“But you poor Israels…” Cullinane began.

“I’m not an Israel,” Eliav said.

“At the Vodzher Rebbe’s you said you were.”

“I did, because I don’t take this Mickey Mouse…” He stopped. “That is, my wife … I never told you about Ilana, did I? She died over there.”

“She what?”

Eliav pressed the warm pipe against his chin and tried several times to speak. Finally in an offhand way he said, “I was married to a girl who could have served as the flag of Israel. She was Israel. She had a very special quality. She was shot. Right over there. Right…there.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cullinane said. He remembered that first night when he and Tabari had seen Eliav kneeling on the tell and he was now inclined to say nothing, but intuitively he knew that silence was not wanted. “So we’ve been digging ghosts?”

“That we have,” Eliav agreed. “And one of the ghosts has come home to roost…in a particularly mean way.”

“How?”

“I’m a Cohen…really. I come from a wonderful line of holy men in the city of Gretz, along the Rhine. One thing about a Cohen, he’s never permitted to marry a woman who’s been divorced…”

“How’s that?”

“Under Israeli law a Cohen is forbidden to marry a divorced woman. It just can’t be done.”

“But you and Vered are engaged.”

“That’s right. And if we want to get married we have to fly to Cyprus, get some English clergyman to marry us according to his law, then fly back to Israel and live in local sin.”

Cullinane started to laugh. “We’ve been trying to dig up ancient history and all the time we’ve been living in it.”

“You’re wrong,” Eliav protested. “You’ve been digging in Judaism but you haven’t tried to understand it. John, we’re a special people with special laws. Why do you suppose I asked you to read Deuteronomy five times? Damn it, you stupid Irishman! I’m not a Catholic. I’m not a Baptist. I’m a Jew, and I come from a most ancient people with most ancient laws.”

“I’m beginning to realize that,” Cullinane apologized. “But this Cohen business…”

“You saw Leviticus. The priests ‘shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband…’ There it is. And there’s no way we can get married in Israel.”

“Wait a minute! Vered’s a widow.”

“More important, she’s a divorcee.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I knew her husband well. We fought together at many places … a handsome, dashing young lady-killer. Vered was captivated by him and on the day we broke the siege of Jerusalem she married him. But when peace came he couldn’t seem to fit in. Never understood that things had changed, so they got divorced. Then, with the Sinai campaign in 1956, came his second chance. You wouldn’t believe what he accomplished with a column of armored cars, and I suppose God was gracious, for he died in battle.” He paused to remember a gallant, undisciplined friend. “Bar-El was one of the few heroes I’ve known. An authentic hero.”

“But if Vered’s a widow…”

“The critical thing is she was once divorced. If I intended staying on this dig, that would be one thing. We’d fly to Cyprus, get married there, and if later on the rabbis judged our kids to be bastards, when the time came for them to marry they’d fly to Cyprus too. But I can’t join the cabinet and flout Jewish law.”

“You’d give up Vered for a cabinet job?” Cullinane asked in astonishment. And the explosive form of his question satisfied Eliav that the romantic Irishman would face any problems to marry her. His uncle, who was a Catholic priest, his father, who still spouted nonsense, his sister, his friends could all go straight to hell if he wanted to marry Mrs. Bar-El, which he did.

The honest shock of Cullinane’s reaction forced Eliav to reply carefully. He said, “For an Irishman, with an Irishman’s secure history, the question is the way you phrased it. But I’m a Jew, and my history is much different. We were two thousand years without a country, John. I and a few…really, we were a handful … my wife…Vered’s husband…and a marvelous Sephardi named Bagdadi, whom I think of very much these days…” He stopped, and after a long moment said, “We built a state to which the Jews of the world can repair for the next thousand years. Today that state faces critical decisions concerning its basic structure, and Teddy Reich’s convinced me that I’m needed…”

“Where?”

“In the most critical areas. The question you just asked would make sense if you posed it to an Irishman. But the question to ask me as a Jew is this: Would you, in conformance to Jewish law, surrender Vered Bar-El to help preserve the concept of Israel?”

“Would you?”

Eliav evaded the question: “The night my wife was killed on this tell our detachment was on its way to Akko. Vered and her man took care of me, because I was pretty much out of my mind. We stormed into Akko, which Tabari held with his Arabs, and about thirty of us Jews went up against…well, God knows how many Arabs. And somehow I got far ahead of the line and I would surely have been killed, except that this little seventeen-year-old girl came blazing up with a submachine gun. She cleared the street and led me back as if I were her idiot child. I can feel her hand in mine now.”

“Why didn’t you marry her?”

“She’s a lot more primitive than you think. She was fascinated by the gallantry of Bar-El. When he was gone there was the Cohen business. Who wants to flee to Cyprus? And I was never the dashing buccaneer type.”

The two archaeologists stood silent for a moment, looking at the minarets of Akko, where Vered Bar-El had fought her way to save Eliav, and finally the Irishman said, “You’ve taught me a certain humility this afternoon. I withdraw my question.”

“Thanks.”

“But I pick up yours. Do you intend to marry Vered or to serve Israel?” There was no reply, and after a while Cullinane added, “Because I’m giving notice right now, Eliav. You marry that girl…before I leave for America … or I’m taking her with me. And so help me God, that’s it.”

“Vered fought for this country,” Eliav said quietly. “She’d never leave Israel. She’d never marry a non-Jew,” and by their separate paths the two men left the tell.

Next morning the first of two disruptive visitors arrived, Professor Thomas Brooks, traveling through the Holy Land on one of his regular photographic trips, and since he was an influential board member at the Biblical Museum, Cullinane was obligated to care for him while he was in the Galilee. This was not an unpleasant task, for Professor Brooks was an amiable man, teacher of church history in a small Protestant college in Davenport, Iowa, who made additional income by lecturing through the west on “Old Testament Times” and “Scenes from the Life of Christ.” He illustrated his lectures with color slides, which, accompanied by his careful explanations, served better than motion pictures. He was a good scholar, tried to keep au courant with the latest archaeological research, and imparted to his audiences a vivid sense of that tiny area of the world from which the great religions had sprung. He was not allowed, of course, to lecture in Catholic churches, but he suspected that when his screenings were held in public halls rather than Protestant churches many Catholics attended, and he took pains to include in his slides scenes that would have special interest for them.