Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Her words had such a startling effect on Eliav that Cullinane thought the new cabinet minister might strike her, but he clenched his hands and asked coldly, “How can you turn your back on all we fought for? Can’t you remember Safad?”

And Vered, speaking softly as one who has discovered her portion of truth, however meager, said, “Do I remember? Eliav, it seems to me we Jews spend our lives remembering, and I’ve suddenly discovered that I’m sick and tired of living in a land of remembrance. My year in Jerusalem begins with Rosh Hashana when I remember Abraham, four thousand years ago. Then comes Yom Kippur, and we remember everything. The Feast of the Booths and we remember the desert years. Like a great bronze bell tolling over the churches of Jerusalem, we tick off our days and remember our grief. Of course, there are a few happy days. Simhat Torah, Hanukkah, when we remember the victory of the Maccabees, Arbor Day for remembering trees. At Purim we remember Persia three thousand years ago and at Passover we remember Egypt even longer ago. Lag Ba Omer, Shavuot. And on the Ninth of Ab we mourn the loss of Jerusalem. When did we lose it? Two thousand years ago. We have special days to remember Herzl, students, socialists, the United Nations, the brave men who fell defending Jerusalem in 1948, and Independence Day. For years I dutifully remembered and thought it was natural to spend one’s life weeping over the dead past, uttering lamentations for things that happened so terribly long ago. It was a burden, but it was our special, inescapable Jewish burden and I accepted it.

“And then I went to Chicago. And I lugged that lousy Candlestick of Death up and down Illinois making speeches to Jewish women’s clubs, the kind Israelis like to joke about, and do you know what I discovered? That some of the finest people this world has produced are the Jewish women of Illinois. They live wonderful, satisfying lives without remembering Persia and Egypt and the Maccabees and the Sinai Desert and Jerusalem. They work for the local art museum and build new wings for the hospital and serve on the board of education and pay the deficit for the symphony orchestra and do all they can to make their world a better place to live in. Take away from Illinois what the Jewish women do, and that state would be a dump. And the only thing those women are required to remember is when to make the next payment on the television set. And you may be surprised to hear it, but I can hardly wait to become one of them.”

Eliav clenched his hands and pulled them against his stomach. In pain he asked, “For this emptiness you’d sacrifice Judaism? For the fleshpots of Egypt, stainless-steel version?”

“Stop it!” Vered cried, beating her palms against the table. “Stop throwing those old clichés at me. I raise a clear, well-defined issue and you mumble what sententious Jews have been mumbling since the time of Moses. The fleshpots of Egypt. I refuse to accept that any longer.” She waved her hands and placed them over her ears. “I refuse to spend the rest of my life remembering. I will not remember.”

Eliav, again in control of his bitterness, said quietly, “Your Gentile neighbors in Illinois will do your remembering for you,” and it was on this point that Eliav and Zodman initiated their acrimonious debate.

ISRAELI: Does Vered think that by going to America she escapes being a Jew?

AMERICAN: She certainly does.

ISRAELI: She escapes until that moment on her honeymoon when the hotel clerk says, “No Jews allowed.”

AMERICAN: We learn how to avoid such hotels.

ISRAELI: Or until the medical school tells her son, “Our Jewish quota is filled.”

AMERICAN: They don’t put it that way any more.

ISRAELI: Or until a new Senator McCarthy comes along. And fails in his economic promises. And has to use you Jews as his scapegoat.

AMERICAN: Now we have safeguards against that sort of thing.

ISRAELI: Or until some new international tragedy like Nazi Germany…

AMERICAN: The world will never again allow a thing like that to happen.

ISRAELI: It will happen before your first son is born. South America? South Africa? Quebec?

AMERICAN: Something will be worked out, I’m sure.

ISRAELI: You sound just like my uncle in Gretz, 1933. And he was right. Something was indeed worked out. And they hung Adolf Eichmann for having worked it out.

AMERICAN: You can’t go on scaring the Jews of America, Eliav.

ISRAELI: I don’t do the scaring. History does.

AMERICAN: In America we have guarantees that protect us from history. Besides, you overlook one important fact. In America that natural hatred which exists in all people is directed not against the Jew but the Negro.

ISRAELI: If he perishes, you perish.

AMERICAN: You can’t apply European experience to America. It’s the greatest error I hear Israelis make, and you make it all the time. We Americans are different. Of my non-Jewish neighbors more than half have come from outside countries. We’re all minority groups.

ISRAELI: And they brought their anti-Jewish prejudice with them. You say you’re different, but it’s not because you’re an American. It’s because you’re a Jew, and America will never let you forget that difference. Neither you nor your children.

AMERICAN: Years go by without my experiencing a shred of anti-Semitism.

ISRAELI: You experience it every day, but have become hardened to it.

AMERICAN: Seems to me you’re angry with us American Jews for two reasons. We’ve built a new way of life that’s the best the Jew has ever known in this world. And we refuse to emigrate to Israel.

ISRAELI: Let’s take your reasons one at a time. As for your new way of life, it’s a false old dream in a golden ghetto. A religion that isn’t Judaism. A synagogue that’s a mere social center and a third generation that thinks it’s been accepted by the majority if it names its son Bryan. It’s a shallow, ugly, materialistic pattern of life, and it leads to one clear goal: assimilation. The rate of intermarriage among young Jews in America is over ten per cent and climbing toward twenty-five. A new way of life? No, an old delusion leading to oblivion, when there will be no more Jews.

AMERICAN: That doesn’t frighten me. If following Moses for four thousand years has got us where we are, a people totally apart, I think it’s time we tried the American pattern. I’ll be a good Jew. Vered will be. But if my son Bryan, as you call him, wants to lose himself in the main stream, I say let him do it.

ISRAELI: In that case Israel is really needed to preserve Judaism, and you’ve been very remiss about sending us immigration to help save the Jewish state.

AMERICAN: Our job is to stay in America and make it the safest home in the world for Jews. And then to share our goodness with our fellow Jews in Israel. And if I may be forgiven a personal reference, I have been careful to share that goodness and have advised my rich neighbors in Chicago to do the same.

ISRAELI: You’ve been generous with everything but human beings. Have you ever watched an immigrant ship arrive? Mostly uneducated people from Africa. People call them Arab-Jews. Strong-minded Ashkenazim fear that if such immigration dominates for the next hundred years, Israel can only become another Levantine state. A Middle East backward country in which a handful of European Jews ran things for a while before submerging their state in some kind of honorable alliance with Lebanon or Egypt. And so the vision of a Jewish homeland perishes once more. I’m not so pessimistic. I’m dedicating my life to the proposal that we can establish some kind of Jewish-Arab federation in this area, to the benefit of both. But to do this we must have more highly educated western Jews. And men like you accept no responsibility.