Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“I want a state which preaches morality to practice it,” Tabari said. “Bring back at least a token of these refugees to prove…”

“We will!” Eliav cried. “In my speech I’m also to make that offer again. More than a mere token we will bring back. And we’ll absorb them in full brotherhood. But a million? Dedicated to destroy us? When only six hundred thousand left? No, dear friend, you cannot demand that we commit suicide.”

“I won’t take the job in Jerusalem,” Tabari said finally. “But I will say this. When we were digging at Crusader levels I remember telling you that just as we Muslims drove out the Europeans after two hundred years, so we would push you into the sea. Now I’m beginning to believe you’ll be here for a long time.”

“I’m sorry you won’t help us,” Eliav said with deep regret.

“I’ll always be an Arab,” Tabari replied.

“On that day in Akko in 1948? Why didn’t you run away too?”

“I belong to this land,” the descendant of Ur said, “this well, these olive trees. My people were here before yours were formed. When it was prudent to be Canaanites, we were Canaanites. For the same lofty reason we were Phoenicians, and when Jews ruled the land we were Jews, or Greeks, or Romans, or Christians, or Arabs, or Mamelukes or Turks. If you allowed us to hold the land we never gave a damn as to which church we worshiped in or what flag we saluted. When my grandfather was governor of Tiberias he spent most of his time looking after his own affairs, and my father, Sir Tewfik, served the British in the same impartial manner, because all we wanted was the land.”

“Why this land, Jemail? What’s so special about this land?”

“Here the pressures of the world are vital. After all, if this land was good enough for God to choose, and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad, it’s good enough for me.”

“You don’t believe in God, do you, Jemail?”

“Indeed I do. There must be a god of the land, who lives in wells like ours, or on hills like that, or in olive groves that replenish themselves forever. He may even live in the religions which grow out of his land. But he cannot exist alien from the land which bore him.”

“We Jews believe in the same partnership of God, and a particular land, and a chosen people. We’re very old brothers, Tabari, and in the future we shall meet many times, for we understand each other.”

Distressed at not having enlisted Tabari for the difficult job ahead, Eliav said good-bye to the dig and made his way eastward along the Damascus road and in time reached Zefat, where he intended spending a few hours with the Vodzher Rebbe reviewing a group of legal cases like Zipporah Zederbaum’s. He had convinced himself that he had a chance of winning the old man over to a more liberal interpretation of Judaism, but he found him a shriveled wraith with a beard even longer and whiter than before and a fierce determination to resist any encroachment on the law. So Eliav retreated and turned the discussion to the heroic days of Ilana, Bar-El and Bagdadi.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” the little leader asked in Yiddish.

“Yes, but their ideas won.”

“And you’ve taken another name.”

“Yes, I’m part of Eretz Israel now.”

“And everything has worked out as I predicted, hasn’t it?”

“With modifications.”

“And you’re to be our minister in charge of the very ideas we used to argue about?”

“Yes, and I hope you’ll help me find some sort of compromise.”

The rebbe’s face darkened and with both hands he clutched his beard. “Compromise there can never be,” he said. “Israel has no right to exist except as a religious state.” And when Eliav fought to gain a concession that would allow Zipporah Zederbaum to marry, the rebbe refused to listen. “There is the law,” he said stubbornly, and more he would not say. But he did take Eliav by the hands invitingly: “Come to the synagogue. Stay by my side throughout this night. And you’ll discover what Israel is.” Eliav protested that he must move on to Tiberias, but the rebbe would not allow it. “Your life is at stake,” he said, forcing Eliav to the synagogue, where the services were as moving as ever, except that now more than sixty men attended instead of a mere seventeen. And all roared the Lecha Dodi in some two dozen different styles.

After the evening service the old man returned home but he did not eat, nor would he allow Eliav to do so, but at quarter to midnight the two men said good night to the rebbetzin and walked out into the lovely crooked streets of Zefat to a barren hall where more than a hundred Jews in ceremonial garb were waiting: tall lean men in fur caps, short round businessmen in long robes, and numerous young men in white shawls. They were the Hasidim of Zefat, men violent in their love for God, and now they ranged themselves silently about a U-shaped table as their beloved rebbe made his way to the head position, where he sat alone like a king. Only he had a plate before him at this feast and only he would dine.

At midnight a senior assistant who acted as servant brought him a bowl of soup, and since no spoons or forks were allowed at this ritual the rebbe raised the bowl to his bearded lips, drank a little of the soup, then ceremoniously pushed it away. As soon as he had done so the silent Hasidim leaped from their seats and a hundred struggling hands dived for the bowl. Fingers were dipped into the sacred broth and then conveyed to the mouths until the bowl was dry.

Next came one fish, of which the rebbe ate only a morsel, whereupon the hundred waiting hands tore at the remains till nothing was left on the plate but a few bones, for it was a cherished thing to be able to say in Zefat, “I ate of the rebbe’s fish.” Now the servant brought a bowl of mixed vegetables, the ancient kind that King David had eaten with his bare hands when he traveled from Jerusalem to the Galilee, and again there was the ritual tasting by the rebbe and the mad scramble for a bean or a grain of groats; to Eliav the fight to thrust even one finger into the bowl was disgusting, even though he knew that such feasts were weekly affairs with the Hasidim.

Now came the meat, a large piece of roast lamb cooked precisely as it had been for more than three thousand years by the Jews of this region, but this time there was to be a variation in the eating procedure, for after the rebbe had tasted the lamb he did not push it away. Instead he rose, nodded his wintry head three times and said in a whispering voice, “To my beloved son Ilan Eliav, who has been chosen to help guide Eretz Israel, I give this meat.” And from the bone he tore off a small piece and with his trembling fingers pushed it into Eliav’s mouth. This done, he moved the plate away and his followers struggled for the fragments until the bone lay clean.

The rebbe’s midnight meal was ended and the devout silence which had marked it was broken by one old Jew who started clapping his hands. When he had set the rhythm he was joined by others until the room echoed to the commanding sound. A voice started chanting in Yiddish, and now the hall was filled with those wild songs of religious joy that had originated in Russia and Poland. The ecstasy of God was upon this shouting congregation and for more than an hour the songs reverberated, not stately hymns in the Catholic or Protestant tradition, but cries of violent praise to the God who had shepherded them through another week.

At two in the morning a surprising thing happened: an elderly Jew, whom Eliav had noticed earlier as one of the more decrepit ancients, began to dance and quickly the floor filled with gyrating bodies, fur caps awry and coats standing out from hips. If the Hasidic songs were not hymns, neither were the dances customary religious posturings; they were wild prancings of abandonment which gave the impression that the dancers were drunk. Those steps are much too vigorous, Eliav thought, for the old men who are performing them, but at three o’clock the rebbe himself rose to dance, and for some minutes the others stopped to watch him. Incredible, Eliav said to himself. He must be eighty. For the rebbe was captured by the religious fervor he had learned from his grandfather in Vodzh, and he cavorted like a child, kicking his legs high and whirling about until his fur cap traced a brown blur across Eliav’s eye.