S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

The room is longer than it is wide, and it has windows on all four sides, but they do not let in the light, for the ruins of the landlord’s house block out the light. This house, which our comrades have made into the group’s home, is actually not a house but an annex, built as a warehouse, for before the war our town had become a trading center for the villages around, and businessmen built warehouses here for their goods. After the enemy came and laid the town in ruins and pillaged the stores, most of the warehouses became dwellings, and the group house is one of these. And although it has many windows, it is like a blind man who has never seen light in his life.

(Since we have set out on this figurative path, let us continue.)

The group’s house is like a blind man whose eyes have died, but the eyes of our comrades shine with the light of the Land of Israel, which all eyes seek to see.

There are pious men in this country who have built themselves Batei Midrashot, and they boast that when our holy Messiah reveals himself he will come first to their Beit Midrash. These young men, on the other hand, do not boast that the Messiah will come to them first; they do not mention him, but most of their thoughts are devoted to going up to the Land of Israel and cultivating the soil. I do not know which are the more worthy of love: the pious in the Diaspora who wish to trouble the Messiah to come and visit them abroad, or these young men who take the trouble to go up to the Land of Israel to prepare it for him.

These young men know what is happening in the Land of Israel in general and in detail, but they and I do not understand each other. The very words we use have different meanings. For instance, when I say “Gordon” I mean our great poet, Yehuda Leib Gordon, while they mean Aaron David Gordon, the socialist ideologist and pioneer. My generation are men of thought, whose hands are short but whose thoughts are long, while they are men of deeds, who put doing before thinking. This Gordon of mine (that is, Yehuda Leib Gordon) was a man of thought, while their Gordon (that is, Aaron David Gordon) came along and translated thought into deeds; in other words, the one carried out what the other wrote. On the face of it, I should be glad, but I am not glad. Not because thought is more important than deed, but because… But this may be explained by a parable, although a not very apt one. It is like an architect who asked for stone and they gave him brick; for he intended to build a temple, while they intended to build themselves a house to live in.

I forgot that I was hungry and sat in the group’s house; first, because I had promised that I would come to visit them, and second, because they had newspapers from the Land of Israel.

I read the newspapers from beginning to end. People from whom I used to keep my distance so long as I lived in the Land now became important to me when I saw their names in the newspapers. Every report about some politician who traveled to Haifa or the Valley of Jezreel moved my heart. There were men who could bore me by saying “Good morning,” and now I sat and read their speeches.

No doubt great things are being done in the Land of Israel, but when I open the newspaper it tells me of things that are not great, for instance, about a certain man who went to Haifa or the Valley, and the like. I lay down one day’s paper and pick up another day’s. And what does that other day’s paper do? It tells me about the same politician coming back from Haifa or the Valley! No doubt this had to be written since they had written that he went, but if they had not mentioned his going they would not have had to mention his return.

Apart from these reports there are more important ones, but the papers are in the habit of concealing the important news from me and offering the unimportant. If you are not familiar with the papers, they tell you what you do not want to know.

Most of the members of the group had assembled in honor of the new lock, and they were glad to see me sitting in their house. They had often invited me to come and lecture to them, but I had refrained from doing so. A man who cannot even listen to himself, how can he expect others to listen to him?

Until I went up to the Land of Israel I used to lecture, but since then I have made it a rule not to speak in public. I compared myself to that pious man who all his life wanted to say one prayer as it was meant to be said; when he went up to the Land of Israel he became wiser, and prayed to be able to pray even one word as it should be prayed.

“How is it possible,” they said, “that a man comes from the Land of Israel and does not know how to make a speech?” “For the very same reason that all the people from the Land of Israel make speeches,” said I, “I do not. It is because of something that happened. If you wish to hear I shall tell you. The year I came to the Land of Israel, a workers’ village was founded. When they laid the cornerstone they preached on the significance of the occasion. There were thirty-six speakers there who preached one after the other. Possibly each one of them expressed some new idea of his own; if not, he repeated what his colleagues had said. In the end I could not remember anything, for one came and jumbled up what the other had said, and a third came and jumbled up the words of the second.”

When the young people saw that I was not going to make a speech, they asked me to tell them about the Land of Israel. “My dear young people,” I said to them, “have you ever seen a young man with his heart set on a young girl who would talk about her to someone else? If you wish, I shall tell you about the first Zion Group, which was founded when your fathers and I were young men.

“Noble and exalted was the Zionist ideal, and far from the world of action. The conquest of the communities, which Nordau demanded at the Congresses, was not needed at Szibucz, whose leaders showed no hostility to Zionism. On the contrary, some of them would come to the house of the Zion Group to read the paper or play chess, like the other Zionists in the town. Once a year we would bring a speaker. If the socialists did not come and make a disturbance, it was good; if they came and made a disturbance, it was not good. Similarly, we used to hold a Maccabee Evening on Hanukkah with speeches and recitations. Once a girl recited ‘Our Hope Is Not Yet Lost’ by heart and the event was reported in the Hebrew papers. I know that no one has any interest in the things I am telling you, except for the man who is telling them. And much more than he is telling others of all this, he is reminding himself.”

What this man tells:

“In the house of the Zion Group there is no change or novelty. We play chess and talk politics, and we exhaust every subject. But the subjects themselves are stale, especially for a man like me whose mind is set on the Land of Israel, and for whom anything not connected with the Land is unworthy of his attention.

“Besides the chess players and those who talk politics, there are some who tell jokes. When you hear a joke for the first time, you laugh; the second time, you smile; the third time, you shrug your shoulders; the fourth, you are bored to tears. This is something I know and perhaps you too, but those who ought to know it, namely the tellers of jokes, do not. That is why they repeat their jokes over and over and over again.

“So who makes you go to the group house? Surely you can go back to the Beit Midrash. But so long as people studied the Torah for its own sake or with an end in view, such as making a show or winning fame, you used to go into the Beit Midrash and open a book; when they stopped studying it for its own sake or with an end in view, the books changed their ways and no longer gladdened your heart. Or perhaps they did not change, but hid away their words for the time to come.