The Source

by James A. Michener

  They drove to Zefat, an exquisite town hanging in the hills, and as time for morning worship approached, Eliav explained, “At the Vodzher synagogue no place is provided for women, so it would be best for Vered to wait in the car. Cullinane and Tabari aren’t Jews, but I’ve brought yarmulkes for them, and they’ll be welcomed. I’ve a cap for you, too, Mr. Zodman.”

  He led the three worshipers away from the main street and down a series of steep winding alleys that clustered along the sides of a hill, and sometimes these alleys were so narrow that Zodman could reach out and touch the houses on either side. Occasionally the buildings joined in their second stories and the men walked through tunnels, winding back and forth through the maze of history, until Eliav pushed open a small door that led into a cramped room not more than twenty-five feet square. Along the sides stood stone benches, hundreds of years old, and on them sat a collection of men who seemed even older: they were bearded, rheumy-eyed and stooped; they wore long black coats and caps trimmed with fur; some had prayer shawls of white wool striped with black. But they were primarily conspicuous because long and sometimes beautiful curls dangled beside their ears, and as they sat they prayed, moving their bodies back and forth in a series of compulsive jerks.

  They were Hasidic Jews who gathered about the Rebbe of Vodzh, a holy man who had emigrated from the Russian town of Vodzh many years before, bringing with him these old men and others who were now dead. The famous little man sat huddled by himself, wrapped in a prayer shawl, only his piercing blue eyes visible through a white beard and side curls. He was known as the Vodzher Rebbe and this was his synagogue; but even more memorable was his beadle, a tall, cadaverous man with no teeth and a filthy robe with a hem so stiff with dirt that it scraped the floor. He wore cracked shoes that squeaked as he made his way from one routine job to the next, and his fur cap was moth-eaten and bedraggled. As he led Eliav and his three guests to the benches, Eliav whispered, “When he asks you, ‘Cohen or Levi?’ you reply ‘Israel.’ ” And as soon as the four were seated the pitiful beadle shuffled up to ask, “Cohen or Levi?” and the men replied, “Israel.”

  It would not be accurate to say that formal worship started. There were seventeen men in the synagogue that morning, and each conducted his own service, coming together now and then as some special prayer was reached; but even then they recited at seventeen different speeds, so that the result was a mad jangle. During the service the beadle shuffled back and forth, talking, cajoling, suggesting, while two old Jews sat in a corner conducting a business discussion. Two others prayed in loud voices on a line of their own, while the old rebbe, incredibly ancient, Cullinane thought, mumbled prayers that no one else could have heard. “I’ve been in some synagogues, but nothing like this,” Cullinane whispered to Eliav, who said, “Don’t whisper. Speak up.” And Cullinane said above the rumble of voices, “Catholics aren’t supposed to enter other churches,” and Zodman said, “This isn’t a church. It’s a synagogue.”

  In the middle of the service the old beadle went to the niche where the Torah was kept—those first five books of the Bible ascribed to Moses—and as the silver-tasseled scroll was brought forth, old men kissed it reverently. The beadle carried it to a kind of pulpit where a reader began chanting the holy words. No one listened, except that from time to time the beadle summoned different members of the congregation to stand beside the chanter, honorary readers as it were. “He takes first a Cohen, then a Levi, then an Israel,” Eliav said above the noise. “What’re they?” Cullinane asked. “I’ll explain later,” he replied.

  And then the beadle was at Cullinane’s elbow, tugging at Paul Zodman’s sleeve, and it was apparent that the Chicagoan was being asked to assist at the reading of the Torah, and suddenly the whole significance of the day was altered. Tears came into the millionaire’s eyes. He looked in bewilderment at Cullinane and Eliav, who pushed him forward. He went to the rickety pulpit, where the reader, using a silver wand, pointed out the words on the scroll, and over the man’s shoulder Zodman looked at the ancient Hebrew characters. Recollections of his grandfather reciting these words came to him, recollections of the little German town of Gretz, from which he had sprung. The drone of voices in the Vodzher synagogue was like an orchestration of his ancestral memories, and when, at the end of the reading, the beadle asked in Yiddish how much Zodman would contribute to the synagogue, the latter said in a low voice, “Two hundred dollars.”

  “Six hundred lira!” the beadle shouted to the worshipers, and all stopped to look at Zodman, even the rebbe himself, and the American returned to his seat, sitting very quietly throughout the rest of the service.

  Cullinane, used to the rigid formalism of Catholic worship, with its masterful alternation of priestly chant and group participation, was unable to assess the Jewish ritual. Here there was no organization, no systematic division and no apparent beauty. The voices of women were absent. The beadle shuffled up and down, the old rebbe prayed on his own, and each man was his separate synagogue. He looked at the two men in the corner, still arguing their business problem, and he concluded that while Judaism might be meaningful for Paul Zodman it could never substitute for the controlled beauty of Catholicism.

  Then just as he was dismissing the religion, a moment arrived that he would never forget, one of the supreme religious experiences of his life. In later years, as he dug through the layers of Jewish history at Makor, it would return at unexpected times to illuminate his understanding. It started simply. The beadle shuffled up to an old man sitting beside Zodman and indicated that he must take off his shoes. The old Jew did so and the beadle banged his way to a little closet under the niche, and while the others prayed he rattled a chain of keys, finally selecting one that unlocked the closet doors, behind which hung a copper pot. This he handed to the man, who went to a spigot outside the door as the beadle threw down a narrow rug. Three other men took off their shoes, and when the first returned with water, washed their hands. Four white prayer shawls were then procured and these the four shoeless men threw over their heads—not their shoulders, their heads—and took their places on the rug, where they prayed in silence, facing the wall.

  Now the Vodzher Rebbe began a different kind of chant, composed of short phrases, whereupon the four beshrouded Jews turned to face the congregation and, bowing from the waist, extended their arms to form a kind of cloth tent which hid their faces but allowed their voices to sound forth, and from this strange position they uttered a series of moving cries, meaningless but profound. Cullinane stared at the ghostly figures—these headless Jews lost in their shrouds—and wondered what their performance could signify. It was archaic, passionate, a group of voices shouting some message from the most ancient history of man, and finally the shawls were dropped back over the heads and the voices ceased. The ceremony, whatever it was, had ended, and seventeen different men moaned and grumbled and argued their way to the conclusion of seventeen different services. The rebbe mumbled a prayer and the synagogue service ended.

  “What was it?” Cullinane asked, deeply shaken by the last segment of the service.

  “The shawl thing?” Eliav asked. “All Jews are divided among Cohens, Levis and Israels. Cohens are priests, Levis are the temple attendants and Israels are the majority that’s left over. At each Saturday service the Cohens in attendance—they don’t have to be named Cohen, though many are—rise, put on their shawls and bless the congregation.”

  “Zodman looks as if he has taken it seriously.”

  “So do you,” Eliav said.

  Zodman left the Vodzher synagogue in a state of euphoria, relieved to know that Israel had some persons, at least, who sustained Jewish ritual—and when the men returned to the cars where Vered waited, he stunned them by stating solemnly, “I don’t think it’s right to drive on Shabbat,” and he would not allow the cars to move until the holy day ended.

  “Has he ever done such a thing in Chicago?” Vered whispered.

  “No. He loves college football. Drives to Urban
a every Saturday.”

  “I believe,” Zodman pronounced gravely, “that with enough saintly men like the Vodzher Rebbe, Israel is in good hands.”

  “Enough men like the rebbe,” Vered whispered, “and this country is doomed.”

  Since the cars could not be used, Cullinane walked his group to a hotel that had old olive trees in the court, and there over a cold lunch, since no fires were allowed in Zefat on Shabbat, the archaeologists explained to their patron what they were accomplishing at Makor. “Let’s climb up on the hill,” Cullinane suggested. “I can show you there.”

  “We won’t have to use the cars?” Zodman asked suspiciously.

  “Walking is allowed,” Eliav assured him, “for two thousand paces in each direction,” and the five climbed to the top of the hill crowning Zefat, where they found the ruins of a Crusader castle. Zodman was delighted to see the great rocks and asked, “Will ours look as good as this?”

  “Better,” Cullinane assured him, “because Makor was a better castle to begin with, and I think we’re going to uncover more of it. But you understand, Paul, that when we do uncover it we’ll have to remove many of the stones and go on down to the levels beneath.”

  “What happens to the castle?” Zodman asked.

  “Some of it vanishes … stone by stone.”

  “But I gave the money to find a castle.”

  “You will, but the important finds will be the ones underneath, the ones going far back into history.”

  Zodman frowned. “I sort of fancied that when we were through we’d have a castle, so that when my friends came over from Chicago I could send them up to … well, see my castle.”

  Cullinane took the next step cautiously: “In Israel we have half a dozen good Crusader castles. Here … the one at Starkenberg. But what we’re digging for may be nowhere else. The ultimate secrets of Jewish history.” This was a preposterous statement, but it sounded good.

  Tabari added, “The sort of thing you saw at the Vodzher Rebbe’s.” This was completely nonsensical, but as Tabari had guessed, it caught Zodman’s imagination.

  “You think there’s something worthwhile down there? Beneath the castle?”

  “Where we’re standing, here at Zefat, history goes back to the time of Flavius Josephus … about the time of Christ. But at Makor it may go back an additional seven or eight thousand years.”

  “Like Gezer?” Zodman asked. “Jericho?”

  “Like them,” Cullinane said.

  “Maybe not as far,” Eliav said with professional caution.

  “But there’s a chance?” Zodman asked.

  “Koe-rect,” Tabari said. “A treasure-house of Jewish history.”

  “Then we should dig for it,” Zodman said, “even if I must lose some of my castle.”

  “We’d better get in the cars now,” Tabari insinuated, “because I have something quite special arranged for tonight.”

  Zodman consulted his watch and his conscience and said, “I think it’s now all right to travel,” but when the cars reached his memorial forest and Tabari asked, “Do you want to stop and see your trees again?” he replied, “I think we can let the trees go back to their rightful owner. You see, when I was playing with those phony little children I saw the other Orde Wingate sign which somebody overlooked.”

  For a moment no one knew what to say, but Tabari broke the silence with the breezy observation: “Tonight, Paul, you’re going to see something you’ll never forget.”

  “I’ll never forget the forest,” Zodman replied, and they could not tell whether he was joking or not.

  In Israel the festive night of the week is Saturday, for “when three stars can be seen in the heavens at one glance” Shabbat ends and the orthodox, who have observed its restrictions, are free to travel and to celebrate. On this Saturday night Kibbutz Makor was playing host to the Galilee finals of the biennial Bible Quiz, in which participants were subjected to the most penetrating questions regarding Old Testament history. Winners of tonight’s contest would move on to Jerusalem to qualify for the world finals in which many countries would participate, so excitement was high as buses arrived in the kibbutz from Akko, Zefat and Tiberias.

  Before the contest began Tabari asked permission to address the crowd, and said, “Tonight our contestants will compete not only for the right to go to Jerusalem, but for cash prizes which our distinguished guest from America, Mr. Paul Zodman, has agreed to award.” Zodman, knowing nothing of this plan, fidgeted uneasily as the shameless Arab stared at him and said, “First prize, one hundred American dollars?” Zodman nodded and the crowd cheered. “Second prize, fifty dollars. Third prize, twenty-five.” He smiled blandly at Zodman and sat down.

  The Chicagoan had expected the evening to be a perfunctory affair, but he was soon disabused. Twelve Israelis, mostly under the age of thirty, lined up while a group of four experts from Jerusalem began firing questions at them: “Name seven birds mentioned in the Bible, citing your authority for each.” That gave no difficulty, nor did the call for seven animals. “Name three princesses from outside Israel who caused trouble.” A young man from Tiberias answered that one. “Differentiate between the three Isaiahs and distribute the Book of Isaiah among them.” That knocked out one girl, who knew the difference between the First Isaiah, who was purely Jewish in his theology, and the Second, who seemed to foretell the Christian faith, but not the Third Isaiah, a shadowy figure who returned to Hebraic thoughts. The next woman, a Yemenite from Zefat, was able to answer the question and to specify the chapters and verses at which the Isaiahs were separated. At the end of the second hour three contestants still remained, two men and an attractive girl from Kibbutz Makor, and the questions became minute. “Differentiate between Jedaiah, Jedidah and Jeduthun, citing your authority for each.” That took care of one man, but the girl was able to rattle off the answers, and in the end she defeated the other man as well, to the joy of her kibbutzniks.

  “Young lady,” Zodman said with respect, “I have never seen a person win a prize more deservedly than you have just done. That goes for you, too, gentlemen. But I would like to ask one additional question. Was this a hand-picked group? Do the other young people know the Bible as well as you did?”

  “Excuse me,” Schwartz interrupted, collecting the girl’s hundred dollars, for the kibbutz was run on a basis of pure socialism, “in Israel we all study the Bible. From our kibbutz alone we could have offered a team which would have done just as well.”

  “Amazing,” Zodman said, and that night before he went to bed he intended to tell Cullinane that he was thinking more kindly about Israel, even if the kibbutz didn’t have a synagogue; but he found his director sitting silent before the Greek hand with the strigil, so he did not interrupt, but when Vered Bar-El appeared he walked with her beneath the olive trees, confessing, “I’m afraid I was fairly stupid about your Israel.”

  “I was sure you couldn’t have been as ill-informed as you sounded yesterday,” she said.

  Next morning there was much energy at the dig, for Tabari had promised an extra ten pounds to any worker who turned up a significant find while Paul Zodman was on the premises, and before noon a girl at Trench B started crying, “I win! I win!”

  “Shut up!” Tabari cried, quieting the cries lest Zodman hear, but when he saw what the girl had unearthed—a Babylonian helmet and a spear point, bespeaking the days when Nebuchadrezzar had enslaved Makor and taken into captivity much of its population—he himself became excited and started shouting, “Hey! Everyone!” And in the confusion Zodman came running up to see the mysterious armor which must have struck terror into ancient Makor when its owner stalked into town. Cullinane sketched the find, then turned the trench over to the recorders.

  On his way back to the office he saw with apprehension that the team at Trench A was gouging out the earth with unscientific haste and no doubt destroying minor objects. He protested to Tabari, but the Arab said, “We’ve got ten years to impress scholars, and one morning to impress Paul
J. Zodman. If I had a steam shovel right now, I’d use it.” And his scheme proved profitable when a boy from Trench A turned up one of the real finds at the tell:

  “What is it?” Zodman asked.

  “The most Hebrew thing we’ve found yet,” Cullinane explained. “The kind of horned altar they speak of in the Bible. This could date back to the time of King David. He may even have worshiped at it, although I doubt that he was ever here.” Zodman bent in the dust to study the old stone altar, so strange and barbaric, yet the foundation of so much of Jewish religion, the kind of altar at which the first sacrifices were made to the one god. Tenderly he patted the antique piece, then said, “I’m flying out tonight. To Rome.”

  “But you’ve been here only two days!” Cullinane protested.

  “Can’t give you any more time,” the busy man said, and on the way to the airport he observed to Vered and Cullinane, “These two days were worth two years of my life. I saw something I’ll never forget.”

  “The Vodzher Rebbe?” Vered asked, with just a touch of malice.

  “No. An Israeli soldier.” Silence. Deep silence. Then Zodman’s quiet voice: “For two thousand years whenever we Jews saw a soldier, it could only mean bad news. Because the soldier couldn’t be Jewish. He had to be an enemy. It’s no small thing to see a Jewish soldier, standing on his own soil, protecting Jews … not persecuting them.” More silence.