Shmuel Hacohen had been born Shmuel Kagan in the little village of Vodzh along the western boundary of Russia. His father was a thin, pious man who collected rents for Russian landlords, and Shmuel’s first argument came when he was nine: his orthodox father had forced him to wear soft curls dangling down beside his ears, the Hasidic mark of piety as demanded by the Bible, but young Shmuel, a sickly and sway-backed child who walked with his left shoulder thrust forward, was learning that boys with curls were apt to be set upon by the Russians, so, borrowing his mother’s scissors, he had shorn himself. At the time his mother said nothing, but when Kagan senior returned from collecting rents she burst into tears and Shmuel’s father took him into a darkened room, where he recited the terrifying admonition of Moses our Teacher: “ ‘If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.’ ” His father had paused before adding, “You let your hair grow in curls.”
Shmuel had been impressed by his father’s threat, and was for some weeks haunted by a vision of the punishment recommended by the Torah, but even this failed to make him pliable to his father’s ideas. He refused to wear the curls. The conflict became intensified when his parents wanted him to enter the yeshiva to prepare himself for a lifetime of study, since they recognized that he was an able boy. Again Shmuel refused, for he had already decided to enter some kind of business.
“There’s no business nobler than studying Talmud,” Kagan said.
“It’s not for me.”
“Shmuel, listen. Each morning when I pass the synagogue I ask God to forgive me. That I’m collecting rents. For Gentiles. And not reading Talmud as I should.”
“Me, I want to work.”
The senior Kagan, knowing the disappointments that Jews faced in Russia, fearing the pogroms that were becoming frequent along the Polish border, said with certainty, “Son, you’re a weak boy with a swayed back. For a Jew like you there’s only one safe course. Study Talmud. Become a pious man. And trust in God.”
This reasoning the stubborn boy could not accept, so in their impasse father and son agreed to place their differences before the holy man of Vodzh and to abide by his decision. Accordingly, they left their home and walked along the muddy road until they reached the village pump, across from which stood a courtyard surrounded by a rambling wooden house. Hasidic Jews, with fur caps, long black gowns and side curls, clustered about the door, and through them Kagan led his son. Without knocking he entered the house, announcing, “Rebbe, we come seeking judgment.”
The saintly man before whom they stood scarcely seemed a religious leader. He was a tall, robust man in his forties, with a ruddy face, smiling eyes and a bushy black beard, a rabbi who loved dancing and the shout of folksongs; at weddings he would sometimes throw the bride on his massive shoulders and race about his courtyard, kicking his heels and bellowing marriage songs until his congregation cheered. If at midnight some wanted to halt the festivities, it was he who kept the musicians playing, and once when he was reprimanded for continuing a marriage celebration till dawn he said, “The Jews of Vodzh have neither carriages nor gold nor expensive wine. If we cannot be lavish with our dancing and our music, how can we celebrate?” And when his questioner remained quizzical, the big rebbe grabbed him and shook him, saying harshly, “Jacob! This bride has not the dishes to lay a table. All her life she will live in poverty, consoled only by the memory of this night when she was beautiful. For God’s sake, dance with her now, before the roosters make us finish.”
He was known simply as the Vodzher Rebbe, a Hasidic rabbi who alleviated the misery of his Jews by the joy of his religious experience. In Vodzh he maintained a court, which the rebbes of his family had conducted for three generations, a house in which transient Jews could find a place to sleep or local Jews a center for discussion. It was a holy place from which he dispensed justice among his people, who could not find it in the local courts. In all the villages of western Russia and eastern Poland the Vodzher Rebbe was recognized as one of the saints of Judaism, and often on Saturdays he would have at his table as many as fifty Jews from different communities who had come to hear wisdom from his lips, but what they usually heard was his lively voice singing old Jewish folksongs.
Across his left cheek he carried a scar which further detracted from an appearance of saintliness, but this was his badge of honor about which Hasidic Jews would speak for generations: “One Friday afternoon the woodcutter Pinhas ran to the Vodzher Rebbe, saying, ‘Poor Mendel! He does not have with what to make Shabbat.’ That winter our rebbe had no money, for he had given it all away. But the idea of a pious Jew unable to celebrate the coming of Queen Shabbat was too painful to bear, so he put on his fur cap and marched to the great house of the nobleman, saying, ‘Sir, your poor Jews of Vodzh have no money to make Shabbat. What can you give me?’ The nobleman was insulted by this interruption and with his sword cut the rebbe across the face. Without flinching the rebbe said, ‘That blow was for me. Now what have you for the needy Jews?’ And in this brave manner he got the kopecks so that Mendel could make Shabbat.”
Now, as the Kagans stood before him, this huge saintly man smiled at the close-cropped boy and asked, “Shmuel Kagan, what have you been up to?”
“My son refuses to wear his curls,” the father complained. “He will not enter the yeshiva.”
“He won’t?” the rebbe asked.
“I want to work,” Shmuel replied.
The big rebbe threw back his head and laughed. “How many fathers in Vodzh would be happy if their lazy sons once said, ‘I want to work.’ ” He reached out and grabbed Shmuel, saying, “Sit on my lap, son,” and with one enormous hand he clutched the frail boy to him, rumpling his short hair with the other. “I noticed that you were running through the village like a lamb newly shorn.” At this witticism the Hasidim in the room laughed, as courtiers should, but the rebbe ignored them, saying to the boy, “Your father is right, Shmuel. Israel can’t exist without a fresh supply of new scholars each year. My own son is at the yeshiva, and he makes me proud. Your father would be proud if you were studying Talmud.” He hugged the boy and asked, “What’s the matter? No mind for studies?”
“I want to work,” Shmuel repeated.
“And so you shall!” the rebbe cried joyously. “Kagan, Israel needs not only scholars but practical men as well. Shave your hair, Shmuel. Go to the Russian schools. Go on to Germany and attend university. Do the wonderful things that Jews are capable of. But never forget your God.” He rose, and keeping the boy in his arms, began to dance, jumping up and down in one place so that his beard brushed across Shmuel’s face, and the Hasidim began clapping their hands. One by one stately men with long beards and side curls joined the dance, and the rebbe’s court echoed with shouts of praise as the holy men danced.
“We are dancing for Shmuel Kagan!” the rebbe cried. “For he is the child of God and in the world he is to do great things.” Toward the end of the long dance, when all were chanting and beating their hands, the big rebbe kissed Shmuel on the cheek and whispered, “You are the child of God, the son of Abraham.”
The dancing ended, and with reverence the big man placed Shmuel beside his father, to whom he said, “The paths to God are manifold.” Then, as if he were experiencing a visit from God, he clutched the boy to him and burst into tears, great animal-sobs coming from his beard as he mourned, “You will do all these things, child, but in them you will not find happiness. Nor you,” and he pointed to one of the visiting Hasidim. “Nor you. Nor you.” He returned to his chair and sat trembling like a child, for he had been allowed a vision
of the tragedy that faced his Jews.
So Shmuel Kagan, with his father’s consent, avoided the yeshiva and went instead to the Russian school; he was a good student, but no small village like Vodzh could provide the funds to send a boy to university, so at the age of twenty he found a job as timber buyer for the government, and in this capacity traveled much of western Russia, a small Jew with an odd way of walking, who went from town to town, acquainting himself with the strange winds that were beginning to blow across that vast land. In Kiev he met young men who argued, “The only hope for the Jew is to join the socialist movement and build a new Russia in which he can find an honorable home.” In Berdichev he came upon a group who met in the home of a poet who insisted, “Jews will come into their own only when they return to Zion and build there a new state.” But at the end of each trip he returned to Vodzh, where he sat like a penitent in the court of the rebbe, listening as that bearded saint developed his view that the true salvation of the Jew could lie only in sanctity and the Talmud. To his surprise young Kagan found himself more attuned to the rebbe than to the voluble men in Kiev and Berdichev and he was always pleased when the spiritual leader ceased talking and began chanting some Hasidic song. Shmuel joined in, and the rebbe’s court would echo with their noisy voices: this was permanent, the joy that poor Jews could find in praising their God.
But at the rebbe’s court there was contradiction: although he himself relied solely upon the Talmud, he did not deny validity to men who thought they had found alternative routes for the Jews. One day in 1874, when Shmuel was twenty-eight, the rebbe surprised the young timber merchant by observing, “What the poet in Berdichev told you is correct. The day is coming when we Jews of Russia and Poland must combine with the Jews of Eretz Israel to build a new land for ourselves. We shall till the soil and work in cities like other men, and if I were younger I would elect this new life.”
That year Shmuel was further perplexed by the arrival in his father’s home of a bearded, unctuous middle-aged Jew named Lipschitz, who nodded to everyone, kept his mouth in a fixed smile and shook hands limply like a woman. He hiked from village to village through Russia, carrying with him a list of Jews who could be counted upon to give him lodging, and in Vodzh he had thrust himself upon the Kagans. “I am from Tiberias,” he announced. “Tiberias, in Eretz Israel, and I shall be living with you for a few days.” He made himself at home, ate voraciously, and visited all Jewish families, begging funds with which to support the Talmudic scholars of Tiberias.
Shmuel disliked Lipschitz and suspected that he was keeping much of the money for himself, but the man’s mention of Eretz Israel so close upon the rebbe’s comments excited Shmuel’s imagination, so that while the guest fed himself Shmuel asked many questions. Between mouthfuls the visitor explained how the holy town nestled beside the Sea of Galilee, how Arabs dominated the town, how the Turks governed, and how the Jews lived.
“What work do they do?” Shmuel asked.
Astonished, Lipschitz replied, “They study.”
“All of them?”
“Yes,” and he recited the Jewish legend which said that on the day when holy men no longer studied the Talmud in Safad and Tiberias, Judaism would perish. “You give your money in Vodzh so that the Messiah can be protected in Tiberias,” he explained, but Shmuel thought that much of what he said was nonsense.
In succeeding months the young timber merchant spent many nights talking with his rebbe, who picked his way like an agile deer through the complexities Shmuel was encountering: “Joining a revolution I could not approve, for when the new Russia comes, you and I will still be Jews and our position will not have been improved. Emigrating to Eretz Israel might be right for you, with your energy, but it would be wrong for most of my court. Holding fast to ancient Jewish custom is still our salvation.” As the big man talked, Shmuel acquired his understanding of what Jewish rectitude meant. There was a right way to perform any act and a wrong way, and honest men clung to the former. Each aspect of business life had its moral tradition, which to ignore meant distress. Human relationships were governed by inherited law, which in the long run proved just. At times the rebbe experienced a mystical apprehension of the future, for in late 1874 he warned Shmuel, “One day our Jews in Poland and Russia will again face the days of Czmielnicki. I’m too old to escape. I’ll stay here and help my court survive whatever strikes. But others should ponder the future and act upon it.”
One warm spring evening in 1875 Shmuel discovered what his rebbe had meant, for in a nearby village a casual group of Russian peasants were sitting at an inn getting happily drunk after the day’s planting, and as the sun set, a sense of moroseness overcame one of the farmers and he observed, with no intention of harm, “Every kopeck I get falls into the hands of some Jew.”
“That’s right,” a second farmer said. “Either we give them to Kagan for rent or to Lieb for vodka.”
The farmers turned as a body to study their Jewish host, and Lieb, recognizing the look, began to put away the glassware. He signaled his son.
“Lieb,” the first farmer shouted, “what do you do with our money?”
“I run this place only for the landlord,” Lieb said apologetically, hiding his employer’s money.
“And Kagan?” the second farmer asked. “What does he do with our money?”
“Like me. Gives it to the landlord.”
The men had to admit that Lieb was right, and the second farmer said, “You Jews are as bad off as we are,” and Lieb breathed easier.
But then the first farmer said idly, as if reflecting upon some critical event in his life, “Jerusalem is lost.”
Like a spark this mournful observation lit up the eyes of the half-drunk peasants. A man who had not spoken repeated, “Jerusalem is lost.”
There was a long moment of hesitation, during which Lieb the innkeeper prayed while the sun went down. The farmers watched it go, waiting. The signal came from a youth, drunker than the others, who uttered the fatal word, that hateful word which once pronounced could never be recalled.
“Hep,” he said quietly, and Lieb turned white with fear.
“Hep,” the first farmer repeated as Lieb looked to see if he could reach the door.
“Hep!” the peasants began to chant, and villagers hearing the ominous word began boarding up their windows. Lieb, with panic on his face, shrank into a corner among the bottles.
“Hep!” the drinkers repeated, and of a sudden the young man leaped from his chair, flung himself upon the bar, sliding down to where he faced the innkeeper. Grabbing a knife from a leg of meat he threw himself upon the white-faced Jew and cut his throat.
“Hep!” roared the growing crowd as it surged toward the Jewish section of the village, bellowing the ancient cry of the pogrom: “Hep!” Hierosolyma est perdita. And somehow the fact that Jerusalem was lost, a distant city which they did not know, became an excuse for murdering Jews. If any people in the world had a right to mourn the loss of that sacred city to Islam it was the Jews, but its surrender was used as a reason for exterminating them.
There were some in the crowd who recognized the irrelevancy of their cry and these substituted another of equal potency: “The Zhid crucified our Lord.” But whichever cry was used, it fed the wild spirit of the pogrom and all united in the culminating wail, “Kill the Zhid.”
The peasants, having destroyed the ghetto of their own village, stormed into the countryside, gathering strength from every farm until they reached Vodzh, where someone screamed, “Let’s get the rent collector!” They rushed to the Kagan home, shouting with approval as a swordsman tore off the head of Shmuel’s father with one blow. They cheered again when the same sword slashed open the belly of the old woman. With axes and hoes the Christians gained revenge for the loss of Jerusalem, hacking to pieces four bearded Hasidim who were trying to reach the rebbe’s court.
The mob then stormed into the court, where they found the big man dancing ecstatically with nine of his steadfast friends. For a mo
ment the peasants hesitated, unprepared for this strange scene of men cleansing their minds for death. But then a young drunk sprang at the rebbe, screaming, “He crucified Jesus, didn’t he?” And so the Vodzher Rebbe was slain, and his beard set on fire, and his body dragged through the streets to a spot where more than sixty children, women and old men were being slaughtered and tossed through the air like sheaves of harvested wheat. Jerusalem was lost, Christ was dead, and somehow the shedding of this Jewish blood consoled the bereaved peasants in their drunken sorrow.
Shmuel Kagan returned to Vodzh in time to bury his parents and his rebbe. That night he determined to quit Russia, for he understood at last that what the rebbe had said was true: “When the new Russia comes, you and I will still be Jews and our position will not have been improved.” A vision of Tiberias, beside its lake, grew strong in his mind and he spent the following days consulting with Jews, numbed by the inexplicable ferocity of their neighbors, and he collected from them funds for the purchase of community farm land at Tiberias. Finally he approached the Vodzher Rebbe’s son, now graduated from the yeshiva, and asked him to lead the exile, but the religious young man refused to leave the village of his ancestors. “I shall stay here and be the rebbe. Last week my father told me that pretty soon you would be going.” So the new rebbe prayed with Kagan and at the end they repeated the litany of all Jews in the Diaspora, “To next year in Jerusalem.”
When Shmuel reached Akka in 1876 he did not, like many Jewish immigrants, fall upon the ground to kiss the soil in which he would be buried, for he saw Palestine not as the end of life but as a beginning, and in this spirit he performed an act even more symbolic than kissing the soil: he dropped his Russian name Kagan and assumed its Hebraic original, Hacohen, and as Shmuel Hacohen—Samuel the Priest—he entered upon his new life.
His trip from Akka to Tiberias was an adventure in disillusionment, especially to one trained as a timber buyer, for both the Old Testament and the Talmud had taught him that Israel was a land heavy with trees: he found only bleakness. In the entire thirty miles from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, Shmuel Hacohen found only one small group of trees, the ancient olives at Makor, and he wondered who had destroyed the homeland of the Jews.
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