The Source

by James A. Michener

  “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.

  At first Eliav was afraid the old man might hurt himself, but as other dancers formed about the rebbe, Eliav realized that these men were in a kind of catatonic trance and if they were to be struck dead now they would die in maximum joy: they were truly children of God reveling in His goodness.

  After the rebbe had continued his violent dance for some fifteen minutes, all the men of Zefat joined hands in a big circle that reached out to the four walls, a
nd slowly this circle began to move counter-clockwise while Eliav remained in the middle, watching. An elderly Jew began singing and soon the hall throbbed with the sound of voices and feet which halted only when the rebbe stopped the dance.

  “Tonight my son Eliav will dance with me,” the old man said, “that he may gain an understanding of this land he is to govern.” And the ancient rebbe left the circle, took Eliav by the hand and brought him into the group. With the old man’s hand clutching his, Eliav danced till morning.

  As dawn came over the hills of Galilee the fur-hatted Hasidim began straggling out of the hall to wander home in groups of five or six, and as each group moved into the saintly streets of Zefat the rebbe gave them his benediction. When he and Eliav were alone he said quietly, “Eliav, we are depending on you to keep Israel a nation dedicated to God.” He asked the young minister to walk home with him, but Eliav said, “No, I have a mission to carry out,” and perhaps the old man guessed what it was, for he said, “Your true mission to Zefat you have completed. You’ve seen that we religious ones intend to fight for this nation. Not a single paragraph of the law may you change.” Then, as if he realized that he had not much longer to live, he reached up and kissed Eliav on both cheeks. “The dead are dead,” he whispered, “but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.” And he followed the others through the narrow, arched streets of Zefat.

  Then Eliav was alone in the city he had fought for, and he walked by twisting paths and alleys down to the foot of the English stairs to make a pilgrimage which in recent years had come to mean much in his life. Ahead lay twenty-one separate flights to be climbed, and reverently he began his ascent.

  One, two, three: to the left stood the stalwart Jewish house pock-marked with bullets and unrepaired since the war; here Vered Yevneski had helped hold off three Arab assaults that would otherwise have taken the house and led to the collapse of the quarter; she had been so young, so brave.

  Four, five, six, seven, eight: to the right he saw the Arab mosque as he had seen it on the morning of victory, and to the left stood Rabbi Yom Tov Gaddiel’s blunt synagogue, still standing in opposition.

  Nine, ten: he stopped in pain, for this was the spot at which Ilana Hacohen had fought off the first Arab attack across the stairs. Children were playing in the area now, and he wondered if, when they grew up, they would have the courage to do the things Ilana had done, that wonderful girl: she had been so powerful in her dedication; where would her like be found again?

  Eleven, twelve, thirteen: he paused to look at the Arab homes, still painted blue to ward off danger, and the blue had protected them for thirteen hundred years—but in the end it had been powerless. How lovely the blue Arab homes were, with their unexpected arches and little gardens; how empty they seemed now, staring up without roofs toward the impartial sun. He had never hated Arabs, Eliav reflected, and he wished that they had remained to make their singing arches and their gardens part of his land as before.

  Fourteen, fifteen: he was on the small plaza where the trees grew so charmingly, flowers on each side, and grapes running up the Jewish wall, and on the Arab side the six tall evergreens which gave the plaza distinction and beauty; here Ilana and Vered had held off the enemy for three hours and in the trunks of the slim trees one could still find bullets. Beyond were morning-glories prolific in their blue loveliness; and if the stairs of Zefat contained only this one small area, they would be memorable.

  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen: now as he neared the head of the stairs he could see the brooding gray walls of the police station, still marked with bullet holes where Teddy Reich and Nissim Bagdadi had tried so vainly to assault the fortress; he still wondered how they had managed to take this forbidding stronghold.

  Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one: he found no words, only the terrible ache of lost companionship; here Bagdadi had fallen; there Ilana and Bar-El had stood, and they were dead; what a terrible burden a man must bear if he climbs the stairs of the years, if he survives and attempts to govern as his dead companions would have wished.

  On this crisp dawn he would ascend beyond the last flight of stairs, for his mind was carried upward to the Crusader ruins, from which he had first seen the Galilee in snow, and as he climbed he saw to the east that impregnable fortress against whose capture his mind had rebelled, and he chanted, as David did when making his ascent to Jerusalem: “ ‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.’ ” Beyond the fortress, which had fallen as miraculously as any in the Torah, he could see once more the flawless land whose sweeping hills moved in majesty and whose towering clouds still twisted in violence above the lake hallowed to so many.

  He saw the lake itself and, toward the far end, that bit of land which Shmuel Hacohen had finally purchased from the emir in Damascus, the land where Jews had proved that they could not only read Talmud but also farm their inheritance. I suppose you have to be like Shmuel, Eliav reflected. You stake out your land. You ride around it on a donkey to protect it. And if somebody shoots at you, you fight back. And if in the end you’re killed, you trust that your granddaughter Ilana will carry on where you left off. He bowed his head and whispered, “How can any man have the courage to govern a land like this?”

  Then, as he raised his head, he discovered, from an unexpected quarter, the answer to his question; for he looked down upon Tiberias, that insignificant, that precious town which had given the world both the Talmud and the Bible. Outside the old Crusader walls he could discern the tomb of Moses Maimonides, of whom it was said, “From Moses to Moses there was no one like Moses.” Eliav thought: I hope I find one tenth the wisdom he did; and he promised himself that this afternoon, when he passed Tiberias, he would pause to light a candle at the tomb. He doubted that any part of the great philosopher’s corpse had reached this burial ground. The tomb could only be a cenotaph, for legend explained that as Maimonides lay dying in Egypt he asked to be buried in Israel, whereupon his corpse was lashed to a donkey and the beast headed north. The animal had died at Tiberias, so there the tomb stood, reminding ordinary men that even they could attain reason if they applied themselves. “I’ll light three candles,” Eliav said.

  Then his eye climbed the hill back of Tiberias, toward those fatal Horns of Hittim, and he could imagine the cave in which another legend placed the grave of Rabbi Akiba, and as he paid homage to this great leader he thought: I wish we had him with us now.

  For there was beginning to be an outcry, both in Israel and in the world, against the arbitrary structure of contemporary Judaism: Zipporah Zederbaum unable to marry because of an outworn law four thousand years old; Eliav forbidden to marry Vered because of the Cohen legalities; Zodman’s divorce not legal because modern-thinking American rabbis could not be trusted; the German woman, faithful to Judaism even at the cost of her eye and her life, with children who were not accepted as Jews; the Indian Jews who were disbarred; and Leon Berkes who could not work as a Jew. Eliav was particularly worried by such rigid crystallization because he had read enough history to know that if it were continued, the revolt of the kibbutzniks and people like Ilana and Vered could become damaging. In any other nation a typical official like Eliav would find himself allied against the priests who insisted upon such irrefrangible law, and even he had begun to echo the warning voiced by Ilana Hacohen: “this Mickey Mouse crap.”

  But Ilan Eliav was not in “any other country,” nor could he ever be “a typical official.” He was a Jew, aware of the unique history of his people. They had survived persecution, as the Vodzher Rebbe knew, only because their stern rabbis had kept them faithful to the law, and if now this law raised certain difficulties, that was nothing new; it had always done so. The law need not be abrogated; what was needed was some new leader to refight in the twentieth century the battles that great Akiba had fought in the second. The law must be humanized, brought up to date. Eliav felt sure that were Akiba alive today he would long si
nce have simplified it, adjusting it to modern life as he had once adjusted it to Roman.

  But the law would continue, for only it could keep Israel alive. Where were the Chaldeans and the Moabites, the Phoenicians and the Assyrians, the Hurrians and the Hittites? Each had been more powerful than the Jews, yet each had perished and the Jews remained. Where was Marduk, great god of the Babylonians, and Dagan of the Philistines; and Moloch of the Phoenicians? They had been mighty gods who struck terror in the hearts of men, but they had vanished and it was the conciliatory, sometimes awkward God of the Jews Who not only persisted but Who also vitalized two derivative religions. And God exercised His power through the law.

  It was no mean thing to be a Jew and the custodian of God’s law; for if His law was exacting it was also ennobling. It demanded respect if not blind obedience. There could be no larger task, Eliav thought, than devising procedures whereby the Jews of Israel and their more numerous cousins in America could share this vital law and the responsibility for keeping it vital. He recalled a cynical joke: “The function of the American Jew is to send money to a German Jew in Jerusalem, who forwards it to a Polish Jew in the Negev, who makes it possible for the Spanish Jew in Morocco to come to Israel.” There was more to it than that.

  On the day he left, John Cullinane had asked in his easy Irish manner, “Ilan, why do you Jews make life so difficult for yourselves?” At the time Eliav had thought of no reply, but now, having lost Vered for a Jewish reason and having been projected into the heart of Jewish responsibility, he understood: Life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be life. And no religion defended so tenaciously the ordinary dignity of living. Judaism stressed neither an after-life, an after-punishment, nor heaven; what was worthy and good was here, on this day, in Zefat. We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.