by Malka Marom
“Hand me two legal-entry visas to The Land this minute or I’ll kill you,” my father tells them, knife in hand. The Jewish agency clerks are so afraid of him and his knife, they hand him two entry visas to The Land. Quick before they blow the whistle to call the police, my father escapes.
But now my father has to face his father. And his father also pulls out a knife and tells my father that he’ll kill him if he disobeys him and runs to partake in Alien work. “Idolatry, Alien work,” my father’s father calls Zionism. “Stay in Poland,” my grandfather tells my father, “where it is safe, where a Jew can work and study the Torah.” He orders my father to obey him, honour him, as is commanded in the Fifth Commandment or a bitter end will come to all. And maybe it did, because my father didn’t obey the commandment.
It is too dark to see his parents and all his brothers and his sisters when my father tiptoes out of their lives . . . Not like they show in the movies: there is no warm lasting embrace, no tearful kiss, no blessing. No, like a cursed criminal my father sneaks away.
He berates himself, ever since then, for not taking—stealing—something from his parents his brothers and sisters: a prayer book, or just a torn page of his father’s Talmud, a piece of cloth, or even a thread or a button. Because no one, and nothing remained of them, but the story . . .
“This is too cruel a punishment for transgressing one single commandment,” my father felt, and with his father’s curse still ringing in his ears, like a condemned man, my father went to seek pardon in the lists. Every day he read the lists like a Bible. He even looked for names remotely connected to his family’s name, or to the name of someone—anyone—from his little Polish town. And when he sees a name similar to the names of the ones he knew There, he follows that name as if it was the pillar of fire that leads to the Promised Land.
But the pillar and the lists lead only to a graveyard in the sky. No one had survived in his little Polish town. Not even one who could tell him how, when, where—if by fire, by smoke, by God only knows why or what. Everyone my father knew There—vanished.
Now, only my mother can attest that he didn’t invent them in his stories and dreams.
“Your sister went horseback riding in the Galilee this Shabbat. A place called Vered Ha’gallil,” my mother told me this evening, as she and I were washing the dishes. The city was so still at that hour of the eve of Shabbat that we could hear my father turning newspaper pages in the living room.
“Your friends are in the paper, Leora,” my father bellowed from the living room. “Riva and Mottke are guest-speakers at a medical conference at Beersheba University this weekend.”
Just then, the neighbours next door started to chant Zemirot to welcome Shabbat. My father hummed along in the living room, my mother and I in the kitchen. We knew the medley by heart. My parents have lived next door to the same neighbours for more than thirty years. Every Shabbat, they string one chant to another in the same order. There was an extra peace in the timelessness.
“Arik’s parents are in the Negev, at Arik’s brother’s,” my mother continued to fill me in when my father joined us for tea and honey cake. “Arik’s father is recuperating there from a gall-bladder operation he underwent three weeks ago. Levi phoned him from Canada every day . . . For as long as he can remember, Levi has heard them talk about Arik as if he was a saint, now he doesn’t know what to do to measure up . . . phones them, phones us, as if he has nothing better to do than phoning grandparents.”
“No, he’s just as impatient as Arik, can’t wait to be part of the life here,” I said.
“Yes, Levi knows that Arik was far from perfect,” my father boomed, turning to me and adding, “you made sure of that. It’s just a stage he’s going through. At his age, I also tried to be one hundred percent perfect—like the Gentiles in my shtetl . . . The Gentiles are a hundred-percent people, you know, I used to work with them in Poland, to get into shape for the pioneering work in The Land. You should have seen their hands, Leora. Mine in those days were two raw wounds, your mother can tell you. She used to dress my hands every night, and every morning the Polish Gentiles were surprised to see me back. We Jews were doomed to be physically and morally inferior to them, they believed. ‘A Jew could never be as strong as a Gentile,’ they used to tell me. ‘Why are you killing yourself?’ they used to say. And only four or five years later, who would have thought that not one Jew in my Polish town would be spared?
“Why only me? What a responsibility. How can a human being live with such a responsibility? And I, only a simple man, I cannot understand, neither man nor God—not our God and not the Gentiles’ Lord, the Saviour of the Gentiles. He was a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time, the Polish Gentiles believed. That is why the Gentiles I knew had to be one hundred percent. If they were short even one iota, they had to confess and atone. That is what they told me.
“I was thinking of them when I was trying to be one hundred percent, and failing . . . failing . . . I was thinking, maybe a hundred percent is impossible for a human being to be—maybe inhuman standards the Gentiles had set for themselves—maybe that is why they dropped to such an inhuman low.
“It must be frustrating to be a Gentile, I was thinking when I was trying and failing to be one hundred percent, maybe it’s even humiliating to be a Gentile, too humiliating, to fail and fail. It drives the Gentiles crazy, perhaps, and they forget that their Saviour was a Jew, a humble carpenter, but one hundred percent—not only did He preach forgiveness, love; He was forgiveness and love, according to the Polish Gentiles I knew—which you cannot say even of Moses, and you know it says that Israel has no greater prophet than Moses.
“Or did the Gentiles remember all too well that their Saviour was a Jew and think my father was not up to what they expect a Jew to be? A Jew should be like their Saviour or not be at all—is that what the Gentiles believe? Is that why they spared not one Jew in my shtetl—my town—There, in Poland?
“Is that what we Jews demand of ourselves—because we were spared, I mean, because of the responsibility? Is that why some of us Jews think we must be one hundred percent or not be at all? Is that why one Jew is turning against his brother?
“You know, Leora, for many years I couldn’t sleep, thinking what would they, who were not spared, wish me to do. I don’t know to this day, to tell you the truth. Your mother also would sit with me every evening in the kitchen, talk it over, and think it over together for years and years.
“Then, one day we heard from people who were There that a few Gentiles had risked their lives to shelter and rescue Jews. And so because of these Gentiles, even if there were all too few, your mother and I decided to make a sulha—a forgiveness—with all the Gentiles. For it says that, if in Sodom had there lived even fewer than ten decent people, Sodom would not be destroyed . . .
“I don’t know if what your mother and I did was right or wrong. That is why I want you to remember, Leora, that we made a sulha—a forgiveness—with the Gentiles. Not a forgetting. Not a forgetting, even with God . . .”
“I remember how angry you were with God, Abba, so angry I was afraid God would punish you, kill you,” I told my father, half wishing it would stop him from opening this door that he and my mother had kept locked ever since I was old enough to remember, except from one sliver of a crack—and half wishing he’d open it wide now, no matter how painful for him, my mother and me.
“Yes, it nearly killed me, my anger with God,” my father went on to open the door for more than a crack for once. “You know, there is tremendous power in anger, power to reclaim The Land, perhaps . . . and power to destroy . . . And I was angry with Him long before the Shoah. We had suffered one pogrom too many for me. It boiled me mad that my father maintained, ‘It’s God’s will.’ I wanted to have nothing to do with such a God years before all The Millions were exterminated in the Shoah. So imagine now, when I discovered that of all the Jews of my shtetl, There, in Poland, o
nly I was spared, almost like an insult to my father: Would I not betray my father—myself—if I make a sulha with God?
“I nearly went mad, searching for the answers to such questions. It was of no consolation to me that I was not alone. Each Jew, like Jacob, was wrestling with God . . .” My father turned to my mother. Their eyes locked, like in my child days, when they’d decide, almost like the Badu: till here, and no more would they reveal. But now my mother nods her consent for my father to continue. My gut insisted I brace tight when my father, in that loud voice of the hard of hearing, went on to say, “Maybe because a woman was the first to have the courage to defy God and to taste the fruit of knowledge, your mother was the one who led me to make a sulha with God, even if He does not deserve it—to have mercy for Him . . . and for myself.
“Yes, it was your mother who moved me to wonder if we are not linked to God like you, Leora, are linked to us. I mean, if just like you are to us, we Jews are God’s unwanted children as well as His chosen, most wanted children . . .
“You are surprised to hear it, Leora, I see . . . that your mother and I wanted to lose you. But we were living in a tent at the time—with a leaking roof. It did not bother us. We were living out our dream. And your mother, just like in the stories, was building roads all day, and at night she sang in a choir. She was also a beautiful dancer. We were just starting to live.
“We were like children in those days—before the Shoah. We did not want to be burdened with an infant. Yes, burdened. That is how we saw it. We thought of a hundred reasons not to have a child, and your mother tried a hundred ways to lose you. There was not a potion she did not drink, no heavy object she did not lift. But you defied us then, and to this day we wonder if you are different because you were unwanted . . .
“Oh, how you tried to be wanted, liked, pleasing to us—and at the same time to defy us, rebel against us, even to rival us. Like us, you ran away from home and like us, you risked your life in the war effort. The scars on your legs are medals of honour and bravery for rescuing three children from a burning house hit by a bomb. I didn’t think you had it in you, to tell you the truth, because I knew what a fear you have of death. But is it a wonder, when your parents wanted you not to be. Is it a wonder you are for being, for living—even if that means being in exile, dropping us, your parents, and The Land . . .
“Are you with me, Leora?” my father said, almost like Abu Salim, “Are you ready?” Like a Badu who could sense-see through mountains, he waited until I was ready to understand him, not as his girl-child, but as a parent—ready to see what a burden a child, in the every day; and by the very fact that love, if real, is a burden, be it as wanted, rewarding and enriching a love as mine of Levi; or even sustaining in the worst of times . . . The need emanating from Levi when, after Arik went, I was all too needy myself, and the responsibility—the double responsibility for countless decisions; like: Does he fly, does he not . . . pressed so heavy, Wallah, embarrassing how many times I wanted to push Levi away . . . Isn’t that what I did when I ventured to Sinai?
“Yes, I’m with you, I hear you, Abba,” I replied.
My father nodded, pressing his lips. “What do you think of this?” he was saying inside, it seemed, when his eyes went to Arik, as ever beaming happy on the wall . . . then, my father turned to me and said, “Is it not because we Jews are God’s unwanted children that we are driven to be wanted, to be liked by everyone: Jews, Gentiles, Arabs, but most of all liked by God—like my father?
“Oh, what a thing and its opposite—children unwanted, wanted. With one hand God keeps embracing us and with the other He is pushing us away. Does God think we Jews are like Him—made in His image—a kiss and a kick? Is that why God was so unsure, He needed such a show of loyalty, of trust: a sacrifice of a son? Or did God want to see what Abraham would be willing to sacrifice for him after all He sacrificed for His children? Yes, how many fathers do you hear saying that, especially fathers of children unwanted-wanted? . . . Your own father also, to be honest with you.
“The best of my years I felt I had sacrificed for you, as if you asked to be born. Maybe that is why sometimes I think God must have had the time of His life in the Garden, before His children came to the world—to knowledge, light, life, I mean. Must have been paradise for Him not to have to make a decision, even the decision of what to name His creatures. He left that to Man. Then, like a father growing jealous of his growing son, He says, ‘Now that man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life to eat and live forever.’ After I read that saying, I could not help but wonder if God didn’t punish us because He was afraid of rivalry. Isn’t that why He scattered us, his chosen-unwanted children, drove us to exile; to wait at the ready for Him—in suspense? Isn’t that what drove us—still drives us—to wait confident-unconfident, worthy-unworthy, wanted-unwanted?
“Is it not this thing and its opposite that drives us to feel that whatever we do is not good enough? Is it not why we Jews are driven to push maybe too much, give too much, take too much, maybe even to talk too much, like me today; is it not this wanted-unwanted thing and its opposite that drives us to crave too much?
“Is it not why this table is overloaded—as if to make up for what was sacrificed, destroyed, lost, lacking, deprived, and like children on the run, or on that brink—any day, any minute may be the last? Is it not what drives us to be—to survive, to live, to know—even God—and to forgive—even God?
“Is it not because we Jews are His unwanted children that God, to make up for that, favoured us to be His chosen, like I favour you over your sister to this day, even though your sister proved to be just as good a daughter as you, if not better? Or do I favour you because, if not for you, Leora, I don’t know if your mother and I would have made a sulha—a forgiveness—with God. A forgiveness, not a forgetting . . .”
CHAPTER 42
“Come on, Leora. Get in the Jeep. We are driving up to Jerusalem to pick mushrooms,” Tal called up to say, as if it was only natural to pick mushrooms in Jerusalem on a Thursday that followed a rainy Wednesday. And then he said he had to attend a meeting in Jerusalem later on this afternoon, to discuss the security job. He wanted to weigh the pros and cons of that job offer once more before he commits himself at the meeting, I sensed. And so I agreed to be his sounding board—until we reached the ascent to Jerusalem. At Bet-Shemesh I’ll grab a bus or a cab back to Herzliyya, I decided. I couldn’t just hop into a Jeep and drive up to Jerusalem.
A trip to Jerusalem was a special event for me, an event that demanded a tremendous emotional toll.
Long before your bones, Arik, were buried in her bosom, long before I was born, I had entered her gates. And once inside, you’re trapped for life, a prisoner obsessed with rebuilding Jerusalem—yet again. Destroyed twenty-two times, and twenty-two times rebuilt, defiant she stands, eternally watchful—over the ruins, over the dead, and over the living. The story lives on in her: the promise of ascent, Cain and Abel, the Covenant, the Altar, the Shrine, the Temple, King David, King Solomon, the Song of Songs, the Psalms, the Transcending Light . . . Forever she will rise, and forever will she doom you, if you do or don’t forget her. So jealous is Jerusalem—she loves you and hates you in equal measure. O, if I forget thee . . . We are marked by this promise, Arik, you and I . . . With nine measures of beauty God endowed Jerusalem, you believed, and to the rest of the world He gave only one; the same measure of suffering He gave to the world, and to Jerusalem he gave all of nine. Too much—O, Jerusalem . . .
Much too much for you, my Arik . . . remember? Only three days before you fell, you were accorded a dream commission to build in Jerusalem, and I remember so clearly how you feared you’d never be able to create a design worthy of her beauty . . . How you shivered whenever we entered her gates, how you felt bound to her by a sort of cord that couldn’t be severed, by knives, guns, plagues, the mightiest of wills, and t
he distance of thousands of miles and years . . .
That cord binds you still, Arik, as she has taken you to her bosom now, forever.
Houses have sprouted wild, like weeds, and the traffic has doubled, but otherwise, the landscape that rolled by on the old road to Jerusalem hadn’t much changed since Arik’s funeral—a hodgepodge of flat, battered-looking towns, dilapidated factories, and poor, unkempt farms, with fields and groves that smelled of the blood spilled to defend them, even after yesterday’s rain.
And then the Jeep left the old road and took a hairpin turn that led to a valley stretching from horizon to horizon—the very place where, according to the Book, Joshua, needing extra daylight to win the battle over this valley, cried out: “Stand still, oh sun, oh moon, in the valley of Aijalon!” It doesn’t take long to cross that valley today, even in a dented, reconditioned Jeep.
Tal turned onto a dust road that hugged the foot of the mountain range leading to Jerusalem, drove for a few hundred meters, parked, and if I hadn’t known he had come to these woods to pick mushrooms, I would have thought he meant to go up to Jerusalem like a pilgrim—on foot, if only for part of the way.
You wouldn’t recognize these mountains today, Arik. The green woods covering them now were a joke—only yesterday . . . Each and every Friday of my public-school days we would laugh when the teacher dragged out the blue-and-white Keren-Kayemet tin box and each of us dropped in a coin or two for the reforestation of these Jerusalem mountains. So devastated they looked, an ash-grey wasteland, even the teacher seemed to believe that our coins would be wasted on a futile exercise. And it was only to instil in us the habit of donating that she passed the box; it was also part of our welcome ceremony for Shabbat.