She blew her nose and looked at the door. “Can I closing it?” she asked.
“Of course.” He got to the door before her, then escorted her back to her seat. “Now, tell me what’s happened.”
Without speaking she took from her pocketbook the inevitable sheaf of worn papers that every Jew in Israel seemed to have. He groaned. It was to be one of those cases. An appeal to the American Embassy, no doubt. When she had her papers in a neat pile she asked quietly, “Is it true, Dr. Eliav going to cabinet?”
He pointed to the headline in the English-language paper. “I know nothing. But the story seems real.”
“What I wanting to know …” The Rumanian woman could not finish her sentence because tears, which she could not control, dripped off her nose and struck her papers.
Cullinane waited for some moments, wondering how Ilan Eliav’s putative promotion could cause such a flood of grief. Was the husky girl in love with him? Was she jealous of Vered Bar-El? It was too deep for him, so he shrugged his shoulders and waited.
After a while Zipporah blew her nose again and fought to regain control. “I so ashamed,” she apologized. “Usually not crying, but the world … I wanting help.”
“Now put your papers up here, take a drink of water … You smoke?”
“Oh yes!” she cried with relief. After the first puffs she relaxed and asked formally, “Will you do me the honor to listening, Dr. Cullinane?”
“I sure will,” he assured her.
“Here is Zipporah Zederbaum, born Rumania thirty years ago. Married to Isaac Zederbaum nine years ago Tel Aviv. Widow. I working very hard …”
“I’ve seen that. I wish I could find a housekeeper like you in America.”
At this unfortunate word the stalwart girl’s composure left her, and she wept for some minutes. “I sorry,” she apologized. “My husband … I know you hearing many things like this too much … but he no good. Really. Not give me one agorot to feeding myself. Ran away with Yemeni girl. Left her and going to America. Never send me no money and while he walking along a road”—she consulted her papers —“in Arizona. He killed by truck. So now my friend Yehiam Efrati … maybe you know him? He working in dairy.”
“I don’t know him, but he wants to marry you?”
“Yes,” she cried brightly, as if he had solved a puzzle. “It’s so hard, Dr. Cullinane. A widow my age. Not easy to finding a man who will to marry her. But he is good man.” She dropped her head and repeated quietly, “Yehiam, a very good man.”
“You’re lucky, Zipporah, to find a man like Yehiam,” Cullinane said enthusiastically. “Now, what can I do to help?”
“Would you speaking to Dr. Eliav for me? If he going onto the cabinet …”
“We’re not sure of that yet, but let’s suppose he does. What am I to do?”
“He must speaking with the rabbis,” she whispered. “They must changing what they say.”
“What have they said?” Cullinane asked, and the inevitable papers were pushed before him.
“This my birth paper. Good Jewish parents. This my wedding paper. Signed by rabbi. This is a photograph my husband’s death paper. Notary public American here, rabbi’s name here. And this Yehiam Efrati’s birth paper. Also good Jewish family.”
“Everything seems to be in order,” Cullinane said brightly, checking off the various documents.
“And this,” she said dully, “what the rabbis in Jerusalem saying.”
Cullinane took the document, obviously official, and read the pertinent parts:
In the case of Zipporah Zederbaum, widow, who wishes to marry with Yehiam Efrati, bachelor, the judges find that a brother of the deceased husband of said Zipporah Zederbaum is still living in Rumania, and that this living brother, Levi Zederbaum, refuses to grant his brother’s widow permission to remarry. On this point the law is clear, as stated in Deuteronomy Chapter 25: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her … And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother. Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her; Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.”
Long ago the rabbis determined that the widow of a dead man must not remarry until her dead husband’s brother give his consent, and it was further agreed that this consent must be given in writing, testified to by proper rabbinical authorities. In this case, all that Zipporah Zederbaum needs do is to obtain in writing the permission of her brother-in-law Levi Zederbaum in Rumania. She would then be free to remarry. But since her brother-in-law refuses to grant her this permission she is not legally free to remarry. And her petition to do so is denied.
Cullinane looked up from the amazing document. His first thought was: She’s playing a joke on me. A medieval joke. Then he saw that she wasn’t. “What does it mean?” he asked.
“As it says,” she replied. She was angry and there were to be no more tears.
“In Israel a widow has to get written permission from her dead husband’s brother …”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Our law. Husband’s family still has interest in dead man’s wife.”
“Does that mean your brother-in-law in Rumania is offering to support you?”
“Support?” she echoed contemptuously. “No Zederbaum ever helping another.”
“Then why doesn’t he sign the release … let you get married?”
The sturdy young woman handed Cullinane a translation of a letter and sat back clothed in fury as he read it:
Braşov, Rumania
Sept. 3, 1964
To the Rabbis of Jerusalem,
I understand from the incredible document delivered to me yesterday that my sister-in-law, Zipporah Zederbaum, whose husband is dead, is not free to remarry unless I sign a paper indicating that I do not want to marry her and that she is free to marry someone else.
I also understand that if I were in Jerusalem my sister-in-law would have the obligation, when she heard that I did not want to marry her, to take off my shoe and spit in my face.
This is the twentieth century, and if I participated in any way in such medieval rites the authorities in Rumania would be justified in considering me a fool. I refuse to sign any such nonsense and I advise you to forget it too.
In disgust,
LEVI ZEDERBAUM
Cullinane folded the letter and thought: It’s about what I’d have written. “What can you do now?” he asked Zipporah.
“Nothing,” she said.
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“That’s why I coming to see you,” she explained. “After this letter, nothing to do.”
“You mean you have to live the rest of your life unmarried … while a man is willing to marry you and support you.”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“It’s inhuman.”
“It’s the law,” she said, stuffing the papers back into her purse.
“Law, hell!” Cullinane snapped. “You wait here.” He ran out to the dig, calling, “Eliav? Can you come in for a minute?” When Eliav approached, Cullinane asked, “What’s this about a cabinet position?”
“These things come up from time to time.”
“But this time it’s serious?”
“Could be, but don’t tell anyone I said so.”
“Your first constituent is in my office. Woman by the name of Zipporah Zederbaum.”
At the mention of t
he name Eliav stopped … cold … refused to move. “No, Cullinane. It would be most improper for me to see her. Not at this point.”
“You won’t talk to her?”
“Look! I know more about her problem than she does. I sympathize. But it would be highly improper for me to speak with her now when I may have to judge her case later.”
“But goddamn it, Ilan. This girl …”
“John!” the Jew cried with great force. “You get in there and give her what consolation you can. And don’t meddle in things that don’t concern you.”
“I’m sorry,” Cullinane apologized. He watched as his friend stomped off; then he returned to the waiting woman. “I’ll speak to Dr. Eliav later,” he fumbled.
“He refused to seeing me, eh?” Zipporah asked.
“Yes, and I understand why.”
“No one seeing me,” she said. “Nothing I can do.”
“There’s no way for you to get married in Israel?”
“None. Here we are having only rabbi marriage, and if they refuse …”
“Somewhere I heard that if the rabbis refused, people fly to Cyprus.”
“Who can flying to Cyprus? The money! And if we go Cyprus … our children bastards. When they growing up they not marry neither.”
“I don’t believe it. You honestly mean that there’s no way you … Hell, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“There is no way, Dr. Cullinane.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d get my things together and I’d move in with Yehiam Efrati … now. And if you need help packing, I’ll come along.”
The powerful girl, so hard-working, so robustly attractive, obviously longed for a husband, but she was forced to say, “Unless we married right, what the purpose?”
At lunch Cullinane sought out Eliav, intending to raise hell, but whatever castigations he had in mind were quickly forestalled: “John, please don’t lecture me in this case. Because one of the reasons why I might be taken into the cabinet is to handle just such complexities.”
“Who said complexities? Inanities.”
“As you wish, but this is the law of Israel, and ninety-nine percent of our laws are humane.”
“But this poor girl … marriageable age …”
“I know.”
“Didn’t you sympathize with the brother-in-law’s letter?”
Ilan Eliav took a deep breath, then said slowly, “No, because I’m working to establish that Levi Zederbaum”—Cullinane was impressed by Eliav’s knowledge of the case—“wrote his letter in the way he did so the local Rumanian censors wouldn’t turn him over to the Russian authorities.”
“Suppose you do prove duress?”
“Zipporah can marry.”
“If you fail?”
“She can’t.”
“But, my God …”
“Shut up!” Eliav cried, and in distress he left the tell and stalked back to the dig, but apparently he was ashamed of his rudeness, for later he returned and said, “These are difficult days.” He thrust forward a sheaf of papers. “You think I’m indifferent to Zipporah’s case. Look at these.” And Cullinane studied the documents that Eliav would face if he took the cabinet position:
Case One: Trudl Ginzberg is a Gentile German woman from the city of Gretz, along the Rhine. Brought up a Lutheran, she fell in love with Hyman Ginzberg and against her family’s predictions of disaster married him. With the coming of the Nazis she suffered grievous persecution. Inspired by some inexplicable love of humanity she volunteered to sew the Star of David on her own clothes, fought to protect her children from Storm Troopers and was kicked in the right eye. Now partially blind. By heroic efforts she saved her children and for four years hid her husband in a cellar, providing him and her family with food by working in a factory kitchen. After the war, when she could no longer believe in God, she scraped together money which enabled her to bring Hyman Ginzberg and their three children to Israel, where the rabbis proclaimed, “Trudl Ginzberg is a Gentile. Worse, she is an atheist, and we cannot permit her conversion. Therefore, neither she nor her children can be Jews.” No effort on her part, neither her offer to convert nor her willingness to live according to Jewish law, has succeeded in changing the rabbis’ minds. She is not a Jew and her children cannot be Jews, either. Can you propose a solution the rabbis would accept?
Case Two: The minute you see Esther Banarjee and Jaacov Jaacov you will know them to be Indian. They come from Cochin and have dark skin, limpid eyes and slim bodies. But they are also Jews. In the fifteenth century their ancestors fled from Spain to Portugal to Syria to Turkey and thence to the coast of India, where they intermarried with dark-skinned natives. In 1957 when Esther and Jaacov emigrated to Israel they were informed by the rabbis that because of some technical difficulty they could not be Jews. Their problem is this: they want to marry but since they are not Jews they cannot do so in Israel. If they were Christians, no trouble. They could marry in one of our Christian churches; but they are not Christians nor do they want to be so. They want to be Jews. In India their ancestors were Jews for more than four hundred years, sharing in the trials and triumphs of our people, but in Israel, because they are unable to provide written records reaching back four generations, they cannot be Jews. What to do?
Case Three: Leon Berkes is the son of an orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn. He made a lot of money running a string of kosher hotels in the Catskills, and when the state of Israel was proclaimed, felt an inner compulsion to join us, but his business was prospering and required his supervision, so he lingered in America, secretly ashamed of himself and muttering to his friends, “If I had any guts I’d be over there helping the real Jews.” On his sixtieth birthday he abruptly turned his hotels over to his two sons-in-law, “fine Jewish boys,” he called them, and came to Israel to invest four million dollars in the Jewish state. Naturally he decided upon a hotel, in Akko, and as an observant Jew announced that it would be kosher. For nearly forty years he had been operating such places and he respected the ancient dietary laws of the Torah, but when he approached the Israeli rabbinate for a certificate he encountered many original problems. The Talmud stated that one could work on Shabbat only in case of dire need, which included the serving of food; but waiters were forbidden to write out meal checks, for that was not essential. Berkes complained, “It means more work, but if it’s the law, okay.” Then the rabbis warned, “All religious holidays to be strictly observed,” and Berkes assured them that in America he had done so. On holidays he did not allow his hotel band to play music, but the rabbis said, “We think it would be more respectful if you kept your band silent for nine days before the Ninth of Ab.” Berkes said, “It’s terribly expensive, but if that’s Jewish, okay.” Then the rabbis pointed out that the Torah said explicitly, “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day,” and Berkes said, “I never have a fire,” but they explained that in recent years this passage had been construed to mean that no electrical switch, which might accidentally throw a spark, could be operated. They demanded that he stop all elevators throughout the hotel from Friday night through Saturday. He said, “People are going to grumble, but if it’s the law, okay.” But when the rabbis insisted that the automatic doors leading from the dining room to the kitchen must also remain inoperative lest the mechanism accidentally produce a spark, Berkes said, “This is too much.” The rabbis warned, “If one door moves, we’ll take back your certificate.” So Berkes said, “You’re making it too complicated to be a Jew,” and returned to America. The question: Can we get this good man back to Israel?
“You’re taking everybody’s problems on your shoulders,” Cullinane said with respect.
“And the most complicated is my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember the day we went to the Vodzher Rebbe’s … with Zodman?”
“Yes.”
“And the attendant asked ‘Cohen or Levi’? And we all answered ‘Israel’?”
&nb
sp; “I still remember the Cohens putting the shawls over their heads.”
“And I said I’d explain later.”
“You did. Cohens are priests. Levis are temple attendants. Israels are the common herd.”
“Every Jew is automatically one of these three, tracing back in unbroken lines to the days of the Torah. All Jews named Cohen, Katz, Kaplan, Kaganovsky … you can guess the others … they’re all priests who even today enjoy certain privileges. Now your Levys, Levins, Lewisohns, Loewes and the rest … they’re all Levis, and they also have a few privileges.”
“But you poor Israels …” Cullinane began.
“I’m not an Israel,” Eliav said.
“At the Vodzher Rebbe’s you said you were.”
“I did, because I don’t take this Mickey Mouse …” He stopped. “That is, my wife … I never told you about Ilana, did I? She died over there.”
“She what?”
Eliav pressed the warm pipe against his chin and tried several times to speak. Finally in an offhand way he said, “I was married to a girl who could have served as the flag of Israel. She was Israel. She had a very special quality. She was shot. Right over there. Right … there.”
“I’ll be damned,” Cullinane said. He remembered that first night when he and Tabari had seen Eliav kneeling on the tell and he was now inclined to say nothing, but intuitively he knew that silence was not wanted. “So we’ve been digging ghosts?”
“That we have,” Eliav agreed. “And one of the ghosts has come home to roost … in a particularly mean way.”
“How?”
“I’m a Cohen … really. I come from a wonderful line of holy men in the city of Gretz, along the Rhine. One thing about a Cohen, he’s never permitted to marry a woman who’s been divorced …”
“How’s that?”
The Source: A Novel Page 124