What she remembered most about Shimshon was his penchant for conversation—especially about politics and family. He and Abe sat up late into the evenings arguing and sharing stories during that trip. He was kind, too, fond of his family and proud of his heritage. And then there was the matter of his past as an intelligence officer in the army. Abe and Rendi had refused to divulge too much information about this, and so of course Emma had become hell-bent on learning the truth.
As for Hanna, she had been plump and cheery before but now she was rail thin and reserved. In the years since Emma had seen her, she’d lost one of her three sisters to a suicide bombing at a market in downtown Jerusalem. She was still as openhearted and welcoming as Emma remembered, but there was a spark of life that was definitely gone. Emma noticed a nervous shaking in Hanna’s leg, and her mind kept returning to Faisal Husseini’s threat, that he’d kill more people if he were released. How many more women like Hanna and Yarden’s mother would lose loved ones if that happened? Would Emma be responsible if she helped free him? She tried to hear Habash’s voice in her head, resolutely sure that Faisal was mostly bluster. But the man she’d met—pale, skinny, feral—seemed entirely capable of murder.
Emma was determined to enjoy the day and to put thoughts of Faisal out of her mind. She had bought wine at a little boutique that specialized in small-batch Israeli vintages, challah at a local bakery, and chocolate-covered lemon peels—her father’s favorite indulgence.
One thing that hadn’t changed about Hanna was her ability to cook. The Shabbat dinner she’d made the family was incredible: two types of chicken, boiled flanken, gefilte fish, roasted potatoes, Emma’s challah, greens, and fresh oranges from the trees Shimshon had planted. And now, as Emma sat in her chair in the blue-painted dining room, she was happy to sing along with Shimshon and his children the traditional song welcoming the “queen” of the Sabbath. Emma knew the song from her summers at Camp Ramah as well as from the Shabbat meals she’d had with her father.
When the song was completed and the kiddush recited over the wine Emma had bought, Shimshon, a tall, thin man with hair that covered his forehead in a salt-and-pepper arc, asked everyone at the table to mention something for which he or she was thankful. The youngest, seven-year-old Mars, a round-faced boy with brown hair that stuck out in all directions, began. “I am thankful that the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team won the European championship, because I bet ten shekels on them with my friend Yoni.”
“It has to be something personal or political, Mars,” Hanna admonished, passing Emma a platter teeming with potatoes.
Shimshon interjected, “It is political. The point guard on the team is an Israeli Arab. The victory was an important unifying event,” he said to Emma.
“Okay, okay, it counts,” Hanna conceded. “How about you, Zara?” she asked, pointing to the ten-year-old girl sitting next to Emma.
“I am thankful Emma is here.” The little girl looked at Emma with wonder. “I heard all about her bat mitzvah. I want to follow in her footsteps and have mine at the Kotel,” she said, using the Hebrew name for the Western Wall.
“When you have your bat mitzvah, I will be there to see it!” Emma patted the girl’s knee.
Zara beamed at her. “It’s your turn.”
Emma took a deep breath and looked around the table. “I’m thankful for having a job with Pal-Watch and my old friend Habash. I love to be in the middle of the action.”
“Hanna, my dear, you’re next.” Shimshon looked at her expectantly.
“I’m thankful our children have the chance of maybe growing up without war or terrorism. Maybe. Maybe.” A tear of memory formed in her eye.
“I guess it’s my turn,” said Shimshon, standing. “I’m grateful to Avraham Ringel, Emma’s great-great-great-uncle, for leaving Poland in 1884 and coming to this godforsaken desert. If he had not left, we”—he pointed to his children—“would not be alive today,” he said, pausing for emphasis as he looked deeply into his children’s eyes. Then he continued, “Now I want to tell you his story.”
Emma laughed as Zara and Mars groaned. “Again!” Zara complained.
Shimshon said, “Emma hasn’t heard it! She needs to know the story for her work.”
“But how many times do we have to sit through this?” Zara complained.
“Until you know it well enough to tell it to your children, but don’t worry—I’m only going to tell the beginning tonight,” Shimshon said, turning to the account of how his great-great-grandfather Abraham Ringel had made aliyah to Israel more than a century and a quarter before.
VI
History Will Solve the Mystery
Rzeszów, Poland, 1884
SHIMSHON RECOUNTED how the Enlightenment had largely bypassed the small Polish town the Jews called Raisha. It was not quite a shtetel, nor was it a full-fledged city. Its population of fourteen thousand in the mid-1880s comprised eight thousand Poles and six thousand Jews. It was a place where superstitions, omens, curses, and talismans held a higher status than reason, science, or liberal education. These primitive beliefs, with slightly different contents, were among the few factors that united the Jews with their Polish Catholic neighbors.
A handful of men and women rejected the old ways, and most of them became outcasts and left for Kraków, Warsaw, or Prague, where reason and secularism were more respected.
The Jews of Raisha spoke Yiddish, though most could read the Hebrew of the prayer book and the Bible. Many spoke a smattering of Polish—enough for them to do business with their Polish neighbors. Jewish men were tailors, goldsmiths, tavern keepers, hatmakers, teachers, furriers, musicians, butchers, and tile makers. Some were beggars, and a few were rabbis.
Shimshon described the Jewish women of Raisha as balabustas—keepers of the home. This elicited a whispered retort from Emma: “Not to be confused with the modern term ‘ballbusters.’ ”
Shimshon whispered back, “I bet some were both.” He then continued to explain how their teenage marriages were arranged by their parents and that their primary responsibility was to give birth to and raise as many Jewish children—preferably boys—as possible. This, too, drew a snicker from Emma.
Shimshon told them that in the early years of the eighteenth century the body of a murdered Christian child had been found and the Jews of the area were accused of killing Christian children and using their blood for religious rituals. A Jewish woman was convicted and sentenced to death. She was offered her freedom if she agreed to convert to Christianity. She refused and was executed. Emma gasped, “Oh my God,” as Shimshon continued.
The Jews of Raisha, it seems, were always on trial for something. At the core was the old accusation: They had killed Christ. It was especially dangerous around Easter time. The local Catholic bishop had issued a decree forbidding the Jews to leave their homes during Easter week. It was unclear whether this was intended to protect or to punish them.
It was during the Easter week of 1884 that Blima’s son ignored the decree. “Where is Avrumi?” shouted the forty-two-year-old Blima, who looked twice her age. “Avrumi” was the family nickname for Avraham Mordechai Ringel, the elder of Blima’s two sons. “He shouldn’t be out this late on Easter Sunday.”
Naftuli, her younger and better-behaved son, tried to calm his frightened mother. “Avrumi can take care of himself,” he said with pride.
“Then you tell that to a crowd of drunken men who think that he killed their God. Remember what they did to Duvid last year on Easter Sunday. Remember what Father Glemp had preached that morning.”
“Last year was different, Mama. After Duvid was killed, they promised to tone down the sermons. And we organized our self-defense group, the Shomrim. Nobody is going to pick on Jews this year.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears, Naftuli.”
“I’ll go find him. I know where he hangs around.”
Before Naftuli could leave, the door flew open and Avrumi walked in, holding a book as if it were a small treasure.
“With the BILU guys.” Avrumi playfully punched his younger brother in the arm.
“BILU? Is that some sort of gang?” she demanded of her son.
Avrumi laughed. “Yeah, Mom, it’s a gang. It stands for ‘Beit Yakov Lechu Ve-nelcha’—‘House of Jacob, let us go up.’ ” Blima looked to Naftuli to see if that made any sense to him. Avrumi explained, “It’s a quote from the Bible.”
“Up to where?” Blima asked, confused.
“To Eretz Yisrael. The land of Israel. We were reading this book by Leo Pinsker,” he said, showing it off proudly. “They let me take it home to finish.”
“Who?”
“A guy from Russia who wants Jews to get the hell out of Russia and Poland and go to Eretz Yisrael.” Avrumi sat at the kitchen table and leaned forward with enthusiasm. “He says only we can free ourselves from these prisons.”
Blima threw her hands up in disgust. “What kind of talk is that? We’ve lived in Poland for hundreds of years. This is our home. There are no Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Arabs live there.”
“You’re wrong, Mama. Thousands of Jews live there. Jerusalem has more Jews than Arabs. Tzvat, Hebron, Jaffa, Ashkelon—all have Jews. They’ve lived there longer than we’ve lived in Poland.”
“So how come I never heard about them?” Blima asked skeptically.
“Because they’re mostly Sephardim, not Ashkenazim like us. But the Sephardim are our cousins. They have the same religion as we do. They just look a little different.”
Blima had heard enough. “How do you know how they look?” she asked, turning her back on her son and proceeding to begin preparations for their dinner.
“We saw pictures. They’re beautiful and dark. You should see the women,” he whispered to Naftuli, making the universal gesture for a shapely woman.
“They’re not going to like you, gingy,” Naftuli quipped, referring to Avrumi’s curly red hair.
Suddenly there was a scream from outside. Avrumi ran through the door, quickly followed by Naftuli. A large figure lay on the ground, blood pouring from a gaping wound in his neck. It was Yankel Ringel, their father. He was gasping for breath. “Vey iz mir!” he cried as life slipped away from him.
Naftuli tried to revive his father as Avrumi took off after the assailants. He tackled one of them as the other fled. “Get your damned Yid paws off me!” the large blond man yelled as he drew the bloody knife from his waistband. Avrumi was on top of his father’s killer, grabbing with his powerful left arm for the hand that held the weapon. As the killer tried to break free, Avrumi picked up a rock with his right hand and brought it crashing down on the killer’s face. The rock hit him squarely on the bridge, and his nose splattered blood. With his right arm, the killer aimed the knife at Avrumi’s neck.
Avrumi smashed the rock into the side of the killer’s head, rendering him unconscious. Then he took the knife from the killer’s limp hand and ran back to Naftuli. A small crowd had gathered. It was obvious to all but Naftuli that Yankel Ringel was dead.
Avrumi went back to the house to try to comfort his hysterical mother, who was standing in the doorway with her head in her hands. This was not the time for him to tell her of the decision he had reached at the moment he saw the blood flowing from his father’s neck. Avrumi Ringel would not live out his life in Poland, as the Ringels before him had done for generations. He would go to Eretz Yisrael.
A week after sitting shiva for his father, Avrumi boarded a train for Odessa. He took with him one change of clothing, the Pinsker book, some photographs of his family, and the knife that had killed his father. He left behind his tallith, tefillin, and other religious items. He also left behind a criminal charge of assault. From Odessa he went by boat to Jaffa, the historic port city from which Jonah had begun his ill-fated biblical journey.
On the boat Avrumi decided to shorten his first name to Avi and to hebraize his last name to Regel, which means “foot.” The new name represented the spontaneity with which he had decided to make aliyah: al regel achat—while standing on one foot—which was a symbolic reference to a traditional Jewish story of a challenge issued to the great Rabbi Hillel to summarize the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel responded, “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is commentary.” Avi Regel’s “Torah” could also be summarized while standing on one foot: “Go to Eretz Yisrael. The rest is detail.” But there were to be many devils in the details of Avi’s life-altering decision.
The strapping twenty-year-old man who stepped ashore at Jaffa was now Avi Regel, chalutz—or “pioneer.” His passage had been arranged by the BILU group, whose parting gift to him was their bible—namely Pinsker’s book Auto-Emancipation. An earlier chalutz named Akiba Gibor—changed from Asher Gibrovsky—waited for Avi at the dock.
“Shalom aleichem, welcome to your new home,” Akiba said in Yiddish. He was a short, stocky man with a bulging belly, a warm demeanor, and a friendly, open face. “This is the last time I will speak to you in the language of the oppressed. Here you will need to learn two new languages—first Hebrew, which we speak, and then Arabic, which they speak.” Akiba pointed to the many dark-skinned and robed men milling around the dock area. “Shalom and salaam are a good beginning.”
“Wow. I didn’t know my great-great-great-grandfather was murdered. Dad never told me that. Do you think he knows?” Emma wondered.
“Of course he does. He’s been at this table. He’s heard the family history here, if not from his own parents,” Shimshon insisted.
Zara had curled up into Emma’s lap, and Emma was stroking the little girl’s hair as she asked, “How did my branch of the family get to America?”
Shimshon helped himself to another portion of Hanna’s dessert. “Five years after Avi left for Israel, Blima and Naftuli also gave up on Poland. They settled in the Dorchester section of Boston because they had lantslaite there—people from the same town. Naftuli was your great-great-great-grandfather, Emma.”
“My father has told me our family history in America. Poor Jew gets off the boat with a dollar. Three generations later his great-grandson is a big-shot criminal lawyer. Every Jewish family I know has its own version of the same story.”
“From the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union to the American Psychiatric Association in one generation, and from the president of the shul to the president of Yale in two,” Shimshon quipped.
“Boring,” Emma insisted. “But ours actually starts with a murder. Not boring. So he leaves the best part out. Why?”
“Probably because he didn’t want you to feel like a victim,” Shimshon suggested. “All storytellers have to decide on a starting point. It’s never accidental. Where you begin determines where you come out.”
“So why does the Israeli branch of the family begin its story in Europe, with murders, pogroms, and discrimination?” Emma asked.
“Because that’s how modern Zionism began—as an antidote to persecution. I will tell you more about Avi’s adventures here another time. It’s important for you to know where you come from, where we come from. It will help you with your work: History may help solve the mystery,” Shimshon said with a knowing smile.
“In the meantime, eat,” Hanna said, in her best Jewish-mother voice.
As Emma slurped Hanna’s delicious chicken soup, her mind was already turned to the field assignment Habash had given her for Sunday—to go to the movies with a man named Adam.
VII
Flix Movie Theater
Adam
RENDI WOULD BE PROUD, Emma thought. And Abe would be appalled.
As Emma walked down the aisle of the Flix movie theater, situated in the heart of the Jaffa Road district in West Jerusalem, she counted off the rows. Row eleven. Then she counted the seats. Nine. She slouched into the seat she had been specifically directed to occupy. Her heart beat wildly as she looked around. There were mostly teenagers in the darkened theater, which featu
red kung fu and other action films needing little in the way of translation.
She hadn’t chosen the movie or the seat.
Adam had.
Adam, Habash’s one-named contact, had told Habash that he had vital information about the case that he must pass on immediately. He’d been putting together a financial paper trail for the Martyrs of Jihad, and Habash was desperate to get his hands on Adam’s findings. Emma begged Habash to let her take the meeting. She wanted to impress him with her dedication, but also she thought it’d be fun to participate in a clandestine meeting with an undercover agent. Habash had reluctantly agreed. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he’d cautioned. “My contacts rarely hear about operations or specific plans. Usually it’s just sermons or general ideology. Maybe financial data or names of contributors. But we sometimes get leads. Be careful not to blow his cover. And don’t ever tell your father I let you do this.”
More than half an hour of intolerable hand-to-hand combat later, Emma was beginning to think that this Adam wasn’t going to show. Then, as two men were beating each other senseless with nunchucks, a young man sat down one seat away from her. She glanced at him, expecting him to be surprised at seeing her instead of Habash in the designated seat, but he did not seem at all surprised. She did as Habash instructed: She pretended to yawn, covered her face, and then pulled on her earlobe three times. It was a signal that Adam understood, for he slunk down in his seat and began to watch the movie.
It was dark, but she could make out a few of his features—he was curly-haired and olive-skinned. She’d been told he was a Sephardic Jew from Tunisia who made a living masquerading as a devout Muslim. He spoke perfect Arabic and looked and sounded the part. Habash had warned Emma to be careful not to do anything that might expose his cover, because he was a valuable asset to Pal-Watch, and if he were exposed as a Jewish plant, he would be abducted, tortured, and beheaded. That’s what they do to informers. His profile was strong, and Emma was psyched by the scene she was participating in, meeting a good-looking spy to obtain top-secret information.
The Trials of Zion Page 4