Leon Uris (34 page)

“
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning ... let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy
.”

There was solace in prayer, and Simon Rabinsky was a believer among men. But even one so devout could not shut his eyes to the misery around and about him. “How long, O Lord ... how long ...?” he would ask. “How long must we live in this abysmal darkness?” And then his heart would grow light and he would become exalted as he repeated his favorite passage of the Passover Prayer—“
Next year in Jerusalem
.”

Next year in Jerusalem? Would it ever come? Would the Messiah ever come to take them back ...?

Y
AKOV AND
J
OSSI WALKED HOME
from the seminary. Jossi’s head was bowed; he was deep in thought, wondering about the meaning of certain passages of the Torah he had studied that afternoon. Young Yakov danced around on his toes flinging rocks at various objects in the street. He always carried a pocket full of rocks in case they ran into some bullies.

As they approached the corner near home, Yakov grabbed Jossi’s wrist. “There is going to be another meeting tonight in Hacohen’s shop,” he said.

“I heard all about it,” Jossi said.

“Will you go this time?”

“No.”

“You should go tonight,” Yakov said; “there is going to be a real Bilu from Palestine to speak.”

Jossi’s heart pounded! A real Bilu from Palestine! How he would love to see and hear someone who had actually been to Palestine. Secretly Jossi envied his younger brother, who had been sneaking off to Lovers of Zion meetings. His curiosity was aroused by this new organization which spoke of the defense of the ghetto and a return to the Holy Land. A real Bilu! No—he would not yield to temptation—never so long as his father objected to the Lovers of Zion.

They turned the corner and entered the shop, first kissing the mezuzah, a tiny prayer scroll nailed to the doorpost. The place smelled strongly of leather. Simon looked up from his workbench and smiled.

“Hello, Papa,” they both said quickly, and drew a curtain over the alcove which served as their bedroom in one corner of the shop. Simon knew by their manner that they had been discussing something in secret and he also knew full well what young Yakov had been up to, but he did not say a word. The boys must have their fling, Simon thought—I will not impose my will on them in this matter nor will I speak to them unless they speak to me first.

Simon could be considered among the more fortunate Jews of the ghetto. His family was in good health and he had a trade which allowed him to exist, however meagerly. The mortality rate of Jews in the Pale was more than twice that of the rest of the population of Russia.

Not only the Jews were near starvation. Most of Russia, especially the peasantry, hovered on the brink of destitution. The country wallowed in the backwash of feudalism, refused to industrialize, and was exploited by the aristocracy.

Bread, land, and reform movements sprang up all over the nation. Because their own plight was the worst, there were always Jews to be found in any organization which strived to alleviate the wretched conditions.

Unrest mounted throughout Russia. An undercurrent which spelled revolution was brewing. Only then did Czar Alexander II institute some long overdue reforms. His first move was to free the serfs and he relaxed some of the stringent anti-Jewish statutes. The new laws even allowed a limited number of professional and artisan Jews to live in Moscow. In Bessarabia a few Jews could purchase land. However, the reforms were mere crumbs.

In trying desperately to divert the people’s attention from the real issue of tyranny, the masterminds behind the Czar found a new and convenient use for the old scapegoats, the Jews. Hatred for the Jew in Russia had been based on religious bias, ignorance, and superstition, coupled with the peasants’ blind hostility due to their inferior status. The Russian government decided to make anti-Semitism a deliberate political weapon. They launched a campaign in which the number of Jewish members in the Bread and Land movements was exaggerated and they claimed it was all a plot of Jewish anarchists out to seize the government for their own profit.

It was furthered as the Russian government secretly drummed up, sponsored, fostered, and condoned bloody pogroms in which ghettos of the Pale were sacked, the women raped, and blood flowed freely. As the mobs tore through the ghettos the Russian police either turned their backs or actively engaged in the affairs.

On March 13, 1881, an awesome catastrophe befell the Jews. Czar Alexander II was assassinated by a rebel’s bomb, and one of the convicted revolutionaries was a Jewish girl!

This paved the way for years of horror.

The power behind the new Czar Alexander III was the sinister Pobiedonostsev. He handled the weak-minded new ruler like an infant. Pobiedonostsev regarded the principles of equality, bread, and democracy as extremely vulgar and set out to crush them ruthlessly.

As for the Jews, Pobiedonostsev had special plans. As procurator of the Holy Synod he received a silent nod from the Greek Church for his scheme which called for the elimination of the Jewish population. One third would go through government-sponsored pogroms, starvation, and other forms of murder. One third would go through expulsion and exile. One third would be converted.

Easter week, 1881. The coronation of Czar Alexander III was the signal to begin. Pobiedonostsev’s pogroms erupted and spread to every city of the Pale.

After the first outbursts, Pobiedonostsev quickly had a dozen laws enacted that either eradicated any previous gains made by the Jews or aimed to destroy the rest of the Jewish population.

In the wake of the awful happenings of 1881 the Jews of the Pale groped desperately for an answer to their problems. A thousand ideas were advanced—each more impractical than the last. In many corners of many ghettos a new voice was heard by a group who called themselves Hovevey Zion—the Lovers of Zion.

Along with the Lovers of Zion came a document from the pen of Leo Pinsker which seemed to pinpoint the causes and solution of the Jewish plight. Pinsker’s document called for auto-emancipation as the only way out for the Jews of the Pale.

Late in the year 1881 a group of Jewish students from Romny bolted from the Pale and made for Palestine with the motto on their lips, “
Beth Yakov Leku Venelkha
—House of Jacob, let us go up!” This daring band of adventurers, forty in number, became known far and wide by the initials of their motto, which in transliteration became the “Bilu.”

The Bilus started a small farming village in the Sharon Valley of Palestine. They named it Rishon le Zion: First to Zion.

The pogroms in the Pale increased in fury, reaching new heights of bloody destruction on Easter morning 1882 in the town of Balta.

As a result new groups of Bilus struck out for the Promised Land and the Lovers of Zion grew by leaps and bounds.

In the Sharon the Bilus founded Petah Tikva: the Gate of Hope.

In the Galilee they founded Rosh Pinna: the Cornerstone.

In Samaria they founded Zichron Yakov: the Memory of Jacob.

By the year 1884 a half dozen small, weak, and struggling Bilu settlements had been begun in the Holy Land.

Each night in Zhitomir and in every other city of the Pale there were secret meetings. Youths began to rebel and to be diverted from the old ways.

Yakov Rabinsky, the younger of the brothers, was swept up in the new ideology. Often during the night he lay awake, staring into the darkness in the alcove of the shop he shared with his brother Jossi. How wonderful it would be to be able to fight! How wonderful to strike out and really find the Holy Land! Yakov’s head was filled with the past glory of the Hebrews. Often he pretended he fought alongside Judah “the Hammer” as the Maccabees swept the Greeks from Judea. He, Yakov Rabinsky, would be there as Judah Maccabee entered Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple.

Yakov Rabinsky would be there with Simon Bar Giora, who held Jerusalem against the might of Rome for eighteen long months. He would be there in chains alongside Giora as the proud Hebrew warrior was led off to Rome to the lions’ den.

Yakov would be there with the greatest of them all—Bar Kochba, the scourge of the Romans.

He would be there at the stands at Herodium and Machaerus and Masada and Beitar, where they fought to the last man after several years of siege.

And of all his heroes, Yakov wanted most to be with Rabbi Akiva when he met his martyrdom at Caesarea, for Akiva was teacher, scholar, and fighter all in one.

When the Lovers of Zion came around to Zhitomir, Yakov ran off to the meetings immediately. Their message of auto-emancipation was music to his ears. The Lovers of Zion wanted his brother Jossi because of his size and strength; but Jossi out of respect for his father as commanded by God was slow to move toward these radical ideas.

The day after the Bilu from Palestine spoke in Hacohen’s candle shop, Jossi could stand it no longer. He wanted to know everything from Yakov—how the Bilu looked—every word he said—every gesture.

“I think, Jossi, the time has come for you to attend a meeting with me.”

Jossi sighed. It would mark the first time in his life he had openly gone against his father’s wishes. “Very well,” he whispered, and all that day asked forgiveness for what he was about to do.

The brothers told their father they were going to say Kaddish, a mourner’s prayer, for a friend who had recently died. They sped off to the shop of Hacohen, the candlemaker. It was a tiny basement shop like their own home. It smelled of wax and sweet scents. Curtains were drawn over the windows. Guards were posted outside on the street. Jossi was surprised at how many familiar faces he saw in the packed room. The speaker was a man from Odessa named Vladimir.

Vladimir neither looked nor acted like them. He had no beard or side curls. He wore boots and a black leather jacket. As he began to speak Yakov became entranced, and around the room a half dozen hecklers started up.

“Are you the Messiah who has come to lead us back?” someone called.

“Did you find the Messiah under your bed when you hid during the last pogrom?” Vladimir rejoined.

“Are you sure you are not one of the Czar’s spies?”

“Are you sure you are not one of the Czar’s next victims?” Vladimir retorted.

The room quieted down. Vladimir spoke softly. He reviewed the history of the Jews in Poland and in Russia and then expanded his summary to include Germany and Austria as well. Then he spoke of the expulsions from England and France—then of the massacres at Bray and York and Spires and Worms.

Vladimir spoke of how the Pope had called upon the Christians to regain the Holy Land from the Moslems and of how five Crusades over three hundred years were directed against the Jews in the name of God.

Vladimir spoke of one of the most horrible periods of all—the Spanish Inquisition, during which unbelievable atrocities against the Jews were committed in the name of the Church.

“Comrades, every nation on the face of this earth has derided us. We must arise again as a nation. It is our only salvation. Pinsker has seen it and the Lovers of Zion see it and the Bilus see it. We must rebuild the House of Jacob!”

Yakov’s heart was pounding as the boys left the meeting. “See, Jossi! What did I tell you! You saw tonight that even Rabbi Lipzin was there.”

“I must think about it,” Jossi said defensively. But even as he spoke he knew that Vladimir was right and Yakov too. It was their only salvation. The street was quiet and dark and they walked briskly. They reached their home, quickly kissed the mezuzah, and went in.

A candle was burning on Simon’s bench. He stood behind it in his long nightshirt with his hands clasped behind him.

“Hello, Papa,” they said quickly, and tried to duck into their alcove.

“Boys!” Simon commanded. They walked slowly before his bench.

Their mother walked into the room and squinted. “Simon,” she said, “are the boys home?”

“They are home.”

“Tell them they shouldn’t be on the streets so late.”

“Yes, Mama,” Simon said. “Go to sleep and I shall speak to them.”

Simon looked from Yakov to Jossi and back to Yakov.

“I must tell Mrs. Horowitz tomorrow that her husband can surely rest in peace because my sons joined in a minyan for him tonight.”

It was impossible for Jossi to lie to his father. “We weren’t at minyan for Reb Horowitz,” he mumbled.

Simon Rabinsky feigned surprise and held his hands aloft. “Oh ... so! I should have known. You boys were courting. Just today Abraham, the matchmaker, was in the shop. He said to me, ‘Simon Rabinsky,’ he said, ‘you have a fine boy in Jossi. Jossi will bring you a handsome dowry from the family of some very fortunate girl.’ Can you imagine ... he wants to make a
shiddoch
for you already, Jossi.”

“We were not courting,” Jossi gulped.

“Not courting? No minyan? Perhaps you went back to the synagogue to study?”

“No, Father,” Jossi said almost inaudibly.

Yakov could stand it no longer. “We went to a Lovers of Zion meeting!”

Jossi looked up at his father sheepishly, bit his lip, and nodded red-faced. Yakov seemed glad it was in the open. He stood defiant. Simon sighed and stared at both his sons for a full five minutes.

“I am hurt,” he announced at last.

“That is why we did not tell you, Father. We did not want to hurt you,” Jossi said.

“I am not hurt because you went to a Lovers of Zion meeting. I am hurt because the sons of Simon Rabinsky think so little of their father they no longer confide in him.”

Now Yakov squirmed too. “But if we’d told you,” he said, “you might have forbidden us to go.”

“Tell me, Yakov ... when have I ever forbidden you to pursue knowledge? Have I ever forbidden a book? God help me ... even the time you took the notion into your head that you wanted to read the New Testament? Did I forbid that?”

“No, sir,” Yakov said.

“I think a talk is long overdue,” Simon said.

The candlelight seemed to blend with the red of Jossi’s hair. He stood half a head taller than his father and now as he spoke he did not falter. Although Jossi was slow in making up his mind, once it was up he rarely changed it. “Yakov and I did not want to hurt you because we know how you feel about the Lovers of Zion and the new ideas. But I am glad I went tonight.”