Leon Uris (40 page)

The next morning Jossi rode off once more for Suleiman’s camp. This time he was armed—with his ten-foot bull whip. He galloped into the camp at full speed and made directly for Suleiman’s tent and dismounted. The Sudanese slave came out and smiled sweetly and welcomed Jossi and invited him to enter. Jossi hit the slave with the back of his hand as though he were flicking a fly from his arm and sent him sprawling to the ground.

“Suleiman!” his big voice boomed out for the whole camp to hear. “Step outside!”

A dozen kinsmen appeared from nowhere with rifles in their hands and surprise on their faces.

“Outside!” Jossi roared again.

The old brigand took a long time to make his appearance. He stepped from the tent and put his hands on his hips and smiled menacingly. Ten feet of ground separated the two.

“Who is it who howls outside my tent like a sick goat?” Suleiman asked. The tribesmen were seized by a fit of laughter. Jossi did not take his eyes off the Arab for a second.

“It is Jossi Rabinsky who howls like a sick goat,” he said, “and says that Suleiman is a thief and a liar!”

The smile on Suleiman’s lips turned into an ugly scowl. The Bedouins tensed and waited for the signal to pounce on the Jew and devour him.

“Go on,” Jossi challenged softly, “call all your nephews. Your honor is no greater than a pig’s and I hear you have no more courage than a woman.”

No more courage than a woman! This was the deadliest insult he could hear. Jossi had issued him a personal challenge.

Suleiman raised his fist and shook it. “Your mother is the biggest whore in the world.”

“Go on, woman ... keep talking,” Jossi answered.

Suleiman’s very honor was at stake. He drew one of his silver daggers and with a bloodcurdling shriek charged at the red-bearded giant.

Jossi’s bull whip whistled out!

It wrapped around the Arab’s feet, picked him up, and sent him smashing to the earth. Jossi was at him like a cat. He brought the whip down on Suleiman’s back with such terrifying speed and strength that the snap echoed through all the hills.

“We are brothers! We are brothers!” Suleiman cried for mercy at the end of five lashes.

Jossi pointed at his frantic foe. “Suleiman, you gave me your hand in a bargain of honor and you lied. If you or your kinsmen ever again set foot in our fields I will cut your body apart with this whip and feed the pieces to the jackals.”

Jossi turned and his eyes pierced the astonished Bedouins. They were all too stunned to move. Never had they seen a man so powerful and fearless and angry. Showing utter disdain for their rifles, Jossi turned his back on them, walked to his horse, mounted, and rode off.

Suleiman never touched a Jewish field again.

The next morning when Jossi mounted up to rejoin his company at Mount Canaan, Sarah asked when he would be back. He mumbled something about getting to Rosh Pinna each month or so. As he swung onto his horse, saluted, and galloped off, Sarah thought her heart would burst apart. There was never a man like Jossi Rabinsky—Jew, Arab, Cossack, or king! She swore as she saw him ride away that she would dedicate the rest of her life to loving him.

For a year Jossi commanded his Guardsman company in their territory with such skill that little or no trouble occurred. He never had to resort to firearms. When there was trouble he would go to the Arabs for a friendly consultation and warning. If it happened again—the bull whip. The bull whip of Jossi Rabinsky became as well known through the northern Galilee as his red beard. The Arabs called it “lightning.”

All this proved too dull for Yakov. He was bored with the lack of action. After six months in the Guardsman he left again to go on the prowl, hoping somehow to fill the constant void in his life.

Jossi was neither sad nor happy as a Guardsman. It gave him more pleasure than buying land and it established an important principle by demonstrating that the Jews could and would defend themselves and were no longer “children of death.” He looked forward to his northern swing so that he could have a visit with his friend Kammal and then travel up to his hill to keep his dream alive.

Secretly he eagerly anticipated those moments when he rode into Rosh Pinna. He would straighten up to look even more elegant and gallant on his white steed, and his heart would beat more quickly for he knew that Sarah, the dark-eyed girl from Silesia, was watching. But when it came to conversation or action, Jossi was lost.

Sarah was perplexed. She simply could not break down Jossi’s shyness. If it had been the Old Country the matchmaker would have gone to Jossi’s father and arranged everything. Here there was not only no matchmaker but not even a rabbi.

This went on for a year.

One day Jossi rode into Rosh Pinna unexpectedly. It was all he could do to ask Sarah if she would like to ride with him to see the country north of the settlement in the Huleh Valley.

How thrilling! No Jew but Jossi Rabinsky dared wander up that far! They galloped past Abu Yesha, on up the road, and then into the hills. The trail ended atop his hill.

“I crossed into Palestine right here,” he said softly.

As Jossi looked down into the Huleh Valley he did not need to say another word. Sarah knew how deeply he loved this earth. The two of them stood and gazed for ever so long. Sarah barely reached his chest.

A warm flood of love passed through her. This was Jossi’s only way of sharing his most intimate longing.

“Jossi Rabinsky,” Sarah whispered, “would you please, please marry me?”

Jossi cleared his throat and stammered, “Ahem ... uh ... how strange of you to mention it. I was about to say something of the sort myself.”

There had never been a wedding in Palestine to compare with Jossi’ s and Sarah’s. They came from all over the Galilee and even from as far away as Jaffa, even though it was a two-day journey to Safed. The Guardsmen came and Yakov came and the settlers of Rosh Pinna came and Turks came and Kammal came and even Suleiman came. Everyone watched as Jossi and Sarah stood beneath the canopy and exchanged vows and drank the blessed wine. Jossi crushed the wineglass beneath his foot in remembrance of the bitterness of the fall of the Temple. There was food enough for an army and there was dancing and gaiety and celebration that lasted nearly a week.

When the last guest had gone home Jossi took his bride to his tent on the side of Mount Canaan and consummated their marriage.

Jossi took his bride down from Mount Canaan to Jaffa where there was much work to be done for the Zionists. His fame left him well equipped to take charge of settling newcomers and to deal with the many intricacies of this strange land. He signed on with the Zionists as one of the chief men in the Zion Settlement Society.

In the year 1909, Jossi was consulted in a very important matter. Many of the Jews of Jaffa’s growing community wanted better housing, sanitation, and a cultural life that the ancient Arab city could not offer. Jossi was instrumental in purchasing a strip of land north of Jaffa, which consisted mostly of sand and orange groves.

On this land the first all-Jewish city in two thousand years was built. They called it the Hill of Spring: Tel Aviv.

T
HE AGRICULTURAL COLONIES
were failing miserably.

There were many reasons. Apathy and lethargy and complete lack of idealism, for one. They still planted only export crops and continued to use the cheaper Arab labor. Despite the influx of Jews and the desire of these Jews to work the land the Zionists could barely convince the colonies to use them.

The over-all situation was discouraging. Palestine was not much better off than it had been when the Rabinsky brothers came twenty years before. There was a measure of culture around Tel Aviv, but all other progress was too small to be measured.

The energy and idealism which had come in with the Second Aliyah was going to waste. Like Yakov and Jossi, the immigrants drifted from place to place without cause and without putting down roots.

As the Zion Settlement Society purchased more and more land it became increasingly obvious that some drastic change in the entire thinking about colonization was necessary.

Jossi and others had long concluded that individual farming was a physical impossibility. There was the matter of security, there was the ignorance of the Jews in farming matters, and, worse, there was the complete wastage of the land.

What Jossi wanted with this new land was villages whose inhabitants would work the soil themselves, plant balanced crops to become self-sustaining, and be able to defend themselves.

The first principle involved was to keep all land in the name of the Zion Settlement Society—all-Jewish land for all the Jewish people. Only self-labor would be allowed on the land: the Jew had to do the work himself and could hire no other Jew or Arab.

The next dramatic step was taken when Jews of the Second Aliyah pledged to work only for the redemption of the land and build a homeland with no thoughts of personal gain or profits or ambition. Their pledge, in fact, came close to later communal farming ideas. The communal farm was not born of social or political idealism. It was based on the necessities of survival; there was no other way.

The stage was set for a dramatic experiment. The year was 1909. The Zion Settlement Society purchased four thousand
dunams
of land below Tiberias at a point where the Jordan River flowed from the Sea of Galilee. Most of it was swamp or marshland. The society staked twenty young men and women to a year’s supplies and money. Their mission was to reclaim the land.

Jossi traveled out with them as they pitched their tents at the edge of the marshland. They named their place Shoshanna after the wild roses which grew along the Sea of Galilee. The Shoshanna experiment on national land could well be the key to future colonization and was the most important single step taken by the Jews since the exodus.

Three clapboard sheds were erected. One was a communal dining and meeting hall. One was a barn and tool shed. The third served as a barracks for the sixteen men and four women.

In the first winter the sheds collapsed a dozen times in the winds and floods. The roads were so muddy they became isolated from the outside world for long stretches. At last they were forced to move into a nearby Arab village to wait it out till springtime.

In the spring Jossi returned to Shoshanna as the work began in earnest. The marshlands and swamps had to be rolled back foot by foot. Hundreds of Australian eucalyptus trees were planted to soak up the water. Drainage ditches were carved out by hand; the work was backbreaking. They labored from sunup till sundown, and a third of the members were always bedridden with malaria. The only cure they knew was the Arab method of cutting the ear lobes and draining blood. They worked in waist-deep muck through the terrible heat of the summer.

By the second year there was some reclaimed land to show for their toil. Now the rocks had to be dragged from the fields by donkey teams and the thick brush hacked down and burned.

In Tel Aviv, Jossi continued to fight to continue support for the experiment, for he was discovering an amazing thing. He was discovering that the drive to build a homeland was so great that there were at least twenty people willing to do this thankless, backbreaking work without pay.

The hardships endured at Shoshanna never ceased, but by the end of two years enough land had been readied to lay in a crop. This was a crucial stage, for most of the group did not know how to farm or what to farm or the difference between a hen and a rooster. They worked by trial and error, and the results were mostly errors. They did not know how to sow or plow in a straight line or how to get milk from cows or how to plant trees. The earth was a gigantic mystery.

They attacked the problem of farming with the same dogged determination with which they had attacked the swampy land. With the swamp water drained off, irrigation water had to be brought in. At first it was carried from the river in water cans on donkey back. Next came an experiment with an Arab water wheel, and after that several attempts at wells. Finally they put in irrigation ditches and built a network of dams to trap the winter rains.

Little by little the land yielded its secrets. On many of his visits Jossi held his breath and wondered and marveled at the morale at Shoshana. They had nothing but what they wore on their backs and even that belonged to the community. They ate the meagerest of meals in a community dining hall, had common showers and toilets, and slept everyone under the same roof. The Arabs and Bedouins watched the slow steady growth of Shoshanna with amazement. When the Bedouins saw several hundred acres of land under cultivation they set out to dislodge the Jews.

All work in the fields had to be done under cover of armed guards. Along with sickness, overwork—security became a problem. After a torturous day in the fields the tired farmers had to stand guard throughout the night. But they carried on at Shoshanna through isolation and ignorance and threats of attack and swamps and murderous heat and malaria and a dozen other calamities.

Yakov Rabinsky came to Shoshanna to try his luck there.

Joseph Trumpledor arrived. Trumpledor had been an officer in the Russian Army and was famous for his valor in the Russo-Japanese War during which he lost an arm. The call of Zionism brought Trumpledor to Palestine and the path led to Shoshanna. With Trumpledor and Yakov handling security the Bedouin raids soon ceased.

There were more problems in communal living than they had imagined.

There was the governing of the community. This was completely democratic, but Jews were traditionally independent and no two Jews ever agreed on any given subject. Would the governing turn into endless conversation and haggling?

There was the division of work. There was community responsibility for health, welfare, and education. And what of the members who could not or would not do a full day’s work? What of those who were disgruntled over their assignments? What of those who objected to the cooking or to living in such tight quarters? What of the clash of personalities?