Only Yesterday (13 page)

Isaac saw that he was still far from perfection. Nevertheless, his soul was relieved and his hand grew light. And that skill that had been closed to him started revealing things to him which even Sweet Foot didn’t reveal to him. And he stopped asking if he had done well, and even Sweet Foot didn’t say anything to him. Either he despaired of him or he regarded him as an artisan like all other artisans in Jaffa. One way or another, Isaac’s soul was relieved and his hand was light, like an artisan who is expert and trained in his craft.

No longer did he see himself in his dreams climbing to the tops of the roofs to watch how the artisans work. Nor did the artisans any longer throw paint in his eyes to blind him. And even Sweet Foot who mocked him during the day and would call his brush burst, looked graciously on him in his dreams. And when Isaac lay supine on his bed after his daily toil, he dozed off and slept and drew strength and life.

In those days, Isaac rejoiced at every new day and every new job. And not only because he got paid, but also because he was fond of his craft, for he could do in reality what he had pictured to himself in imagination. His limbs were at ease and the order of his days was fixed. If he had work to do, he worked, if he didn’t have work to do, he sat in his room and read a book, or he wrote letters to his fa-ther and his brothers and sisters, and at night he would stroll on the seashore and in the other places and go visit Sweet Foot or somebody else. And when Isaac would dress in his fine clothes, he looked like all the sons of good families who left their father’s house and wound up here in the Land of Israel.

Days of Grace

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His days passed smoothly. His livelihood was at hand and there was no need to worry about tomorrow. And now he was used to the climate of Jaffa. The sun didn’t crush his brain by day and the damp of night didn’t weary his bones. He feared neither the winds nor the heat wave. And when people grumbled about the
Hamsins
that sucked their marrow and dried their skin, he would say, On the contrary, I like the
Hamsins
, for I bathe in them as in a pool of sun. Whether he exaggerated a lot or whether he exaggerated a little, this was a display of goodwill and affection for the Land.

A special affection did he feel for the sea. At first he was ter-rified to approach it lest it rise up and wash him away; now he goes into it and isn’t scared. And on summer days, when he leaves his work, and needless to say on Friday evenings, he bathes in the sea. But some of the excitement he felt when the sea appeared to him for the first time on the way to Trieste still stirred his heart. And just as he is amazed at the sea, so he is amazed at himself when he bathes in it and at the children who play in it. That water that can cover the land, schoolchildren play in it and aren’t afraid. And that is nothing compared with the Gynmasium students who make human pyramids in the sea, and when the pyramid is very very high, they all jump off into the water at the same time. And one of them makes himself into a boat and his friends sail on him. And sometimes someone disappears from the group and reappears in a boat standing in the sea far away from the land.

On days when the sea rages and you don’t bathe in it, Isaac walks on the beach. Terrifying waves rise from the sea and strike one

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another, and rise up to the land and pluck up the sand, and the sand is undermined, and the storm roils the depths, and the sounds of mighty waters rise from the bottom of the sea, and the whole world trembles and quakes, and you stroll along and aren’t afraid. Behold, there’s a small river in our city which is a drop compared with the sea and not a year goes by when it doesn’t sweep away cattle and vessels and even houses, but this sea doesn’t go over its bounds which the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He delineated when He created the sea. And on the morrow a person goes out and sees that the sea has made peace with itself and its waves are smiling at one another with greenish eyes and bluish eyes, and the sand is gleaming before them like a fop’s illuminated mirror.

Now we shall turn to things that are essential to human life and shall talk a bit about the foods that are special to the Land of Is-rael. Even the foods that were alien to Isaac at first became tasty to him. Eggplant fried in oil and tomato sauce, and the other dishes they eat in the Land are his daily food, not to mention olives and tomatoes.

Isaac took thorough pleasure in apricots. We didn’t learn about them in the Torah, and we didn’t hear about them until we came to the Land of Israel, and suddenly they appear to us, and be-hold they’re good and exquisite. The Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He loves the Land of Israel and gives more than He promises. He promised us
a land with wheat and barley,
etc., and He also provides other good and fine fruits. And when does He provide? Between Passover and Sukkoth, when the oranges were gone from the market. With one hand He takes, and with one hand He gives.

Before you’ve had your fill of them, the whole market is rejoicing at grapes. Grapes like those you never ate in your hometown. On the second night of Rosh HaShana, Father used to buy a bunch of grapes to make the blessing “that we have lived to see this time,” and if he didn’t bless with grapes—currants are even better, for Fa-ther is a poor man and buys second-rate goods. And here, for a penny you buy an ounce or two of sweet, good grapes. And how many kinds there are here, and the taste of one isn’t like the taste of another. Like all our comrades who come from northern lands, Isaac knew that

there were white and black grapes, but what he didn’t know is that both of them are divided into many kinds, and every kind has its own name. And now that he does know, he selects from the good kind and skips over the mediocre kinds. However, we must say that even the mediocre ones merit a blessing.

While the grapes still fill the market, another fruit is already peeping at you. The Sabra, that prickly pear they use to build garden hedges and when a person steps on it with his shoes it pricks his sole, is also a fruit worthy of a blessing and sweet to the heart. The eyes of the Lord wander throughout the Land, and when He wants to, He bestows a good taste even to the thorns of the hedge. Arabs sit at the slopes of every street and for a penny they peel you enough prickly pears to fill your belly. And while you’re preoccupied with the prickly pear, another Arab passes by with a basket of Damascene strawberries on his head.

Between one thing and another, the market fills up with heaps and heaps of big watermelons, bigger than a man’s head. Their rinds are green and white flecks sparkle on the rind, and their inside is red and rejoicing, and black seeds look out from them, and you eat the core and spit out the seeds, and throw away the rind. You recall autumn nights in your hometown when you saw the market vendors sitting in the light of small lanterns with watermelon halves in front of them, and your mouth yearned to savor that sweet fruit, but your pocket was empty, and you couldn’t buy yourself even a small piece of watermelon. And here, you buy a whole watermelon and eat it for a day or two.

Even before the watermelons are gone, the whole market is filled with figs. The fig is a fruit with no rind outside and no pit in-side, and is eaten as it is, it enters your mouth unmediated, as an ob-ject that is purified of all junk, and remains all good. Even before the figs are gone, the whole market is filled with dates sweet as honey. These fruits that we ate in the Diaspora once a year on the fifteenth day of the month of Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, one fig and one date, to bless with them, to rouse with our blessings the force of the supreme values to bestow the holy profusion unto the fruits of the Land of Israel, here you buy an ounce or two of them for a penny.

Even in the Diaspora, figs and dates are the sweetest fruits in the world, but in the Land of Israel, they are many times sweeter, for not like the taste of fruit in Exile is the taste of fruit where it dwells. And between the figs and the dates come the pomegranates. Before we came to the Land of Israel, the pomegranate served us as a parable, for instance, he ate its core and threw away its rind. When we came to the Land of Israel, that parable became reality. From the fruits the Land of Israel is famed for, we turn to the other fruits the Land grows for her inhabitants.

Big, good oranges fill the Land, and their fragrance is like the fragrance of a world that is all good, and a kind of light envelops them, like the light that comes from gold, and their good taste stays in the mouth. All the time you were outside the Land, you may never have got yourself a whole orange, and if you did buy one—you certainly didn’t buy two; and here they give you three or four for a Mat-lik. The surplus of Jaffa, which is blessed with good fruit, treats you generously and gives abundantly.

Next to the orange comes the mandarin, the baby of the tree of the Land of Israel, and the little sister of the orange, which capti-vates you with the warmth of her beauty and her fragrance and her taste, and wraps herself in a light wrap, and if you desire her she is unpeeled easily.

And now, our brothers weary in the
Hamsins
and the sun and all other things which sap a man’s strength in the Land of Israel, did-n’t you know that in the season of the oranges, the sun weakens, and a pleasant chill spreads and flutters, and sweet clouds are suspended in the firmament, and the sun peeps from them with sad affection, and it seems to us that we really are in a Delightsome Land, especially here in Jaffa where there is no snow and no cold, but there are good winds and a sweet sun. Here a man doesn’t have to fear that his blood will congeal from the chill and a man doesn’t have to fear the cold, and even when it is cold, the sun rises in the firmament and warms us pleasantly. The Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He knows that we are poor and can’t make ourselves warm clothes or heat our oven, so God provided a comfortable climate we can endure. And when Isaac recalled his father’s house in the winter, when the ground beneath

the bed sprouted ice and frost and everybody was sick from the chill, he didn’t know whether to sigh for them or to rejoice for himself.

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Little by little, Isaac uprooted his mind from his hometown and was getting used to the conditions of the Land. The cherries and the currents and the Canaanite strawberry and all the fruits, big and small, which he was used to in his city, were departing his memory. He also turned his mind away from the other food and beverages he was used to in his hometown. And just as he had grown accustomed to the climate of the Land, so he also grew accustomed to her language, and mingled Arabic and Russian words in his speech, whether he spoke Yiddish or whether he spoke Hebrew, like all our comrades in the Land.

In other things too, he behaved like most of our comrades. He didn’t go to synagogue and he didn’t lay Tefillin and he didn’t keep the Sabbath and he didn’t honor the religious festivals. At first, he made a distinction between the Commandments of commission and the Commandments of omission; but in the end, he didn’t distinguish between commission and omission. And if he chanced to vi-olate one of the Commandments of Thou Shalt Not, he didn’t worry. He didn’t do that because he thought a lot about faith and religion, but because he dwelled among people who came to the conscious conclusion that religion and such things weren’t important, and since they didn’t see a need for religion, they didn’t see a need for its Commandments. On the contrary, as people who cherished truth, they would regard themselves as hypocrites if they observed Jewish law when their heart was far from it. Nevertheless, a trace of an idea prevailed in Isaac unwittingly, a vague idea that didn’t become clear, but it guided his acts. For the Land of Israel was divided into the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv, the former behave this way and the latter behave that way. And since he belonged to the New Yishuv, why should he behave like the people of the Old Yishuv. And even though some of his ideas changed, as far as that was concerned, they didn’t change. And even though they didn’t change in this matter, he did long for the days of yore, for his father’s house, for

the Sabbath and the festivals, yet he didn’t go into a synagogue but sat silent or hummed an exalted tune, until he forgot the gloomy reality with all its distress. In this, Isaac was not alone. In those days, Jaffa was full of young fellows who had studied Talmud and had prac-ticed exegesis, and when they gathered together, and their hearts would assail them, they would sweeten their sitting with Hasidic stories and Hasidic tunes or with homilies. The generation before them sang songs of Zion, for this generation those songs became trite, and when the yearning soul yearned it went back to seek what was lost. Anyone who could sing sang tunes he had brought with him from his hometown, and anyone who could tell tales sat and told tales, and the Lithuanians who don’t know the Hasids pretend to be preachers and expound homilies. And here a thing happened that did not hap-pen to their fathers, the sons of Misnagdim found delight in Hasidic tales and the sons of the Hasids found delight in the words of homilies, and they didn’t distinguish between the imitation and the original, because of the desire to exalt the soul. Out of their affection for those things whose tang is mostly in Yiddish, they sometimes gave up Hebrew, on condition that the things were not said in public; in a small party of friends, they weren’t sticklers about their language. Isaac was different from most of our comrades in two things, he didn’t belong to any political party and he didn’t court girls. He didn’t join a political party because he was wholeheartedly with Zionism as a whole, and he didn’t court girls because he didn’t. If he had sought them, he would have found. In these two things, Isaac was different from the rest of our comrades, and maybe in one more thing he was different from them, that sometimes a thought of re-pentance stirred in his heart, but since he had gotten used to not observing the Commandments, he appeased his good instinct with an easy Commandment that wasn’t exacting, like reciting the Shema at bedtime. And that he did not so much as a Commandment as a rem-edy for sleep.