Authors: Cynthia Freeman
Avrum returned home after his day spent in prayer, washed himself so that he could come to God’s table with clean hands. As Chavala brought the food to the table, Avrum looked around and saw that Sheine was not there. He frowned and was about to ask where she was when Sheine came into the room, kissed him on the cheek, then sat down next to Moishe.
There was a long, awkward silence as Avrum looked at his daughter. “Where have you been, Sheine?”
“I sent her to the marketplace to buy—” But before Chavala could finish, Sheine interrupted. “I can speak for myself.” How dare Chavala treat her as though she were a stupid child! She didn’t need Chavala’s protection. “I wanted to see the city outside the walls, is there anything wrong with that, papa?” She spoke with more insolence than she had intended. Well, it was her anger at Chavala that had spoken, not her…
Avrum looked at Sheine. No … she was not like the others. There was a defiance, an arrogance. A child did not speak to a father that way … “Yes, Sheine, there
is
something wrong with that A girl does not go out alone. I forbid it, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, papa, but why should you object? Jerusalem is also outside the walls—”
“For my daughters Jerusalem does not extend beyond the Damascus gates. From now on you will not go further than the old city.”
Sheine sat with her head bowed, biting her lower lip. This humiliation was too much … in front of the others … Papa had never treated his children with such anger, it was Chavala who was at fault … Chavala whom she blamed. She waited to settle herself a little, then excused herself and went to her room. Shutting the door behind her she lay down and cried out bitter tears. No one, she was convinced, really loved her. She was alone, she always would be …
When she heard the door open, she wiped her eyes quickly and lay with her face to the wall.
“Sheine,” she heard Chavala say, “may I please speak to you?” Sheine didn’t move.
“Sheine, please … forgive me. I know it was me you wanted to run away from. I was too hard on you.”
Slowly Sheine turned toward Chavala, her eyes cold as steel. “How kind of you, but why the sudden concern for me? Are you feeling guilty for what papa said to me? That should have made you very happy—”
“Oh, Sheine,
please
, let’s not fight. Our lives are difficult enough. All we have is each other. I love you, Sheine … you’re my sister … I just hope you can love me in return.” She reached out, took Sheine by the shoulders and hugged her close.
And somehow in that moment the anger vanished and the two sisters cried in one another’s arms … Chavala because she hoped so intensely that the two would become closer. Sheine’s tears, though, were because she knew that she would always be jealous of Dovid’s love for Chavala, and not her. She wished she could feel differently, but she couldn’t Maybe there really
was
a
dybbuk
in her. God help her…
A
VRUM HAD BEEN
so preoccupied with God that he had failed to notice the great changes in his children.
Moishe and Dovid gradually left the tradition of putting on the phylacteries and were absent from the morning prayers. He would have thought that they would have clung to their faith after getting to this holy place, but he came to the realization that Eretz Yisroel for them was not, as for him, a place to drench their souls. He felt in some way he had failed. His children seemed to grow further apart from the traditions of their faith, and painful as it was to face, in the freedom of their newfound hope he trembled that they were becoming nonbelievers. His heart nearly broke when he admonished Moishe for deceiving him, when he found out he was not attending the yeshiva…
“Papa, I beg you to understand,” Moishe said. “I love God as much as I ever did, but papa, you must understand that if a man is born free he must pursue his religion according to his times and needs. I will observe, but not in your way. I can’t go to the yeshiva, because that means to live on charity, and
that
is something I can’t live with. I think, papa, the time has come for me to be a man and contribute a man’s share to his family. I’ve taken a job in Mea Shearim cutting stones—”
Avrum clenched his hand out of fear that he would hit his son. But more than his own anger he actually was afraid that God’s wrath would descend on his child. Where, he asked himself, have I failed as a father? And how had he failed by not being able to reach Dovid? Dovid wanting to use the sacred words of the Torah was something that Avrum could not tolerate. Dovid’s words rang in his ear: “If we are to be a nation we must speak a common language. Today Eretz Yisroel is like the Tower of Babel, a hundred tongues are spoken here…”
“If God had intended for our sacred words to be spoken to one another it would have been written in the holy text. I
forbid
it, do you hear me, Dovid, I forbid it.” And saying it, Avrum thought how much he too had changed since coming to Eretz Yisroel … he would never have imagined that he could feel such anger against his children, or Dovid … he had always been, after all, a rather meek man, but his children were demanding things of him he just could not condone. He hadn’t come to Eretz Yisroel to change the word of God … he’d come here to do God’s will, to live and be buried in the sacred earth.
Chavala knew that nothing Dovid could say could convince her father. True … they spoke a bastard language, the outgrowth of living in the ghetto, an extraction of German mingled with Russian, a jargon that made it near-impossible to communicate. But Avrum would not give in.
Dovid tried again. Hebrew, he said, was the language of their forefathers two thousand years ago, and it should have been like honey in his mouth, but Avrum shook his head and turned more than ever to his dedication to God through prayers … including more for Dovid’s and his children’s salvation. Avrum Rabinsky’s had become a divided house…
Chavala lay alongside Dovid and said, “Don’t be angry at papa, Dovid. Remember, he’s an old man who has only one reason for living—his faith. Please don’t challenge him anymore—”
“I don’t challenge him, Chavala, I try to explain. All right, I’ll try. Still,
we
have to try to fulfill ourselves too. We’re entitled to our dreams—”
“I know, Dovid, dreams are fine, as I said so long ago, but we mustn’t have our dreams at the expense of other people.” She laughed mildly. “I’ll tell you what my grand dream is right now… to own a sewing machine.”
“Well, that’s not such a difficult one. For that we only need money.”
Remembering the small amethyst brooch that belonged to Dovid’s grandmother, Chavala thought she needed a machine much more. Her sisters should be dressed decently … “I have the money, Dovid …”
“How do you happen to have the money?”
“From the dowry I held out on you,” and not wanting to press the matter she nestled close in Dovid’s arms and whispered, “We’re always so serious, Dovid, do you realize you haven’t made love to me for … well, I wonder if you still know how?”
Putting his mouth to hers he kissed her and whispered, “I still know how.” And, blessedly, there was no more talk that night.
Dovid bought an old sewing machine from an Arab tailor in Jerusalem, which raised Chavala’s spirits considerably. In the marketplace she bought material and set herself to making peasant skirts and blouses like the ones they’d worn at home. She made an especially beautiful one for Sheine. As she admired it a sudden thought grew … why shouldn’t she find a small stall and become a merchant herself … ? The idea alone made her excited, even more so when she imagined Dovid sharing the stall with her. Here they were, both of them strong, each with a good trade, and Dovid seemed to be wandering aimlessly about. Good God, why hadn’t she thought of this before? She could hardly wait for Dovid to come home.
When he did, for the first time since their marriage, angry words erupted between them.
“I didn’t come to Eretz Yisroel to be a ghetto bootmaker.” Chavala stopped her pedaling and looked across to where Dovid sat on the rickety wooden chair. “You’re not going to be a bootmaker? What then, a doctor?”
He ignored the sarcasm. “Chavala, we both know that this is not why we came to Eretz Yisroel.”
“I thought we came to escape the pogroms.”
“That’s true, but there must be a deeper meaning to our lives. Surviving isn’t enough …”
“Not being killed has plenty of meaning for me. At least the Turks don’t massacre us.”
“Chavala, let’s not play games. We didn’t run away to settle behind a ghetto wall. Look how we’re living.”
Her pulse beat a little faster with hope. Maybe Dovid was disillusioned with Eretz Yisroel, after all … “Then this isn’t what you expected it to be?”
“You’re right, Chavala, I didn’t come to pray at the Wall. You know what I want.”
Of course … for a moment she had allowed herself to think he’d changed his mind, wanted to choose America with her … Yes … she knew what he wanted … to live in the wilderness on some Godforsaken kibbutz, but if she gave in to that she could forget about ever leaving Palestine. When the time came she would fight him. She had something coming to her too, her dream of America … “I don’t see anything so terribly wrong with the way we’re living … if you wanted to make a living you could—”
“I know … I could be a bootmaker. Well, I won’t do it, Chavala, not even for you. I want to help build a land—”
“In America you wouldn’t have to build a land. It’s already built.”
“But America is not
our
country. This is.”
“Is it? Forgive me, but this country belongs to the Turks and Bedouins, and the decay and rot and pestilence. Please, Dovid, let the Lovers of Zion have their fantasy, but I’m afraid Jews will never have a country. We will always be the intruders who plead with the world to just let us survive. Only in America, Dovid, can you and I really be free.”
“
No.
This land, by
rights,
belongs to us, and one day, Chavala, we’ll
have
it.”
“You’re still back in Reb Kaufman’s basement, listening to that great sage, the
Bilu
who came from Palestine to save us. To build a country. But how can you build a country when you can’t even buy land?”
“Legally, as individuals, no. But in spite of it all, land is still being bought up, settlements are being established …”
Chavala loved Dovid so she found it almost impossible to deny him … except, she couldn’t help thinking, why was it always she who had to give in? But what she said was, “What about my father? You know he’d never leave Jerusalem.”
“I’ve thought about that. Sheine’s old enough to take care of him. It isn’t that I don’t love him, Chavala, I do. But you and I have a life to make—”
“And what about the rest of the family? Have you thought about them too?”
“Yes … whoever wants, can come. It’s for them to make the choice. But you, little Chia and I will go.”
“I didn’t say that I would—”
“I’m begging you, Chavala. If we’re to find a life, it can’t be here in Jerusalem.”
But all she could say was that she would think about it
That night they slept back to back.
The next morning as she watched Dovid leave in anger, Chavala was reminded of another day, a day that now seemed so far away … their wedding night. But at least it served to remind her that Dovid Landau was not a man to be wrapped up like a package. For all his kindness and love, he expected his wife to love him enough to go with him. She
was
his wife, and since the days of Ruth a wife went where her husband went He didn’t say when he would return, and her heart beat too fast as she fought back the tears…
Dovid had journeyed far into the hills of Metullah, dodging the marauding Bedouins, spurred on by his hope of finding land to settle on … But that hope was soon crushed when he found that at the settlement of the Baron de Rothschild only
Arabs
were employed. Not one Jew worked the land—it was cheaper for the baron to hire
fellaheen
. The only Jews to be seen were administrators and overseers, and they had been imported from France, as had been the agriculturists who taught the Arabs how to farm.
He felt duped, deceived by the Lovers of Zion who had filled his and so many other minds with visions of a Jewish Utopia.
Angry, frustrated, he left and went back to Jerusalem….
At Mea Shearim Dovid found a job as a stonecutter, working with his brother-in-law Moishe. As he chipped away through the rough rock, he thought, well, at least better this than a bootmaker. “I’m a builder, a builder of dreams,” David Ben-Gurion had said to him that night. Here, cutting the stone, at least in a small way he was helping to rebuild the land. This stone would go into new dwellings to build a country…
When he returned home that evening his disappointment over not being able to work in the fields was so great he said nothing about working for the diminutive Yemenite in Mea Shearim.
Chavala, though, could hardly overlook his scratched and calloused hands, but since Dovid would say nothing to her, well, she wouldn’t ask why he had stayed away, where he had been … She wouldn’t even tell him she’d missed him … oh God, how she’d missed him …
That evening was only a prelude to the week that came. Each morning he left for Mea Shearim only to return silent, withdrawn.
After a week Chavala could no longer stand it. That night she moved closer to her husband, waited for him to turn to her… he only lay there, rigid, his back to her.
Getting out of bed, Chavala began to pace the small room. Her anger had gone to hurt, and the hurt eventually became guilt… he was her husband, and there came a time when it no longer mattered who was right, who was wrong. “Dovid, how long is this going to go on?”
Silence.
“Dovid, please, speak to me.”
He turned to look at her. “I don’t know how to solve this, I don’t.”
Again, silence.
“Dovid, there must be an answer, let’s try to find it—”
“Do you think you could stand the truth?”
“What’s the truth, Dovid?”
“That you are my wife and your place is with me. You know why I came. My reasons are the same.”