The passage about England was fervent too. The British part in creating Israel, he had to admit, was the nearest thing to a show of God’s hand. The King James Bible had stamped in British culture so vivid a vision of an eventual Jewish return to Palestine, that an army general like Orde Wingate could risk his career training Jewish settlers in night fighting against Arab raiders, foreshadowing the Palmakh. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, the entire legal basis of Zionism and of Israel, seemed an outright miracle; but in fact the British were simply making such a declaration ahead of Germany, so as to win American Jews to their side in World War I. There was much more, about Lord Palmerston, George Eliot, and Winston Churchill, which was quite new to Kishote.
Roweh turned brusque and arid about America and Germany, rapidly flipping his handwritten notes. The American immigration law of 1924 slammed shut the Statue of Liberty’s “golden door,” he pointed out, compelling emigrating European Jews to consider Palestine instead; and the German Holocaust created a short-lived mood of world favor for the Jews, resulting in the UN partition vote and the establishment of the Jewish State.
Picking the microphone from the bracket, trailing the wire to walk directly before the splendiferous Holy Ark, his notes left behind, Roweh exclaimed, “Ah, but the Arabs, dear friends, how can we unbelievers possibly account for the Arab contribution to Zionism? More than all other nations combined, more one is tempted to say than the Jews themselves, the Arabs have created Israel.”
In one of his infrequent pauses for breath, a murmur rose in the audience, which he seemed to welcome. “Absurd? Perverse? Self-contradictory? But just consider and bear well in mind, my friends, the words of George Bernard Shaw: ‘My best friend is my worst enemy, the one who keeps me up to the mark.’
“Who but the Arabs forced Jews to learn the art of war again, forgotten since the Romans crushed Bar Kokhba? Who woke in them the dormant genes of Joshua’s warriors, by making the very first settlers fight to survive in the ruined and barren Holy Land?
“Dear friends, how could the Arabs rationally have rejected early British proposals which would have given them control of Palestine, ended Jewish immigration, and made present-day Israel an impossible dream? How could they have rejected the UN partition which awarded them a Palestinian State?
“What did they do instead? They invaded newborn Israel on five fronts, giving the Jews a brief chance to capture enough territory, in defending themselves, to make their borders viable. And in 1967, by threatening a second Holocaust, they triggered the Six-Day War, a triumph that won Israel the whole world’s reluctant admiration, and made Zionists of nearly all the world’s Jews.
“Moreover, to this day their terrorism sustains sympathy for Israel. Arab thinkers have themselves told me, in confidence and in despair, that this persisting blindness of their own people to what they are doing can only be the will of Allah. Though we unbelievers do not accept that explanation, we can certainly understand it.”
Concentrate as he might on Roweh’s iridescent flow of words, Yossi was befuddled by what followed, a rapid run through Vico’s theory of ‘the barbarism of reflection,’ as it related to the civilization of Islam, which Roweh clearly admired, and in which he saw the bedrock of future peace between Arabs and Jews. “Like Egypt in Moses’ time,” Roweh concluded on this theme, “Islam is a crucible of rejection for the Jews, in which the nation is being forged and tempered for another twenty centuries of survival against all odds.”
He went back to the podium, fitted the microphone into its bracket, and looked around at the vast expanse of faces with a benign smile. “Have I gone on too long? I have simply done my best, in the forty minutes your rabbi allotted to me —” A ripple of audible amusement spread through the temple. “Sorry, I’m accustomed to a classroom bell to cut me off — I’ve done my best, I say, to suggest that for us unbelievers purely natural causes have propelled the Jews back into history. The accumulation of favoring events and coincidences, and I could cite many more, is exceedingly unusual, I concede. But in the end, the most unusual element of all is the will of the dispersed tiny Jewish people to survive forbidding odds through more than twenty centuries, and on the brink of annihilation, to come back to life and create the third Jewish commonwealth. Today, facing nuclear or environmental annihilation, all mankind needs such a will to survive. In that sense, if not in any Godly sense, the Jews may perhaps be called ‘a light to the nations.’
“Yet to the believers among you in the supernatural explanation of Israel’s rise, I can only say — and with this I conclude and take my leave — I can only say that you almost have a case. Tamara Katzman, my blessings on your bat mitzvah.”
“Well, for a temple lecture it was all right,” Cookie Freeman commented at the Katzman dinner party afterward, answering a query by the society columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Holly Jonas, who sat beside him. Four tables for ten were set in the spectacular cathedral-ceilinged dining room, looking out through an arched picture window at the Los Angeles lights far below. At each table there was a celebrity, and Freeman had just taken his seat opposite Kishote with an irked glance through his black-framed glasses toward the number-one table, where Max Roweh sat with Yael Nitzan, the Katzmans, their bat mitzvah daughter, and Meryl Streep. “On the whole, a little too high-flown. And his windup about the Jews as a light to the nations was just ridiculous, in view of Israel’s crappy image nowadays.”
Holly Jonas gestured with embarrassment at Kishote. “Cookie, this is General Nitzan of the Israeli army.”
“Sorry, General,” said Freeman coolly. “You’re well disguised. No offense meant.”
“No problem,” said Yossi. “I’m a fan of yours, sir, I’ve liked all your movies. But tell me more about our crappy image. I’m interested.”
“It’s not a topic to pursue, is it?”
“Why not? You made a frank remark, and I’d like to understand you. A lot of Israelis might agree with you.”
“Are you here for fund-raising, General?”
Sheva Leavis said in a weak voice, “General Nitzan and I are looking into matters of mutual interest, Cookie.” He looked frail and very old. “Go ahead and tell him just what you think. He can handle it.”
“I’m sure of that.” Freeman turned to Yossi. “You know the nursery rhyme Humpty-Dumpty?”
“Sure,” said Yossi. “Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and couldn’t be put together again. It’s a riddle, and the answer is an egg.”
“Just so, and Israel is Humpty-Dumpty, General,” said Freeman. “You’ve had a great fall, and you can’t be put back together again. Your image is gone, smashed for good and all. Israel now comes across as a sort of Jewish Albania that almost got wiped out, was saved by an American airlift, yet still blocks all American efforts to make peace in the Middle East.”
“Do you believe that,” Yossi inquired, “or are you talking about image?”
“Mainly I’m talking image.”
“And what do you believe?”
“If you really want to know what I believe, General Nitzan, I believe it’s a pain in the ass to be blamed on talk shows for what you Israelis do, and to be asked whether I’m for Israel or America.”
“Yossi, he’s right about the image,” Sheva Leavis quietly put in. “A movie about Israel now couldn’t possibly be a success.”
“Okay,” Yossi said to Freeman, “but we weren’t saved by the airlift. Mostly it arrived after we crossed the Canal. It was a magnificent help, but we saved ourselves.”
“That’s not what people think here.”
“Are you sure? I think most of them know that the one thing we’ve learned is to save ourselves. What’s Israel all about, if not saving Jewish lives? If terrorists snatched you, for instance, Mr. Freeman, while you were doing a promotion tour in Europe — and it’s a risk you’d better bear in mind these days, sir — we’d try to save you.”
“Why?” Freeman looked amused. “I’m a pretty poor Jew, I’m just an artist.”
“You could be a pretty poor artist,” said Yossi, “but to us you’d still be a Jew.”
Holly Jonas laughed and scrawled in a notebook. Cookie Freeman grimaced and changed the subject.
When the dinner party was breaking up Yael came to Kishote, flushed and bright of eye, followed by Professor Roweh. “Look, dear, can you make your way back to my apartment if you take my car? Very easy to find, drive back down to Sunset and west half a mile.”
“No problem at all.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” She handed him the car keys. “The professor and I have been talking, and he’s asked me to join him for a nightcap.”
“That is, if you’ll allow me, General,” said Max Roweh diffidently.
“Of course. I admired your lecture, sir, but I should tell you I’m a believer.”
“From what I’ve heard of you, Don Quixote,” the professor returned, “you have better reason than most.”
Hours later Kishote was sitting up in bed, reading a travel book on Alaska and making notes, when Yael breezed in, saying cheerily, “Hi. What did you really think of the lecture?”
“He’s got a brain like a focussing lens. Excellent, only the Vico stuff lost me.”
“Oh, that’s Max. I could feel the audience slipping away and so could he, he cut it short. Max believes he invented Vico.” She stood smiling at him. “I hear you gave Cookie Freeman a hard time at Holly’s table.”
“Not at all. Just chatter.”
“Yossi, we have to talk.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Now?”
“Not now. I’m falling into bed. First thing tomorrow.”
In the morning he sat on the terrace conning an Alaska tourist map. At his feet the little blond girl played with a large cat. The sky was deep blue, the green-brown hills startlingly clear and close, and a high snowcapped peak rose stark in the distance, for a spell of high winds had blown off the smog. Yael came out in a flowing peach robe, carrying a newspaper. “Well, well, Mount Baldy,” she said. “First time I’ve seen it in months.” She showed him the society page, with a picture of the table where Max Roweh sat between Meryl Streep and Tamara Katzman. “Big story, and guess what, you’re the headline, not Max or Streep or the bat mitzvah girl.”
Holly Jonas’s column began “COOKIE FREEMAN HAS A GREAT FALL.” In the account Holly Jonas had changed “crappy” to “negative,” noting that Freeman had used a ruder word. The item ended, “It was Cookie’s night to be Humpty-Dumpty.”
“So, I’m famous. What’s on the front page? Anything on Israel?”
“No, it’s all about the smoking gun and impeaching Nixon. Don’t tell me!” She pointed in mock horror to the Alaska map. Since arriving in California, Yossi had been driving a rented car all over: the redwoods, Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Olympic rain forest. “Kishote, enough sightseeing already! When will you get to work with Sheva Leavis? He asked me again about it only last night.”
“Yael, I’m enjoying myself. Anyway, the week I spent with Lee in Las Vegas discouraged me about Leavis’s business altogether. It’s the sewer of the world, Las Vegas. Hell must look like Las Vegas, electric signs and all.”
“That’s Lee’s taste. You needn’t have anything to do with Las Vegas. Mainly you’d be travelling in the Far East with Sheva. You should spend more time in our offices here.” She sat down in a lounge chair, and put up shapely sunburned legs. “Now listen, Kishote, Max Roweh would like to marry me.”
“Oo-ah!” He put aside the map and pushed up his glasses to look at her. “Max Roweh? Has he asked you?”
“How can he, when I’m married? A shy man like Max? Still, I can tell. Just take my word for it.”
“You and Professor Roweh. Amazing.”
“I know, I know, I’m illiterate and I’m nobody, but he’s lonesome, and he likes me.”
“Hm! I’ve sometimes thought about you and Sheva Leavis, but —”
“Such suspicions!” she said with a wily grin. “Well, Sheva is religious, and he has a wife who’s been paralyzed for years, and that’s that. I respect Sheva and I owe him a lot, but Max, he fascinates me. Him and his Vico! He’s scary, but he can be sweet as a child.”
“So you want a divorce?”
“Are you willing to discuss it?”
“Why not?”
The humiliation of Yossi’s indifference had smoldered in Yael for years, and his easy acquiescence was not flattering. The maid came and took Eva off to play in a park while they probed the subject, agreeing on most matters. Money was no issue, for she had plenty and he had none. The sticking point was Eva. Yossi said she must grow up in Israel. “Let her run away to America, if that’s how she turns out,” he said, “after she’s done her army service. She’s my daughter. If you marry and come to live in Israel, fine, you take her.”
“I have to think about that, Kishote.”
“Okay.”
“I know that Max does have a house in Jerusalem, in Yemin Moshe,” she mused aloud, “which he hardly ever uses.”
“Really? Mighty fancy, Yemin Moshe.”
“Yes, his wife bought it long ago.” Yael hesitated, and shrugged. “Oh, listen, this is all so premature. Right now I guess I’ll ask my lawyers whether we should file here or in Israel. I’ll do whatever you say about Eva.” She held out a hand. “Gemacht?”
He got up and shook hands. “Gemacht.”
She wryly laughed. “Now he won’t ask me, and I’ll be out in the cold.”
“Out in the cold, you? Ha. I’ll call Leavis, but anyway, I’m going to Alaska.”
“I’ve never been to Alaska,” said Yael, heavy at heart, and half hoping he would invite her along, even in jest. The break she had asked for was painful now that it was happening. But he said nothing, so she forced a gay tone. “The Eskimos had better look to their wives and daughters.”
Don Kishote learned a lot in his Alaska tour. Confined as he had been in the nutshell of Israel, preoccupied with geographical flyspecks like the Golan Heights and the Sinai, he had never quite perceived the minuteness of his field of action. In the American West he had glimpsed the vastness and beauty of the earth, and in Alaska his vision further cleared. The boundless majesty of the mountain ranges, glaciers, forests, and snowfields stopped his breath. He saw salmon schooling at a river mouth in the millions. He rode two days with a dog team over the snow, encountering no human being besides the driver, who talked only about oil and gas deposits and bear hunting. He figured out that into the area of Alaska alone, seventy Israels could be fitted with ease. Seventy! Sobering. If ever he did leave Israel, he thought, he would come to this giant nearly empty American paradise to start life over.
Los Angeles by comparison, when he returned, struck him as just a bigger and grimier Tel Aviv. Two letters awaited him in Yael’s apartment. The one with Australian stamps he ripped open the instant he saw it.
July 2, 1974
Dear Yossi:
I arrived yesterday and am still very, very jet-lagged. A long trip! It looks as though I’ll be too busy in the next couple of weeks to write a real letter, so this is just to let you know, as I promised, that I’m here. Melbourne is nice, a little like Toronto, and it’s strange to be having winter weather in July, but of course that’s how it is “down under.” I’ll be staying with Lena and Mendel (her husband, very good-natured man) until I find a flat, the sooner the better. Write me here meantime, if you feel like it. Reuven is terribly thin, but he was so happy to see me! Last night at dinner he ate like a tiger, Lena said he hadn’t eaten that much the whole week before.
My department head at the Technion was nice about everything. I had earned a sabbatical anyway, and it starts in September, so I’ll be here at least a year, and I’ll be looking for things to do. Meantime I’m happy. Since Michael died and Lena took Reuven away I’ve been drawing my breath in misery, but no more. I’ll always miss Michael, he was a wonderful man, but as long as I can be with Reuven I’m all right. I’m not looking any farther into the future.
I hope California doesn’t seem too glamorous to you. Enjoy it, but then go home. You belong in Israel, and you’re needed.
Love,
Shayna
The other letter was from Zev Barak. He had been against Kishote’s departure, and now he was writing every week or two, urging him to cut short his leave and return to active duty.
Dear Yossi:
Things are very bad here. Kissinger squeezed a terrible price out of Golda for that disengagement in the north, and now that we have done our part and pulled back on the Golan Heights, the Syrians are fudging on releasing prisoners and returning the dead. The army was demoralized enough by the firing of Dado. This retreat from our positions outside Damascus, to a line that actually gives back some territory to the beaten Syrians, has got all Zahal seething. But Golda needed the deal to stop the casualties and release the reserves, and she was too weakened politically to fight anymore. She’s a sick old lady. Rabin has started off well, except that he’s kept me on as military secretary. I pleaded for any other duty, or for retirement, in vain.
Motta Gur has repeatedly asked me about you. With so many officers vying for the few star staff posts, he can hardly offer one to a general who’s left the country in a huff. Most of us feel badly about what was done to Dado, but with leadership goes responsibility, and Dado was Ramatkhal when Israel had its near-catastrophe. It’s all in the past, the army is undergoing a convulsive reorganization, and you’ve got much to contribute. Anger and withdrawal are no contributions, Yossi, so by your life, don’t get bogged in Los Angeles and dollar-chasing, leave all that to Yael. Come back where you belong.
Zev
Kishote sat on Yael’s terrace for a long while in a sunny afternoon, rereading both letters and pondering.
“Let me understand you,” said Sheva Leavis. “You’ve definitely decided to go with me on my next Far East trip?”
“If you still want me, sir.”