A LIFE IN WEST JERUSALEM
THE MAN BORN as Jacob ben Ezra was an identical twin; so identical were he and his slightly younger brother that no teacher could tell them apart, and often they even succeeded in deceiving their mother. Their mother said they had knocked at the gate to the world at just the same moment, but Jacob had elbowed his way past his slightly smaller brother and so became the firstborn. Because the younger one, who was not smaller, had thicker hair on his head, he was named Esau. When they started school—two merry black-haired, brown-eyed, bright little boys—their mother tousled their hair, felt the difference, and realized that by this comparative method she would always have a way to distinguish who was who. She shared this secret with no one, not even her pious husband.
In temperament the boys seemed quite different. Esau shared his father’s interest in scriptures and memorized them with great exactness; he could recite the entirety of the book of Genesis by the time he was eight, and Exodus and Psalms, though he found the meaning of poetry more slippery than prose, by age ten. In this way, he earned his father’s special protection. Jacob’s interests were more scientific: he observed the world with focused curiosity, and when he had classified the plants and bugs of the neighborhood, he lifted his eyes to the heavens and learned about the stars of the constellations over West Jerusalem and to identify the planets. He liked math.
Jacob had one other passion discovered quite by accident: he overheard a portion of an Easter service held by touring Methodists with an American singing “Jerusalem, the Golden.” Never had Jacob heard such stirring music and beautiful tones. And this was his place, his home, celebrated in the song. The man’s voice itself was like a golden trumpet. The melody soared, yet it had a martial beat to it that made the boy want to march, then soar. Like a fanfare in the middle of the piece—do, sol, me, do—the music spanned a rapid octave; the notes climbed like quick feet mounting the golden steps to heaven.
“Listen, listen!” he commanded, wanting Esau to join his rapture.
“It’s the wrong religion,” Esau sensibly answered.
But Jacob knew he must have this music and more like it in his life.
As soon as he found his courage, Jacob told his father, “I would like to be the man who sounds the shofar at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.” As preparation for his lungs, Jacob proposed he take up the trumpet. Soon he realized his mistake: the trumpet was too brazen; the mellow French horn was just right. And he liked stuffing his fist into the bell to modify the pitch or to act as a mute. It was as though he himself had entered into the life of the music, as if he had joined with the instrument, from his lips on the mouthpiece to his hand inside the metal bell. He had become an instrument of the instrument and of its Glory.
Both boys, then, had their spiritual side. Esau said he wanted to become a settler and help reclaim the land for God’s chosen people. Jacob said that God’s kingdom was not of this world, and he had no interest in claiming a patch of dirt. He thought of orchestras and French horns playing Handel’s Water Music and of von Karajan’s Beethoven when he thought of where he wanted to be.
When the boys were thirteen, on the first day of school, they entered the public bus with special excitement. At Jacob’s insistence, they had hatched an exciting plan: a new variation on an old theme. Jacob had insisted that they sign up to study different languages: Greek and Hindi. But actually they would both study both languages, by swapping places every day. They whispered and giggled like girls, and then the bus blew up.
Jacob was spared, but Esau was decapitated and his body almost entirely destroyed. What Jacob saw when he opened his eyes in the wreckage was their two school satchels leaning together as though in conspiracy. The blue and yellow bags were covered with dust, but he knew their contents—their lunches, their wallets, their books and new blank notebooks—were safe inside. His brother was gone. Jacob reached out for one of the bags, opened it, and saw the Greek grammar that belonged to Esau. With all his heart, he grabbed the satchel to his body and let no one take it from him.
Beside his hospital bed, the orderly opened the satchel, saw the wallet and the identification card, and gently spoke to the boy, calling him Esau. Jacob felt his own eyes narrow, and in that moment he became Esau.
When his parents came to his bed, his mother put her fingers in his hair, but she had no point of comparison; the amount of dust in his hair was distracting, and the dust made his hair feel thicker, too. No, Jacob would not let his brother die. To become Esau he resolved to give up music and to study the scriptures, seated patiently for long hours beside his father. When other boys in yeshiva made careless errors, Jacob-now-Esau flew into a rage.
One day one of his teachers said, “And do you still want to take on the hazards of being a settler, now that your dear brother is gone? Would you break your parents’ hearts twice?”
“No,” he answered thoughtfully, “yet my faith is strong that God promised this land to Israel, in perpetuity. I will find other ways to do the work of the Almighty.”
“And how shall you love God?”
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thine soul, and with all thine might.”
Esau, born as Jacob, became Rabbi ben Ezra, a rabbi of narrow and exacting precision. Often he studied with cotton in his ears, lest some accidental strain of heavenly music tempt him. He grew to dislike commentaries on scripture that were imaginative, and asked always what was the letter of the word. His disdain for anyone unfortunate enough not to be among the chosen people hardened into hatred, though he collected paintings of the archangel Michael wearing medieval armor regardless of the religion or ethnicity of the artist, and also paintings of the fiery cherubim sent to guard the gates of Eden.
When a wealthy diamond merchant, an oil sheik, and an American real estate broker paid him to organize an interfaith group to guard the glory of God the Creator, Rabbi ben Ezra proposed the name Perpetuity.
It was he who selected an Arab to wrest the unholy secrets of astrophysics from the scientist Thom Bergmann, and he who reviewed the files of Christian fundamentalists to select a Texas businessman for the Genesis mission. It was God who packaged both threats in the possession of and on the person of an American widow.