The Jerusalem Inception

Chapter 15





Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem – a Report on the Banality of Evil, left Lemmy confused and angry. Four years earlier, when the Nazi fugitive had been caught in Argentina and brought to stand trial in Jerusalem, Rabbi Gerster led the men in a special prayer of gratitude for the divine hand that had brought the mastermind of The Final Solution to judgment. But Arendt portrayed Eichmann as a man of average intelligence, mild temper, and clerical efficiency—a family man who happened to find himself at the top of a vast bureaucracy of mass extermination.

On the next Sabbath afternoon, he shared his frustration with Tanya.

“But it’s true,” she said. “What in retrospect seems like a monstrous enterprise was nothing but a day job for thousands of Germans. Their culture of obedience had conditioned these men to follow their leader’s orders and do a good day’s work—whether it was to manufacture trucks or to operate gas chambers.”

“That’s impossible! Any human being could tell the difference!” Lemmy clenched his fist. “Even a child knows that killing innocent people is evil!”

“But what if the people being killed aren’t human? What if they have been stigmatized for generations as evil, as pests, as the cause for all social and economical problems? What if eliminating them is your national duty, dictated by the state’s top authority?”

“A man has a mind to question authority.”

“Do the men of Neturay Karta question Rabbi Abraham Gerster’s authority?”

This argument shocked him, but before he could become angry, he noticed the hint of a smile on Tanya’s lips and understood she was trying to provoke him. “My father speaks for God. Do you believe in God?”

“That’s a trick question.” She took his hand. “Come, let’s have cake.”

They shared a lemon tart she had bought at a kosher bakery near Meah Shearim. It was January 1, 1967—her thirty-ninth birthday.

When he left, she gave him two thin volumes: Night and Dawn, both by author Elie Wiesel. He read them both that night, and was left agonizing over a quandary that went to the core of his faith: Why had God allowed the Nazis to do this? What was God’s purpose in causing so much suffering?

One afternoon, Rabbi Gerster posed a question from the podium: “Talmud says: Create a rabbi for yourself, and acquire a friend. I’ve always wondered: Why create a rabbi, but acquire a friend?”

Redhead Dan, sitting somewhere in the middle of the hall, raised his hand. “A friend could be acquired with gifts or favors. But a rabbi’s blessing isn’t for sale.”

“I disagree,” Cantor Toiterlich declared from the front row. “Talmud wouldn’t direct us to buy friends!”

Benjamin stood up. “Maybe acquire means that it’s mutual. But the relationship with one’s rabbi is created by one’s submission to a spiritual leader.”

“Well put, young man!” Rabbi Gerster took a contemplative stroll across the dais, the men’s eyes following him. “But as a rabbi, I’d rather have mutuality. So let me tell you a story.” He leaned on the lectern, looking around the hall. “A few years ago, a man named Aaron traveled a whole day from Haifa to talk to me. Temimah brought us tea, and I inquired of the sights he’d seen along the way, how the country was changing.”

Everyone knew of the vow he had taken not to leave Jerusalem until the Old City was freed from the Arabs.

Lemmy whispered in Benjamin’s ear, “Obedience to the rabbi—that’s the answer.”

Benjamin nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on Rabbi Gerster, up on the dais. Everyone’s face wore the same delighted expression. Lemmy imagined himself up at the podium. Could he be like his father, captivate hundreds of brilliant, inquisitive Talmudic scholars? And even if he could, did he want to?

“Finally,” the rabbi continued, “Aaron told me his problem. He was a God-fearing Jew, who worked hard as a bookkeeper to raise five children with his righteous wife, Miriam. One Friday night, he got out of bed to use the bathroom, and noticed that his wife wasn’t breathing!”

The men groaned, their bodies leaning forward in suspense.

“Complete silence on Miriam’s side of the bed!” Rabbi Gerster turned to the ark and made like he was begging for relief of Aaron’s agony. “So, even though it was Sabbath, he turned on the lights and discovered that his wife wasn’t even in bed!”

An explosion of laughter rocked the hall.

“Aaron wasn’t laughing! He ran through the house in panic, opening every door, turning on the lights in every room, until he found her asleep on the couch. He woke her up, and she started yelling at him for turning on the lights during Sabbath!”

He waited for the laughter to calm down.

“The rest of that night, Aaron couldn’t sleep, because all the lights were on. The following night he still couldn’t sleep, because Miriam refused to return to their bedroom. His snoring interfered with her sleep, she argued, and she could no longer bear children, so why share a bed? Aaron begged, yelled, threatened a divorce, but Miriam was deaf to his pleas. So he took her to their rabbi, who had married them many years before, circumcised their sons, blessed their daughters, and led them through life with his wise advice and knowledge of Talmud.”

“Ah!” The men sighed in relief.

Rabbi Gerster clapped his hands. “Guess how the good rabbi from Haifa ruled. For Aaron?”

A forest of hands appeared.

“For Miriam?”

Lemmy looked around. No hand rose in support of the wife. The blood rushed to his face. Talmud didn’t command marital slavery! He knew what Howard Roark would do now!

He raised his hand.

No one saw the lonely hand in the rear of the hall, except for his father, who ignored it and announced, “Mazal Tov! You voted wisely!”

The men applauded.

“Talmud commands a wife to serve her husband’s bodily needs, notwithstanding her incapability to bear children anymore. It’s part of the marriage. After all, Sarah, the mother of our nation, gave birth to Isaac when she was a hundred years old. It can happen.” Rabbi Gerster looked down and sighed. “It’s all in God’s hands.”

The silence was charged. Everyone knew of the rabbi’s pain at his wife’s inability to bear him more children.

“You voted wisely,” he repeated, “but you guessed poorly!”

The crowd groaned.

“Their rabbi told Aaron to let her be. Now what do you say to that?”

The men shook their heads. They all had wives.

“It’s true,” the rabbi explained, “that a wife must serve her husband. Miriam sinned, but a sinner cannot be forced to repent. That’s the essence of Judaism—a free choice to sin or to repent. It’s between you and God. And that’s what I told Aaron when he came to me for a second opinion.” He caressed his beard. “But then I thought, does Talmud allow a second opinion when you don’t like your rabbi’s ruling?”

No one responded.

“Create. Acquire. Don’t you see it?” Rabbi Gerster looked around the hall. “Friendships you acquire with kindness, generosity, or intellectual interaction. We are friends with our grocer, tailor, and barber, and we are friends with our study companion. Friendships vary by the nature of reciprocal exchanges. We go through life acquiring and losing friends. But a rabbi?”

Lemmy watched the nodding heads spread like a wave of comprehension.

“Every Jew must create his rabbi by embracing faith and knowledge. It is a permanent bond of trust, spirituality, confidence, and obedience to your rabbi’s authority. Create! Your rabbi will conduct your marriage ceremony, pronounce your food kosher, settle your disputes, educate your children, and marry them to their chosen spouses. The relationship with your rabbi is like the relationship with your child. And let me ask you: When our child behaves disagreeably, do we go out to seek a new and better child? Of course not! Once we create the parental bond, it’s inseparable, for better or for worse. Similarly, the bond of obedience to our rabbi is unbreakable.” Rabbi Gerster paused, looking from one side of the crowded synagogue to the other. “And when I called to check on Aaron a few months later, he told me that Miriam had fallen sick, and he took care of her, which renewed their feelings for each other—better than ever!”

The men exhaled in relief. A story with a sweet and instructive ending was a perfect appetizer for the warm dinner that awaited each of the men at home, prepared by their loyal wives. The chandelier above the dais, while not lit up, glistened in red reflections of the setting sun, signaling the end of a day of studying.

But Lemmy could not think about dinner. How could hundreds of Talmudic scholars, critical and inquisitive minds, turn into the submissive crowd surrounding him? How could they not raise their voices in the same protest that boiled inside him?

As if in a dream, he raised his hand.

His father noticed. “Yes?”

The clatter subsided as all heads gradually turned to him.

“I think that, just like Talmud doesn’t require a wife to obey her husband blindly, Talmud also doesn’t require a husband to obey his rabbi blindly.” Lemmy swallowed hard. “A rabbi is only flesh and blood. A rabbi could be wrong. Anyone could be wrong sometime, right?” He took a deep breath. The hall was silent. “Maybe the meaning of create is that we have a personal choice to seek a rabbi whose rulings we find to be wise?” He shifted his weight, his knees shaky.

His father’s face remained expressionless. “Go on.”

“A rabbi,” Lemmy said, “might give his followers the wrong advice—not maliciously, but due to ignorance or poor judgment. Not always would it be a minor disagreement about sleeping arrangements. What if it’s a matter of life and death?”

The silence grew deeper. All eyes focused on him.

“For example,” Lemmy spoke louder to hide the tremor in his voice, “the rabbis in Europe told their congregations not to immigrate to Palestine, and the millions who obeyed their rabbis died in the Holocaust. And those who disobeyed the rabbis’ rulings and joined the Zionists in Palestine? They survive! I think it proved that rabbis can be wrong. Deadly wrong, even.” He wanted to continue, but the words never left his lips.

“Master of the Universe!” Rabbi Gerster grabbed the lectern. “Six million were chosen to join God, and you think it was their rabbis’ fault?”

“It’s not about fault, but about being wrong sometimes—”

“Silence!” Rabbi Gerster raised both hands. “Who are we to judge God’s decision to gather His lambs under His merciful wings?” He swayed back and forth. “His decision to take my saintly mother, my eight young brothers, and two little sisters. Was my father, Rabbi Yakov Gerster, guilty of their death? And of the death of the rest of our shtetl?”

After a long moment, Cantor Toiterlich began chanting in a mournful voice: “This world is only a very narrow bridge, leading to heaven.”

More voices joined him. “And the essence is not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all.”

The second time, every man in the synagogue, except Lemmy, chanted the sad melody, eyes shut in devotion, voices growing stronger. “Not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all.”

Lemmy felt Benjamin tugging at his sleeve. He sat down. His throat was dry. No one looked at him.

Temimah served chicken soup with a slice of bread and a piece of meat with boiled potatoes. The silence was broken only by the clanking of forks and knives. Lemmy had expected his father to admonish him, but not a word was uttered since they had left the synagogue after evening prayers.

Temimah served tea and cookies.

Rabbi Gerster recited the blessing after the meal, ending with, “God shall give courage to His people and bless us with peace.”

“Amen,” Temimah said.

“Father,” Lemmy said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me.” His father sighed. “The Nazis, their name be wiped from memory, they upset me.”

Temimah stood up but did not start to collect the plates.

“I have doubts,” Lemmy said. “I’m not sure I can accept what you said about obedience. My question about the Holocaust—”

The word Holocaust brought Rabbi Gerster’s hand pounding the table with such force that the teacups jumped and landed noisily. “You think you’re alone? Everyone has doubts about what happened. Everyone!” He pointed at Lemmy. “You are my son. When you speak, it’s like I’m speaking. You can’t say whatever comes to your mind. You have a responsibility, for God’s sake!”

“Abraham, please,” Temimah said softly, “he is only—”

“He’s not a child anymore!” Rabbi Gerster stood. “He can defend himself!”

“It’s good for him to express his doubts.”

He glared at her. “To express blasphemy?”

Temimah lowered her eyes.

“And you,” the rabbi turned back to Lemmy, “remember who you are! Our people need certainty, not misgivings. They look to us for answers, not for more questions. Do you understand?”

“I’m not a rabbi,” Lemmy said.

“Not yet! And if you don’t think before you speak, you’ll never be one!” He left the kitchen, and a moment later, the front door slammed behind him.

Lemmy collected the plates from the table and placed them in the left sink, which was dedicated for meat dishes. His mother turned on the faucet and soaped the sponge. “For people like us,” she said, “your father and me, the Holocaust is a demon. It’s a terrible monster that’s still haunting us.”

He knew they had both lost their entire families in the Holocaust. That’s why he didn’t have grandparents, uncles, aunts, or cousins. Temimah had survived a mass execution by pretending to be dead, dug herself out, and was taken in by a Catholic nun who hid her in the basement for four years. After the war and two more years in a displaced persons’ camp in Italy, she had arrived in Israel and found a distant relative in Neturay Karta, where a marriage was arranged with Abraham Gerster.

“And we’re too small to question God.” She caressed his cheek. “We have to accept His judgment, His decision to collect all those innocent souls to His paradise.” She sighed. “It’s a wonderful thing to know that I’ll meet my parents and siblings again. It makes me so happy to imagine our reunion.”

Watching his mother’s face, suddenly aglow with inner joy, he held his tongue. How could he argue with her about the meaning of the Nazis’ murder of those she had loved? How could he express doubts, when God’s powers provided his mother with hope?

“Go now,” Temimah said. “You should be with your father.”

Lemmy took his coat and hat and went to the synagogue for evening study. Many of the men were back, swaying over open books. Cigarette smoke swirled up to the ceiling. But there was no sign of his father.

Elie Weiss leaned against the wall by the entrance to the public restroom. The beggar’s cloak was not thick enough to deflect the bitterly cold wind, and he was shivering. Abraham had called for an emergency meeting—the first time ever.

He appeared out of the darkness in his long black coat and wide-brimmed hat. Elie led the way to his car. The alley was deserted, no children playing outside at this time of night. The dark interior of the car provided privacy against prying eyes. Elie considered turning on the engine for heat but gave up, not wanting to attract attention.

Abraham did not waste time. “Did you reach Tanya?”

“She’s a Mossad agent. I can’t just pick up the phone and call her.”

“Is she in touch with my son?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“He accompanied her home that Saturday, a couple of months ago. And now he’s talking about things he couldn’t possibly know from studying Talmud all day inside Neturay Karta. It occurred to me that he might be communicating with her, maybe even seeing her in secret.”

“Unlikely. Why would she waste time on an ultra-Orthodox kid?” Elie rubbed his hands. Abraham must not find out about his son’s relationship with Tanya. “I’ll sniff around my Mossad buddies. Maybe they’ll tell me how to reach her.”

“Do it!”

Elie had never seen him so anxious. “Still, a little exposure to the real world will give your son better tools as a leader.”

“That’s my decision! What if Jerusalem loses his faith in our teachings?”

“You could always expel him from Neturay Karta. He’s practically an adult.”

“He’s my son!” Abraham’s heavy hand grasped Elie’s forearm. “And he has a mother too. He’s everything to her. If he continues down this road, it’ll kill Temimah. He’s the focus of all her hopes.”

“What if she has another child?”

“No! I can’t even look at children, so similar to our siblings in the shtetl. Every time I see a child, I think of what happened to them.”

The image appeared in Elie’s mind, the sight from the crack in the attic’s floor, where he and Abraham had hidden above the butcher shop. The Germans had separated the children from the older Jews and herded them into the corral outside. Elie’s father had kept his knives in a wooden rack, sharpened daily to perfection, as Talmud required a shoykhet to slaughter an animal in a single pass of a smooth blade, causing no pain. But the SS men got bored with slicing the children’s throats, so they started stabbing their bellies. Elie could still hear the screams, punctuated by the shooting in the street, where the rest of the Jews were being mowed down in groups of fifty. It had been the first time Abraham’s unique talent emerged. The rabbi’s son had an eerie ability to combine cold thinking with hot-tempered action. Abraham had waited until the four German soldiers were occupied with a girl, who wriggled and fought while they tried to undress her. Abraham slipped down from the attic through the flap door, collected two long knives from the rack, and stabbed the four soldiers in rapid succession. But there was a fifth soldier, who had been out of sight, smoking near the door. By the time Elie followed Abraham down, the German grabbed his machine gun, which was leaning against the wall. Elie managed to swing a knife at the man’s wrist, a passing cut that separated the tendon connecting the muscle that operated his trigger finger. The German’s momentary bewilderment about why his finger wasn’t functioning gave Elie a chance to swing the blade a second time, separating his vocal cords and windpipe. Before the Germans upfront noticed that something was amiss, the two of them slipped through the rear of the shop into the forest. And for months after that, through hunger, danger and more killings, Abraham had continued to bemoan their failure to save even one of the children.

“And tell Tanya I want to see her again.”

“You’re the leader of Neturay Karta.” Elie tapped the steering wheel. “Wasn’t her first visit risky enough?”

“We’ll meet in secret, just like you and I meet.”

“You can’t revive the past, you know?”

“That’s not your business!”

“You are my agent, and therefore you are my business.” Elie pulled a cigarette from a pack. “That son of yours won’t be ready to lead Neturay Karta for another ten, fifteen years, if ever. There’s no retirement from your job. You knew it from day one.”

“I gave twenty years!” Abraham put a finger in Elie’s face. “Find Tanya and tell her that I’ll be free in one or two years. Do it!”

Elie lit the cigarette, keeping the match burning so that he could watch Abraham’s reaction. “It’s not so simple. She has feelings for others.”

“What are you saying?”

Elie drew long on the cigarette. “Could I speak any clearer? Tanya has a reputation in the spy world. She’s a very passionate woman. Highly sensual. Surely you remember?”

Abraham leaned closer, his wide shoulders filling the tight space in the car. The flame of the match danced in his eyes, and his bushy beard trembled as his lips pressed together. His left hand rose and rested on Elie’s neck, almost encircling it. The hand tightened, four fingers at the nape, a large thumb pressing the windpipe.

Elie dropped the match, and the cigarette fell from his lips. He tried to undo Abraham’s grip, realizing he had underestimated the intensity of Abraham’s love for the woman he had thought dead for two decades. Reaching down, Elie’s hand fumbled with the beggar’s cloak, trying to reach the long shoykhet blade that was strapped to his lower leg.

The world fogged up.

His hand found the handle of the knife and tried to pull it from its sheath, but the folds of the cloak entangled it.

“One day,” Abraham said, releasing his grip, “you’ll push it too far.”

His breath shrieking through his constricted airways, Elie watched through the windshield as Abraham walked away, his black coat and hat melting into the dark of the night.