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Chapter 2

A Scattering of Exiles

The sun sets with a bloodred glow.

Hardly anyone on board notices, because almost everyone is where they were before—facing east, towards the city dissolving into the horizon.

Little by little the hitherto closed lives of dozens of strangers open up and melt into one other. They pair up: in twos, smaller and then larger groups; conversations develop, and different faces and character types gradually appear, as if some long-gone stage director has given them voice and character. They fulfil their roles beautifully. Let me introduce them to you:

The impetuous Jew, who curses and excoriates Palestine out of a feeling of innermost love for the Land of Israel, at the same time missing and praising the Diaspora, which deeply disgusts him.

A young man with Samson-like shoulders has suffered from malaria no less than thirty-six times during the four years he has lived in the country.—Now he is travelling to help his two younger brothers immigrate to Palestine.¹

The skinny-faced young man, who doesn’t stop joking, has had, for the past five years, a maximum work quota of two days per week.—He is a hard worker, and enthusiastic proponent of shared planning, which he justifies as follows: “Why should my comrade Mohammed and I not starve together? Isn’t it his land as well as mine?!”

Two truck driver Jerusalem brothers originally from the Hungarian kolel.² They have taken upon themselves the “task” of protecting—during the recent riots in the Old City—the sacred Hungarian “Awakening Magyar” zealots (Hungarian Jews who hate Zionism and believe in waiting for the coming of the Messiah to establish the Jewish State).³ Each one is strong enough to carry an ox, and both sing continuously, belting out Zionist songs from the past forty to fifty years.

A silent young man, known by half the people on the ship as one of the “nonpioneers,” whom nobody can get to speak, or move his lips even in a half-smile.

A Jerusalem rebbetzin travelling with her two young daughters, who speaks fluent, Modern Hebrew interspersed with pieces from the Torah and Midrash.⁴ Her two charming daughters—“like mother like daughter”—speak a purer Hebrew than even their mother. She is taking them out of their homeland “to disgust them with the iniquities of Europe,” so that they can the more appreciate their life in the Land of Israel, despite all its hardships.

A beautiful young maiden, born in Israel, who is finally travelling to “marvelous Europe,” which she regards as the most important thing in the world, from her perch in the Old City.

A dignified old man travelling for surgery in Vienna, “city of perfect medicine,” who is seized with horror when he thinks that he may die and be buried, God Forbid, amongst non-Jews. “How could I lie there in peace, surrounded by those who hate me with all their soul? What about the danger of grave desecration by hooligans, whose hatred of late centers on waging war on Jewish cemeteries?—Brrr!”

A respected, modest woman who prays, keep kosher, lives modestly, and doesn’t even consider the possibility that lack of money or “emergencies” could prevent meticulous adherence to the dietary laws, or scrupulous performance of all other religious practices. She only allows exceptions for pioneers. “If a pioneer doesn’t meticulously adhere to all 613 commandments—our institutions are guilty, not the pioneers themselves.” She is travelling to Europe as an emissary from one of the foundations—when her mission is complete, she will collect wedding ring allowances for pioneers who wish to marry according to strict Jewish law.

An instructor travelling to the Diaspora to organize the Shomer Hatzair, and “awaken the appetite of the youth to go hungry in a kibbutz.”⁵ Why should he starve alone?

A young Zionist-Orthodox rabbi, carrying on his person exact statistics of how many synagogues, rabbis, ritual slaughterers, houses of learning, ritual circumcisers and purgers, Torah scrolls, ritual immersion baths, and glatt kosher butchers there are in the Land of Israel. A man carrying essential information, necessary for the life of every Jew!

Opposite is an elder from the Agudah rabbinate, sent to convince European Jews that “the commandment of colonizing the Land of Israel is possible without Zionists, and that the rabbinate is violently opposed to postponing the coming of the Messiah by forcing the issue with Zionism.⁶ ‘Without the Messiah, a Jewish State is an abomination!’”

A handsome youth, who immigrated to Israel eleven years ago when he was about sixteen, and in the interim has grown strong and upright as a cedar tree, and is now travelling to Germany to become a film star.⁷ He is as handsome as matinee idol John Gilbert, and his primary goal is to star in a movie about the pioneers in the Land of Israel.⁸

Teachers, bureaucrats and writers travelling straight to Moscow, carrying in their pockets lists of counterrevolutionary members of the bourgeoisie and Zionist imperialists, “to hand them over for the coming day of judgment.” Despite this, they adamantly refuse to leave their homes in Israel. On the contrary: “I will return by this time next year, because I believe with perfect faith that world redemption will come out of Zion.”

The man who said goodbye to his lonely wife walks around glumly, and only the impetuous Jew can draw out the reason for his despondency: he has left his wife childless, “without first having established progeny in the homeland.” He will get off at the first stop in Brindisi, and return back home at the earliest possible opportunity. His decision to leave was a mistake.

A Presbyterian minister from the Scottish Mission travelling overseas to proselytize amongst the Zionist Diaspora “in the name of redemption of Zion that will come through Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, when He reappears, under the wings of the Divine presence, in the Land of Israel.”

One of the orphans of Safed, whose parents fell victim to their “neighbors,” is travelling to Europe to bring back his relatives⁹

An elderly woman, on her way to visit her new grandson with a beautiful gift in her suitcase: “a little bag of pure dust from the Land of Israel,” taken from her future grave plot, which she has purchased on the Mount of Olives.

A boy of about seven from a collective farmstead whose members ceaselessly rail against “the abomination of living abroad” (“abroad” signifying a ship, sea, even the heavens over “foreign” lands).¹⁰

A Jew with Napoleonic vigor, going to “gather 1,000 signatures for the Western Wall.” In other words: Diaspora Jews who are willing to pay one lira each for kaddish to be recited for 120 years after their death. He will receive a “writ” from the Jerusalem Chief Rabbinate, that yahrzeit will observed once a year, with kaddish recited at the Wall “until the coming of the Messiah, amen.”¹¹ He hasn’t spoken with the chief rabbi about it yet, but is convinced that the great and pious sage, long may he live, would not refuse this great idea, “which would bring in more than 1,000 lira for Keren Hayesod!”¹² A truly noble and pious man, in the best sense of the words!

A clean-shaven Jew, who compels all passengers to join him in daily minyan, and respond loudly.¹³ He himself stands before the ark and prays regularly with an amazingly pure Sephardic accent.¹⁴ He is a wealthy man, travelling to the Diaspora to fulfil his most important duty in life: “To be called up to read maftir in beautiful, pure Sephardic Hebrew.”¹⁵ He was born in Galicia and has a grocery store in Jerusalem, Mea She’arim.¹⁶

The singing brothers entertain us with their classic Zionist songs until the midnight hour. The ship floats in the pitch-black night under protection of God’s stars, which faithfully accompany and watch over us.

The ship becomes silent again, and the assembled passengers start to slowly scatter, each one to his or her cabin, or elsewhere.

Someone sits next to me and whispers, as if to himself:

“Precious drops from the cup of consolation,” which scatter and fall into the Mediterranean Sea, like a scattering of exiles.¹⁷

“We have a total of 250,000 such drops—our cup is small”¹⁸

“Only its contents are extremely potent,”—I hear in the darkness behind me. “They contain powerful spirits.”

The voice of the skinny-faced youth is again heard in the land.