Only Yesterday (26 page)
Torah, they were forced to pawn a Torah scroll. And if not for Lord Oliphant who lived in Haifa in those days and rushed to their aid, they would have been wiped out of the world by hunger and the diseases of starvation. Rothschild heard of it and sent Elijah Sheid to them. Sheid built them several small houses, made some plans, and went on his way. At that time, the chairman of the committee in whose name the property had been bought met his death. So Turkey descended on their property, since he died without heirs, and according to Turkish law, the property of anyone who dies without heirs falls to the government. Finally, with bribes and pleas and interventions and supplications and temptations, the government gave up the inheritance and their property remained in the hands of its owners. In those days, Rothschild made a tour of the Land and came to pay them a visit. He saw that the place was beautiful and he was taken with it. And he named it after his father Jacob, Zikhron Ya’akov, and built spacious stone houses and drew water through pipes to every house and planted vineyards and fruit trees of all kinds and carved out a winepress for them and made roads and streets and hung lanterns in them, and appointed a Rabbi and a ritual slaughterer and a Cantor and a chorus of singers and a doctor and a pharmacist and a medic and a hospital and a pharmacy and a school and a warehouse for merchandise. And so the fearsome rocks turned into a settled city that looked like one of the handsome cities of Europe. Anyone who was blessed to endure the bad years was blessed with the good years. The fathers of Manoah weren’t blessed and died in the bad years.
Manoah was left an orphan, lost both his father and his mother. He wallowed on the dungheaps of Zikhron Ya’akov like all other abandoned youngsters, street-sweepings, suffering from hunger. Serving the muledrivers and carters and tending the horses and donkeys, for a wage of leftover food and wornout shoes and torn trousers. Reb Haim Dov took pity on him and brought him to Jerusalem to the Diskin Orphanage. There he spent as much time as he did and didn’t see a sign of blessing. There was a Baghdadi woman, serving at the Grodno Rabinovitch’s inn, who had been slandered that she had curried favor with a Samaritan in order to marry him. Her whole family joined against her and married her off to Manoah.
They made him a garment and bought him a tarboosh and Manoah became his wife’s helper in the inn where she worked. That woman was not content with her husband, for she was mighty and irascible, and he was skin and bones, modest and miserable. She grieved and vexed him and sometimes raised her hand to strike him. Manoah, who was accustomed to suffering, neither protested nor complained. Thus a year went by and the world thought the match had succeeded. But that woman didn’t think so. She went to a fortune teller who cast her lot and it turned out that she was to ride on a sea camel and her husband was to eat thorns. And it seems that the fortune teller hit on the truth. For within a month she sailed in a ship to Beirut, and the Arabs call a ship a sea camel, and Manoah ate thorns, for before she ran away and left him without a divorce, his wife borrowed money from the innkeeper and Manoah had to work off his wife’s debt. Shoel Hirshl heard about it and made a deal with Manoah’s boss, the Grodno Rabinovitch, and he took Manoah and brought him to his place. And he shortened his name, for it was enough for that skinny Manoah to be called Noah.
Noah wore a squashed tarboosh and tattered clothes hung on his body and he dragged his feet in patched shoes and every three or four days he added a patch to them. From the prayer at dawn to the Shema at bedtime, he ran errands for Shoel Hirshl and errands for the guests, and did all the jobs nobody else could do. And sometimes he linked the Shema at bedtime to the prayer at dawn, for he didn’t have enough time to sleep. Because of that his mind is confused and he says things a sensible person doesn’t say. Says Noah to Shoel Hirshl, I’m worried about you, Reb Shoel Hirshl, I’m worried about you. Says Shoel Hirshl, Fool, what are you worried about me? Says Noah to Shoel Hirshl, I’m worried that you’ll go to hell. Says Shoel Hirshl, Why? Says Noah, Because there is no mercy in your heart for me and you work me harshly, and up above there in Heaven they see, they see everything you do to me, and they’ve got a Jewish heart and they’re full of mercy for a man from Israel. Shoel Hirshl replies, Go to your work and don’t be a fool. Says Noah, I’m going to my work, I’m going to my work, if I don’t work, you’ll throw me out into the street. But I have to tell you, Reb Shoel Hirshl, I’m afraid for
you, I’m afraid for you. Says Shoel Hirshl, You already told me. Says Noah, And what results? Eh? Shoel Hirshl replies, What results is that you are a fool. Said Noah, A fool I am, a fool I am, at any rate, a Jew should have a little mercy in his heart for a fellow Jew. Shoel Hir-shl laughs and says, It’s forbidden to have mercy for a fool. Says Noah, I know that Reb Shoel Hirshl is a learned man, but there in Heaven there are greater learned men than him, and maybe they don’t teach that. Says Shoel Hirshl, What don’t they teach? Says Noah, That it’s forbidden to have mercy on a fellow Jew. Says Shoel Hirshl, If they had mercy on the children of Israel, they wouldn’t have imposed a fool like you on me. Go to your work, Noah. Noah returned to his work, pondering to himself, How many years are a man’s life, seventy years. And a weakling like me certainly won’t live long, and is not required to live long, and when I die those in Heaven will have mercy on me. In this world they say it’s forbidden to have mercy on a fool, and in the next world they say, on the contrary, it’s a Commandment to have mercy, and they have mercy on me.
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When Isaac entered the hotel, the hotel owner came and wished him good day and spoke with him as if he had known him from the day he was born. He asked him all kinds of things, sometimes in a re-spectful tone and sometimes in a contemptuous tone, depending on what Shoel Hirshl’s heart required at that time and depending on the look on Isaac’s face. And meanwhile, he studied him to figure out what kind of a person he was, for when fellows like him ascend to Jerusalem, they usually stay with their comrades. And if they don’t have comrades, they go to the Turkish bathhouse and spend all night there, and the next day they go and rent themselves half a room or a third of a room. Isaac, who didn’t have a comrade in Jerusalem and didn’t know about that custom of the seminarians and the Bezalel students, needed an inn, and since the carter brought him to Tefillinski, he came to Tefillinski.
After Isaac took his bags to his room, he ordered dinner. They brought him a thin slice of bread and eggs cooked in sesame oil. He wanted to change that taste with the pastry that Sonya had given him
for the road. He remembered all that had happened on the train with the chocolate, and he left the pastry and didn’t eat it. He ordered a cup of tea. He drank and enjoyed it. And in truth, the hot drinks in Jerusalem are finer than all the hot drinks in the world for they are made with rainwater and there is nothing finer for tea than rainwater.
When he had eaten and drunk, he went into his room and got into his bed. Satisfaction he did not find from his bed. Either because of himself or because of his roommates. And he began thinking about what was in store for him in Jerusalem. And because he was in low spirits, melancholy images rose in his mind. He turned over and started thinking of everything that had happened to him with Sonya. Then his thoughts began speaking aloud. And his roommates thought he wasn’t in his right mind. Isaac surely was in his right mind, but the earlier troubles that had oppressed him struggled to come out, to make room for the later troubles.
An Apartment in Jerusalem
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After he ate breakfast, he wrote in his notebook a few places they had told him at the inn, and he went out to find himself an apartment. He went to several neighborhoods and asked in several houses if there was a room to rent. Some were nice to him, but the room was not nice; or the room was nice to him but the landlord was not nice; or they didn’t know what he was talking about, for there are landlords who dwell in their homes and don’t know that there are homeless people with nowhere to live. So he wandered from place to place and from courtyard to courtyard until he had gone through most of the day and hadn’t found himself a room. He was about to return to his inn, for by now he was weary of running around and his mind was confused from the many rooms he had seen and the many people, and he resolved to seek tomorrow what he hadn’t found today. On the way he came upon the Russian Compound. He saw that the place was spacious and handsome, and peace and quiet dwell there and its walls separate it from the noise of the city and a good wind blows there, so his soul was refreshed and he sat down to rest.
Old people of the generation, who are fond of every stone and every corner of Jerusalem, tell that a son of Israel was about to buy that place, but couldn’t come to an agreement with the owner of the field about the width of the road. The buyer claimed that there had to be six cubits so that two camels loaded with sacks coming to-ward one another could pass; and the seller said that all he needed was the width of one loaded camel, which was three cubits. Neither of them yielded and the lot and three lots adjoining it were sold to the Russians. And the hearts of all the other Children of Israel in that
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generation were opressed within the Old City walls, in the alleys of the Arabs, without sunshine or a green garden. And they ruined their eyes without light and grieved their soul without air to breathe, and they are reconciled to their suffering and console themselves with the end of days, for in the future the Land of Israel will return to the Children of Israel, and every Israelite will sit in his house, built and perfected like a palace fit for a king. And if a son of Israel had a little money he rented himself a house from a Gentile and bought himself the right of possession. How? He would go to the sages of the city and they would give him a document of possession for the house and the courtyard. In his courtyard, he rents out a corner of an apartment here and a corner of a room there, and takes rent at the standard rate in Jerusalem. And anyone who would come to expropriate his right of possession will be persecuted, for the rate for apartments has already gone up because the Gentiles desired to devour Israel vora-ciously, and there are not many houses in the city, and those with the right of possession see themselves as landlords by virtue of the agreement they made with the sages and the city elders of Jerusalem, with the power vested in them by the lords and deputies, the officials of Istanbul.
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And what did the Gentiles do? They bought houses and courtyards and lands and built houses and gave every single person of their Society, rich or poor, an apartment for free, except for the houses they built for pilgrims, which stand empty all year long. And they go on and buy more lands in the city and outside the city. Once the Armenian church wanted to buy lands and didn’t have any money. They got a loan of forty thousand gold Lira from the government trea-sury. When the time came to pay, the Armenian bishop went to Istanbul and reached an agreement with the authorities that they would collect from every male one penny a year more on his taxes. Within three or four years, they had paid off the debt. The Armenians bought the southwestern part of the Old City, along with fields and villages outside the city, and from the money of the apartments and stores that they rent to the Children of Israel, they bought more
land and built houses and stores. And the Greeks bought the north-western part, along with fields and villages outside the city, and from the money of the apartments and stores that they rented to those who are not members of their Society, they bought more land and built more houses and stores until they surrounded all Jerusalem. And the Russians bought that lot and built their church and houses for their priests and their monks and their pilgrims who come every year from Russia to kiss the dust of the tomb of their Messiah.
And the Children of Israel were still dwelling between the tight walls and were pressed in small courtyards they rented from the Arabs, and every single courtyard was filled up with several stories, and every single story was filled up with many apartments, and not every house has windows, but some houses get their light through a little opening in the ceiling and some houses get their light through a hole in the wall above the lintel or through an opening to the air of the courtyard where there is a cistern and where the women do their laundry, and below in the lower courtyard are outhouses that are cleaned only once every few years. And a house could still be bought for a sack of rice, but in all those times only a rare person bought a house for himself. And when new immigrants came they didn’t find a place to lay their head and slept in the street until they found shelter in an Arab house that was still being built. Jerusalem began to contemplate a solution. Then the Lord planted in their heart the idea of going outside the Old City walls, to buy land and build houses. And it was a hard thing for the officers of the Societies to invest money in trees and stones, when they had to support the poor and the destitute. And anyone who didn’t worry about the poor worried about himself, for all the roads outside the Old City walls were dangerous, for there was no settlement there aside from the Russian Compound, and when the gates of the Old City were locked at night, everyone outside the wall was unprotected. Those who were more fond of their body than of building Jerusalem remained where they were; those who were more fond of building Jerusalem than of their body went outside the walls and bought themselves land and built themselves seven houses, a house for each person, and they called their settlement Nahalat Shiv’ah, the Estate of the Seven,
because there were seven of them. Those were the first seven houses outside the walls, except for the houses of Judah Tura and the houses of Moses Montefiore, which had been built about ten years earlier.
Those seven houses were neither elegant nor splendid, but they did have one advantage, that they expanded the border of Jerusalem and strengthened the Jewish settlement, for the people of Jerusalem weren’t accustomed to leave the gate of the Old City and go outside, except during the week of Passover, when they circle the walls of the Old City. When Nahalat Shiv’ah was built, they began going out even on other days to ask how their brothers of Nahalat Shiv’ah were faring. And on the first day of the month when women don’t do any work, they go out in groups wearing their Sabbath clothes. And their relatives and relatives of their relatives accompany them: they go out Jaffa Gate and pass by the Arab café, go up mountains and come down into valleys until they come to Nahalat Shiv’ah. And as they walk, they are stunned and amazed that even in the destruction, the air of Jerusalem revives the soul. One person says to his companion, If I could, I would have built me a house here. And his companion replies, Let us ask mercy that we live to see the day. Within seven or eight years they built Meah Shearim, bought a plot of land, and built a hundred houses for a hundred members. Others learned from them and did the same, and others followed their lead. Before long, Jerusalem was crowned with new Jewish houses.
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