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By Root 994 0

among the foliage and villas would each provide a calm and comfortable home for a famous writer or renowned scholar, Uncle Joseph would go for a stroll sometimes in the evening breeze along the little street that was later to become Klausner Street, his thin arm entwined with the plump arm of Aunt Zippora, his mother, his wife, the child of his old age, and his right-hand person. They walked with tiny, delicate steps just past the house of the architect Kornberg, who occasionally took in paying guests of a polite and cultured kind, at the end of the cul-de-sac that was also the end of Talpiot, the end of Jerusalem, and the end of the settled land: beyond stretched the grim, barren hills of the Judaean desert. The Dead Sea sparkled in the distance like a platter of molten steel.

I can see them standing there, at the end of the world, on the edge of the wilderness, both very tender, like a pair of teddy bears, arm in arm, with the evening breeze of Jerusalem blowing above their heads, the rustle of pine trees, and a bitter smell of geraniums floating on the clear dry air, Uncle Joseph in a jacket (which he suggested should be called in Hebrew "jacobite") and tie, wearing slippers on his feet, his white hair bare to the breeze, and Auntie in a flowery, dark silk dress with a gray woolen wrap around her shoulders. The whole width of the horizon is occupied by the blue bulk of the hills of Moab beyond the Dead Sea; beneath them passes the old Roman Road that continues to the walls of the Old City, where before their eyes the domes of the mosques are turning gold, the crosses on the church towers and the crescents atop the minarets gleam in the glow of the setting sun. The walls themselves are turning gray and heavy, and beyond the Old City one can see Mount Scopus, crowned by the buildings of the university that is so dear to Uncle Joseph, and the Mount of Olives, on whose slopes Aunt Zippora will be buried, though his own wish to be buried there will not be granted because at the time of his death East Jerusalem will be under Jordanian rule.

The evening light intensifies the pink color of his babylike cheeks and his high brow. On his lips floats a distracted, slightly bewildered smile, as when a man knocks on the door of a house where he is a regular visitor and where he is used to being very warmly received, but when the door opens, a stranger suddenly looks out at him and recoils in surprise, as though asking, Who are you, sir, and why exactly are you here?

My father, my mother, and I would leave him and Aunt Zippora to stand there for a while longer; we quietly took our leave and made for the stop of the No. 7 bus, which would surely arrive in a few minutes from Ramat Rahel and Arnona, because the Sabbath was over. The No. 7 took us to the Jaffa Road, where we caught the 3B to Zephaniah Street, a five-minute walk from our home. Mother would say:

"He doesn't change. Always the same sermons, the same stories and anecdotes. He has repeated himself every Sabbath as long as I've known him."

Father would reply:

"Sometimes you are a little too critical. He's not a young man, and we all repeat ourselves sometimes. Even you."

Mischievously, I would add my parody of a line from Jabotinsky's "Beitar Hymn":

"With blood and zhelezo we'll raise a gezho." (Uncle Joseph could hold forth at length about how Jabotinsky chose his words. Apparently, Jabotinsky could not find a suitable rhyme in Hebrew for the word geza, "race," so he provisionally wrote the Russian word zhelezo, "iron." And so it came out: "With blood and zhelezo / We'll raise a race / Proud, generous, and tough," until his friend Baruch Krupnik came along and changed zhelezo to the Hebrew word yeza, "sweat": "With blood and sweat / We'll raise a race / Proud, generous, and tough."

My father would say:

"Really. There are some things one doesn't joke about."

And Mother said:

"Actually, I don't think there are. There shouldn't be."

At this Father would interpose:

"That's quite enough for one day. As for you, Amos, remember you're having a bath tonight. And washing