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By Root 2237 0

to the moderate religious community. Then one Friday afternoon I got a more agitated call from Dov: “We’ve been told he’s definitely somewhere in the New York area. Check it out.” I called a friend, Israel Gur-Arye, an Israeli consul and a descendant of the Besht, of whom it was whispered that he was the Mossad’s man in New York. “Another false rumor,” he said. Was he sure? “Absolutely,” he replied. He promised to let me know if anything broke. I called Dov back and told him I trusted Gur-Arye. “If you’re not careful,” Dov insisted, “you’ll let the most sensational item of the last few years slip through your fingers.” I agreed to be on guard. In any case, the next day was Shabbat, and ordinarily, nothing out of the ordinary happened in Brooklyn on Shabbat. But I forgot that many extraordinary things can happen at the end of Shabbat.

On Sunday morning Dov’s voice on the phone sounded more ironic than annoyed. “So, you still trust that friend of yours?” It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. “You haven’t heard?” He seemed surprised. “Mossad agents recovered the boy last night. In Brooklyn.” Stunned, I hung up. I had to get hold of Gur-Arye. It was five in the morning, and I hesitated to wake his wife, Shula. But never mind. I would apologize to her, though surely not to her lying husband. It was Shula who answered. “Israel’s not here,” she said, “but I know he wants to talk to you. Here’s the number where you can reach him.” I got through on the tenth try. Seething with indignation, I was about to tell my former friend what I thought of him when he cut me off. “Try to understand. The slightest indiscretion could have ruined the operation. The boy was not yet in our hands. We picked him up only two hours ago. We knew where he was hiding, but needed the consent of the American authorities. I was going to call you.…” I refused to forgive him. He had tricked me, embarrassed me. He said he was sorry, but I wasn’t interested in his excuses. You don’t lie to a friend, even if you are a Mossad agent. “Look,” he said, “you never know what line might be tapped or by whom.” He went on and on, but I rejected his explanations, and finally he grudgingly admitted my anger was justified. “Okay,” he said. “I owe you one. Let me find a way to pay you back.”

That afternoon he arranged an exclusive interview for me with the boy. The descendant of the Besht could not fail to honor this second promise. “But you have to swear you won’t reveal where he is.” I swore. “And that you won’t ask him about the kidnapping.” I swore that too. “And that you won’t say I was the one who …”I swore that too.

Yossele reminded me of the Jewish boys of my town, with kipa and side curls. He washed his hands before saying his morning and evening prayers, recited a blessing before drinking the glass of water I offered him. I liked his melancholy, innocent smile. I told him that when I was his age, I had been as pious as he. I asked how he had spent his days while hidden in Brooklyn. “I studied the parsha,” the weekly passage of the Bible. What else? “Rashi.” And? “The Talmud.” Which tractate? “Berakhot, the Benedictions.” There happened to be a complete set of the Babylonian Talmud in the apartment, and the two of us, ignoring the Mossad and FBI agents in the room, pored over the texts that bound us to ancient times.

The interview caused quite a stir, though I didn’t reveal anything sensational. I never mentioned that it was an ex-nightclub dancer who had converted to Judaism who had been instrumental in getting Yossele out of the country illegally, nor that Yossele had been disguised as a girl, nor that a fanatical sect had organized the kidnapping. All I did was describe our Talmud lesson.

Dov was pleased, and Gur-Arye and I were friends again. You can’t hold a grudge against a descendant of the Besht, even if he is a Mossad agent.

(Some years later I read an article about Yossele in Yedioth Ahronoth. He was no longer fanatical; in fact, he had even stopped practicing.)

In France I was compelled to change publishers. Perhaps because he liked Night