Exodus - Leon Uris [117]
“To hide under my bed while people try to kill me?”
“Don’t raise your voice to Father,” Jossi admonished.
“No one said it is easy to be a Jew. We were not born on this earth to live from its fruits. We were put here to guard the laws of God. This is our mission. This is our purpose.”
“And this is our reward!” Yakov snapped back.
“The Messiah will come and take us back when He is good and ready,” Simon said, unruffled, “and I do not believe it is for Yakov Rabinsky to question His wisdom. I do believe it is for Yakov Rabinsky to live by the laws of the Holy Torah.”
There were tears of anger in Yakov’s eyes. “I do not question the laws of God,” he cried, “but I question the wisdom of some of the men who interpret those laws.”
There was a brief silence. Jossi swallowed. Never had anyone spoken so harshly to his father. Yet he silently applauded his brother’s courage, for Yakov was daring to ask the very questions he himself dared not ask.
“If we are created in the image of God,” Yakov continued, “then the Messiah is in all of us and the Messiah inside me keeps telling me to stand up and fight back. He keeps telling me to make my way back to the Promised Land with the Lovers of Zion. That is what the Messiah tells me, Father.”
Simon Rabinsky would not be shaken. “In our history we have been plagued with false messiahs. I fear you are listening to one of them now.”
“And how do I recognize the true Messiah?” Yakov challenged.
“The question is not whether Yakov Rabinsky recognizes the Messiah. The question is whether the Messiah will recognize Yakov Rabinsky. If Yakov Rabinsky begins to stray from His laws and listens to false prophets, then the Messiah will be quite certain that he is no longer a Jew. I suggest to Yakov Rabinsky that he continue to live as a Jew as his father and his people are doing.”
Chapter Four
“KILL THE JEWS!”
A rock smashed through the seminary window. The rabbi hurried the students out through the back to the safety of the cellar. In the streets, Jews scampered wildly for cover ahead of a frenzied mob of over a thousand students and Cossacks.
“Kill the Jews!” they screamed. “Kill the Jews!”
It was another pogrom inspired by Andreev, the humpbacked headmaster of a local gymnasium—high school—and foremost Jew hater in Zhitomir. Andreev’s students swaggered down the streets of the ghetto, smashing up store fronts and dragging any Jews they could find into the streets and beating them mercilessly.
“Kill the Jews ... kill the Jews ... kill the Jews!”
Yakov and Jossi raced from the seminary. Using a route through back alleys, they sped over deserted cobblestone streets to reach their home and protect their parents. They ducked frequently for cover and worked away from the sounds of hoofbeats of Cossack horses and from the bloodcurdling screams of the students.
They turned the corner into their street and ran head on into a dozen hoodlums wearing university caps—disciples of Andreev.
“There go two of them!”
Yakov and Jossi turned around and fled, leading the pack of pursuers away from their own home. The students howled with glee as they sprinted after the brothers. For fifteen minutes they wove in and out of streets and alleys until the students trapped them against a dead-end wall. Jossi and Yakov stood with their backs to the wall, dripping sweat and panting for breath as the students formed a semicircle and closed in on them. His eyes gleaming, the leader stepped forward with an iron pipe and swung on Jossi!
Jossi blocked the blow and snatched up the student, spun him around, lifted him over his head, and hurled him at the rest of his companions. Yakov, whose pocket full of rocks was for just such occasions, bounced two stones off the heads of two students, sending them to the ground unconscious. The other students scattered in flight.
The boys dashed home and flung open the door of the shop.
“Mama! Papa!”
The shop was a shambles.
“Mama! Papa!”
They found their mother cowering in a corner in a state of hysteria. Jossi shook her hard. “Where is Papa?”
“The Torah!” she shrieked.