Exodus - Leon Uris [119]
In 1884, Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky, aged fourteen and sixteen, became fugitives. They used the roads only by night and hid during the day, moving east to Lubny, a distance of a hundred-odd miles from Zhitomir. At Lubny they found the ghetto immediately and sought out the rabbi, only to learn that their notoriety had preceded them. The rabbi and the elders of Lubny met and agreed to give the boys enough food and money for another week’s travel. This time their destination was Kharkov, some two hundred miles away, where the search for them might not be so intense. Advance word was sent to the Kharkov rabbi that the Rabinsky boys were on the way.
The entire countryside was on the alert for the Rabinsky brothers. It took twenty days of cautious moving for them to get to Kharkov.
Their fame had spread throughout the Pale, and their capture was being turned into a holy mission. For two weeks they hid in the clammy basement beneath the synagogue in Kharkov, their presence known only to the rabbi and a few elders.
At last the Rabbi Solomon came to them. “It is not safe, even here,” he said. “It is only a matter of time until you boys are discovered. Already the police have been prowling around asking questions. But with winter coming on it will be near impossible to move.”
The rabbi sighed and shook his head. “We have also tried to get you papers to enable you to travel beyond the Pale, but I am afraid that is impossible. You are too well known by the police.”
He paced back and forth. “We have decided there is but one thing to do. There are some Jewish families in this district who have passed as gentiles and who own small farms. We feel it would be the safest plan for you to hide with one of them until spring at least.”
“Rabbi Solomon,” Jossi said, “we are very thankful for everything that has been done for us, but my brother and I have made a plan of our own.”
“What is that?”
“We are going to Palestine,” Yakov said.
The good rabbi looked stunned. “To Palestine? How?”
“We have a route in mind. God will help us.”
“No doubt God will help you but let us not press Him for a miracle. It is over three hundred hard cold miles to the port of Odessa. Even if and when you reach Odessa you cannot get a boat without papers.”
“We are not going by way of Odessa.”
“But there is no other way.”
“We intend to walk.”
Rabbi Solomon gasped.
“Moses walked for forty years,” Yakov said; “it will not take us that long.”
“Young man, I am well aware that Moses walked for forty years. That does not explain how you are going to walk to Palestine.”
“I’ll tell you our plan,” Jossi said. “We will go south. The police won’t be looking for us so strenuously in that direction. We will cross out of the Pale into Georgia and then over the Caucasus Mountains into Turkey.”
“Madness! Insanity! It cannot be done! Do you mean to tell me you will walk over two thousand miles, through the cold of winter, across strange lands and fifteen-thousand-foot mountain ranges without papers ... without knowledge of the country ... with the police after you? Why, you are but little more than children!”
Yakov’s eyes were burning with passion; he looked at the rabbi. “Fear not for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up and to the south, keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”
And so it came to pass that the Rabinsky brothers who were wanted for murder fled from Kharkov and moved to the east and to the south through an inhumanly bitter winter.
They trudged through waist-high snow during the night, bending their young bodies against howling winds and fighting off the numbness of frostbite. Their bellies rumbled with hunger. They stole from the countryside and in the hours of daylight they hid in the forests.
Through those tortured nights it was Yakov who filled Jossi with the spirit of their mission. It was Yakov who urged another step and another and yet another when all strength