Exodus - Leon Uris [139]
“Sarah,” he said at last, “I have come to a decision. Tonight I was at the Vaad Halashon and they have asked me to take a Hebrew name and speak Hebrew exclusively. I heard Ben Yehuda speak tonight. He has done a tremendous job in modernizing Hebrew.”
“Such nonsense,” Sarah replied. “You told me yourself that never in the history of the world has a language been revived.”
“And I have come to think that never before have a people tried to revive a nation as we are doing. When I see what has been done at Shoshanna and the other kibbutzim ...”
“Speaking of Shoshanna... you only want to take a Hebrew name because your brother, the former Yakov Rabinsky, has done so.”
“Nonsense.”
“Just what do we call the former Yakov Rabinsky now?”
“Akiva. He named himself after his childhood idol ...”
“And maybe you want to call yourself Jesus Christ after a boyhood idol.”
“You are impossible, woman!” Jossi snorted and stomped in from the balcony.
“If you ever went to synagogue any more,” Sarah said, following him, “you would know that Hebrew is for communication with God.”
“Sarah ... I sometimes wonder why you bothered to come from Silesia. If we are to think like a nation, we had better speak like a nation.”
“We do. Yiddish is our language.”
“Yiddish is the language of exiles. Yiddish is the language of the ghetto. Hebrew is the language of all the Jews.”
She pointed her finger up at her giant of a husband. “Don’t recite Zionist propaganda to me, Jossi. You will be Jossi Rabinsky to me till the day I die.”
“I have made the decision, Sarah. You had better study your Hebrew because that is what we will be speaking from now on.”
“Such stupidity, your decision!”
Jossi had been slow in agreeing with Ben Yehuda and the others. Hebrew had to be revived. If the desire for national identity was great enough a dead language could be brought back. But Sarah was set in her ways. Yiddish was what she spoke and what her mother had spoken. She had no intention of becoming a scholar so late in life.
For a week Sarah locked Jossi out of the bedroom. He refused to break down. Then for three weeks he spoke to Sarah only in Hebrew and she answered him in Yiddish.
“Jossi,” she called one night, “Jossi, come here and help me.”
“I beg your pardon,” Jossi said. “There is no one in this house by the name of Jossi. If you happen to be speaking to me,” he continued, “my name is Barak. Barak Ben Canaan.”
“Barak Ben Canaan!”
“Yes. It took much thought to select a proper name. The Arabs used to call my whip “lightning,” and that is what Barak is in Hebrew—lightning. It is also the name of Deborah’s leading general. I call myself Canaan because I happen to like Mount Canaan.”
The door slammed.
Jossi shouted through it. “I was happy living on Mount Canaan! I did not have a hardheaded woman then! Get used to it, Sarah Ben Canaan ... Sarah Ben Canaan!”
Jossi, now Barak, was again locked out of his bedroom. For a solid week neither adversary spoke.
One night, a month after their warfare had started, Barak returned from a grueling three-day meeting in Jerusalem. He came in late at night, exhausted, and looked around, hoping that Sarah might be up to talk things over and have a cup of tea. The door to her room was closed. He sighed and pulled off his shoes and lay back on the sofa. He was so large his legs hung over the arm. He was tired and wished he could sleep in his own bed and was sorry for starting the whole business. He began to doze but was awakened by a crack of light under the bedroom door. Sarah tiptoed to him and knelt by his huge frame and put her head on his chest.
“I love you, Barak Ben Canaan,” she whispered in perfect Hebrew.
Life was busy for Barak Ben Canaan in the brand-new city of Tel Aviv. As the community grew the Jews of Palestine became known by the literal definition of the term—the Yishuv—and Hebrew was revived as the language of the Yishuv. Barak Ben Canaan had risen high among the