Exodus - Leon Uris [177]
Karen looked around frantically for Kitty and lit up when she saw her some distance away, standing with Mark Parker by the rail.
“Come on, Kitty,” Karen called, “there is a place for you here.”
“It’s your party,” Kitty answered. “I’ll just watch.”
When everyone had opened his present, David Ben Ami stood at the head table. The terrace became very still as he began to speak. Only the steady shush of the sea could be heard behind him.
“Tonight we celebrate the first day of Chanukah,” David said. “We celebrate this day in honor of Judah Maccabee and his brave brothers and his band of faithful men who came from the hills of Judea to do combat with the Greeks who enslaved our people.”
Some of the youngsters applauded.
“Judah Maccabee had a small band of men and they had no real right fighting so large and powerful an enemy as the Greeks, who ruled the entire world. But Judah Maccabee had faith. He believed that the one true God would show him the way. Judah was a wonderful fighter. Time and again he tricked the Greeks; his men were the greatest of warriors, for the faith of God was in their hearts. The Maccabees stormed Jerusalem and captured it and drove out the Greeks of Asia Minor, who ruled that area of the world.”
A riot of applause.
“Judah entered the Temple and his warriors tore down the idol of Zeus and again dedicated the Temple to the one true God. The same God who helped us all in our battle with the British.”
As David continued with the story of the rebirth of the Jewish nation, Kitty Fremont listened. She looked at Karen and at Dov Landau—and she looked at Mark and she lowered her eyes. Then she felt someone standing alongside her. It was Brigadier Bruce Sutherland.
“Tonight we will light the first candle of the Menorah. Each night we will light another candle until there are eight. We call Chanukah the feast of lights.”
David Ben Ami lit the first candle and the children said “oh” and “ah.”
“Tomorrow night we shall light the second Chanukah candle at sea and the night after we shall light the third one in Eretz Israel.”
David placed a small skullcap on his head and opened the Bible. “ ‘He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber.’ ”
Kitty’s eyes came to rest on the head table. She looked at them—Zev Gilboa the farmer from the Galilee, and Joab Yarkoni the Moroccan Jew, and David Ben Ami, the scholar from Jerusalem. Her eyes stopped at Ari Ben Canaan. His eyes were rimmed with weariness now that he had had a chance to relax from his ordeal. David set the Bible down and continued to speak from memory.
“ ‘Behold!’ ” David said, “ ‘he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.’ ”
An icy chill passed through Kitty Fremont’s body. Her eyes were fixed on the tired face of Ari Ben Canaan. “Behold ... he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
The ancient motors of the Exodus groaned as she slid back into the center of Kyrenia Harbor and she turned and pointed out to sea in the direction of Palestine.
At dawn of the second day everyone sighted land at once.
“Palestine!”
“Eretz Israel!”
A hysteria of laughing and crying and singing and joy burst from the children.
The little salvage tug came within sight of land and the electrifying news spread through the Yishuv. The children who had brought the mighty British Empire to its knees were arriving!
The Exodus sputtered into Haifa Harbor amid a blast of welcoming horns and whistles. The salute spread from Haifa to the villages and the kibbutzim and the moshavim and all the way to Jerusalem to the Yishuv Central building and back again to Haifa.
Twenty-five thousand