Exodus - Leon Uris [189]
“You miss it very much, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. Someday I will have the chance to go back.”
The froggy sound of a horn blasted as it turned dusk.
“Sabbath! Sabbath!” a call went up along the streets.
All over Jerusalem the sound of the ancient horn could be heard. David put on a small skull cap and led Kitty to the street of Mea Shearim—the Hundred Gates of the ultra-Orthodox.
“Here in Mea Shearim you will be able to look into the synagogues and see the men pray in many different ways. Some of the Yemenites pray with a swaying motion as though they were riding on a camel. This was their way of getting even, as Jews were not allowed to ride camels because it would make their heads higher than a Moslem’s.”
“I am impressed.”
“Take the descendants of Spanish Jews.... During the Inquisition they were forced to convert to Catholicism on pain of death. They said their Latin prayers aloud but at the end of each sentence they whispered a Hebrew prayer under their breaths. They still pray in silence at the end of each sentence.”
Kitty was speechless when they turned into Mea Shearim. The street comprised connected two-story stone dwellings, all displaying iron grillwork on their balconies.
The men were bearded and wore side curls and fur-brimmed hats and long black satin coats. There were Yemenites in Arabic dress and Kurds and Bokharans and Persians in riotous-colored silks. Everyone walked from the ritual bath with a quick-paced bobbing motion, as though swaying in prayer.
In a few moments the street emptied into the synagogues, small rooms for the most part and several on each block. There were congregations from Italy and Afghanistan and Poland and Hungary and Morocco. The Mea Shearim was filled with the chanting of prayers and Sabbath songs and weeping voices of anguished Hasidim who whipped themselves into a furor. Women were not permitted to enter rooms of prayer, so David and Kitty had to content themselves with peeking through iron-grilled windows.
What strange rooms—what strange people. Kitty watched near-hysterical men cluster about the Sefer Torah wailing and moaning. She saw the angelic faces of Yemenites who sat cross-legged on pillows, softly praying. She saw old men weaving back and forth emitting a stream of Hebrew in monotone read from decrepit prayer books. How different and how far away they all were from the handsome men and women of Tel Aviv.
“We have all kinds of Jews,” David Ben Ami said. “I wanted to bring you here because I know that Ari wouldn’t. He and many of the sabras despise them. They do not farm the land, they do not bear arms. They shove an ancient brand of Judaism down our throats. They are a force of reaction against what we are trying to do. Yet, when one lives in Jerusalem as I have, we learn to tolerate them and even appreciate the horrible things in the past that could drive men to such fanaticism.”
Ari Ben Canaan waited near the Greek Church in the Russian compound. It turned dark. Bar Israel appeared from nowhere. Ari followed the contact man into an alley where a taxi waited. They got in and Bar Israel produced a large black handkerchief.
“Must I submit to this?”
“I trust you, Ari, but orders are orders.”
The blindfold was tied over Ari’s eyes and Ari was made to lie on the floor and was covered by a blanket. For a long twenty minutes the taxi moved in zigzags and circuitous routes to confuse Ari, then headed toward the Katamon district near the former German colony. The taxi stopped. Ari was quickly led into a house and into a room and was told he could remove the kerchief.
The room was bare except for a single chair, a single table which held a single flickering candle and a bottle of brandy and two glasses. It took a full moment for Ari’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. His uncle, Akiva, stood opposite him by the table. Akiva