Exodus - Leon Uris [336]
They were both silent for a long time. Kitty went to the tent flap and looked outside. The flies swarmed around her. She spun around quickly and faced Karen. “I can’t go without telling you I am sick about your coming to this place.”
“The borders must be defended. It is easy enough to say let the other fellow do it.”
“Nahal Midbar is three months old. Already you have a boy and a girl in your graveyard, murdered by fedayeen.”
“We don’t think of it that way, Kitty. Two are lost but fifty more have joined Nahal Midbar and another fifty have come to build a settlement five kilometers away—because we came here. In a year we will have a children’s house and a thousand dunams of land under cultivation.”
“And in a year you will begin to grow old. You will work eighteen hours a day and spend your nights in the trenches. All that you and Dov will ever have out of this is a single room eight by ten feet. Even the clothes on your back won’t belong to you.”
“You are wrong, Kitty. Dov and I will have everything.”
“Including a quarter of a million kill-crazy Arabs at your throats.”
“We cannot be angry at those poor people,” Karen said. “They sit there day after day, month after month, locked up like animals, watching our fields grow green.”
Kitty sagged down in a cot and buried her face in her hands.
“Kitty ... listen ...”
“I can’t.”
“Please ... please listen. You know that even when I was a little girl in Denmark I asked myself why I was born a Jew. I know the answer now. God didn’t pick us because we were weak or would run from danger. We’ve taken murder and sorrow and humiliation for six thousand years and we have kept faith. We have outlived everyone who has tried to destroy us. Can’t you see it, Kitty? ... this little land was chosen for us because it is the crossroads of the world, on the edge of man’s wilderness. This is where God wants His people to be ... on the frontiers, to stand and guard His laws which are the cornerstone of man’s moral existence. Where else is there for us to be?”
“Israel stands with its back to the wall,” Kitty cried. “It has always stood that way and it always will ... with savages trying to destroy you.”
“Oh no, Kitty, no! Israel is the bridge between darkness and light.” And suddenly Kitty saw it all, so clearly ... so beautifully clear. This then was the answer. Israel, the bridge between darkness and light.
Chapter Five
ONE NIGHT ABOVE ALL OTHER nights is the most important for a Jew and that is the religious holiday of Passover. The Passover is celebrated in memory of the deliverance from bondage in Egypt. The Egyptians, the original oppressors, had become the symbol of all the oppressors of all the Jews throughout all the ages.
The high point occurs on the eve of Passover when the Seder—the Feast of Liberation—is held to give thanks for freedom and to offer hope for those who do not have it. For the exiles and the dispersed, before the rebirth of Israel the Seder always ended with the words: “... next year in Jerusalem.”
The Haggadah, a special book of prayers, stories, and songs for Passover, parts of which were written three thousand years ago, is read. The story of the Exodus from Egypt is recited by the head of the house.
The Seder was the high moment of the year. The woman of the house had to prepare for it for a month. All dirt had to be chased. Special Passover foods and decorations had to be prepared. All over Israel half-frantic preparations for the Seders took place. In the communal settlements the Seder table would hold hundreds. Other homes had small and simple Seders. As the eve of Passover drew near, the air of anticipation of the great feast grew and grew to a bursting point.
The Seder this year at the Ben Canaan cottage at Yad El was to be a relatively small affair. None the less, Sarah had to carry out the prescribed traditions and rituals to the letter. It was a labor of love and she would not be robbed of it. The cottage, inside and out, was made spotless. On the day of the feast the rooms were filled with enormous Galilee roses. The