He went out and saw people plowing and sowing in gladness, with never a policeman or an officer. He came back and told his father, who took his wife and his sons and daughters, and they entered into the land. The whole city was astonished at them, for they thought all the exiles had already arrived, and there was no Jew left who had not come. They gave them a dwelling and food and a field to plow and sow. The father took out money to pay. “What are these scraps of metal?” the people said to him. “You call these scraps?” he replied. “If I had had a thousand like them, I would have been with you long ago.” Immediately it became a great joke throughout the city: for the sake of such things Jews had been prevented from entering the land, and the sons of the land had not been allowed to return. How foolish the world had been to torment the Jews for scraps of metal and paper notes.
The letters lay before me, and I had to answer them. I stretched out my hand and took the pen. I set a clean sheet before me and started to write, but apart from greetings and apologies I could not write a thing. I could not study the Torah, because of my confused mind: I could not stay at home for boredom. What could I do? I got up and went out to wander for a while in the streets of Jerusalem.
5
I walked about the streets of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which had been still, gave voice. Buses and automobiles raced about as if pursued by demons; the noise of them rose into the heart of the heavens, and people dodged out of the way to avoid being run over. Every street and corner was full of soldiers, policemen and detectives, tarbushes red as blood and eyes angry and black with hatred. And the precious sons of Zion — some of them were dressed in velvet and satin, but others lay in the dunghills.
Even as the streets of Jerusalem have changed, so have its houses. Not all the prophecies have yet been fulfilled in the city, but some of its ruins have been rebuilt. The Lord buildeth Jerusalem, at any rate, even through gentiles, even through speculators. And there are houses that rise up to the sky. In the past, when the sons of Israel were lowly in their own eyes, He would, as it were, lower all the seven firmaments to be close to them; today, when they are proud and He is getting further away from them, they build their towers up to the sky.
There are other buildings in Jerusalem where you can find anything, whether you want it or not: shops where no one knows the use of the utensils they sell, or banks and coffeehouses and places of amusement and entertainment. If you find the night hangs heavy on your hands, and you do not know what to do with it, borrow money in a bank and go to a cinema or a coffeehouse or some other place of entertainment. And if you find it hard to wait until evening, stand at the side of the street and you will hear choruses on the gramophone. When Elijah, of blessed memory comes to bring tidings of redemption, we can only hope his voice will be heard above the noise of the automobiles and the screeching of the gramophones.
I stand in front of a large building full of shops selling clothing and foodstuffs, jewelry and ornaments for males and females. Signs hanging over the shops proclaim their wares in every possible tongue, and the building emits a vapor like the vapor of foreign lands.
“And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.” And the sages say: “One day the Holy One, blessed be He, will make Jerusalem of precious stones and diamonds.” And even now we can see in Jerusalem something like a pattern of the days to come, for its mountains are covered with all kinds of pleasant colors, were it not for the tall buildings that conceal the face of Jerusalem.
I wandered in the streets and squares of Jerusalem without seeking anything, and when I recalled that House of Study and those old men I had seen there, I knew that I would never find it and never see it.
But I saw new faces. These were the immigrants from Germany who had lately arrived. Where was their dignity, their property, their wisdom, their power? Those who had displaced the Divine Presence with their pride now walked along bowed with care. From time to time the Holy One, blessed be He, shows favor to one of the tribes of Israel and gives it wealth and honor, that they may help their brethren, but they ascribe all their good fortune to their own merits, to their clever behavior, to the masters of the land who have given them good laws because they are better and more honest than the rest of their brethren. When the Holy One, blessed be He, sees this, He, as it were, turns His face away from that tribe. Immediately the wicked men among the gentiles bring down ruin upon them and they go down into the dust.
As I was walking, I met one of the German immigrants whom I knew. I stopped and asked how he was.
He began to tell me the same things he had told me recently, all that the wicked men had done to him there in Germany, what he had suffered, how much money they had taken from him, and how at last he and his wife and his children had escaped without a penny.
I comforted him as I had comforted him before. “You are fortunate to have come here,” I said, “for from now onwards, no wicked hand has power over you.”
Now that I had mentioned the Land of Israel in his presence, he began to abuse the nation and the population, their behavior and demeanor; his room was minute, and the rent, to boot, would not be too small for a baronial hall; the maid downstairs put on ladylike airs; the workers were all Left, and the merchants bent on theft. The phones had gone crazy, the children were lazy; immigrants from many lands talked with their hands; the trains were always late, the beer was second rate. People didn’t know how to pray, and they spat on the floor; the politicians made you pay, always asking for more; the men at the top talked and talked without a stop; mosquitoes were a pest, and gave you no rest; at funeral rites there were barbarous sights. In short, life was vile at home and outside, above and below, whatever you tried.
I said: ‘And thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem,’ the Scripture said. A Jew ought to see the good of Jerusalem and not its evil.” And I went on: “Perhaps you have heard from the old men of Jerusalem how many troubles our fathers found in the Land of Israel, for the land was in ruins at that time, and they were plagued by diseases; when they got out of one trouble, along came another, worse than the first. But they paid no heed to their troubles; they were happy to live in the land and gave praise and thanks to the Creator of all the worlds for choosing us out of all the nations and giving us the Land of Israel.”
He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “Those people had God in their hearts.”
I said to him in a whisper, “God exists now too.”
“But not within us,” he said.
I said to him: “A certain hasidic master was asked where the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells. He told them: Wherever He is allowed to enter, there He dwells.”
6
In these days I visited some of the new neighborhoods at whose dedication ceremonies I had rejoiced. Most of the little houses were rickety; their builders no longer lived in them, for they had built them with loans and could not pay, so the banks had sold their houses to others. The same thing happened to the purchasers: they borrowed from the banks — borrowed from one bank and paid to another, so they had to go to the moneylenders — and anyone who falls into their hands never recovers. But so long as they paid the interest they were allowed to stay.
One day I found myself in a certain neighborhood in Jerusalem which Mr. Gedaliah Klein had an affection for, because he had helped some of its people with a loan at one or two per cent less than the banks usually take.