It is not dignified to ask one’s neighbor: Why do you hate me? If your neighbor hates you — hate him. And if you need his help, go and make up to him, until he stops hating you. Yeruham Freeman is a simple workman, and I, thank the Lord, am a respectable householder in Israel. Even now, when my house is in ruins, I would not change with Yeruham. My table is set, my bed is made, my clothes are clean, and my wife and children are fed, even though I do not grub about on the ground and repair the roads.
A man likes to be liked by everyone; but I have given up this desire. You can see this from the fact that the town rabbi speaks censoriously of me because I have not gone to pay my respects to him, and still I do not go. I am not saying that if I go to him he will praise me, but he would show me affection. Similarly with Zechariah Rosen. Zechariah Rosen, a merchant in foodstuffs and one of the town’s notables, has made out a pedigree for himself back to King David. Once, when I passed by the door of his shop, he called me in and showed me his pedigree. I looked and saw that he claimed descent from the great sage Rav Hai Gaon. I said to him, “Rav Hai Gaon had no children.” So this pedigreed fellow began to bear me a grudge. Now if I had said to him, “I was mistaken, I have found in the documents of the Geniza that Rav Hai had a son born to him in his old age,” Zechariah Rosen would immediately change from enemy to friend. But I do not do so. Such is the way of this man: what he can get with ease, he gives up; and what he cannot get with ease, he runs after.
Although I wanted to be friendly with Yeruham, I did not try to make friends with him, apart from greeting him. Once I passed by and did not greet him, because I was preoccupied with the trouble of the key and did not notice the fellow.
After I had gone on some distance, I turned my head and saw that he was stretching out his neck and looking at me between his knees. I went back to him and said, “Listen to what I will tell you. You are acting as if you despised me, but really you wish to be my friend. Perhaps it is worth while finding out why you act like this.” “Why? Because you were the first of all my troubles, and all the troubles that followed came through you,” replied Yeruham. “How is that possible?” I said. “Until I came here we did not even see each other, for I went up to the Land of Israel when you were a child, or perhaps you were not in the world at all at that time, and you say that I am the first of your troubles and the cause of all the troubles that followed.” “That is perfectly true,” said Yeruham, “when you left here I was not yet born.” “You see,” said I, laughing at him, “you have no reason to connect your affairs with me, much less to blame me for all the troubles that you say have come upon you because of me.” “That’s what you say,” said Yeruham. “There is no reason to blame my affairs on you.” “That is what I say, and your words support me,” said I; “didn’t you say that when I went up to the Land of Israel you were not even in existence? If so, how can you explain your words?” Said Yeruham, “It was your departure for the Land of Israel that had these effects on me.” “How?” I asked him, “how, my friend? The rope the hangman used to hang the condemned man swayed a little; apparently it was not pleased with all this honor.” “I will explain straightway,” said Yeruham. “Explain, my friend,” said I. “I am not an inquisitive man, but in such things I am entitled to be inquisitive. What is it, Yeruham? You are looking at me as if you had seen me in a dream.” “When I was a child,” Yeruham replied, “I heard many stories about you.” “It never occurred to me that the people of my town talked about me,” said I; “not because I am a modest fellow, but because since I shook the dust of my town from my feet I have tried to remove it from my heart. Well, what did you hear them telling about me?” “I heard,” replied Yeruham, “that there was a certain young man here, different from the rest of his comrades. Not better; on the contrary, in some respects worse. One day he disappeared from the town. They thought he was hiding, as usual, in the forest, but after some days had passed they asked his father, ‘Where is your son?’ ‘He has gone up to the Land of Israel,’ the father replied.” Said I to Yeruham, “Is there anyone here who says I did not do right in going up to the Land of Israel — or perhaps it’s you who say it? I assure you I did not steal from the church and run away. I longed to go up to the Land of Israel; my father, of blessed memory, gave me money for expenses; and I went. I assure you it was clean money Father gave me. So what wrong did I do in going?” “What wrong did you do?” cried Yeruham. “On the contrary, you did well, for you succeeded and won a good name. But…” “What do you mean by ‘but’?” “But to me you did wrong,” said Yeruham; “you did great wrong to me.” “How did I do wrong to you?” Said Yeruham, “Until you went up to the Land of Israel, there was nothing real about the Land in our town. You know the Zionists, young and old. All the Land of Israel means for them is something to come together about, to hold meetings and sell the shekel that makes you a member of their organization. But since the day you went up to the Land of Israel, it became something real, for one of our boys had gone to settle there. In time, when I reached years of understanding, I gave my heart to the Land of Israel, not the one of the Zionists in our town, but your Land, until the whole world was not worth so much to me as a little grain of its dust.” “If so,” said I to Yeruham, “surely you profited through me.” “I thought so too,” replied Yeruham. “That is why I was drawn after you, for you and the Land of Israel became one thing for me. I used to say to myself: I will go up to the Land of Israel and pay you a visit and tell you that I am your fellow townsman and I too have come here through you. Immediately you would take my hand in yours and look at me with affection, and I would see that I have a brother in the Land, and you would take out an orange, divide it in two, and say to me, ‘Take and eat.’ Many oranges I ate there in the Land; there were days when that was my only food; and yet I missed that piece of orange which I hoped to get from your hand.” “And why did you not come to me?” I said to Yeruham. “Why didn’t I come to you?” said Yeruham. “Were you there? When I boasted to my comrades in the Land that I was going to see you, they told me, ‘That man has gone abroad.’”
I sighed and said, “True, very true. In those days I was living in Berlin.” “You were living in Berlin,” said Yeruham, “enjoying all the pleasures of the big cities, and in our hearts you had instilled the poison of the Land of Israel.” I turned on Yeruham and cried, “Poison you call the love of the Land? I don’t want to chop logic with you, but tell me, I beg of you, what was I to do, in your opinion?” Yeruham looked at me quietly and said softly, “To die, sir, to die.”
“Are you tired of my life?” cried I. “If your life in the Land of Israel gave you no satisfaction, my dear sir, you should have committed suicide,” replied Yeruham. “Committed suicide?” “Or disappeared, or changed your name, so that people might not know you were still alive, or…” “Or?” “… or dressed yourself like an exile and gone from place to place, kissing the dust of every country, beating your breast and saying, ‘I am the man who drew men after me to the Land of Israel, and I was wrong. Do not follow my example.’”