This man who has come here is silent and does not utter a word. “And so,” says the man of calculations, “what can one do?” Say I, “I don’t know.” “What do you mean, you don’t know?” says the other, raising his voice in a shout. “Because a man is poor, have you the right to lock the gates of the Land of Israel in his face? Are you making fun of me?” “Never in my life have I made fun of any Jew,” I reply. “And if we have to make fun, let us laugh at those that see this world of chaos as the best of worlds, and not at the Jew, who always remembers that there is another world.”
“Now I ask you,” says the other man, “what have these young fellows done, who have no money and nothing else, that they welcome them so cordially and let them into the Land of Israel?” “They merit this because of their labor,” say I. “What do you mean, because of their labor?” retorts the other. “Do you think I am sitting doing nothing? Ever since I grew up I have borne the yoke like an ox and the burden like an ass; never have I had an hour of rest.” And his toilworn face bears witness to his words.
Say I, “And that man to whom your house and store are mortgaged — do you think he too wants to settle in the Land of Israel?” The man looks at me in surprise, thinking that I cannot put two and two together. Didn’t he say that no one makes a move so long as he is earning a livelihood? “Well,” says he, “it seems we shall have to wait till the Messiah comes.”
Dolik breaks into our talk and says, “Do me a favor, sir: when the Messiah comes will you recommend me to take charge of immigration certificates?”
Some people bring their complaints to me: of how much money the Zionists have taken out of the Jewish National Fund boxes in their homes, yet when they want to settle in the Land, they are not given permission. Whenever a propagandist or a lecturer or just an ordinary man from the Land of Israel came to their town, they would make great banquets for them, and when they wrote to them “Send us certificates,” there was no response.
Some have already despaired of settling in the Land, because it is small and has little business and not everyone can make a living there, but since they happen to have met a man from the Land of Israel they wish to know what is true and what is not. They know that the truth is not as the lecturers tell and the papers write, nor is it like the defamatory reports of those who come back from there — so what is true and what is not true?
“Both these and those are words of truth,” I tell them. Say they, “How can both things be correct, when these sing its praises and those tell its faults; these say it is a land where nothing is lacking and those say it is a land that devours its inhabitants. In the same way they speak of its people: these say they are all angels and those say they are worse than devils.” “It is like the sun,” I replied. “The righteous are healed by it — the wicked are consumed by it. It is the same sun: for the righteous it is healing and for the wicked it is Gehenna. So is the Land of Israeclass="underline" whatever man is, that he finds in the Land.”
A man who was standing by greeted me and said, “I ought not to have greeted you, except that I heard you came from a good family — that is why I greeted you.” Why all this anger? He had two sons, who had kept the commandments and had decent ways. They went to the Land of Israel and came back; now they had neither piety nor decent ways.
I said to myself: Another old man also had two sons, and the news came to him that their blood had been shed on one day. And Freide had two sons and their blood was shed on one day. The Holy One, blessed be He, always measures out abundantly, both for good and for evil. When He gives, He gives double, and when He takes, He takes double.
I ask that man, the father of two sons, “Why did they come back from the Land?” He answers, “And why did they ever go away?” So I ask, “And why did they ever go away?” He answers, “Why did they go away? They went to the Land to study heresy.” “And did they learn their fill there?” “A great question you ask,” he replies angrily. “They even left both their tefillin and their tzitzit there. If it had not been for an old Gentile woman who lived with them there in the settlement, who used to collect the tefillin and the tallitot that the young fellows threw away and bring them to the town, they would have lain there as litter in an unclean place.”
“In every place the Gentiles have their own ways,” said I. “Here in Szibucz the Gentiles took the tallitot and the tefillin and used them in ways I had rather not mention, and I believe the uncircumcised in your own town, sir, did the same.”
The father of two sons replied angrily, ‘Whatever trouble may come, the Zionists are the first to benefit from it and draw advantage from it, to persuade the Jews to go up to the Land of Israel.” Said I, “And do those who are not Zionists draw no benefit from the troubles?”
Let us return to our subject. Since the day Reb Hayim undertook full care of the Beit Midrash, I am free to my own devices. Sometimes I talk to a guest who happens to cross my path, and sometimes I examine my clothes and my linen, to see what should be thrown out and what should be given to a poor man.
Mrs. Zommer is a diligent and goodhearted woman. It happened once that I threw away a pair of torn socks, and found them after two days — whole and darned. Similarly with a shirt, and again with other garments. Krolka helps her; she is sorry for that man who was a guest for the night and stayed for many nights far from his wife and children, and cannot distinguish between a thing that is beyond repair and a thing that can still be repaired.
Like a seal stamped by diligent hands, so are the patches stamped on my linen and my socks, and perhaps the patches will out-last the shirt. Particularly worthy of attention is that mending in the sock. Although it is made of different threads, it makes the sock whole. Happy is he whose affairs can be repaired and have been repaired.
I have spent many words on my torn clothes, and since I do not say much about the clothes that are whole, surely I should not talk about the torn ones. But they recall to my mind the days gone by when I was a bachelor, always on the move from one room to another and from landlady to landlady. Since that time many of my affairs have changed. I married a wife, and two children were born to me; I went up to the Land of Israel, and dwelt in Jerusalem, and became a householder — and suddenly everything has gone back to the beginning: again I am living outside the Land, in a room in a hotel, looking after my clothes like a bachelor.
Why am I here, and my wife and children elsewhere? After our enemies had destroyed my house and left me with nothing, a great weariness entered me and my hands were too feeble to rebuild my house, which had suffered a second destruction. The first destruction was abroad, and the second in the Land of Israel; but when my house was destroyed abroad, I accepted the justice of the verdict and said: It is my punishment for choosing to live outside the Land. So I made a vow that if God was with me and restored me to the Land of Israel I should build myself a house and never leave it. Praised be the Name of the Lord, who privileged me to go up to the Land and privileged me to live in Jerusalem. I brought over my wife and children; we rented a house and bought furniture; and every day I would thank the Almighty for setting my lot among those who dwell in His city and shelter in His shadow. When I took pleasure in the air of the city, which is spiced with all good things, I used to say in surprise: If it is so in its desolation, how much more will it be in the future, when the Holy One, blessed be He, restores all the exiles and rebuilds His city. And when I used to see the young men standing among the ruins, removing the rubble and clearing away the stones that had lain there since the Destruction, building houses, planting gardens, and singing in the Holy Tongue, and birds flying, uttering their song, I was like one that dreams; for since the day Israel went into exile, all the birds of the sky had dispersed, and if a bird was seen it looked like a handful of dust or a flying clod of earth; but now at last the birds had returned to the city. The heavenly eye began to look upon us with mercy, for “He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth.” Eye to eye we saw that the Almighty was looking down with favor on His Land and that a people was being created. And we already thought, in error, that the end of the exile had come and we were feasting on the years of the Messiah.