"Just a moment, Baruch. There's something burning in the kitchen."
Rushing in, he found the kettle alive and well, shining happily on the marble countertop. So it was yet another false alarm. But in his haste he knocked the black transistor radio off the shelf and broke it. Returning, panting, to the phone he said:
"Everything's okay. I'm listening."
It turned out that the old man just wanted to tell him that he had found some workmen, who would be arriving the following week to replaster and paint the flat. "They're Arabs from Abu Dis village, so from your point of view it's strictly kosher, Efraim." Which reminded the old man of a charming Hasidic story. Why, according to Jewish tradition, are the righteous in Paradise permitted to choose between feasting on the Leviathan or on the wild ox? The answer is that there may always be some ultrafussy Jew who will insist on eating fish because he can't rely on the kashrut of the Almighty himself.
He went on to explain to Fima the ostensible point and the true point of this joke, until Fima had the impression that his father's distinctive smell had managed to infiltrate the telephone wires: it was an East European cocktail, combining a whiff of perfume with a lungful of unaired quilts, a smell of boiled fish and carrots, and the fragrance of sticky liqueurs. He was filled with revulsion, which he was ashamed of, and with the ancient urge to provoke his father, to challenge everything that was sacred to him until he lost his temper. And he said:
"Listen, Dad. Listen carefully. First, about the Arabs. I've already explained to you a thousand times that I don't think they're great saints. Can't you understand that the difference between us is not about kosher or nonkosher, or about Hell and Paradise; it's simply a matter of common humanity — theirs and ours."
Baruch agreed at once:
"Naturally," he intoned in a Talmudic singsong, "nobody would deny that the Arab too is created in the divine image. Except the Arabs themselves, Fimuchka: to our regret they do not comport themselves like human beings created in the image of God."
Fima instantly forgot his solemn vow to refrain at all cost from political arguments with his father. He set out to explain, once and for all, passionately, that we must not become like the drunken Ukrainian carter who beat his horse to death when the beast stopped pulling his cart. Are the Arabs in the Territories our workhorses? What did you imagine, that they would go on hewing our wood and drawing our water forever and ever, amen? That they would be content to play the part of our domestic servants to all eternity? Are they not human beings too? Every Zambia and Gambia is an independent state nowadays, so why should the Arabs in the Territories continue come Hell or high water quietly scrubbing our shit-houses, sweeping our streets, washing dishes in our restaurants, wiping arses in our geriatric wards, and then saying thank you? How would you feel if the meanest Ukrainian anti-Semite planned a future like that for the Jews?
The phrase "domestic servants," or maybe it was "the meanest Ukrainian ami-Semite," reminded the old man of a story that was actually set in a small town in the Ukraine. As usual the narration dragged behind it a long train of explanations and morals.
Finally Fima gave up in despair and screamed that he didn't need any decorators anyway and that Baruch should stop poking his nose into his life all the time, subsidizing, plastering, matchmaking. "You may have forgotten, Dad, but I happen to be fifty-four years old."
When he had finished, the old man replied placidly:
"Very nice, my dear. Very nice. It seems I was wrong. I sinned, I erred, I transgressed. In that case I shall still try to find you a nice Jewish painter. Without any taint of colonial exploitation. Assuming that such a paragon still exists in our state."
"That's just the point," Fima crowed triumphantly. "In the whole of this miserable country of ours you can't find a single Jewish builder or male nurse or gardener. That's what your Territories have done to the Zionist dream! The Arabs are building the Land for us while we sit back gorging ourselves on the Leviathan and the wild ox. And then we go out and murder them, and their children too, just because they have the gall not to be happy and grateful for the privilege of unblocking drains for the chosen people till the Messiah comes."
"The Messiah," Baruch reflected sadly. "Perhaps he is already among us. Some say he is. And maybe it's just because of fine fellows like you that he hasn't made himself known yet. There's a story about Reb Uri of Strelisk, the Holy Seraph, the grandfather of Uri Tsvi Greenberg the poet, who was once wandering lost in the forest…"
"Let him wander!" Fima cut in. "Let him stay lost forever! And the grandson too. And the Messiah as well, for that matter, to say nothing of his ass."
The old man coughed and cleared his throat, like an old teacher about to hold forth, but instead of lecturing Fima he asked sadly: "So that's your humanism? That's the voice of the peace camp? The lover of mankind hopes that his fellow man will be lost in the forest? The defender of Islam prays that saintly Jews will perish?"
Fima was momentarily abashed. He regretted wishing misfortune on the rabbi lost in the forest. But he quickly rallied and counterattacked with a surprise flanking movement:
"Listen to this, Baruch. Listen carefully. Apropos of Islam. I want to read you word for word what it says here in the encyclopedia about India."
"India yourself!" chorded the old man. "But what's India got to do with it? The demon that's got into you and your friends, Fimuchka, isn't from India; it's all too European. It's a crying shame that precious young people like you have suddenly decided to sell the entire Jewish heritage for a mess of pottage of sham European pacifism. You want to be Jesus of Nazareth. You want to teach the Christians a lesson in turning the other cheek. You love our enemies and you hate Uri Tsvi and even his grandfather the Holy Seraph. But we've had it up to here with the famous European humanism. Our backs still carry the scars of your dear Western civilization. We've been on the receiving end of it, all the way from Kishinev to Auschwitz. Let me tell you a poignant tale about a cantor who was once marooned — it shouldn't happen to us! — on a desert island, and at the High Holy Days of all times. There stands a solitary Jew in the midst of the world in the midst of the times and wonders…"
"Hold on a minute," Fima erupted, "you with your wondering cantors. Chmielnicki and Hitler equal Western civilization the way India equals an Arab state. What a ridiculous idea! If it weren't for Western civilization, for your information, my dear sir, there would not be left of us one that pisseth against the wall. Who do you think sacrificed tens of millions of lives to defeat Hitler? Wasn't it Western civilization? Including Russia? Including America? Who was it who saved us, your holy rabbi from Strelisk? Was it the Messiah who gave us a state? Is it Uri Tsvi who makes us a present of tanks and jet planes and pours three billion dollars on us every year, as pocket money, so that we can carry on behaving like hooligans? Make a note of this, Dad: Every time in history that the Jews have gone out of their minds and started navigating their way through this world with messianic charts instead of real, universal ones, millions of them have paid with their lives. Apparently we still haven't managed to get it into the famous Jewish head that the Messiah is really our exterminating angel. That's it in a nutshell, Baruch: the Messiah is our angel of death. So it's perfectly okay to disagree about where we want to go; that is a legitimate subject for argument. But on one unshakable condition: Wherever we decide to go, we must use real, universal charts, not Messianic ones."
The old man suddenly gave a little whistle, as though in amazement at Fima's wisdom or his own foolishness. He coughed, he groaned, he may have intended to interject a few words, but Fima was already carried away: "Why the hell are we all brainwashed into believing that the concept of human equality is something alien to Judaism, a flawed goyish commodity, tainted Christian pacifism, whereas the muddle-headed mishmash brewed up by some messianic rabbi, the grandfather of Gush Emunim, who has cobbled together a patchwork of scraps from Hegel, Judah Halevi, and Rabbi Loew of Prague, is suddenly considered to be the pure elixir of Judaism, straight from Mount Sinai? What is this? Sheer lunacy! Thou shalt do no murder' is alien to Judaism, according to you, it's untouchable? Christian pacifism. Whereas Rabbi Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, that proto-Nazi, is all of a sudden the genuine Jewish heritage! Let me tell you, Dad, Yosef Haim Brenner had more Jewishness in his little finger than all your frock-coated fossils and your psychopaths with their knit skullcaps. One group pisses on the state and says it's illegitimate because the Messiah hasn't come yet; the other group pisses on the state and says it's just a temporary scaffolding that we can dismantle now that the Messiah's standing at the gate. Both groups piss on Thou shalt do no murder' because they've got more important fish to fry: banning autopsies, or discovering the tomb of our ancestress Jezebel."