“There’s going to be a demonstration on Saturday.” Elie handed him a black-and-white photo, showing the face of a man with a beard and payos. “This is the ringleader. Red hair, burly fellow.”
“I remember him. He threw the first rock.”
“Beat him up and throw him in solitary confinement for a couple of days. I’ll join him in the cell once he’s softened up.”
Major Buskilah pocketed the photo. “There’s another one. The rabbi’s son. I’m going to bust his balls.”
“Little Jerusalem?” Elie was amused by the major’s sudden anger. “What’s he done to you?”
“That prick kicked me in the nuts!”
L emmy joined his father on the dais. He set up the instruments on a small folding table, together with a bottle of sweet red wine and a silver goblet. Redhead Dan sat on a large, elevated chair, his sleeping baby on his lap. Lemmy tried to ignore the many eyes that watched his every move.
Rabbi Gerster released the safety pin on the cloth diaper. He pulled up the tiny feet, removed the diaper, and chanted, “ Every male among you shall be circumcised. Thus shall the covenant remain as an everlasting mark in your flesh. ”
The hall erupted in a loud, “Amen!”
Lemmy handed him the pressure gauze.
The baby suddenly opened his eyes and saw Rabbi Gerster’s bearded face. The toothless gums opened wide, and he screamed.
The rabbi tied the strip of gauze around the base of the baby’s tiny penis. The fiddling must have stimulated it, because a stream of urine emerged, passing over Rabbi Gerster’s left shoulder. Redhead Dan chuckled nervously, and Lemmy held the blade forward. His father took it and brought it to the baby’s loins.
Redhead Dan cleared his throat. “ Blessed you be, Master of the Universe, for the sacred mitzvah of bringing my son, Shimon ben Dan, into the covenant. ”
Lemmy held the baby’s legs apart, Rabbi Gerster sliced off the foreskin with the blade, and blood gushed out of the cut.
Redhead Dan said, “ Oy! ”
The baby shrieked.
Lemmy let go of one of the baby’s legs and received the blade from his father. The rabbi picked up the wine goblet and recited: “ Bless you be, Master of the Universe, creator of the fruit of wine.” He sipped wine and bent down, bringing his lips to the fresh, bleeding wound. Lemmy reached for a fresh bandage.
The rabbi sucked on the open cut, turned his head, and spat a mouthful of wine and blood on the floor. Lemmy quickly pressed a bandage to the wound while his father swished a mouthful of red wine from the goblet and spat again. He wiped his lips and beard with his handkerchief. Meanwhile Lemmy fixed a clean diaper on the baby, dipped a piece of cotton in wine, and held it to the baby’s lips. The screaming stopped.
The men chanted, “Mazal Tov and Siman Tov — Good Fortune and Good Omen.”
Rabbi Gerster gulped from the wine, this time swallowing it, and joined the men’s singing. Lemmy cleaned the knife and collected the bloody bandages and the foreskin. Later he would bury it behind the synagogue.
The men helped the shaken Redhead Dan down from the bimah, and a circle formed around him, dancing and singing, as he carried his son to the foyer, where a cluster of women was waiting with the tearful young mother.
Lemmy felt his father’s arm on his shoulder. “I think you’re ready,” the rabbi said. “Next time, you’ll conduct the ceremony.”
Chapter 15
Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem — a Report on the Banality of Evil, left Lemmy confused and angry. Four years earlier, when the Nazi fugitive had been caught in Argentina and brought to stand trial in Jerusalem, Rabbi Gerster led the men in a special prayer of gratitude for the divine hand that had brought the mastermind of The Final Solution to judgment. But Arendt portrayed Eichmann as a man of average intelligence, mild temper, and clerical efficiency-a family man who happened to find himself at the top of a vast bureaucracy of mass extermination.
On the next Sabbath afternoon, he shared his frustration with Tanya.
“But it’s true,” she said. “What in retrospect seems like a monstrous enterprise was nothing but a day job for thousands of Germans. Their culture of obedience had conditioned these men to follow their leader’s orders and do a good day’s work-whether it was to manufacture trucks or to operate gas chambers.”
“That’s impossible! Any human being could tell the difference!” Lemmy clenched his fist. “Even a child knows that killing innocent people is evil!”
“But what if the people being killed aren’t human? What if they have been stigmatized for generations as evil, as pests, as the cause for all social and economical problems? What if eliminating them is your national duty, dictated by the state’s top authority?”
“A man has a mind to question authority.”
“Do the men of Neturay Karta question Rabbi Abraham Gerster’s authority?”
This argument shocked him, but before he could become angry, he noticed the hint of a smile on Tanya’s lips and understood she was trying to provoke him. “My father speaks for God. Do you believe in God?”
“That’s a trick question.” She took his hand. “Come, let’s have cake.”
They shared a lemon tart she had bought at a kosher bakery near Meah Shearim. It was January 1, 1967-her thirty-ninth birthday.
When he left, she gave him two thin volumes: Night and Dawn, both by author Elie Wiesel. He read them both that night, and was left agonizing over a quandary that went to the core of his faith: Why had God allowed the Nazis to do this? What was God’s purpose in causing so much suffering?
O ne afternoon, Rabbi Gerster posed a question from the podium: “Talmud says: Create a rabbi for yourself, and acquire a friend. I’ve always wondered: Why create a rabbi, but acquire a friend?”
Redhead Dan, sitting somewhere in the middle of the hall, raised his hand. “A friend could be acquired with gifts or favors. But a rabbi’s blessing isn’t for sale.”
“I disagree,” Cantor Toiterlich declared from the front row. “Talmud wouldn’t direct us to buy friends!”
Benjamin stood up. “Maybe acquire means that it’s mutual. But the relationship with one’s rabbi is created by one’s submission to a spiritual leader.”
“Well put, young man!” Rabbi Gerster took a contemplative stroll across the dais, the men’s eyes following him. “But as a rabbi, I’d rather have mutuality. So let me tell you a story.” He leaned on the lectern, looking around the hall. “A few years ago, a man named Aaron traveled a whole day from Haifa to talk to me. Temimah brought us tea, and I inquired of the sights he’d seen along the way, how the country was changing.”
Everyone knew of the vow he had taken not to leave Jerusalem until the Old City was freed from the Arabs.
Lemmy whispered in Benjamin’s ear, “Obedience to the rabbi-that’s the answer.”
Benjamin nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on Rabbi Gerster, up on the dais. Everyone’s face wore the same delighted expression. Lemmy imagined himself up at the podium. Could he be like his father, captivate hundreds of brilliant, inquisitive Talmudic scholars? And even if he could, did he want to?
“Finally,” the rabbi continued, “Aaron told me his problem. He was a God-fearing Jew, who worked hard as a bookkeeper to raise five children with his righteous wife, Miriam. One Friday night, he got out of bed to use the bathroom, and noticed that his wife wasn’t breathing!”
The men groaned, their bodies leaning forward in suspense.
“Complete silence on Miriam’s side of the bed!” Rabbi Gerster turned to the ark and made like he was begging for relief of Aaron’s agony. “So, even though it was Sabbath, he turned on the lights and discovered that his wife wasn’t even in bed!”
An explosion of laughter rocked the hall.
“Aaron wasn’t laughing! He ran through the house in panic, opening every door, turning on the lights in every room, until he found her asleep on the couch. He woke her up, and she started yelling at him for turning on the lights during Sabbath!”