Sabbath lunch felt as if it would never end. Lemmy couldn’t wait to go to Tanya’s house. But after the blessing, Rabbi Gerster told Lemmy to join the other young members of Neturay Karta, who were leaving soon for the demonstration.
A s soon as the group reached the intersection of Jaffa and King George streets, Lemmy noticed several police vans parked up the street.
Redhead Dan stepped into the road and waved his fists at passing cars. “Sabbath! Sabbath!”
The cars swerved into the opposite lane to avoid the blackgarbed man. The drivers cursed through open windows. Some raised their middle finger.
Surrounded by other Neturay Karta men, his flaming beard and payos flapping in the wind, Redhead Dan shouted, “Sabbath! Sabbath!” He chased slow-moving cars and pounded on them with his fists. “ He who violated the Sabbath is destined to die! Stone him with rocks until his soul leaves his body! ”
The quote was correct, Lemmy knew, but Talmud disfavored capital punishment, saying that a Sanhedrin, a rabbinical court, which issued one death sentence in seventy years, was a deadly Sanhedrin.
The parked police vans turned on their flashing lights, their doors opened, and policemen jumped out. They put on their helmets and held up their shields and truncheons.
Redhead Dan grabbed Lemmy’s arm, pulled him up front, and yelled, “Our rabbi sent his son! God will punish you if you touch the rabbi’s son!”
Lemmy tried to free his arm. “Are you crazy? We can’t fight them!”
“God will fight for us!”
“They knew we were coming!”
“Don’t worry, the whole Zionist army couldn’t silence God’s voice!”
“It’s a trap!”
Redhead Dan was too worked up to listen. “The Zionists are afraid of us! They’re afraid of you, Gerster!”
Lemmy looked across the street at the policemen. The major stepped forward and smirked, swinging his baton.
Another attempt to release his arm from Redhead Dan’s grip failed. The young man didn’t even notice. He pulled Lemmy after him while the group clustered tightly, their faces touched by fear.
The policemen lined up along the opposite curb.
Redhead Dan dragged Lemmy with him to the side of the road and lifted a stone as big as a fist. “ He, who violated My Sabbath, stone him to death! ”
Lemmy shouted, “Don’t!”
“It’s God’s war!”
Additional police cars blocked the surrounding streets. Traffic ceased, and the men of Neturay Karta faced the policemen in riot gear and truncheons.
Major Buskilah held a tin cone to his mouth. “Disperse immediately!”
In response, Redhead Dan raised his hand, reached back, and hurled the rock across the street. It flew in a wide arc and hit one of the policemen, who cried and fell down. Major Buskilah lowered the tin cone and shouted orders to his troops.
“God is with us! Repent, or go to hell!”
Across the street, the injured policeman was carried away, his cracked helmet remaining behind.
Redhead Dan took another step toward the middle of the road. “Sinners must be punished!”
Lemmy threw all his weight backward, certain that his arm was going to snap out of his shoulder. He saw Major Buskilah signal his men, and three things happened at once: The policemen rushed forward, Lemmy put his foot aside and tripped Redhead Dan, and the men of Neturay Karta fled.
The policemen circled the two of them. Redhead Dan got up, clenching his fists, and the major swung his truncheon and hit him on the side of the head. As he fell down, the truncheon landed on his back and thighs, again and again, making a sickening, hollow sound, while Redhead Dan screamed.
“Stop it!” Lemmy lunged toward the major, but two policemen restrained him.
The beating continued until Redhead Dan stopped screaming.
Major Buskilah gave him a kick, which produced no response from the unconscious man. The major turned to Lemmy, panting, his face red, the truncheon clutched in his hand. “Who’s laughing now, punk?”
“Satan, probably.” Lemmy didn’t lower his eyes.
The major holstered his truncheon, took Lemmy’s arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his black coat, exposing the red skin left by Redhead Dan’s grip. He showed the mark to his men. “Looks like evidence of resistance, boys?”
They laughed, and Major Buskilah shoved him. “Go home, boy. Tell your father that the Zionist police treated you fairly. Go on!”
Lemmy picked up his hat. “What about him?” He gestured at Redhead Dan.
“We’ll take care of him,” Major Buskilah said. “Go home!”
Chapter 18
Elie Weiss waited until Monday night, allowing Redhead Dan two days to stew in pain and fear in the windowless cell at the police lockup. Major Buskilah’s deputies pushed Elie into the cell, where he collapsed on the floor, wrapped up in his beggar’s cloak.
The young Neturay Karta man was sitting in the corner on the concrete floor, cuddled in his black coat, mumbling Psalms from memory. A light bulb hung from a wire, illuminating his bruised face.
Elie shuffled to the wall and propped himself up to a sitting position. “May God burn their souls in hell!”
“Amen.” Redhead Dan coughed. “What happened to you?”
“The Zionists.” The fake beard itched, and he scratched quickly. “They don’t like what I have to say.”
“They arrested you for talking?”
“Beat me up, too. With sticks, for speaking the words of the Prophet Ezekieclass="underline" And He said to me, prophesy upon these bones, and tell them: Listen, dry bones, to the word of God! ”
Hearing the biblical words intoned in the manner of a learned scholar seemed to reassure Redhead Dan. “But why did the Vision of the Dry Bones upset them so much?”
“They said the prime minister couldn’t sleep, that I was keeping him up.”
“You recited Ezekiel by his house at night?”
“Is he home during the day?”
Redhead Dan described his own painful experience. Elie’s sympathy was forthcoming as he listened to a lengthy rant against the state and its sinful ways. He steered the conversation to personal facts, asking the ultra-Orthodox man about his life in Meah Shearim, his family, and his studies. Elie reciprocated by sharing his own version of personal history, a mix of fact and fiction, of growing up in an Orthodox family in Germany, embracing modern socialist ideas, running away with a Zionist group to start a kibbutz near Lake Kinneret in Palestine, farming the land, fighting the British army for independence, and risking his life in the wars against the Arabs in 1948 and 1956. But Elie’s invented biography veered off the common path of secular Zionism when he had supposedly regained his faith in God and started observing the Sabbath. The kibbutz expelled him with nothing but a few items of clothing and a sandwich, which he couldn’t eat as it was not kosher. He settled in Jerusalem, working in construction and preaching Ezekiel, which had presently landed him in jail.
They spoke about the heretic Zionists, who were about to legalize abortions. As their discussion went from conceptual ideas to concrete facts, Elie led Redhead Dan to the eventual conclusion that, as the ultimate leader of the Zionist state, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was responsible for a legislation process that would cause the murder of unborn, yet viable, Jewish children. “It’s driven from the top,” Elie said. “The prime minister must be made an example for all sinners!”
The Talmudic scholar in Redhead Dan emerged, and he quoted a whole section of Jewish law dealing with the concept of Rodef, where Talmud required the preemptive killing of a Jew who is actively attempting to hurt other Jews. The blood of such a pursuer must be spilled under the concept of collective self-defense before he succeeded in his attempt to hurt other Jews.