The Eternal Jew’s Tale, #204, Crystal Haggadah, 15

In this episode tempers rise at Kibbutz Teruah’s seder.

The Eternal Jew’s Tale
A Pesakh Montage, The Crystal Haggadah
Midrashbase

Kibbutz Teruah Midrashim, the Eretz, 1950 CE, Part 2

Aton keeps trying to interrupt but many ‘shush’s’ restrain his zeal. But finally his boiling pot overflows:

“You talkin’ Suhar? Messiah? No way. Jus’ an Arab livin’ an Arab life; jus’ a peasant workin’ her simple chores; jus’ a fixer doin’ half-hearted fixes; jus’ a mender sewin’ another patch; jus’ a local; you could never hear two prutahs jinglin’ in her bag; jus’ a bedouin who settled down for a year or two, then she drifted on an’ gone. You know that as well as me. That’s the woman you’re messiahfyin’?”

Mayan frowns and shakes his head.

“From the tower I can see them a mile away. A moment later they’re in the barn, now in the orchard waterin’ trees. How’d they get to the cucumber patch? And ever playin’ in the sweltering shade beneath the tower, squabble and squawk, those three children, like three geese. Here, no here, no, somewhere else, like dust devils risin’ out of the sand.

“Jabril, a keffiyeh wrappin’ his head; Hassan, bare head without a shirt. No, it’s Jabril without the shirt, Hassan, keffiyeh around his neck. Orbit each other like double stars in wild and unpredictable swings. Jabril laughin’, brash, loud; Hassan pensive, quick to lash out, or was it Jabril the pensive one?

“A molotov cocktail thrown one night burned our granary to the ground.

“‘Fedayeen. No place is safe.’

“We doubled our watch, set posts for a fence, shoulder to shoulder with Jabril and Hassan.

“Such little cherubs playing by the pond, barefoot, rough and tumble in the sand, cursin’ a storm like the men in town, grinnin’, hopin’ we wouldn’t tell their mum. Was it Jabril with a breathy lisp?

“Before their upper lips turned dark with first growth, they turned their will to steady work at the kibbutz, clearin’ stone from the rocky fields, brakin’ the hardened face of the land —

“what, two thousand years of constant neglect —

“mixin’ concrete, haulin’ hay, sunbaked backs and iron arms.

“So, when did Hassan stop workin’ here? I heard he opened a shop in Jenin repairin’ tractors and drillin’ wells. But someone told me they saw him around, but I suspect it was just Jabril.

“They always seemed young boys in my eyes, playful or pensive, but just little boys…”

And Aton again interrupts,

“You talkin’ Hassan? You talkin’ Jabril? Just little boys an’ sunbaked necks? A nuisance they were, barefoot brats. Eyes on our storerooms, ears on our plans, fingers rummagin’ thru our drawers, keys gone missin’; where’d they go? All day fixin’ their motor bike, and petrol missin’; where’d it go? I saw them mixin’ with toughs in town. I saw them, blown by a bitter wind. I saw them driftin’ to the Brotherhood.* An’ you all saw it as well as me.”
* Muslim Brotherhood

Then Ronit stood, glaring around; a woman to be reckoned with.

“You seem to forget why we’re here. There’s pharaoh’s armies surroundin’ us, a simple fact and right in our face. You don’t like it? Too damn bad. But most of you don’t seem to know there’s pharaohs livin’ inside of us. Goddam pharaohs everywhere. Pharaohs to drive us into the sea, and pharaohs who don’t want us to see! Don’t want us to see another fact: our self-hate and self-disgust, that we feel hate like pharaohs do, that we have shit inside us too. You don’t like it? Whatta you want? You wanna go be victims again? You wanna beg on your knees to live, and get shot in the head anyway? You wanna return to that easy life of no choice, of no hope, so you can avoid makin’ a choice, so you won’t need the will to live? I ain’t askin’ much of you; don’t stretch your mind, don’t strain your eye. You don’t need to look too far. The border’s just a couple of miles, and just beyond, a million of them, and here we are, not a thousand of us. Toughen up or you’ll be dead. You don’t like it? Get the hell out.”

And down on the table she slammed her fist, but none of us flinched a bit. We lifted the fourth cup and drank, and then rose up and got to work.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the next episode, the table of contents for the Crystal Haggadah, and then we move on to the Messiah Tractates.