All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (64 page)
Read All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs Online
Authors: Elie Wiesel
My pessimism was ill-founded. The war turned in favor of the Israel Defense Force shortly after it began. I told my friends I was going even though I had no idea how I would cover the travel costs.
Yedioth
certainly would not, and Simon Weber at the
Forverts
announced that he would be delighted finally to have a war correspondent, though he would have to be unpaid. This trip would deplete my savings account. But that was not my only problem: getting there was not easy. Most airlines had suspended their flights to Lod, and seats on El Al were at a premium. It was, however, the only company where I had some connections, and on the afternoon of June 6 luck was on my side and I obtained passage on a flight from Paris to Lod. I jumped in a cab, rushed to Kennedy Airport, and caught a TWA flight to Paris. I changed planes in Orly and was the last passenger to board the El Al flight, which took off just as I boarded. Exhausted, I closed my eyes. A short nap would do me good. Everyone already knew that Israel was out of danger, but my own anguish was not so easy to quell. Sure, I was no longer afraid of Israel’s demise and my own with it. Instead, my fear was of the kind that comes over us at the approach of the unknown, the anxiety that comes with the certainty of reaching a turning point,
a shift in life’s pace and intensity. I knew I was about to live a new chapter in Jewish history.
A pretty stewardess lifted my morale. She brought me coffee and whispered in confidence that she knew who I was. A little later she mentioned that she had read and liked my book. In the singular. I knew that if I asked her, “Which one?” she would be embarrassed, so I merely thanked her again. I tried to doze off, but the young stewardess had other ideas. Since regulations did not permit her to nap, she decided to keep me company. She told me she read a lot, “especially between Paris and New York, when the passengers are asleep and the cabin is quiet.” Usually, she said, she read quickly, “but I liked your book so much I forced myself to slow down. In fact, there was something in the fourth chapter I didn’t understand, Mr. Schwarz-Bart.”
My humility back in place, I told her she was making a mistake. “I’m not André Schwarz-Bart.” She waved away my denial: “I know you’re traveling incognito. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” I repeated that I was not Schwarz-Bart. She smiled knowingly and went to bring me another coffee, a snack, and some fruit. Loath to usurp a great writer’s identity and fame, I resolved to press on. “Listen,” I told her, “your mistake is understandable. André and I have a lot in common. To start with, we’re both writers. And some of my works are concerned with the same subject as his. We even have the same publisher. In fact, we’re friends, and some even say we look a little alike. So it’s only natural for you to confuse us.” She didn’t believe a word of what I said, and by now her admiration had turned into affection. “I thought I knew all about you and your work, Mr. Schwarz-Bart, but I never realized you had such a good sense of humor.”
Twenty minutes before we landed, the stewardess was back, as pretty as before but less affable. Earlier she had leaned toward me and spoken softly. Now she stood up straight and raised her voice so the whole cabin could hear her accuse me of lying to her: “I don’t know who you are, sir—” “It’s about time,” I interjected, but she went on triumphantly, “—but I know you’re not André Schwarz-Bart.” I said: “Prove it.” Savoring the moment, she paused dramatically before delivering the final blow: “You’re not André Schwarz-Bart, because André Schwarz-Bart is sitting right there!” I looked over to where she was pointing, and there was my friend André, in a seat three rows behind me. I unbuckled my seat belt, made my way past the stewardess, and hurried over to him. We fell into each other’s arms. “André, what
are you doing here?” He asked me the same question. Even as the pilot announced that we were about to land, we were still standing and talking in the aisle, not hearing the stewardess, who was asking us to sit down. What were we doing here? We knew we had come for the same reason and with the same aim: to be there and to testify.
My people’s quest was mine, its memory my country. Everything that happens to it affects me. I have lived its anguish and been scorched by the fire of its dreams. I belonged to the community of night, the kingdom of the dead, and henceforth I would also belong to the wondrous, exhilarating community of the eternal city of David. It is incumbent upon the Jewish writer to be witness to all that has haunted the people of Israel from its beginnings. That is his role—not to judge but to testify. And in our tradition the responsibilities of the witness are greater than those of the judge; if the testimony is true, the verdict will be just.
The next day, before the reconquered Wall in the Old City, I began writing A
Beggar in Jerusalem
.
It was an unforgettable day War was still raging in the Sinai and had not yet broken out in the Golan, but everyone’s imagination was fired by the long-awaited liberation of Jerusalem. “The Temple Mount is ours!” shouted Colonel Motta Gur, commander of the parachutists. His cry was heard on every radio in every tank and vehicle. Soldiers and officers burst into tears. People wept throughout the Holy Land. Suddenly the war seemed suspended. Isolated Jordanians were still firing from rooftops, but thousands of Jews rushed to the Old City. No force could deter them.
Rabbis and merchants, Talmudic students and farmers, officers and schoolchildren, artists and scholars—all left whatever they were doing and converged on the Wall, and, when they reached it, kissed the stones and shouted ancient prayers and requests. On this day everybody was running.
I did too. Never did I run so fast, never did I say “Amen” with so much fervor as when I heard the parachutists reciting the minha prayer. On that day, more than ever, I grasped the true meaning of
ahavat Israel
, devotion to the people of Israel.
An old man, who looked as if he were stepping out of a novel I was to write later, murmured as if to himself, “Do you know how we managed to defeat the enemy? Six million Jewish souls prayed for us.” I touched his arm. “Who are you?” I asked. He looked at me gently: “I am one who prays.”
Entries from my (Yiddish) diary of the time:
… Before telling the story, it is incumbent on us to recall its genesis: the first miracle, the first prayer, the first spark of the fire that lit its path. We must tell everything, but I don’t know where to begin. Doesn’t the Bible itself begin with a
beth
, and not an
aleph?
So be it. But this I know: Now, more than ever, we must begin with Jerusalem, city of a thousand generations of men who dreamed of deliverance and paved the way for today’s heroes, Jerusalem, ancient and renewed city bridging the beginning of beginnings and the end of time.
To be sure, young warriors have died to sanctify His name on other fronts, shedding their blood for their people. Young men and women who only yesterday spent their evenings in the nightclubs of Tel Aviv have suddenly taken their places in the ranks of the Righteous. They are bearing Jewish history on their shoulders. And some have fallen under its weight.
But Jerusalem comes first. Jerusalem is the absolute priority. All roads lead to it. It is in Jerusalem that our people have been initiated into what our mystics call
aliyah neshama
, or ascension of the collective soul. Our ancestors have helped them lift themselves ever higher. Hence the question: Where and with whom to begin? With King David, who with his strength and his Psalms built this city dedicated to peace and eternity? With the Zealots who fought for it? With Rabbi Akiba and his fellow martyrs, who by going to their deaths sanctified the Jewish people’s faith in their mission?
When did I first come to love Jerusalem? I cannot say. The poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevy expressed the Jew’s nostalgia in his song: The Jewish heart lies forever in the East, though we may find ourselves far away, in this or that region, in this or that continent.
The Jew in me loves Jerusalem with a different, unique love. A lullaby my mother sang to me before I was old enough to speak told of the widow Zion who awaited her beloved alone on the grounds of the Temple in Jerusalem. Like her—with her—I awaited the legendary little she-goat
and her offerings, awaited her so that she might lead me to this city which breathes Jewish life and where the stones themselves tell tales of Jewish kings and princes of our often glorious, often sad, but always exhilarating past.
I remember: At
heder
my friends and I would let our imagination soar and allow it to lead us through secret tunnels buried in the Carpathians, to the land of Israel. It would be enough to pronounce a “name,” and invisible gates would open before us. And then, at once, persecution, hatred, and fear would end. Master of the Universe, we asked, please send us an emissary to reveal this holy, all-powerful “name” to us. But, sadly, no emissary ever appeared to enlighten us.
* * *
And here I am in Jerusalem. It took me a long time to get here, but here I am. I dream that I’m dreaming. I dream that words become jumbled on my lips and that they burn my tongue.
And yes, it is both a privilege and a duty to speak of Jerusalem.
Of the heart that is full, so full that if it doesn’t open it will burst. Of the alleyways of the Old City, which have made me want to sing like a madman, to sob like a child. To paraphrase Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, I will have to make words of my tears.
Nothing must be omitted from this chronicle of the events of June 1967. All must be retained, transmitted, shared. From beginning to end, though the story began before the beginning and the end is far from being the end. This is a story that reaches beyond the individual and transcends the moment, just as Jerusalem is something more than the houses and shadows that inhabit it.…
Mid-June 1967, Sharm al-Sheikh. A sandstorm moves over this area that was the technical and legal pretext for the recent hostilities. The base commander welcomes us and we wait for the storm to pass. The officers make no secret of their frustration: This site was taken without a struggle, Egyptian artillery failing to fire a single shot.
We notice the wedding preparations of a groom who is stationed here, the bride in the Sinai. A military chaplain will perform the ceremony. A tent is used as synagogue. I feel like laughing. The whole
world has been in jeopardy because of this island, and now all that matters is the impending wedding.
All over the country they sing the praises of the valiant fighters who saved the nation:
“Kol hakavod le-Tsahal”
(All honor to Tsahal, the Israel Defense Force) is the slogan on all the walls, the headline in all the newspapers. But knowledgeable observers also speak of the victors’ melancholy.
In the speech General Yitzhak Rabin delivered at the end of June on Mount Scopus, I find the same moving restraint as in another address he delivered twenty-six years later in Washington, in the presence of President Bill Clinton and Yasir Arafat:
It is strange to note to what extent Israel’s fighters do not feel joy. They seem to be closed to joy. Some try to show gaiety, but their heart is not in it. Others do not even feel like trying, for they have seen not only glory but the suffering that goes with it. They have seen their closest comrades fall bloodied and maimed.… But that isn’t all. The price paid by the enemy also weighs upon our soldiers. Conditioned by its past, the Jewish people has never been able to feel a conqueror’s pride or victor’s exaltation.…
In
A Beggar in Jerusalem
I echo Rabin’s reflections on the sadness felt by the Israelis in the face of the vanquished Arabs, especially the children who saw them as victors and therefore as capable of doing them harm. I saw such children in the Old City, encountered them in Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus. They were afraid of us, of me. For the first time in my life, children were afraid of me.
From my travel diary:
The war is over, and in the turmoil I seek joy but do not find it. I encounter only beings with grave faces and wounded eyes. Shaken by the experience they have just lived, they seem unable to grasp its implications. It seems the stuff of legend rather than history. The accumulated anguish and anger before the fury, the reversal of roles: it all happened too fast, too suddenly. Victors and vanquished will need time to catch their breath and absorb the meaning of the event. David has vanquished Goliath and now
wonders how he did it. No one knows, he less than anyone else. His astonishment, more than his victory, should arouse admiration and hope alike.…
… The victors, in fact, would have preferred to forgo battle. Saddened, they returned to their homes without hate or pride, disconcerted and withdrawn. The world has never seen such victors as these.
… This event has had a moral and perhaps a mystical dimension. I understood that the day I found myself in the Old City of Jerusalem and saw thousands of men and women parading before the Wall, sole vestige of the Temple. I was struck by how awed and contemplative they looked. Suddenly I thought I saw, intermingled with the living, the dead converge from the four corners of exile, from all the cemeteries and all memories. Some seemed to emerge from my childhood, others from my imagination. Mute madmen and dreaming beggars, masters and their disciples, cantors and their allies, the Righteous and their enemies, drunks and storytellers, children dead and immortal, all the characters of all my books—yes, they had followed me here to manifest their presence and to testify like me, through me! Then they left, and I had to summon them back.
The war was over, and I went home via Paris, where I took part in a highly popular television program called “Dossiers de l’écran.” Every week the program featured a film followed by a debate. That week the film
Exodus
was shown and the debate was devoted to the Six-Day War. The moderator, Armand Jammot, had invited four Arabs (not yet called Palestinians) and four Jews (three of them Israeli), to take part in a dialogue. To our surprise, the Arabs refused to sit at the same table with us, insisting instead on speaking from a neighboring studio. We decided to withdraw from the program in protest, but before leaving, I made a statement which went something like this: