The second plane was even shabbier than the first. Apparently, that was what it took to get to a country that didn’t exist, with people who barely had a pot to piss in. In the years after the war, every Jewish community in the world, other than those in the United States, was either wiped out or reeling. There were Jews stranded among the lands of slaughter. There were Jews being kicked out of countries they’d lived in for centuries in the Middle East. Of course, there were some Jews doing well in the US. And then there was a group of Jews that were fighting impossible odds to try to end the curse of living as a Jew in foreign lands.
The exhaustion of traveling was catching up with Rabbi Groh. So was the shot of Canadian whiskey he’d downed in the tiny terminal before boarding the flight. Peled was constantly looking through his files and seemed indefatigable. Rabbi Groh began thinking about what it would be like to meet actual survivors of the camps for the first time. He thought of his father’s descriptions of shtetl life. He imagined the scars that they would bear, the emaciated figures he had heard about in the papers and the news reels. He wondered how he, a rabbi from the tropical paradise of Miami, could communicate with those who had just emerged from the abyss. Such thought was disturbing, so the rabbi pivoted back to Peled.
“David,” he asked, “how many other American rabbis have you engaged so far for these missions?”
“Not many. A few.”
“Why?”
“Well, first of all, there are not too many reform or conservative rabbis who speak fluent Yiddish. I wish we could recruit more of them because we find that their pastoral skills are generally quite good. Many of the orthodox rabbis do speak Yiddish, and we have engaged a few of them. But many of them are not well trained as counselors, and it’s not easy to convince them to leave their congregations indefinitely. So they come up with lots of excuses. A few even say that if they arrive to the Holy Land, they will never be able to leave it. And they are afraid that they would abandon their communities in the States.”
Rabbi Groh wasn’t surprised. “How do those rabbis know their congregations like them so much? Maybe some of them would be thrilled to see their rabbi head overseas and not come back,” the rabbi joked, unsure if the serious man from Palestine had any sense of humor. Thus far there were no such indications.
The rabbi was pleasantly surprised when Peled responded with a wry retort of his own. “Is your congregation hoping you stay in Palestine too, Rabbi?” Peled said with a smile.
“I certainly hope not, but one never knows. I do hope my chances are good for a nice welcome party when I return. If they throw me one, David, you will definitely be invited.”
“Ah, Rabbi, I don’t have that luxury. My return to Palestine is permanent. I have no other home to go back to. You can go back to Miami, but for me there is only Eretz Yisrael.”
Rabbi Groh wasn’t sure if Peled’s comment was meant as a dig or was simply a matter-of-fact comment. Was Peled suggesting that Jews living outside of Palestine were inferior in their commitment to their people, or was he just hearing it that way? The truth was that his family had made a go of it in Palestine just a generation ago. Rabbi Groh wasn’t sure how Peled would react to hearing that his father had been born in the Old City of Jerusalem but left for America just two decades later. But it was important for him that Peled knew how deep his connection to the Holy Land was.
“You know, Peled, my father was born in Jerusalem.”
“Yes, Rabbi, I did know that. Don’t you think we did our homework? But other than hearing he ended up in the Bronx, I don’t know too much else about him.”
“I don’t know too much either, except that he needed to support his family. I am sure it was hard from him to leave Jerusalem, but a chance to come to America and make a living was probably too good to pass up.”
“Back then, I am sure you are right,” Peled replied. “But we are changing that, and someday soon there will be a synagogue on every corner in Jerusalem. And we will need all the rabbis we can get.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Sam answered.
“Actually, that’s your job, Rabbi,” Peled said with a rare smile.