An Orphan’s Tale

I saw him again today for the 1st time in 40 days. He walked by me 3 times and didn’t see me. He walked 3 steps ahead of Dr. Fogel, knocking branches aside. Dr. Fogel looked very happy. He kept stopping and closing his eyes and breathing in the fresh air through his nostrils. He looked younger than he did since I remember him.

What surprised me: how old Charlie looked in comparison! Steam came out of his mouth when he breathed and talked. He wore a blue wool hat pulled down over his ears like a Canadian lumberman and his black curls stuck out on his forehead. His eyes were moving fast, and he was excited by what he was seeing but I could still tell how much he had changed. He didn’t look like a young man anymore. I felt so bad for him that I wanted to cry out to him to take care of himself, but I stayed where I was on the ground, covered with leaves.

I could see how much he missed me by the worry in his brow and this is what I thought: IF I CAN’T HAVE HIM THEN NOBODY ELSE WILL.

I followed them from a long distance. Charlie had a rolled up map in his hand but I knew he was thinking of me and wondering whether or not I exist. These are the places he might guess he’d find me in: the deserted Home, Dr. Fogel’s house, the basement of Murray’s School, the woods around Anita’s house, the basement or empty apartment of 1 of Mr. Mittleman’s buildings, here on Dr. Fogel’s land.

I couldn’t hear anything they said to each other and I liked it better that way. He must see that my plan worked even more successfully than I’d hoped for and that now I have no identity or existence at all. My fate is truly in his hands, if he wants me.

While I followed them I had fun imagining myself telling him about what I’d thought and how I imagined the future. I know how scared he is of dying young. I saw myself telling him that nothing would happen to me if I murdered him because I didn’t exist. I would tell the judge and jury what I told myself, that if I couldn’t have him nobody else could. My defense would be this: How can you convict a boy who was so abandoned that even a Jewish orphanage tried to destroy him?

They would ask me: Why did Charlie Sapistein take you in? And I would tell them that he wasn’t there to give an answer.

An old joke that Sol told me: “Chutzpa” is when a boy murders his mother and father and asks for mercy from the court because he’s an orphan.

What would Dr. Fogel and Sol feel toward one another if they met at Charlie’s funeral?

They went to the area where the old cabins are and Charlie made a motion with his hand which showed he would level all of them. They looked into the cabin where I stayed last night but I leave no traces. I have everything I need in my sack and pockets: my Tephillin and Talis and prayer book and PIRKAY AVOS and money and an extra shirt and set of underwear and candy bars for energy and the package for Anita.

I didn’t go into the clearing where the cabins are when they went inside for fear one of them would look out a window and see me. I sat on a stump and tried to imagine Dr. Fogel’s father and his settlement living here 50 years ago. There are no traces of their existence in any of the buildings. There are no books or carvings on walls or pieces of newspaper.

After they left I walked into town and mailed the stopwatch to Anita. Then I went into a supermarket and bought food for supper. It’s more difficult being Kosher because I can’t eat meat and I have to cheek the canned foods and the packages to make sure they’re all right. I look for things with eggs in them, for protein. I eat a lot of cheese and canned mackerel and day-old bread.

At night I take out the lantern I bought from under the cabin floor and light it and I’m alone. I’m hundreds of yards from any road so nobody can see the light through the woods. The lantern is a blue camping lantern with a gas cartridge and a piece of mesh nylon called a mantel which has phosphorous dust on it and gives off a strong white light for me to read by. I do no cooking because I don’t want the odors to attract animals. In the mornings I carry my garbage out to the road.

What I believe: If he came once he’ll come again! If Dr. Fogel came with him that must mean Charlie started putting on Tephillin in the morning or praying. I have enough money for another 3 weeks, the way I live. The less I eat the smaller my stomach and intestines become and the less food I need to survive on. I looked at my reflection in a mirror in the supermarket and I’m thinner, but not that much to worry about myself.

I look better than he does. I have lots of sayings saved up for him, for us to listen to together. Here’s one, to explain why it’s all right for his friends from the Home to treat him the way they do: “A man’s gifts make room for him.”

A question to think about: If I knew the end of the world were coming tomorrow would I want to stay here alone or be with him?

My answer now, when I’m alone: I would want to stay alone. But would my answer be the same if I didn’t see him come for me today and if I didn’t know he’ll be back?

Things he could do with the land if he buys it from Dr. Fogel: sell it to the state or government for conservation. Build a planned community for people who want to flee the city. Sell it to an organization like a charity or religious group to get income for himself every year after 40. Make a deal with Mr. Mittleman and divide it into lots for subdevelopments.

A better idea: Buy some expensive land near the property and build garden apartments so that this land’s value increases, and then sell this land!

To tell Dr. Fogel: This is what the Rabbis taught: “God, the people of Israel, and the land of Israel are one.”

I said Minchah in the afternoon and Maariv when the sun went down. I wash before I eat and after I eat. I say a prayer after I eat and after I go to the bathroom. Indoors I wear a Yamulka at all times. I put on my Tephillin in the mornings just in case Mr. Mittleman is right about my age.

Will I ever stop wanting to know? Can any other human being understand how much it presses against my life for me to feel I’ll never never know! Even if someone should read this would that someone understand what I feel?

What would he think if he knew I lied to him. I HAVE NO MOTHER AND NO MEMORY OF ANY MOTHER.

I like sleeping on the wood floor. I sleep better without any kind of artificial heat. I sleep on top of the winter coat he bought for me which has an insulated lining with half of it on top of me.

What I wonder about: If we really couldn’t be together and if I really meant what I said and if I crept up on him 1 night in his bed while he was sleeping and if his eyes opened at the last moment and were staring into my eyes, would I have the courage to do it?

It rained all day today and I stayed inside the cabin. I had to read standing up so I could look out the window in case I saw them coming, but they never came.

I wrote a letter to Ephraim and told him what I imagined I would do to Charlie, but I tore it up when I was done.

If Hannah knew I was here I bet she would run away and try to live with me, that’s how young and foolish she is.

It was raining too hard to walk through the woods and get new food. I collected rainwater in an empty can. I kept thinking I was going to get hungrier, but I never did. I made a sandwich out of 2 pieces of bread, bits of apple, and peanuts.

I was too worried to do a lot of reading or memorizing. I’m learning how to let my mind do nothing when it wants to.

The rain ended in the middle of last night and I heard it stop and I never fell back to sleep. I started to walk out of the woods even before the sun came up and I was in town before the stores were open. I went into an all-night diner and ordered hot chocolate and toasted English muffins with jam. The odor of frying bacon and eggs and griddle cakes was VERY tempting. The eggs and griddle cakes would not be Kosher because they would be fried in the same pan and on the same griddle that was used for “Trayf.”

A package store was open when I finished my hot chocolate and muffins and I went in and bought cheese, apples, grapes, a can of tuna fish, and a small head of lettuce. I have to be sure I don’t get weak. The man asked me if I wanted to work in his store after school and I said no. I didn’t like the way he looked at me and after I walked out I went around to the side and peered through the window to see if he was telephoning anyone but he wasn’t.

I put on my Tephillin and prayed and then I had breakfast with myself. The food tasted wonderful. I asked God to forgive me for having the hot chocolate and muffins before I prayed, but I could justify that on the grounds of health. In the Jewish religion health comes before everything else! I smiled at my reasoning.

I took a walk after breakfast through the woods and I found a small pond, about 80 feet wide and 30 feet across. I sat on a rock and this is the passage I decided to memorize: “IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO PLANT A TREE AND SOMEONE TELLS YOU THAT THE MESSIAH HAS COME, FINISH YOUR WORK AND THEN GO FORTH TO MEET THE MESSIAH.”

The ground was wet everywhere, so I lay my coat across the rock and slept there, in the sun. When I woke up the wool fuzz was sticking to my lips from sweating and I remember I was scared for a second, not knowing where I was.

Then I walked back, following the trail I’d made before by breaking branches and it was very strange, because just as I was thinking to myself that if he were to catch me unawares I would say to him, “Well hi Charlie, and how do you like your boy scout?” I saw him coming toward me, and behind him was Dr. Fogel…and behind Dr. Fogel was Mr. Mittleman puffing on a cigar!

I was scared but I decided to take my chances and not move rather than attract attention by stirring up noises. I took 2 steps and pressed myself against a tree. God was with me! They veered off to the right, away from me.

I waited and followed them. Mr. Mittleman looked funny, waddling behind. I thought of calling to him, “Hey Max—where’s your movie camera?” But I didn’t. I realized I never saw him in a coat before or outside at all. His face looked bloodless. He was even shorter than Dr. Fogel. He didn’t say anything to them.

They looked at the clearing where the cabins were and I was afraid they would go into mine again even though I left it clean and bare, but they didn’t. They were gone before I had a chance to make a decision. I didn’t want Charlie to see me the 1st time with Mr. Mittleman there. But that was a mistake, not to show myself.

The important thing now is to make sure Charlie gets the land for himself, without Mr. Mittleman’s money or help! If he really has all the money he told Anita he did, that should be enough.

It’s almost sundown now. I promised to wash myself for Shabbos and change into my other set of underwear and clean shirt. If I wash the clothes I’m wearing and put them out to dry before Shabbos I’ll be safe because Dr. Fogel and Charlie won’t ride here on Shabbos.

Today I observed Shabbos by doing no work: no writing or carrying or cooking or lighting matches or buying or thinking about money. I left my money out of my pocket all day on a board next to the front door and I never touched it.

After I ate bread and grapes I prayed all morning, doing the entire service except for the part of taking out the Torah. I sang the prayers out loud and my voice sounded nice inside the cabin. It’s not like a girl’s voice anymore. When my praying was over I spread 3 napkins out in the middle of the floor and made lunch. I made Kiddush over the grapes again, washed my hands, and made a Motzi over the bread and when I was done eating I washed my fingertips and said the blessings after meals. Then I took a nap and I didn’t dream.

When I woke up I studied the way old men study Talmud in Orthodox synagogues on Saturday afternoons and I tried to see how many points of view I could give on the same question.

I gave Murray’s answer and Dr. Fogel’s answer and Sol’s answer and Ephraim’s answer and Charlie’s answer and Mr. Mittleman’s answer and Rabbi Akiba’s answer and Maimonides’s answer and Danny Ginsberg’s answer.

MURRAY‘S answer was yes, a Jew can be a Jew alone but he’s a better Jew when he’s part of the Jewish people.

DR. FOGEL quoted God’s promise to Abraham, saying “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” Dr. Fogel asked: Why would God say “everlasting” if He didn’t mean it?

SOL said he learned that God promised the Jews that the Messiah would come 1 day and His people would be there. But if there were 1 Jew left that would mean there would be an end to all Jews and that would mean the Messiah’s time had come. Then God’s promise to His people would not have been fulfilled. All Jews should be proud of their heritage! he added.

EPHRAIM said a Jew could be a Jew alone because his father had been a Jew alone. He said the word “alone” shouldn’t be taken literally. He said he thought I meant it to represent the way you felt about being Jewish.

CHARLIE said he believed that a Jew could not be a Jew alone, but he said he didn’t have to give reasons for his feeling.

MR. MITTLEMAN said my question was Anti-Semitic and that an Anti-Semite is somebody who hates Jews more than is necessary.

DANNY GINSBERG said a Jew could be a Jew alone because Abraham had been a Jew alone. Everybody had to agree with me, because it was in the Torah.

Then we talked about whether a 2nd Jew alone would know if he were a 2nd Abraham. How would God talk to a man if he wanted to in today’s world? (Mr. Mittleman said he would come through on an answering service!) What are His signs? If there were no Jews would there still be a Sabbath? Is there any place in the Bible where it definitely says the Messiah will come, or did Sol make that part up? If Dr. Fogel doesn’t believe in Israel and does believe in the Bible coming from God, how does he explain God’s promise to Abraham to give him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession?

Also: If God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, how did Dr. Fogel explain who wrote the last 8 parts, after Moses dies?

I asked Charlie why he didn’t want to give reasons for his feeling and he got angry with me and told me not to feel so proud because I knew how to use words. He surprised me and quoted the saying about God being concerned above all with what is in a man’s heart.

This is what he asked me: Where in the Bible does it say that Abraham knew how to read and write?

Mr. Mittleman said that God was too smart to have ever put his promise in writing.

Then it was time for Minchah and Maariv. When I finished praying I went outside and when I saw 3 stars I went back inside and I lit the lanterns for Havdalah and sniffed salt and pepper from the palm of my hand. I kissed the backs of both my hands and wished myself a good week.

I sat on the step of the cabin making myself think of nothing until it became chilly, when I came back inside and had supper.

If I had enough food and money, could I go on forever like this, filling my days with nothing but prayer and study and eating and washing and sleeping?

It’s the middle of the afternoon now and here I am, sitting next to my own pond and thinking how lucky I was to have thought to come here instead of staying in the city. I wonder if Dr. Fogel sat here when he was a boy and his father was the leader of the colony.

I just gave myself my 1st music lesson on the Tonette, learning to read notes and how to blow to get a good pure tone. I bought one in a drugstore this morning.

My promise: to practice music one hour every day. This will give me a start for when I come out and can take up a real instrument. I think the sweet fragrance of the Sabbath is going to stay with me all week long, because when I realized this morning that Charlie was not going to come today it didn’t make me unhappy. Sunday is his big day for selling houses.

Charlie’s fatal trouble: He’s too good. If he had the ability to reject me he wouldn’t be worried the way he is now and I wouldn’t be able to make him do what I want. Mr. Mittleman would agree with me. This is what he would say: If you want to get ahead, learn to be bad! Too many people like Charlie, even after what he did to Murray, whether by accident or not.

My question: Why is he so good? If he were less good, would I have seen that in his eyes also, even in the photos, and would that have kept me from trying to find him? And if I hadn’t wanted to find him and if everything hadn’t happened the way it had and if I hadn’t just thought what I thought about him being too good, would that have made him something else, and would anybody else ever have thought the same about him?

A fact: THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE LESS THAN ⅓ OF 1% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION, INCLUDING CHILDREN.

To do: list the great contributions of the Jews to civilization, including not only those of people everybody knows like Einstein and Spinoza and Freud, but also others. In America, for example, find out if Jews really run the publishing industry and garment industry and movie industry and diamond industry and Democratic party and radio and TV and universities.

Some examples I remember of things even Jews don’t know about famous Jews: Emil Berliner invented the gramophone and the microphone. A Jew discovered petroleum in Galicia in 1853. The International Postal Union was invented by Joseph Michaelson. The telephone was really invented by Philip Reiss in 1864. Nahum Salamon was the 1st man to manufacture bicycles. Bubonic plague serum and typhus fever serum were invented by Jews. The repeating rifle was invented by a Jew. In 1854 in Germany a Jew made and drove the 1st electric automobile. (Look up names I forgot!)

Things that are not in my notebook: what I dream about when I dream. What each person I meet looks like. What I think between the time when I finish writing in my notebook until I go to sleep on that day. What I eat at every meal and/or between meals.

Also: I don’t put down every single detail of what people look like, or everything they say, or what rooms I’m in are like. I don’t put down what kinds of shoes people wear or what color the pants and shoes and socks and underwear and shirt I’m wearing now are. I don’t put down how each thing I eat tastes and every time I drink water or go to the bathroom.

I don’t put down only the important things either. Sometimes I forget the important things.

How different am I when I write things down from when I do the things I’m writing about?

I don’t put down the stories I see all the time when I think of how people’s lives, like Charlie’s or Dr. Fogel’s or Hannah’s, would be so different with small changes and when I follow their lives along different lines, coming from them saying things or making decisions or having things happen to them that are different from the way things are.

When I imagine how their lives might become different lives from the ones they have I always see them in my head as if they’re walking away from me on a path covered with leaves and I’m seeing them from behind. Then I see them come to places where there are several directions they can go in, including straight ahead. I imagine what lies ahead on each road. Each road has new turning points and I see them making choices or being forced on to paths and I see them in the future with different lives being led right there on the paths, and when I look from behind I can see 8 or 10 or 12 or more different lives being acted out by them at stopping points on the road, as if on theater stages. Sometimes I see all the lives being led at the same time and I can see which ones would have been the best choices. But sometimes a good choice at 1 point leads to a bad choice later and vice versa. And sometimes the paths intersect and the people shake hands with themselves and kiss themselves in delight at meeting themselves.

Do I really know everything my mind went through during the instant in which I had the idea to do what I’m going to do and during which it sped backward in time even while it was writing in time right now and saw everything that happened in time back then and which I’ll now put down?

One bright day in the 3rd quarter of the century in which we now live, a young boy of indeterminate age chanced to be walking through a deserted section of some woods in upstate New York, where he had been sojourning, on his way to freedom (for the boy was an orphan who had run away from the orphanage which had held him—and in those days there were still orphans, though they were forgotten by the public at large), when he spied a tree trunk that attracted his attention by the strange light flickering from it. Upon closer examination the boy discovered that the strange light came from sunbeams dancing upon the filaments of an intricate spider web, which web covered a hollow in the old tree, and below which web the boy saw what it was that was causing the marvelous light to glisten at him.

He stuck his fingers through the sticky web and took out the box. It was made of highly polished metal, and though the boy could tell that it was very old, it still shone as if it were new. Upon the lid of the box was a Star of David, and the initials, in Hebrew

The brass hasp of the box gave way easily to the pressure of the boy’s fingers, and inside he found an envelope addressed as follows:

The boy, looking around stealthily to be sure he was not being spied upon, for he was fearful of having his whereabouts detected before he could establish a new existence for himself (he had, upon quitting the orphanage which had held him in bondage, made sure to destroy all records of himself, including fingerprints and photographs, so that, when he had come to some new town which was not hostile to children like himself, he would be able to start anew), then made his way to a bold rock beside a pond, where he sat himself down.

As he was wondering whether or not he had the right to look within the letter, a shaft of bright light seemed to fall upon his hand where he held the letter, and the boy was so transfixed by the nature of the curious light that he did not even realize for a while that it was burning his knuckles. When he released the letter with a cry of pain, it floated to the ground, but though it fell upon mud, when the boy lifted it, it showed no signs of dirt, and his hand too had no mark from the burn.

Was the boy religious? Did he believe in signs from above? Did he believe that the same light which had attracted him first to the tree was now offering him the letter as his own?

Alas, dear reader, we shall never know what went on inside him! All we know is that, without any seeming thought, he did in fact reach inside the envelope and from it he plucked the letter.

The paper was remarkably well preserved, and showed no signs of aging, not even at the corners. The script was quite legible, the boy was pleased to see, and he looked around once more, to assure himself of his privacy amidst Nature (did a frog croak? did birds twitter above him? if they did, would he even have noticed, so lost was he in contemplation of his treasure?) and then he read:

MY DEAREST GRANDCHILDREN,

As I write this letter, who can know if you exist or if you do not because how do I know if my son who has long ago deserted me will have married, and if he married, will have had children? Remember what the Talmud said (I’m telling you this in English because who knows if anyone will speak Hebrew anymore in the time in which you will be living?): “The unmarried person lives without joy, without blessing, and without good. He is not a man in the full sense of the term.” Which shows that He wanted us to have children, also from when it says that a man may divorce his wife if she is barren for 10 years and a wife may divorce her husband if he is impotent.

So if you are there somewhere reading me and hearing my voice I want you to know about how I came to America and founded my colony of New Zion and how it all ended so maybe you will not repeat my mistakes and will have a better life as Jews than I or your father, who calls himself, so I am told by those who see him, “Doctor” Fogel.

Was I to blame? In the Talmud the Rabbis blame the evil nature of Absalom who revolted against David the King on David himself, who brought him up with too much freedom, but who could say that of me?

Listen for a minute, my grandchildren. This is a voice from the past and even from the Old Country, as it is called, telling you to be good Jews and to remember Israel, for does it not say that it is an inheritance unto you?

Remember this: GOD, THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, AND THE LAND OF ISRAEL ARE ONE. If you are born a Jew, you remain a Jew always, and a stranger in all lands but your own. And I Eliezer Fogel know this better than any man, for I tried to establish God’s land here in America and my end is that I end alone, without my wife or my son or my followers, so that I am condemned never to have the blessing even of praying in a Minyan, or of knowing if my children and grandchildren will follow after me and redeem my life for me!

I am hoping you understand what these words mean, coming to you now, across the years. This is what you should remember if you are a Jew: Trust Nobody, not even other Jews. I trusted in man, and was paid in kind!

What was my life like in the Old Country, where I was a student in the Cheder of the great Riminova Rebbe, may his name be blessed? I might have become his prize pupil and a wise man myself but I was too eager. This is what Eliezer Fogel says: “Don’t be so eager!” In my village we were taught to honor the stranger and when he came into our midst and stayed with us for Shabbos and told me of the land of Palestine and of the people who were going there to make it a Homeland for the Jewish People, I trusted in him.

May the worms feast on his flesh!

And what was my life like in our Shtetl in Europe before I left it? Now I have beautiful memories of a community devoted to God and Torah and one’s fellow Jew, but the truth is, my grandchildren, the Shtetl had a smell like rotting onions! It stank like poverty stinks and sickness stinks and sadness stinks!

You should study what life was like for Jews in the Shtetl and through the centuries, wherever they were, unless they catered to the Goyim, and then you will see that the great miracle is our survival and that you are alive and still a Jew despite everything!

This is what we said: “If God lived in the Shtetl His windows would be broken.”

But more than His windows broke. Didn’t His heart break to see our suffering? Or was the Rebbe right, that Suffering was our lot, that it showed we were His people, and that the New Doctrine of Zionism was trying to take from God what was His, who had to work through His time and in His way?

My son left me when he told me this was so, but what did he ever know of sorrow and hardship, having been born here in America?

I declare this: God wanted us to regain the land of Israel, of our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whenever we could, for why else did He choose us to be a blessing to the nations, and how could we be a blessing to the nations in these terrible times if we have no nation of our own, no land which is our own, where we can be safe from Destruction? Remember this: “If there is no bread there is no study.”

On our Holiest day, Yom Kippur, God himself cannot forgive us all our sins. We must ask our fellow men for forgiveness. Do you understand me? We Jews are a people of this world!

Here for you is another way of seeing what I mean. The Rabbis say “If a person who withholds himself from wine is called a sinner, how much more so is one a sinner who withdraws from all of life’s enjoyments.”

I believed this when I was a young man, and so I trusted the stranger who stayed with us and I gave him my money so that he would buy me passage to the border and onto a ship bound for Palestine, to join with the Knights of Zion in building our Homeland.

So, my dear grandchildren, bound to me in the blood of the children of Israel, I wish you long life and happiness! But how can a Jew enjoy life if he is not part of His people? For in the study of Torah is the highest happiness. Remember what we sing each Shabbos when we open the Holy Ark—OUT OF ZION SHALL GO FORTH TORAH!

And so I came to America. The voyage across the ocean stank. There was an epidemic and half the ship died. Jews were thrown overboard into the sea. Did they believe they were going to the Promised

Land? I arrived in New York, with no money and in ill health.

If you want to know the rest you should ask your father. I became a man of the world. I studied money. I made my fortune and I bought land and I left Gomorrah and moved here to the country to build a colony which would train Jews and prepare them for a future life in the land of Israel. I had many followers in my time, don’t ask me how many. We had cabins full of Jews who spoke all languages, but with each other Yiddish.

We built our homes with my money. I continued to study money. I married and had only one son and I saw my duty in life as preparing others for the journey I never made. Did I believe it was God’s will to stay here, or did I really love the land I was in also? Who can tell.

We argued about everything: Should a mother nurse and bring up her own children or should she put them in the care of others? Were children private property or communal? Should we speak in Hebrew or Yiddish? We farmed the land and we built furniture to sell and we prayed and we had children. We sent settlers to Palestine and many died and half of those who didn’t die came back to New York.

You should look up and study about all the things we argued about: Marxism and Socialism and practical Zionism and synthetic Zionism and cultural Zionism and political Zionism. Some of us followed Herzl and some of us followed Jabotinsky and some of us followed Weizmann and some of us followed Gordon.

Look up the history of Palestine before and after the Mandate!

Chaim Weizmann said this: “Memory is right.”

On several hundred acres, at our height, we were like Babel itself. Answer me this: Why did God give us so much brains if he wanted us to be One people? Without poverty, nothing joined us except our different theories. We became our own enemy.

The Colony of New Zion has been dead for 20 years. I have lived here alone since its death studying Torah and finding only questions. Maybe, wherever he is, my son has answers. My followers forsook me for the temptation of America. Why should they suffer the hard winters of our colony and the harder life in Palestine? Hadn’t they left the Old Country to abandon Suffering?

Many of them forsook God, so that they lost both ways, in this world and in the next one too!

Many of them died and we buried them.

My son, your father, wanted them to stay and, like Akiba, he warned them against corruption and assimilation, but when they fled, he fled also. He had my blood.

Without land a man is nothing. Without God a man is nothing.

I left my land to my son, and I left myself only enough money to travel to Palestine, where I hope to die and be buried soon after my arrival there.

Finally, I leave you the words of Rabbi Akiba, “Whoever is buried in Palestine is as though he were buried underneath the altar, for all Palestine is fit for the altar.”

The choice is yours!

The boy was about to return the letter to its envelope when a thin slip of a paper fluttered out of it. He caught it in the air as if it were a frail butterfly. On it was 1 sentence, in the same handwriting as that on the letter, except that the script was very shaky as if it had been written by a much older man than the one who had written the letter. Trembling, the boy read: “If my grandchildren are not in the world, I pray that you will use this letter with your mind and with your heart, so that you, my dear friend Daniel, can tell the generations of the Story of New Zion!”

What I learned today from writing a story: Not to be fooled by the deceptive power of my own imagination. Even if I could write things like this forever, filling myself with myself, the answer is still no.

If I created enough people like Dr. Fogel’s father, from the way I see people the way I described today, would they be able to keep each other busy and happy after a certain point, or would they still need me?

Why did I love my story while I was writing it and despise it now that it’s finished?

This morning I found a tree that had a hollow and a spider web over the hollow and I wondered if I ever saw it before I wrote my story or if writing my story made me notice it. I don’t know enough about Nature to know how long the spider’s web could have been there, or if he could have spun it overnight.

Once when King Saul was chasing David with his soldiers to kill him, David hid in the hollow of a tree and a spider spun a web over the hollow so that David’s life was saved.

I stuck my hand through the web and inside the tree trunk was nothing but pieces of wood like sponge.

I woke up feeling better and I walked in some new directions on the property but didn’t find any artifacts of the old settlement or any traces that anyone ever lived in any other part. There were some flat stretches that might have been farming land.

If Charlie marries Anita and I go to live with them, what will happen between Hannah and myself, living in the same house? What do brothers and sisters who are close to the same age feel toward each other and if they think unhealthy thoughts, what do they do about them?

After lunch I walked outside on the roads all around the property, to make sure there are no other ways’ of getting inside, so that I won’t miss him if he comes again.

While I was walking outside and looking in across the fence at the trees I saw the 2nd story I’m going to write down now. I knew football practice started by then and that he wouldn’t be coming today. I was imagining horses and wagons of Jews going in and out of the property and speaking to each other and to their horses in Yiddish and Polish and Russian and Hebrew when something made my mind see an opposite scene, from the future, and this is what it was:

Twenty years had passed from the time when the 2 friends had last seen one another. The visitor, a tall blond man in his early thirties, with strangely restful hazel eyes, was passing through the town in which he had once spent several crucial months of his life, and out of curiosity he had driven along the road he knew to see if the house he had once known so well was still there.

He had walked up to the door, and, seeing that the name was the same as that of his childhood friend, he had knocked.

When the door opened, the visitor and his friend needed to look at each other for only the briefest instant before the flash of recognition entered their mutual eyes and all of the changes of the 20 years which had passed were obliterated.

“I don’t believe it,” said the tall handsome man in the doorway, who was as dark as his friend was fair. “It is too good to be true!”

“And you are,” said Daniel, “by the nameplate on your door, Ephraim Mendelsohn!”

They now shook hands, somewhat awkwardly, since they had grown used to covering up their strongest emotions in their regular lives, and Ephraim invited his dear friend to come into his house.

Daniel looked around the kitchen, once so familiar to him, and it seemed that it had been only yesterday that he had been sitting there and that the 2 of them had been boys, each lost in his own world. How much, really, had they known of one another’s inner thoughts back then? And yet, how close they had been, in a way that could never be repeated!

“The kitchen is the same,” Daniel said, and then, without warning, he felt a rush of tears flood his eyes and he was holding his friend by both shoulders and staring into his warm eyes and saying, “Oh Ephraim—there’s so much I want to know, don’t you see? There are so many questions, so many thoughts!”

“I know how you feel,” Ephraim said, and he too was crying, from a mixture of joy and sadness. “I have questions also, though for the moment it seems enough to have you here with me.”

“I thought the same thing,” Daniel said. “And even if I should turn around now and leave, without talking with you or ever seeing you again, the moment that has just passed would be enough, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes!” Ephraim said, and he took his friend by the arm. “But come,” he said. “Let me offer you a drink, or some nourishment.”

Daniel had walked to an old cabinet and opened the glass doors without asking his friend’s leave. He took out a beautiful antique Tsumin box and held it in his hands and shook it gently so that the bells tinkled. “When did you recover this?” he asked. “It is the same one—the one which was lost 20 years ago, in the week in which your father died, is it not?”

Ephraim looked down for a brief second, and then looked up and smiled, and Daniel wondered about the shadow which had flickered across his friend’s eyes, in the moment before he spoke. “It was an accident. I was purchasing a Talis for my son Moshe—”

“I was purchasing a Talis for my son Moshe, named after my father, as I know you must realize, for his coming Bar Mitzvah—this was less than 10 days ago—when, in the store of the old Jew from whom I often buy objects of Jewish interest, I saw it in the corner of a shelf behind him, and I recognized it at once!”

“How curious,” Daniel said. “That you should find it in the same week in which I should be passing through!”

The 2 friends laughed, and Ephraim asked Daniel if he would write down the coincidental experience in his diary, but Daniel only sighed. “I have long since given up such foolishness,” he said. “I think it was my way back then of keeping myself from having to live in the real world and communicating with real people.”

“I thought so at the time,” Ephraim said. “But I didn’t dare say so, for I knew how much it meant to you!”

Daniel nodded and a dark look came across his brow. “In a way, it was my writing things down that sustained me, you know. I’m not sure I would have survived without it.”

“Of course you would,” Ephraim said, and he clapped his friend on the back. “Why, just look at you now!”

The 2 friends talked like this for a long while and then they retreated to Ephraim’s living room and talked to one another about their lives and their families and all the intervening years and books they’d read and people they had known and what had become of them.

Ephraim was now a widower whose wife had died 4 years before, after giving birth to their 3rd son. Ephraim did not think he would ever remarry, so intimate had he and his wife been to one another! But Daniel had to wonder secretly as to the real reason, for he remembered how affected his friend had been when his friend’s father had died and his mother had cared for the family of 4 brothers and 2 sisters by herself. All this happened many years ago.

Daniel thought of a saying from Rabbi Akiba which he loved very much: “When a husband and wife have merit, God’s presence may be found in their midst. When they lack merit, a fire consumes them.”

Ephraim showed his friend the laboratory he had built in his basement and the hothouses he had added on to the house in back, where he did his botanical research, for he had become a highly successful consultant to scientific firms. “By working at home,” he explained, “I am able to be with the children more—and that is the most important thing.”

Daniel, walking through the hothouses and admiring the plants, said laughingly, “Murray the Mower.”

Ephraim puffed on his pipe and laughed also. “I know,” he said. “It’s very strange, isn’t it, how these things work themselves out in life? But now, Daniel, tell me about yourself.”

Daniel and his friend adjourned to Ephraim’s office and, smiling at the coincidence, Daniel told his friend that he too was a research scientist, and about his work in Biomedical Engineering. Daniel also revealed that, under the pseudonym of Charles Fogelstein, which name Ephraim at once recognized, he was also a highly successful writer of science-fiction books for children.

“Why, I read them to my sons all the time!” Ephraim exclaimed. “And in all the years I never thought to see anything special in the name of the author!”

As the afternoon wore on and was subdued into dusk, the friends talked as if time had had a stop.

Ephraim’s sister, Hannah, had become a lawyer, and was married to a Jewish lawyer and lived in New York City and had 2 lovely children of her own.

Dov had moved to California, where he was a highly regarded brain surgeon, and went on camping trips with his family of a wife and 4 children.

Rivka lived in Washington, D.C. and was married to a Congressman whose name Daniel recognized. She had 3 beautiful children.

Eli had emigrated to Israel at the age of 16, and at the age of 17 he had been killed in a guerrilla attack on his border settlement.

The youngest child, Murray, whom Daniel had never seen, was a student at Harvard University.

“Just think,” Daniel said, “of all the things I would feel if I were to meet him, and of how he would not understand. Isn’t that the difference, my friend?”

Ephraim’s mother, Anita, had moved to Florida, where she was an educational consultant and was receiving continual offers of marriage, though she had never accepted any. “Please give them all my love when you see them,” Daniel said.

“They’ll be so happy to know about how your life has turned out,” Ephraim said. “We have talked about you often through the years.” Then Ephraim paused meaningfully. “You heard about Charlie, didn’t you?”

Daniel said he had, though he did not explain how. Charlie had died of a malignant brain tumor, just before his 40th birthday.

“I used to think,” Daniel said, “that if I had not left him, he would not have become ill. That was the way my mind worked in those days, though I see how foolish such thoughts were.”

Ephraim, who vividly remembered visiting the man in question in the hospital before his death, did not tell his friend that Charlie had asked for Daniel frequently, up until the end!

Dr. Fogel, who had been a teacher to both Murray and Charlie, and to Daniel also, had died, and according to his wishes, his body had been transported to Israel for burial.

Mr. Mittleman had died, but Mrs. Mittleman was still alive, and quite a wealthy woman. She was living in a retirement village in Florida. Anita visited her several times a year and the 2 women shared much, strange to say.

Ephraim did not know what had happened to Charlie’s wife or beautiful daughter. They had moved away from Brooklyn and no one had heard from them again. Some of Charlie and Murray’s old friends, for they had grown up in the same orphanage in which Daniel himself had been raised, still kept in touch with Ephraim, though a few of them had died.

The 2 friends laughed together, remembering experiences they had shared, but they did not make any promises about seeing one another again, for to do so would have ruined the magic of the afternoon.

The friends were at the door when a car drove up and 3 children bounded out of it. “Your boys!” Daniel said.

“They’re just returning from Hebrew School,” Ephraim said. “We have a synagogue in our town now, and quite a nice community of Jews.”

“Would Dr. Fogel approve of them?” Daniel asked, and the 2 friends laughed at the joke.

Then Ephraim, after mentioning to Daniel that he had for many years feared that his friend was long since dead, introduced his boys to Daniel and they each gave him their names. The oldest, 12 years old, was named Moshe, and the middle son, 9 years old, was named Chaim, and the youngest boy, who was 4 years old, was named Daniel!

This is what I believe: True friends lie to one another, the way Ephraim did to Daniel when they were boys.

What I know nothing about: what it’s really like to study Torah. What would a truly wise man do to me if he saw my thoughts written down?

In Murray’s study once I looked into one of his volumes of the Talmud and I couldn’t understand anything except a few words. The Talmud is written mostly in Aramaic. There is a Babylonian Talmud and a Jerusalem Talmud but I couldn’t even tell which one I was looking at.

When I think of all the things I would have to learn, first just to be able to read and understand the letters and words themselves, and then to know how to follow the arguments between the Rabbis and understand them and interpret them, I get sick inside!

I don’t even know what any boy my age who goes to a regular Yeshiva knows. My memorizing is no substitute.

Can a dedicated man learn as much between the ages of 55 and 65 as he does between the ages of 5 and 15? Why should there be such a difference?

It rained all day today and I didn’t go outside. I stood at the window but he never came. Have I miscalculated?

Asking myself that question makes me especially calm and I don’t know why. I made up no stories today. I stood at the window and prayed and waited. I tried to ask myself what we really have in common, other than our origins, and why, really, I ever expected him to take me in.

I was outside just before because the rain stopped. There was a full moon in the sky and the clouds floating in front of it like vapors made it look like a sliver of dry ice with steam coming off. I felt very close to it, as if I could touch it and burn my fingers!

There are special prayers for the new moon and the new month in Hebrew but I don’t know what they are. The Jewish calendar goes according to the changes of the moon, not the sun, and I don’t know why that is either, or whether it was always that way.

In the time of Rabbi Akiba some Jewish men had a dangerous operation performed on themselves to conceal their circumcisions against the Romans.

How much do I know about all the exact persecutions Jews suffered throughout History?

I found some empty cartridge shells in back of one of the other cabins, but I haven’t heard gunshots or seen tracks of any hunters.

Is Charlie with Anita now, and are either of them thinking of me at this moment?

I woke in the middle of the night and heard them, across the way, in another cabin. At first I was scared, but then I listened for a while and I could tell they were just teenagers making out. They were laughing and struggling with each other and throwing beer cans against the walls.

I walked across the clearing and listened at the wall to their cabin. I heard a girl giggle and say, “Don’t you 2 do anything we wouldn’t do!”

I heard a guy’s voice and he sounded drunk. I couldn’t make out his words, except that he kept saying, “C’mon, huh? C’mon, huh? C’mon, huh?”

I heard another girl giggle and tell somebody to stop, but she didn’t mean it. I wondered what she looked like. Her voice was very refined, as if she took speech lessons. She sounded much older than the others and I wondered what she was doing there. I wondered what her face would look like in the morning when she faces her mother across the breakfast table.

This is what one of the guys shouted that made the 3 others laugh: “Because it’s my birthday!”

Then I acted like an idiot, I don’t know why. I just kicked the door open and yelled in at them, “THEN HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GANG!” and then I ran!

The girls screamed but I didn’t wait to see what any of them looked like. I ran into the woods behind the clearing through the wet leaves and the slosh and I didn’t stop until I thought I was far enough away. The girls were still screeching and I heard the guys cursing and yelling at them to shut up.

They probably thought I was just somebody from their school who followed them but I can’t take any chances.

It doesn’t matter why I did, even if it was just for fun, because it told me what I must have wanted to tell myself anyway: that I shouldn’t stay here anymore. Charlie might come back again, and then again he might not. There’s no reason to wait any longer. The best thing is to admit that I miscalculated and to go forth.

What the words “go forth” remind me of: the Rabbi’s speech at Murray’s funeral.

In the woods, thinking of them hopping around with their pants caught around their ankles, I had a good laugh. I thought of the guys at the Home and how I would have been a hero to them if I could have told them a story like that about myself! I could have added things about seeing the girls naked and it wouldn’t have mattered if anyone believed me or not.

I sat on the ground with my back against a tree and didn’t think about anything except how I must have scared them to death and about what a child I was not to have been able to control myself when he said it was his birthday.

Even if I hadn’t barged in on them, how can I sleep in the cabin tonight wondering if they’ll be coming back? If I sleep outside I’ll surely catch a terrible chill. Just from sitting on the ground for less than an hour with my jacket under me I’m sniffling this morning.

When everything was silent for a long time I walked back to the clearing. The sky was filled with millions of stars and I thought of God’s promise to Abraham.

There were 9 empty beer cans in their cabin and some leftover potato chips and a damp army blanket they left behind. I took it to my cabin and I lay on the floor with it under me and that way I couldn’t feel the dampness under my coat. I was afraid to go to sleep for fear they’d return but I rested well until sunup.

Then I said my prayers and had a farewell breakfast of potato chips, warm beer, bread, and lettuce. I’ll get something warm to drink in town at the bus station before I leave.

Will I ever see this land again? If I hadn’t come here to wait for him, in how many different directions might my life have gone? But since I did come here, even though it was a temporary mistake, it was a necessary step for me so that I might realize how foolish my planning was,

for I was really waiting on him to do something instead of relying on myself to create my own fate.

That was what my foolish act last night showed me, so that I revise my earlier statement about you being an idiot, Daniel Ginsberg. For if you had not acted the fool you might have erred in waiting here even longer!

Charlie will be surprised when he sees me to find such a new look in my eye! He’ll see that even though I have to make plans and decisions concerning my future, I’m not as much in need of him as even I thought I was a few days ago.

My name is Daniel Ginsberg and I come from the Home and I can save myself, thank you.

Seven