From the very beginning, one of the four founders took it upon himself to attend to community business: to see that the Arabs didn’t send their beasts into the gardens and that the garbage collector took the garbage from the houses; to speak with the governor and those in charge of the water so that water wouldn’t be lacking in the pipes, and to see that the bus would come and go on schedule, four times a day. What would he do if he had to consult his neighbors? There was no telephone as yet. He would take a shofar and go up on his roof and blow. His neighbors would hear him and come.
After a while, more people came and built homes and planted gardens. During the day they would work in the city, and an hour or two before dark they would come home to break earth, weed, pull up thorns, plant trees and gardens, and clear the place of snakes and scorpions. Soon more people came, and then still more. They too built houses and made gardens. Some of them would rent out a room or two to a young couple who wanted to raise their child in the clear air. Some of them rented out their whole houses and continued to live in the city until they paid off their mortgage. After a time I too came to live here, fleeing from the tremors of 1927, which shook the walls of the house where I was living and forced me to leave my home. I came to this neighborhood with my wife and two children, and we rented an apartment. Roads had already been built, and the buses would come and go at regular times. We felt as though this place, which had been barren since the day of our exile from our land, was being built again.
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Automobiles still came but rarely, and a man could walk in the streets without fear of being hit. At night there was a restful quiet. If you didn’t hear the dew fall, it was because you were sleeping a good, sweet sleep. The Dead Sea would smile at us almost every day, its blue waters shining in graceful peace between the gray and blue hills of Moab. The site of the Temple would look upon us. I don’t know who longed for whom more; we for the Temple Mount, or the Temple Mount for us. The king of the winds, who dwelt in a mountain not far from us, used to stroll about the neighborhood, and his servants and slaves — the winds — would follow at his feet, brushing through the area. Fresh air filled the neighborhood. People from far and near would come to walk, saying, “No man knoweth its value.” Old men used to come and say, “Here we would find length of days.” Sick people came and said, “Here we would be free from our illnesses.” Arabs would pass through and say, “Shalom”; they came to our doctor, who cured them of their ills. The doctor’s wife would help their wives when they had difficulty in childbirth. The Arab women would come from their villages around us, bringing the fruits of their gardens and the eggs of their hens, giving praises to Allah, who, in His mercy upon them, had given the Jews the idea of building houses here, so that they would not have to bring their wares all the way into the city. As an Arab would go to work in the city, taking a shortcut through these streets, he would stand in wonder at the deeds of Allah, who had given the Jewish lords wisdom to build roads, mend the ways, and so forth. Suddenly, one Sabbath after Tisha b’Av, our neighbors rose up against us to make trouble for us. The people of the neighborhood could not believe that this was possible. Our neighbors, for whom we had provided help at every chance, for whom we had made life so much easier — buying their produce, having our doctor heal their sick, building roads to shorten the way for them — came upon these same roads to destroy us.
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By the grace of God upon us, we rose up and were strong. As I said in the beginning, I built a house and planted a garden. In this place from which the enemy tried to rout us, I built my home. I built it facing the Temple Mount, to always keep upon my heart our beloved dwelling which was destroyed and has not yet been rebuilt. If “we cannot go up and be seen there, because of the hand which has cast itself into our Temple,” we direct our hearts there in prayer.
Now I’ll say something about the house of prayer in our neighborhood.
Our forefathers, who saw their dwelling in this world as temporary, but the dwelling in the synagogue and the house of study as permanent, built great structures for prayer and study. We, whose minds are given over mainly to things of this world, build great and beautiful houses for ourselves, and suffice with little buildings and shacks for prayer. Thus our house of prayer in this neighborhood is a wooden shack. This is one reason. Aside from this, they didn’t get around to finishing the synagogue before the first disturbance, the riots, or the War of Independence, and at each of those times the residents had to leave the neighborhood. It was also not completed because of the changes in its congregants, who changed after each disturbance. That’s why, as I’ve explained, our place of prayer is a shack and not a stone building.
Now I shall tell what happened in this shack on that Shavuot night when the rumor reached us that all the Jews in my town had been killed.
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I entered the house of prayer. No one else was in the place. Light and rest and a good smell filled the room. All kinds of shrubs and flowers with which our land is blessed gave off their aroma. Already at Maariv I had taken note of the smell, and now every blossom and flower gave off the aroma with which God had blessed it. A young man, one who had come from a town where all the Jews had been killed, went out to the fields of the neighborhood with his wife, and picked and gathered every blossoming plant and decorated the synagogue for the holiday of Shavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah, just as they used to do in their town, before all the Jews there had been killed. In addition to all the wildflowers they gathered in the nearby fields, they brought roses and zinnias and laurel boughs from their own garden.
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I shall choose among the words of our holy tongue to make a crown of glory for our prayer room, its candelabra, and its ornaments.
The eternal light hangs down from the ceiling, facing the holy ark and the two tablets of the Law above it. The light is wrapped in capers and thistles and bluebells, and it shines and gives off its light from between the green leaves of the capers’ thorns and from its white flowers, from between the blue hues in the thistles, and from the gray leaves and purple flowers around it. All the wildflowers that grow in the fields of our neighborhood gather together in this month to beautify our house of prayer for the holiday of Shavuot, along with the garden flowers that the gardens in our neighborhood give us. To the right of the holy ark stands the reader’s table, and on the table a lamp with red roses around it. Six candles shine from among the roses. The candles have almost burned down to the end, yet they still give off light, for so long as the oil is not finished they gather their strength to light the way for the prayers of Israel until they reach the gates of heaven. A time of trouble has come to Jacob, and we need much strength. Opposite them, to the south, stand the memorial candles, without number and without end. Six million Jews have been killed by the Gentiles; because of them a third of us are dead and two-thirds of us are orphans. You won’t find a man in Israel who hasn’t lost ten of his people. The memorial candles light them all up for us, and their light is equal, so that you can’t tell the difference between the candle of a man who lived out his days and one who was killed. But in heaven they certainly distinguish between the candles, just as they distinguish between one soul and another. The Eternal had a great thought in mind when He chose us from all peoples and gave us His Torah of life. Nevertheless, it’s a bit difficult to see why He created, as opposed to us, the kinds of people who take away our lives because we keep His Torah.