“No.”
“You should go tonight,” Yakov said; “there is going to be a real Bilu from Palestine to speak.”
Jossi’s heart pounded! A real Bilu from Palestine! How he would love to see and hear someone who had actually been to Palestine. Secretly Jossi envied his younger brother, who had been sneaking off to Lovers of Zion meetings. His curiosity was aroused by this new organization which spoke of the defense of the ghetto and a return to the Holy Land. A real Bilu! No-he would not yield to temptation-never so long as his father objected to the Lovers of Zion.
They turned the corner and entered the shop, first kissing the mezuzah, a tiny prayer scroll nailed to the doorpost. The place smelled strongly of leather. Simon looked up from his workbench and smiled.
“Hello, Papa,” they both said quickly, and drew a curtain over the alcove which served as their bedroom in one corner of the shop. Simon knew by their manner that they had been discussing something in secret and he also knew full well what young Yakov had been up to, but he did not say a word. The boys must have their fling, Simon thought-I will not impose my will on them in this matter nor will I speak to them unless they speak to me first.
Simon could be considered among the more fortunate Jews of the ghetto. His family was in good health and he had a trade which allowed him to exist, however meagerly. The mortality rate of Jews in the Pale was more than twice that of the rest of the population of Russia.
Not only the Jews were near starvation. Most of Russia, especially the peasantry, hovered on the brink of destitution. The country wallowed in the backwash of feudalism, refused to industrialize, and was exploited by the aristocracy.
Bread, land, and reform movements sprang up all over the nation. Because their own plight was the worst, there were always Jews to be found in any organization which strived to alleviate the wretched conditions.
Unrest mounted throughout Russia. An undercurrent which spelled revolution was brewing. Only then did Czar Alexander II institute some long overdue reforms. His first move was to free the serfs and he relaxed some of the stringent anti-Jewish statutes. The new laws even allowed a limited number of professional and artisan Jews to live in Moscow. In Bessarabia a few Jews could purchase land. However, the reforms were mere crumbs.
In trying desperately to divert the people’s attention from the real issue of tyranny, the masterminds behind the Czar found a new and convenient use for the old scapegoats, the Jews. Hatred for the Jew in Russia had been based on religious
bias, ignorance, and superstition, coupled with the peasants* blind hostility due to their inferior status. The Russian government decided to make anti-Semitism a deliberate political weapon. They launched a campaign in which the number of Jewish members in the Bread and Land movements was exaggerated and they claimed it was all a plot of Jewish anarchists out to seize the government for their own profit.
It was furthered as the Russian government secretly drummed up, sponsored, fostered, and condoned bloody pogroms in which ghettos of the Pale were sacked, the women raped, and blood flowed freely. As the mobs tore through the ghettos the Russian police either turned their backs or actively engaged in the affairs.
On March 13, 1881, an awesome catastrophe befell the Jews. Czar Alexander II was assassinated by a rebel’s bomb, and one of the convicted revolutionaries was a Jewish girl!
This paved the way for years of horror.
The power behind the new Czar Alexander III was the sinister Pobiedonostsev. He handled the weak-minded new ruler like an infant. Pobiedonostsev regarded the principles of equality, bread, and democracy as extremely vulgar and set out to crush them ruthlessly.
As for the Jews, Pobiedonostsev had special plans. As procurator of the Holy Synod he received a silent nod from the Greek Church for his scheme which called for the elimination of the Jewish population. One third would go through government-sponsored pogroms, starvation, and other forms of murder. One third would go through expulsion and exile. One third would be converted.
Easter week, 1881. The coronation of Czar Alexander III was the signal to begin. Pobiedonostsev’s pogroms erupted and spread to every city of the Pale.
After the first outbursts, Pobiedonostsev quickly had a dozen laws enacted that either eradicated any previous gains made by the Jews or aimed to destroy the rest of the Jewish population.
In the wake of the awful happenings of 1881 the Jews of the Pale groped desperately for an answer to their problems. A thousand ideas were advanced-each more impractical than the last. In many corners of many ghettos a new voice was heard by a group who called themselves Hovevey Zion -the Lovers of Zion.
Along with the Lovers of Zion came a document from the pen of Leo Pinsker which seemed to pinpoint the causes and solution of the Jewish plight. Pinsker’s document called for auto-emancipation as the only way out for the Jews of the Pale.
Late in the year 1881 a group of Jewish students from
Romny bolted from the Pale and made for Palestine with the motto on their lips, “Beth Yakov Leku Venelkha-House of Jacob, let us go up!” This daring band of adventurers, forty in number, became known far and wide by the initials of their motto, which in transliteration became the “Bilu.”
The Bilus started a small farming village in the Sharon Valley of Palestine. They named it Rishon le Zion: First to Zion.
The pogroms in the Pale increased in fury, reaching new heights of bloody destruction on Easter morning 1882 in the town of Balta.
As a result new groups of Bilus struck out for the Promised Land and the Lovers of Zion grew by leaps and bounds.
In the Sharon the Bilus founded Petah Tikva: the Gate of Hope.
In the Galilee they founded Rosh Pinna: the Cornerstone.
In Samaria they founded Zichron Yakov: the Memory of Jacob.
By the year 1884 a half dozen small, weak, and struggling Bilu settlements had been begun in the Holy Land.
Each night in Zhitomir and in every other city of the Pale there were secret meetings. Youths began to rebel and to be diverted from the old ways.
Yakov Rabinsky, the younger of the brothers, was swept up in the new ideology. Often during the night he lay awake, staring into the darkness in the alcove of the shop he shared with his brother Jossi. How wonderful it would be to be able to fight! How wonderful to strike out and really find the Holy Land! Yakov’s head was filled with the past glory of the Hebrews. Often he pretended he fought alongside Judah “the Hammer” as the Maccabees swept the Greeks from Judea. He, Yakov Rabinsky, would be there as Judah Maccabee entered Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple.
Yakov Rabinsky would be there with Simon Bar Giora, who held Jerusalem against the might of Rome for eighteen long months. He would be there in chains alongside Giora as the proud Hebrew warrior was led off to Rome to the lions’ den.
Yakov would be there with the greatest of them all-Bar Kochba, the scourge of the Romans.
He would be there at the stands at Herodium and Machaerus and Masada and Beitar, where they fought to the last man after several years of siege.
And of all his heroes, Yakov wanted most to be with Rabbi Akiva when he met his martyrdom at Caesarea, for Akiva was teacher, scholar, and fighter all in one.
When the Lovers of Zion came around to Zhitomir, Yakov
ran off to the meetings immediately. Their message of auto-emancipation was music to his ears. The Lovers of Zion wanted his brother Jossi because of his size and strength; but Jossi out of respect for his father as commanded by God was slow to move toward these radical ideas.
The day after the Bilu from Palestine spoke in Hacohen’s candle shop, Jossi could stand it no longer. He wanted to know everything from Yakov-how the Bilu looked-every word he said-every gesture.
“I think, Jossi, the time has come for you to attend a meeting with me.”