With this, I have concluded Book Two of the book of Manfred Herbst and the nurse Shira. I will now begin Book Three, starting not with Herbst or Shira, but with Henrietta. After telling about Henrietta, I will come back to Herbst and Shira — to Herbst first, then to Shira, then to the two of them together.
Book Three
Chapter one
Henrietta kept her secret to herself and did not reveal what was in her heart. In delighted surprise and surprised delight, she mused: The baby I’m going to bring forth is younger than my daughter’s child; her own child is older than her mother’s child. She was embarrassed before her daughters, yet pleased for herself, for her youth had been restored and she was as she had been in the early days, right after her marriage.
How did she arrive at such a pass? After receiving the news that Zahara had given birth to a son, she decided to go to her in Kfar Ahinoam, and Manfred agreed to come along. They locked their house and went off, spending three days and three nights with Zahara’s firstborn, with Zahara, with Avraham-and-a-half, and with all their friends and well-wishers in the village. In all their years in Jerusalem, the Herbsts had never had three consecutive days of rest like these. I am speaking, of course, of Henrietta, whose days, except when Tamara and Sarah were born, were filled with work; but Manfred, too, enjoyed the rest. He wasn’t trapped by piles of books, pamphlets, transcripts, notebooks, and cards, nor was he occupied with endless papers that seemed to generate spontaneously, producing more and more of their kind, which he would move from here to there although they belonged nowhere.
He did lecture in Kfar Ahinoam, more than once, in fact. Nevertheless, I maintain that he had never enjoyed such restful days as those in Kfar Ahinoam, for there is a big difference between lectures in Kfar Ahinoam and those at the university. His lectures at the university were required. The lecturer was required to lecture, and the listeners were required to listen, whereas in Kfar Ahinoam it was his wish and desire to lecture, and it was because of their own wish and desire that the listeners listened, most of them being tired of the speeches of political hacks and eager for intellectual discourse. Furthermore, from his lectures in Ahinoam he learned that he could recover what had been taken from him.
I’ll explain what I mean. Dr. Herbst was not one of those who are willing to pay any price for a drop of so-called honor. He already understood in his youth that one benefits only from what is won through integrity. But when our comrade Berl Katznelson organized a three-day workshop, inviting various lecturers but excluding him, he was dejected, for he had always been in demand. The lectures he presented in Kfar Ahinoam were well attended, not merely by members of the settlement, but by many people from neighboring communities, proving that he could attract a larger crowd than all the lecturers on all three workshop days combined.
Back to Henrietta Herbst. Since the day she arrived in the Land of Israel, she had not had three consecutive days of rest, other than when Tamara and Sarah were born. Her days were spent working hard in the house, gardening, and dealing with guests. Most difficult of all was the pursuit of certificates.
Many of the Herbsts’ relatives were left behind in Germany. Upon hearing that Henrietta and Manfred were going to the Land of Israel, they sneered at them for leaving a highly cultured country for an arid wilderness. When they heard Manfred was appointed lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, they were astonished to learn that Jerusalem had a university. When they heard lectures were held in Hebrew there, they were astonished that the language still existed. Between yesterday and tomorrow, events occurred in Germany that transformed it into an inferno — the very country about which it was said: Every Jew should bless God daily for the privilege of living there. Now they wandered from land to land. The nations were grudging, and those who escaped the sword were not allowed to earn a living. At great risk, they returned to Germany, and from there they asked friends and acquaintances in America to send them entry permits. Our brethren in America did everything they could, neither resting nor desisting until they brought them to America. But, in the end, they were helpless before the mass of supplicants, among them the Herbsts’ relatives, who were left with no options other than Palestine. They wrote to the Herbsts, “Send us certificates.” Henrietta raced around to obtain certificates, making no distinction between her own relatives and Manfred’s. The same catastrophe engulfed them all, making them equal before it. Nor did she mention that her relatives had all laughed when they heard she was going to Palestine, and, now that they were in trouble, they were asking her to bring them to Palestine.
I will interrupt the flow of my story to praise Henrietta Herbst.
Henrietta had an elderly relative. He was born in the province of Poznan. When Henrietta informed her relatives that the Hebrew University in Jerusalem had offered Manfred a position, the old man said, “I will tell you something from which you will understand what a Hebrew university is.
“When I was a boy, I neglected my studies. My mother was sad, and my father scolded me. What they achieved through their sadness and scolding could be compared to what our teacher Moses achieved through his sadness and scolding.
“One day, my father took me to a poor neighborhood. We went into a crumbling building. I peered inside and saw shabbily dressed boys crowded together on narrow benches, reading in shrill voices from tattered books, their words a jumble of the holy tongue and ordinary jargon. A skinny man stood over them, wielding a cane and a strap, groaning, grunting, and spitting. He leaped up suddenly, pinched one of the boys on the arm, and shouted at him, ‘Villain, what are you looking at? Look at the book, not outside.’ The boy burst into tears and said, ‘I wasn’t looking outside.’ The teacher said scornfully, ‘Then tell me what the book says.’ The boy began to read, stammering. The teacher shouted, ‘Villain, then tell me what you saw outside. Was it perhaps a golden whip? I know all of you only too well, you scoundrels. When I’m done with you, you won’t have eyes to see with or a mouth to utter lies.’