Henrietta asked her husband, “Have you eaten?” Manfred was afraid to say, “I ate but I’m hungry,” since that might lead his wife to further questions. He answered, “I had tea with Taglicht.” Henrietta said, “Poor thing, you had tea, but nothing to eat.” He said, “Tea with some dry cake.” Henrietta said, “I’m getting right up to bring you something to eat.” Zahara said, “Stay where you are, Mother. I’ll fix something for Father.” Henrietta said, “Aren’t you tired from the trip?” Zahara answered, “Did I walk here? I came in a car, of course. And what a car, a very special one, like a deer with wings. It was quite a trip. Eighty kilometers an hour. If you promise not to report me, I’ll confess that we even hit a hundred kilometers an hour. Avraham-and-a-half says such speed causes cars to die an untimely death.”
Herbst asked his daughter, “What brings you here?” Zahara said, “Mother, I see Father isn’t pleased that I came.” Herbst said, “I’m pleased. I’m pleased, and all I’m asking is why.” Zahara said, “I came for the workshops. Out of the entire kvutza, two of us were chosen.” “And who is the other girl?” Zahara said, “Allow me to correct you, Father, dear. You ask about the other girl when you ought to ask about the other person.” Herbst smiled and asked, “Then who is the other person?” Zahara said, “If I tell you, will you know? You have a habit of switching people’s names, Father.” Herbst said, “Yes, child, I never remember the names of all the boys who surround you.” As he spoke, he noticed how ripe she was. He lowered his eyes and thought: She is with young men who have rejected the authority of their fathers. She has come here with one of them, and I’m too preoccupied to look after her. But look at Lisbet Neu — of course, she is older, but she is in constant contact with all kinds of people, clerks as well as customers, and she has an invalid mother and no father. Nevertheless, she behaves impeccably. He stroked his daughter’s head and said with concealed emotion, “It’s a great privilege to have been chosen to attend these workshops and to have an opportunity to hear things that are probably worth hearing. Did you see your little sister? Isn’t she a fine baby? Who will be lecturing?” As he asked this question, he felt a twinge of pain, for he had not been invited to participate. Several years earlier, there was not an intellectual event that didn’t include him. Now they were having these workshops, and he wasn’t asked to lecture even once. Manfred Herbst was on the way out. He used to be invited to participate in every cultural event, and those who arranged them didn’t make a move without consulting him. New people had come, bringing new wisdom. Herbst felt sorry for himself, sad that it had come to this. Yet he justified these omissions, for he had not published anything in several years, except for two or three trifles in Kiryat Sefer and Tarbitz. His great book on burial customs of the poor in Byzantium was still a bundle of notes, references, and preliminary drafts.
Whose fault is it that the book lies curled up in a box, like an embryo dead in the womb. This country is at fault; it is not a scholarly environment. Here in the Land of Israel, everyone makes do with the minimum. This applies to spiritual needs as well as physical ones. Whatever is not essential to sustain body or soul is a luxury this poor country cannot afford. Our colleagues — those young scholars who came from Germany only yesterday, because they were relieved of their positions there — are amazed that in all these years we have contributed absolutely nothing. They don’t realize that this place is unlike any other. In other places, scholarship justifies itself. Not so here, where, unless a scholarly study can be related to Israel’s national destiny or to the ethic of the prophets, it is immediately discredited. Those innocents still pretend to be living in a German environment. Give them two or three years and they’ll be like the rest of us, making do with articles in jubilee volumes. The ambitious ones will join the bureaucracy, which is the seat of power. In other countries, the bureaucracy serves the needs of the people and the state; here, the bureaucracy itself is primary, and it takes precedence over the needs of the people and the state. Among those who came in the early days of the university, there were some true scholars. Years passed, and they didn’t achieve anything important. This being the case, they began to regard their minor achievements as major ones. When Julian Weltfremdt and his cronies remark scornfully, “See what those professors are up to,” the professors answer, “Their words have the ring of envy; they resent us because they weren’t appointed to the faculty.” What these malcontents say about the professors, most of the professors say about their own colleagues. In fact, most of them agree that Bachlam is no scholar, while he says they have small minds and deal entirely with trivia.
Zahara brought her father his meal. Herbst glanced at his beloved daughter, who was forfeiting sleep for his sake. He picked up a knife and fork to eat what she had prepared, but they remained idle. Zahara peered at him and said, “Father, you’re not eating.” Herbst answered, “I’m eating.” Zahara laughed gaily and said, “I see you deep in thought, but I don’t see you eating.”
Many thoughts troubled Herbst. He dismissed them, one after another, thanks to his beloved daughter. As long as she was in his mind, he felt relaxed. But he was sorry she hadn’t followed his advice. She hadn’t enrolled in the university, and her education was incomplete. Dr. Herbst had many opinions, among them that one cannot acquire an education outside of a university. Since settling in the Land of Israel, some of his opinions had changed, but he remained convinced that one could not be educated outside of a university, even by reading widely, listening to lectures, devouring the wisdom of the world. In the end, such knowledge is incomplete. He applied this rule to everyone, including his daughters.
Father Manfred doesn’t really know his daughters. This is surely true of Tamara, whose character no one really knows. But it is also true of Zahara, who is attached to her father and whose soul is as transparent as water from a spring; one can’t really say that her father knows her. Were we to summarize all of Father Manfred’s information about Zahara, it would add up roughly to this: Zahara belongs to a kvutza called Ahinoam, which foreign correspondents with Zionist sympathies mention often and journalists rush in to write about in many languages, as if it were there that humanity will be renewed — to the extent that one can barely find a kvutza member or even a shrub that hasn’t been photographed for one of these publications. Zahara is a member of this kvutza and is accepted by one and all. Its ways are congenial to her, and there is no activity in which she doesn’t participate wholeheartedly: the vegetable garden, the kindergarten, the kitchen, the dining room. Wherever she works, there are people helping her. It is the way of young men to be helpful to young women who enjoy their work, by lending a hand, giving good advice, or simply looking on. She occasionally comes to Jerusalem from the kvutza, sometimes with this young man, sometimes with that one. Today, too, she came with one of them. The early days were good, before Herbst met Shira. He used to see his daughter and her friends without being subjected to afterthoughts.