Such Is Rachel

A Story

by JACQUELINE SHOHET

JACOB BENZION’S sons arrived in their big cars at their father’s house in the Arab part of Cairo. The narrow street could hardly contain the cars, and the Moslem neighbors, gathered on their jasmine-bordered verandas to take in the sweet evening air, observed, “Tonight the old Jew has his sons and his grandchildren around him to celebrate Passover, the great feast of his people. May Allah gladden the old man’s heart!” For many days they had seen the servant Mohamed coming back with baskets of food in preparation for the feast. The Arab neighbors smiled, pleased that the house usually so silent behind its high walls would overflow, this one night, with the voices of young people.

The Benzion sons, their wives and children, wearing handsome European clothes, smiled vaguely at the indistinct mass of their father’s neighbors, and were ill at ease in the half-forgotten Arab surroundings. Arab children gazed at the cars, patting the steel flanks with shy, curious fingers, and their parents said, “Late into the night will we hear the Jews’ prayers. Then the sons and their families will return to their European houses far across the river.”

In the house, each of the Benzions went in turn to the armchair where the old man sat, his hands folded in his robes. They knelt, kissed Jacob’s hand, and he blessed each of them. The eldest son, Isaac, knelt a little stiffly, as a man to whom his years were already a burden. Simon knelt with unthinking acceptance, and David, the third son, knelt with unswerving devotion to his old father and the old ways. The women knelt passively, as women do, a little reluctant to give this mark of respect to a man of another house. In the children, he felt the resistance in their necks, which refused to yield under his blessing, their shame to obey the Oriental custom.

Only Rachel, David’s thirteen-year-old daughter, coming up to him with her little brother, had no shame in kneeling, and when she had kissed his hand, she shifted her head slightly, so that after her lips, her cheek touched her grandfather’s hand. He blessed her, saying the Hebrew words slowly, as if he wanted to bless her more than the others. When Rachel stood up again and pushed her brother before him, he felt pride, because the girl Rachel carried well her name.

Jacob examined David’s son, a blond lad with merry golden eyes, brought to him for his first Passover, and he wondered what Passover would mean to this grandchild who had light hair. The boy knelt, kissed the old hand, but before his grandfather had had time to bless him, he escaped, laughing, to his mother. David rebuked his son in French, “Jack, are you not ashamed to run from under your grandfather’s blessing? How often have I told you you must venerate the head of your house?”

David’s father, who understood French and English although he did not speak them, said to him in Arabic, “Your son is an affrit, a little devil, but he meant no wrong. And, my son, this is a different world from the one we left behind us when we came from Arabia thirty years ago. The world changes, David, and you must accept the change.”

Jack did not understand the Arab speech, but laughed again, because he knew that the old man in Arab clothes they called his grandfather had sided with him against his father.

The women gossiped in one corner, and the young ones in another. Rachel was silent, and Jack, observing everything with his intelligent golden eyes, saw his uncle Isaac glance nervously at the door left open. He tugged at his sister and asked, “Rachel, why is the door open?”

“Tonight, any man who’s poor and hungry can come in and be one of us,” Rachel said. “The door is open for all. The guest may be a barefooted beggar— he may also be the Messiah.”

Jack pondered a while. “But Rachel,” he asked, “Miss Kelly said Jesus was the Messiah, that he had already come, so why are we still waiting for him?”

Rachel was angry. Always their English governess was saying such things to pull Jack away. Passionately, she told her brother, “What can she know about the real Messiah, the one who is ours and other people’s too, the one who will save the Jews, and everybody, and not only the Christians as she says — He may come tonight — ” And Rachel’s eyes went to the door open on the little garden, with its jasmine and honeysuckle, where the Messiah might appear any moment.

Isaac also looked at the door open on the Arab street and he asked Jacob, “My father, why do we not close the door, so that we may have our Passover in peace, unheard by those outside?”

The old man said, “Isaac, these are kindly people, our neighbors, who mean us no harm. Do you not know that tonight our house must be open to any man with a need to be filled, for us to fill his need? Are we to shut our door when the Prophet may come? Ah, Isaac, how far has your heart strayed from Israel?” Then Jacob, shutting the anger within him, lifted himself from his armchair and told them all, “Now, my children, let us go in and start the prayers, and thank the Lord for having delivered us from Pharaoh’s heavy yoke.”

They followed him into the dining room, next to the parlor where they had sat. Rachel went in holding Jack by the hand, impatient to make him share the pain and pride of Passover, to win his soul, and give it to her grandfather. Jacob seated himself in the armchair at the head of the table, his sons on his right side, the women on his left, and at the opposite end of the table, the young ones, with Rachel and Jack in the middle, facing him.

2

RACHEL gazed at the long Passover table. She saw beside her grandfather the engraved silver tray covered with glasses, tall ones for the grownups, small ones for the children, the glasses brimming over with the ruby-red wine from Palestine. On her side of the table she saw the Seder, a basket covered with red and gold brocade, under which were hidden all the symbolical things they would use for the prayer. She saw the centerpiece of roses, the roses still full and round and sweet-scented on their wire stems. She saw the silver goblet from which the Messiah would drink if he came to visit them. Her hand tightened on Jack’s, and she asked him, “Isn’t it beautiful — don’t you love it?”

Jack squirmed to free his hand. “You hurt me, Rachel. No, I don’t like it a bit. The table is so big the servant won’t have enough room to pass with the dishes. The chairs are almost against the walls.”

Rachel dropped his hand, and her vision also dropped away. Jack had made her see the narrow limits set by plain whitewashed walls where before she had only seen the mystical beauty of the table. She watched the others getting ready for the prayer, and in a voice now a little uncertain, she said, “Get your school cap, Jack, and put it on your head.”

“Why?”

“Because you must have something on your head for the prayers.”

“When Miss Kelly took me to church once, people took their hats off. We put them on — it’s silly.”

“Look, Jack, not all people pray God in the same way. Why should you think one way is good and the other is silly? Go, Jack, please get your cap.”

When Jack came back with the round navy blue cap of his English school on his head, he said, “Maurice and Charles have no hats, only napkins. Why, Rachel?”

“They never wear hats, and they think it’s bright and funny to pray with a napkin falling off their heads all the time. They are just stupid.”

Rachel’s eyes left the napkined heads, rested on those of her uncles, with their European hats pushed back on their heads, went over to the vulgar faces of her aunts, the aloofness of her mother, and the tired dignity of her father’s face under his felt hat worn straight on his forehead. She saw Jacob in the ample folds of his long silk robe, with its harmony of two shades of gray, and wearing on his majestic head a white turban draped around his red fez as he would have worn a crown. He was, to the girl, a serene old king of those days when the Hebrews had great kings, except that he ruled over subjects unworthy of him. She watched the slow dignity with which he washed his hands before starting the prayer, oblivious of the servant holding out the towel for him to dry his hands. Why was she not a boy so that she could be like him? Why had there never been great Hebrew queens?

Jacob Benzion began the prayer, the men chanting the old rhythm with him, “Praise to Thee, Eternal, our God, who has chosen us from among all people, and has given us this sacred feast to commemorate our deliverance from Egypt . . .”

They all leaned on their left elbows to drink the wine and Rachel made Jack sip his. She wanted to give him the meaning of Passover in words a child of eight could understand. Fearing the task before her, she thought there was so much she did not know and could not explain. Yet she knew the task was hers, for was she not the only one to know that when her grandfather died one worthy of him should be among them, so that something of his greatness would live on? She was only a girl, therefore useless. The last hope was Jack, the last child old Jacob could have brought to him for Passover. She dared not, she could not, fail. Her heart beat hard within her, and she cleared her voice to ask her brother, “Do you know who built the Pyramids?”

Jack said, “The people who build houses.”

“No, we built them. We, the Jews. That was long ago, when Egypt was different. There was a cruel king in Egypt then, and his name was Pharaoh. He made us carry those heavy stones on our bare backs, his soldiers flogged us, and thousands died building those Pyramids we see every day. We were slaves, you see.”.

“You mean we were slaves?” He was unbelieving.

“Yes, we were slaves. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of when you’ve gained your freedom and God is on your side.”

“Perhaps you were a slave, but I’m sure I never was. I don’t want to have been a slave, ever.

“We have the same mother and father, Jack.

“Yes, but you are like Father, and I’m like Mother, and I’m sure she was never a slave.”

Rachel did not answer. Anguished, she thought Jack might be right. He was like their mother, and not like herself, her father, and her grandfather. Perhaps her mother’s people had not been Jews in those times, but people like the Gauls she learned about in her French history book, carefree savage pagans, roaming in green forests, while the Jews strained under the heavy stones and the floggings, erecting Pyramids in burning golden deserts. Perhaps, indeed, the unforgotten bitter splendor of those days was hers and not her brother’s.

Rachel would not give up. “You’ll understand later, Jack. But now listen to me. I can’t tell you the story exactly as it is in the prayer book. Mine is in English, and I only know where Grandfather is in the prayer when he does something my book says we should do, then I find my place again. But you are a boy, and later you’ll learn Hebrew and you’ll know it ail as it is. Shall I tell you the story?”

Jack had been ready to say he did not want to learn Hebrew, but Rachel’s eyes were pleading, and he could no longer tease. He slipped his hand in hers, and said, in a fit of tenderness, “Please’tell me the story, Rachel darling.”

3

JACOB lifted the unleavened bread and said, “Here is the bread our fathers ate in Egypt. This year we eat it here, next year in the land of Israel as freemen.” He watched his sons repeat the words, watched all of them nibble at the hard bread. Simon’s wife shouted to her youngest son across the table, “Don’t eat too much of it, Charles. You knowl how this stuff always hurts your stomach.”

Jacob said to her angrily, “What matters your son’s bellyache, woman? Were not our ancestors’ bowels twisted by worse pains?” And watching his sons, he thought they were hardly better than this woman.

He saw Isaac, who refused to admit he was bound in chains; Simon, who did not even know he had chains; and David, accepting them with mystical resignation. He saw his sons’ sons, who could hardly read the words in the prayer book, their mothers, waiting with vacant eyes to resume their gossip. He thought of his other sons who had gone west too far, too soon, and who had probably forgotten Passover existed. How could those still around him ignore the burning and longing in those words?

Wearily, he thought he should feel joy at this numerous family surrounding him, but he felt only the sadness of a dying hope. He remembered how he had brought them to Egypt, long ago, from Jeddah, in Arabia. He had wanted to transplant his tree, withering in the ancient dryness of Arabia, to the rich soil of Egypt, where fresh winds blew from west and north. He had wanted the tree to grow mighty in the forest of Israel, and have his old Judaism bloom again in the new climate. What had become of his vision when, full of faith, he crossed the Arabian desert in caravan with all his tribe? To giddy heights his tree had grown, but now, hollow inside, unable to draw the sap from its roots, how could it stand when came the tempests and the storms?

What of his sons, and their wives, and their children? They had grown prosperous in Egypt, but they had forgotten that Israel had always storms to withstand, and they were Israel. They no longer knew that wealth was only the means by which, in the abundant years, one generation eats enough, learns enough, accumulates enough for the next generations to live on in the lean years, the years of persecution and huddling in ghettos. They no longer knew that the hungry years spread over generations and were much longer than the seven lean years of which Joseph spoke to Pharaoh. When the time would come to pack and leave, as their ancestors had done in Egypt, would they find the strength to survive, these children who did not know that always the Jew is thrown back into the ghetto?

His voice low, he commanded, “David, read this part of the prayer. Your son, the youngest among us, should read these words, but since he has not been taught Hebrew, you must speak his words for him.”

David bent his head under the reproach, and read. “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Jacob began to read the answers, as in old times, when children were taught their great inheritance.

Simon said, “Why not skip this part of the prayer, my father? The children do not listen, and they cannot understand.”

Jacob looked at the young ones, impatiently fidgeting on their chairs, the youth of his house who could not feel the words in which beat the heart of Israel. He told his sons, “If their ears hear not, and their eyes see not, still I will do that which the Law commands, for it is still our duty to instruct our children.”

He read the four answers for the four types of children the Law describes — the wise, the ignorant, the stupid, the mean — and asked himself, “Around me, I have the ignorant, the stupid, and the mean, but who is wise among them?”

How long he had prayed for this wise one, the one to lead the house of Jacob after him! Year by year, generation by generation, child by child, face by face, he had watched for a sign that would tell him, “This is the Chosen one.” Once again he searched their faces, but where was the Chosen one?

His eyes dwelt on David of the ancient wisdom, a lost exile to whom a new world was a prison. This was his dearest, but not the one to guide the house of Jacob, for in this age the truly wise one bad to marry within him the past and the future, the old and the new, and David lived in the past.

And here was David’s son, a blond head wearing an English school cap as a birthright, eyes sparkling with merriment, eyes on which the brooding thoughts of Israel never cast their shadows, a smiling child, subtly chiding the tradition of his fathers. This was the last child, the last hope, and this too was gone. For Jacob was past eighty, and life, ebbing away, could wait no longer for a child still unborn.

His eyes went from Jack to Rachel, in whom he had always seen the maiden by the well, whom Jacob, father of Israel, had loved. To this Rachel, his own, the new world was a well from which she drew her substance, and yet on her face alone had he seen his own emotion mirrored at Passover. In her, by an irony of fate, two worlds were made one, the beauty of an old tradition wed to the vigor of a new age, as he had wanted them to be in his Chosen one. In this maiden, to be given as bride to another old man’s house, were squandered the gifts he had sought in the man who was to make great his house.

Time had come for Jacob to die, a bitter death with none there to take his place, with all hope dead. The house of Jacob would die with Jacob, crumbling as a castle of sand, for were they not, his sons and their children, sterile grains of sand to be blown away and scattered, useless, among other people? He read the Passover prayer, while in his heart the cry rose, “What, O Lord, has become of Israel? Is Thy Chosen People a rivulet to melt away meekly in the mighty seas of other people? Why hast Thou forsaken me, and my house, and Israel, O Lord?”

His vision of Israel’s new greatness, again to spring from the loins of Jacob, the vision which had swept him across the desert, appeared now as utter folly, and nothing remained but a dark despair, an old patriarch who no longer heard the voice of his Lord. The old voice rasped and sobbed when Jacob recited the ten plagues the Lord had sent upon the Egyptians, and his hand, so steady when it had blessed, trembled now as he shook drops of wine out of his glass, one drop for each plague.

The change in the father’s voice dried the prayer on the sons lips. Isaac asked, “Are you ill, my father?” Simon said, “Rest yourself awhile, the prayer can wait.” And David asked, “What grief assails you, rpy father, that makes you sing the song of triumph as a lament of death?”

“Grief lies heavy upon me,”Jacob said, “and when God wills, time may soon come to rest, but now, let us still pray.”

4

RACHEL knew the sorrow which had quelled Jacob s voice. The old king was dying, knowing no head was proud enough to wear his crown. Ah! Had she not been born woman, she would have worn the crown, even if she were to pick it from the gutter, even if it were a crown of thorns. Yet, Rachel would not despair. When they had been slaves in Egypt, had not God saved them when they had reached the bottom of despair? Had He not sent Moses to lead them, and worked miracle after miracle until they had won their freedom? What God had done then, He could do again. He had not abandoned Moses, and now He could not abandon Jacob, and still be God. There would be a miracle, and perhaps even now could Jack be won.

She told her brother, “ This part of the prayer tells how God punished the Egyptians and thanks Him for all He did for us. God sent Moses to Pharaoh to ask him to let us leave. Pharaoh always said, yes, he would let us go, but he always broke his promise, and treated the slaves worse than before. Ten times, God had to punish the Egyptians. He changed the Nile water into a river of blood, sent wild beasts, millions of frogs and grasshoppers to eat up all the crops. He made darkness out of daylight, and killed the Egyptians’ first-born. Pharaoh was so wicked, even then he didn’t let us go. Then —”

“It’s horrible, Rachel,”Jack interrupted. “God couldn’t have done those things.”

“What else could He do if Pharaoh shut his heart to all pity?”

“But the little children, it wasn’t their fault. How could God kill babies?”

And our babies, Jack, what had they done when Pharaoh had wanted to kill them, and what had their parents done? Can’t you see how wrong it is to pity the masters, when the masters have no pity for the slaves? Should we have stayed slaves forever?”

I don t know, Rachel, it’s all so cruel. And why did we have to come back to Egypt after all that? It makes me feel ashamed.”

“Every country has been to us as Pharaoh’s Egypt, although never so bad, I think, and every country we had to leave. If we had never returned when things got better, long ago there would have been no place for us to live in.”

“You mean those things still happen?”

“Yes, Jack, they do.”

“When I grow up, I don’t want to be a Jew. It’s too horrible. Why do you, Rachel?”

“I’m born that way — oh, Jack, why won’t you understand?”

Rachel knew she was defeated, and wished her heart could become a hard little pebble, to feel no more the steel fingers squeezing so much pain out of it.

While she had talked to Jack, she had not noticed her cousins listening to her. Now she heard them goad her. The girl Arlette said, “There s Rachel trying to make a convert. Well, you didn’t, Rachel, did you?” And the boy Maurice, “And now when the old man calls us for that comedy of carrying the bread, he won’t call you, Rachel, will he?”

Rachel did not answer. Instead, she asked God, “Why didn’t You help me when I did try, so hard: But now at least, please, God, help me not to cry in front of everybody, and also make Grandfather call me to carry the bread this time, and not leave me out so all the others will laugh at me.”

Jacob’s eyes had rested on Rachel. In his torment the sight of her was soothing as oil upon scorched flesh. While saying the prayers, he had watched all that passed at the other end of the table. He thought, “As in the temple one candle is lit with the flame from another candle, so has Rachel wanted to light her brother with her own flame. How could she, a little maiden, know the boy was already cut off from his people, already burning with an alien flame?”

Now he saw serenity fled from her face, and heldback tears flicker in her dark eyes as stars in somber night. Still only a child, she knew the deep grief of losing a soul beloved that one had wanted to bring in offering to the Lord. Had she known his vision and his despair, with love enough to divine his secret heart? Why else the anguish and the immense appeal in her eyes? And if it were so, his doubt must be her doubt, and his ache her ache. What mattered if, being woman, she was useless to the house of Jacob! She was a soul kindred to his own, and he knew how the sharp steel of pain could pierce such a soul. She was worthy of being a son of his house, and as a son he would treat her.

When he reached the part of the prayer which told how the Hebrews left Egypt, and how the young boys slung the still unraised bread around their shoulders, to carry on the long passage, he said, “Let our two youngest boys come forth to carry the bread, as our ancestors did in Egypt, and Rachel, my child, you too come forth, and carry the bread.” He watched the change on her face from grief to uncertain joy, and faith returned to the radiant eyes.

Isaac asked, “Why Rachel? She is only a girl.”

Rachel stood against the wall, not daring to advance. Again Jacob called her, “Come, Rachel, do not fear, and carry our burden like a man.”

He wrapped the bread in a napkin, and when she had knelt before him he tied it around her shoulder. Then he said, “Let my old hand bless your young head.” And when he had blessed her; he kept his hand on her dark hair, and turning to his sons, he said in answer to Isaac, “Women there are who count as men, for they are wise when men are foolish, strong when men are weak, brave when men are cowards. Such is Rachel.”

The girl returned to her chair, holding the precious bread against her as if afraid to lose it. And Jacob’s mind dwelt upon the words he had spoken, and the truth in them beyond the truth in his thought. Such indeed was Rachel, brave and wise, as the one he had awaited. Seeking a man, he had failed to see in Rachel the Lord’s gift. In his pride, he had thought first of building the greatness of his house, and seeking a shepherd for his flock, he had forgotten Israel, the greater flock. For if the girl Rachel could not lead his house, she could do greater things for Israel in the new world open before her. And before Israel, what mattered the house of Jacob? Let it perish! If one was there to accomplish its purpose it had not existed in vain.

But was not this too heavy a burden to lay on the slight shoulders of a girl? He had known the loneliness of one who lived for such a task, and where he had weakened, could he ask this child to remain strong? As the time had come in the prayer to eat the bitter herbs, symbol of the bitterness of their life in Egypt, he thought, “Can I take this child by the hand and tell her, ‘The bitter herbs of earth shall be thine, but not the sweet wine of life; the pains and the searching will be thy lot, but not the laughter and the joy, for thou art chosen’?”

When the bitter herbs had reached the lower end of the table, again he watched Rachel. Jack tasted them and pushed them away, saying, “They’re so bitter.”

“Yes, they are bitter, but they must be eaten,” Rachel said.

She ate hers, and then she ate her brother’s. Their bitterness was hers, and her people’s, and that of so many others. And when one refused his share of bitterness, another must eat both shares. Her grandfather had said she was strong and brave, and having no man, he had chosen her, a girl. There could be no other meaning to his words, and now she must learn to be worthy of him. Gravely eating the herbs, she looked up at him and smiled to show him she had understood him and was ready for what he wanted of her.

Jacob smiled back, now that he could no longer doubt. Alone the child had taken to herself the bitterness of those who carry forth the Lord’s ordained task. Again, she had been sure when he had doubted, and alone, she had heard the Lord’s call.

And when Jacob sang the hymn praising the Lord for all He had done to deliver His people from slavery, his voice soared sure and full, “Praise to the Eternal, for He is kind, and His loving-kindness is eternal.”