OI- Overrated Intelligence

My prose piece (updated):

Since the Diaspora, Jews have wandered, settling in lands where they might be allwed to remain. Hated or feared by uneducated, supersticious, bigoted populations because they were "different", they endured great hardships. They remained constant, though, and firm in their desire to return at some point to the land of their origin--Palestine. In his novel, THE EXODUS, Leon Uris tells the story of how two brothers made their way back to the holyland.

“Kill the Jews!”
A rock smashed through the seminary window. The rabbi hurried the students out through the back to the safety of the cellar. In the streets, Jews scampered wildly for cover ahead of a frenzied mob of over a thousand students and Cossacks.
“Kill the Jews!” they screamed. “Kill the Jews!”
It was another pogrom inspired by Andreev, the humpbacked headmaster of a local gymnasium-high school-and foremost Jew hater in Zhitomir. Andreev’s students swaggered down the streets of the ghetto, smashing up store fronts and dragging any Jews they could find into the streets and beating them mercilessly.
“Kill the Jews…kill the Jews…kill the Jews!”
Yakov and Jossi raced from the seminary.
They dashed home and flung open the door of the shop.
“Mama! Papa!”
The shop was a shambles.
“Mama! Papa!”
They found their mother cowering in a corner in a state of hysteria. Jossi shook her hard. “Where is Papa?”
“The Torah!” she shrieked. “The Torah!”
At that instant, six blocks away, Simon Rabinsky staggered into his burning synagogue and fought his way gagging to the end of the room where the Holy Ark stood. He threw back the curtains with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them and pulled down the Torah, the Scroll of the Laws of God.
Simon pressed the holy parchment against his breast to protect it from the flames and staggered back to the door. He was badly burned and choking. He staggered outside and fell onto his knees.
Twenty of Andreev’s students were waiting for him.
“Kill the Jew!”
Simon crawled a few yards and collapsed covering the Torah with his body. Clubs smashed his skull. Hobnailed boots ripped his face…
“Kill the Jew!”
In mortal agony Simon Rabinsky screamed out… “Hear, O Israel… the Lord is our God… the Lord is one!”

When they found Simon Rabinsky he was beyond recognition. The Torah, the laws which God had given Moses, had been burned by the mob.
The entire Zhitomir ghetto mourned his passing. He had died in the noblest way a Jew could meet death—protecting the Sefer Torah. Simon was put to rest along with a dozen others who had been murdered in Andreev’s pogrom.
Jossi and Yakov went to synagogue twice each day to say Kaddish for their father. In his sorrow Jossi probed to find a reason for his father’s brutal death.
Yakov was different. His heart was full of hatred. Even as he went to say the mourners’ prayers, his soul demanded revenge. He seethed and smoldered—he was restless and angry. He muttered time and again that he would avenge his father’s death.
Jossi, knowing his brother’s state of mind, barely let him out of his sight. He tried to soothe and comfort Yakov but Yakov was inconsolable.
A month after the death of Simon Rabinsky, Yakov slipped from the shop in the middle of the night as Jossi slept. He took from his father’s bench a long sharp knife and hid it in his belt and ventured from the ghetto toward the school where Andreev the Jew hater lived.
Jossi awoke instinctively a few minutes later. The instant he saw Yakov was gone he dressed hurriedly and ran after him. He knew where his brother would be going.
At four o’clock in the morning, Yakov Rabinsky pulled the brass knocker on the door of Andreev’s house. As the demented hunchback opened the door, Yakov sprang from the shadows and plunged the knife deep into his heart. Andreev emitted one short shriek and rolled to the ground, dead.
A few moments later Jossi rushed onto the scene to find his brother standing hypnotized over the body of the slain man. He pulled Yakov away and they fled.
All the next day and night they hid in the cellar of Rabbi Lipzin’s house. Word of Andreev’s murder spread quickly throughout Zhitomir. The elders of the ghetto met and came to a decision.
“We have reason to fear that you two were spotted,” the rabbi said when he returned. “Your red hair, Jossi, was seen by some students.”
Jossi bit his lip and did not reveal that he had only been trying to prevent the crime. Yakov showed no remorse for his deed. “I would do it again, gladly,” he said.
“Although we understand well what drove you to this deed.” Said the rabbi, “it cannot be forgiven. You may well have started another pogrom. On the other hand… we are Jews and there is no justice for us in a Russian court. We have reached a decision you are to abide by.”
“Yes, Rabbi,” Jossi said.
“You must leave Zhitomir at once and never return.”

In 1884, Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky, aged fourteen and sixteen, became fugitives. They used the roads only by night and hid during the day, moving east to Lubny, a distance of a hundred-odd miles from Zhitomir. At Lubny they found the ghetto immediately and sought out the rabbi, only to learn that their notoriety had preceded them. The rabbi and the elders of Lubny met and agreed to give the boys enough food and money for another week’s travel. It took twenty days of cautious moving for them to get to Kharkov.
Their fame had spread throughout the Pale, and their capture was being turned into a holy mission. For two weeks they hid in the clammy basement beneath the synagogue in Kharkov, their presence known only to the rabbi and a few elders.
At last the Rabbi Solomon came to them. “It is not safe, even here,” he said. “It is only a matter of time until you boys are discovered. Already the police have been prowling around asking questions. But with winter coming on it will be near impossible to move.”
“We have decided there is but one thing to do. There are some Jewish families in this district who have passed as gentiles and who own small farms. We feel it would be the safest plan for you to hid with one of them until spring at least.”
“Rabbi Solomon,” Jossi said, “we are very thankful for everything that has been done for us, but my brother and I have made a plan to four own.”
“We are going to Palestine,” Yakov said.
The good rabbi looked stunned.
“We have a route in mind. God will help us.”
“No doubt God will help you but let us not press Him for a miracle. It is over three hundred hard cold miles to the port of Odessa.”
“We are not going by way of Odessa.”
“We intend to walk.”
“Young man, it cannot be done! Do you mean to tell me you will walk over two thousand miles, through the cold of winter, across strange lands and fifteen-thousand-foot mountain ranges without papers… without knowledge of the country… with the police after you? Why, you are but little more than children!”
Yakov’s eyes were burning with passion; he looked at the rabbi, “Fear not for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and father thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up and to the south, keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”
And so it came to pass that the Rabinsky brothers who were wanted for murder fled from Kharkov and moved to the east and to the south through an inhumanly bitter winter.
Over the ice and the snow they staggered south with but cloth wrappings around their feet—yard after yard—mile after mile—week after week.
They walked on until the blue-green of the Mediterranean Sea burst suddenly before them and the howling winds and cold of the past years were exchanged for the blistering head of one hundred and twenty degrees. They plodded down the Levantine coast wearing Arab rags.
“Are there Jews here?”
On into Lebanon they walked-through Tripoli and the wildness of Beirut—they neared the Promised Land.
“Are there Jews here?

The year was 1888. Forty months had passed since that night Yakov and Jossi fled the Zhitomir ghetto.
They stood upon a hill. Below them was a valley. Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky stared down into northern Galilee. Their journey was over.
Yakov put his hand on Jossi’s shoulder. “We are home, Jossi! We are home!”

The Exodus (my prose piece)

“Kill the Jews!”
A rock smashed through the seminary window. The rabbi hurried the students out through the back to the safety of the cellar. In the streets, Jews scampered wildly for cover ahead of a frenzied mob of over a thousand students and Cossacks.
“Kill the Jews!” they screamed. “Kill the Jews!”
It was another pogrom inspired by Andreev, the humpbacked headmaster of a local gymnasium-high school-and foremost Jew hater in Zhitomir. Andreev’s students swaggered down the streets of the ghetto, smashing up store fronts and dragging any Jews they could find into the streets and beating them mercilessly.
“Kill the Jews…kill the Jews…kill the Jews!”
Yakov and Jossi raced from the seminary.
They turned the corner into their street and ran head on into a dozen hoodlums wearing university caps—disciples of Andreev.
“There go two of them!”
Yakov and Jossi turned around and fled, leading the pack of pursuers away from their own home. The students howled with glee as they sprinted after the brothers. For fifteen minutes they wove in and out of streets and alleys until the students trapped them against a dead-end wall. Jossi and Yakov stood with their backs to the wall, dripping sweat and panting for breath as the students formed a semicircle and closed in on them. His eyes gleaming, the leader stepped forward with an iron pipe and swung on Jossi!
Jossi blocked the blow and snatched up the student, spun him around, lifted him over his head, and hurled him at the rest of his companions. Yakov, whose pocket full of rocks was for just such occasions, bounced two stones off the head of two students, sending them to the ground unconscious. The other students scattered.
The boys dashed home and flung open the door of the shop.
“Mama! Papa!”
The shop was a shambles.
“Mama! Papa!”
They found their mother cowering in a corner in a state of hysteria. Jossi shook her hard. “Where is Papa?”
“The Torah!” she shrieked. “The Torah!”
At that instant, six blocks away, Simon Rabinsky staggered into his burning synagogue and fought his way gagging to the end of the room where the Holy Ark stood. He threw back the curtains with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them and pulled down the Sefer Torah, the Scroll of the Laws of God.
Simon pressed the holy parchment against his breast to protect it from the flames and staggered back to the door. He was badly burned and choking. He staggered outside and fell onto his knees.
Twenty of Andreev’s students were waiting for him.
“Kill the Jew!”
Simon crawled a few yards and collapsed covering the Sefer Torah with his body. Clubs smashed his skull. Hobnailed boots ripped his face…
“Kill the Jew!”
In mortal agony Simon Rabinsky screamed out… “Hear, O Israel… the Lord is our God… the Lord is one!”

When they found Simon Rabinsky he was beyond recognition. The Sefer Torah, the laws which God had given Moses, had been burned by the mob.
The entire Zhitomir ghetto mourned his passing. He had died in the noblest way a Jew could meet death—protecting the Sefer Torah. Simon was put to rest along with a dozen others who had been murdered in Andreev’s pogrom.
For Rachel Rabinsky, the death of her husband was but another tragedy in a life which had known little else but sorrow. But this time her strength and will were gone. Even her sons could not comfort her. Rachel was taken off to live with relatives in another town.
Jossi and Yakov went to synagogue twice each day to say Kaddish for their father. In his sorrow Jossi probed to find a reason for his father’s brutal death.
Yakov was different. His heart was full of hatred. Even as he went to say the mourners’ prayers, his soul demanded revenge. He seethed and smoldered—he was restless and angry. He muttered time and again that he would avenge his father’s death.
Jossi, knowing his brother’s state of mind, barely let him out of his sight. He tried to soothe and comfort Yakov but Yakov was inconsolable.
A month after the death of Simon Rabinsky, Yakov slipped from the shop in the middle of the night as Jossi slept. He took from his father’s bench a long shark knife and hid it in his belt and ventured from the ghetto toward the school where Andreev the Jew hater lived.
Jossi awoke instinctively a few minutes later. The instant he saw Yakov was gone he dressed hurriedly and ran after him. He knew where his brother would be going.
At four o’clock in the morning, Yakov Rabinsky pulled the brass knocker on the door of Andreev’s house. As the demented hunchback opened the door, Yakov sprang from the shadows and plunged the knife deep into his heart. Andreev emitted one short shriek and rolled to the ground, dead.
A few moments later Jossi rushed onto the scene to find his brother standing hypnotized over the body of the slain man. He pulled Yakov away and they fled.
All the next day and night they hid in the cellar of Rabbi Lipzin’s house. Word of Andreev’s murder spread quickly throughout Zhitomir. The elders of the ghetto met and came to a decision.
“We have reason to fear that you two were spotted,” the rabbi said when he returned. “Your red hair, Jossi, was seen by some students.”
Jossi bit his lip and did not reveal that he had only been trying to prevent the crime. Yakov showed no remorse for his deed. “I would do it again, gladly,” he said.
“Although we understand well what drove you to this deed.” Said the rabbi, “it cannot be forgiven. You may well have started another pogrom. On the other hand… we are Jews and there is no justice for us in a Russian court. We have reached a decision you are to abide by.”
“Yes, Rabbi,” Jossi said.
“You must leave Zhitomir at once and never return.”

In 1884, Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky, aged fourteen and sixteen, became fugitives. They used the roads only by night and hid during the day, moving east to Lubny, a distance of a hundred-odd miles from Zhitomir. At Lubny they found the ghetto immediately and sought out the rabbi, only to learn that their notoriety had preceded them. The rabbi and the elders of Lubny met and agreed to give the boys enough food and money for another week’s travel. This time their destination was Kharkov, some two hundred miles away, where their search for them might not be so intense. Advance word was sent tot the Kharkov rabbi and the Rabinsky boys were on the way.
The entire countryside was on the alert for the Rabinsky brothers. It took twenty days of cautious moving for them to get to Kharkov.
Their fame had spread throughout the Pale, and their capture was being turned into a holy mission. For two weeks they hid in the clammy basement beneath the synagogue in Kharkov, their presence known only to the rabbi and a few elders.
At last the Rabbi Solomon came to them. “It is not safe, even here,” he said. “It is only a matter of time until you boys are discovered. Already the police have been prowling around asking questions. But with winter coming on it will be near impossible to move.”
“We have decided there is but one thing to do. There are some Jewish families in this district who have passed as gentiles and who own small farms. We feel it would be the safest plan for you to hid with one of them until spring at least.”
“Rabbi Solomon,” Jossi said, “we are very thankful for everything that has been done for us, but my brother and I have made a plan to four own.”
“We are going to Palestine,” Yakov said.
The good rabbi looked stunned.
“We have a route in mind. God will help us.”
“No doubt God will help you but let us not press Him for a miracle. It is over three hundred hard cold miles to the port of Odessa.”
“We are not going by way of Odessa.”
“We intend to walk.”
Rabbi Solomon gasped.
“Moses walked for forty years,” Yakov said; “it will not take us that long.”
“Young man, I am well aware that Moses walked for forty years. That does not explain how you are going to walk to Palestine.”
“It cannot be done! Do you mean to tell me you will walk over two thousand miles, through the cold of winter, across strange lands and fifteen-thousand-foot mountain ranges without papers… without knowledge of the country… with the police after you? Why, you are but little more than children!”
Yakov’s eyes were burning with passion; he looked at the rabbi, “Fear not for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and father thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up and to the south, keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”
And so it came to pass that the Rabinsky brothers who were wanted for murder fled from Kharkov and moved to the east and to the south through an inhumanly bitter winter.
They trudged through waist-high snow during the night, bending their young bodies against howling winds and fighting off the numbness of frostbite. Their bellies rumbled with hunger. They stole from the countryside and in the hours of daylight they hid in the forests.
Over the ice and the snow they staggered south with but cloth wrappings around their feet—yard after yard—mile after mile—week after week.
In the spring they reached Rostov and collapsed.
They found the ghetto and were taken in and fed and sheltered. Their rags were exchanged for new clothing. They had to rest several weeks before they were fit enough to continue the journey.
Late in the spring they went on again, fully recovered from their winter’s flight.
Although they did not now have to contend with the elements they had to move with greater caution, for they had left the Pale behind and could no longer depend on protection, food, and shelter from the Jewish communities. They skirted the Black Sea south of Rostov and moved deep into Georgia. All their food now was stolen from the fields—they never let themselves be seen by daylight.
At Stavropol at the base of the mountains they staged a series of robberies which completely outfitted them with clothing and food for the assault over the mountains. Then they fled into the Caucasus toward Armenia with the police on their track.
Through another brutal winder they moved deep into the mountain, walking by day. Climbing the treacherous passes into dark, and pillaging the countryside. The first year had hardened them and made them wise—the obsession to get to Palestine was greater than ever and drove them onward. Yakov would babble passages from the Bible by the hour to drive their bodies forward. They made the last part of their push instinctively, in the numbed daze.
And in spring they received their second miracle of rebirth. One day they stood up and for the first time breathed free air—as they left “Mother Russia” behind them forever. As Yakov passed the border marker into Turkey he turned and spat into Russia.
Now they could move in daylight, but it was a strange land with strange sounds and smells and they had no passports or papers. All of eastern Turkey was mountainous and the going was slow. They went to work in the fields in places were they could not steal food, but twice that spring they were caught and thrown into prison briefly.
Jossi reckoned they would have to give up thievery, for it was too dangerous being caught; they might be sent back to Russia.
They pressed on to the south. In each village they asked, “Are there Jews here?”
In some there would be Jews and they would be fed and clothed and sheltered and sent along their way.
These Jews were different from any they had known. They were peasants filled with ignorance and superstition, yet they knew their Torah and kept the Sabbath and the Holy Days.
“Are there Jews here?
“We are Jews.”
“Let us see your rabbi.”
“Where are you boys going?”
“We are walking to the Promised Land.”
It was the magic password. “Are there Jews here?”
“There is a Jewish family in the next village.”
Never once were they refused hospitality.
Two years went by. The brothers pressed on doggedly, stopping only when exhaustion overcame them or they had to work for food.
“Are there Jews here?”
They walked on until the blue-green of the Mediterranean Sea burst suddenly before them and the howling winds and cold of the past years were exchanged for the blistering head of one hundred and twenty degrees. They plodded down the Levantine coast wearing Arab rags.
“Are there Jews here?”
Yes, there were Jews, but again they were different. These Jews looked and dressed and spoke like Arabs. But yet they knew the Hebrew language and the Torah. Like the Jews of the Pale and the Jews of Turkey, the Arab-like Jews took the Rabinsky brothers in without question and shared their homes and their food. They blessed the brothers as they had been blessed before the sacredness of their mission.
On into Lebanon they walked-through Tripoli and the wildness of Beirut—they neared the Promised Land.
“Are there Jews here?

The year was 1888. Forty months had passed since that night Yakov and Jossi fled the Zhitomir ghetto. Jossi had frown into a lean and leathery giant six feet three inches tall with a frame of steel. He was twenty years of age and he wore a flaming red beard.
Yakov was eighteen and also hardened by the more than three years of travel but he was still of medium height with dark sensitive features and was filled with the same intenseness he has had from childhood.
They stood upon a hill. Below them was a valley. Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky stared down at the Huleh in northern Galilee. Their journey was over.
Yakov put his hand on Jossi’s shoulder. “We are home, Jossi! We are home!”