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“Never has a year passed in which no one died,” Iacopo writes resolutely. “Death waits for all who live— the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of dry land. We who have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we alone know that death is coming for us. Adonai, in His compassion and wisdom, has given us the Days of Awe, so that we might turn back toward Him. Some do. Some don’t. Some need not return because they’ve never left. It seems to make no difference. Each year, the Holy One takes life from those whose deaths leave us stu
Why my mother, my son, my cousin, my wife? his congregants will ask themselves. Why these i
“I have studied Torah for many years,” he writes. “Had I studied alone, I might have come to believe that Torah does not teach us to understand God but simply to belong to Him. Fortunately, we Jews have as our study partners the wise of all ages, sages who lived in the times of the Canaanites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hellenists, and the Romans.”
Iacopo’s gaze drifts along the shelves of his library. Bibles in Hebrew and German, French and Italian. The many-volumed Talmud with its centuries-long conversation among past rabbis. Commentaries by Maimonides and Nachmonides, by Rashi and Rabbi Luzzatto share a plank with Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Plutarch. Flavius Josephus and Nathan ben Yehiel rest cozily between Machiavelli and Tacitus. Schiller and Shakespeare rub shoulders with Solomon Conegliano. Cantarini, Cardoso, Lampronti. Deborah Ascarelli, Sara Coppio Sullam. So many dear friends…
“The sages offer us a way to understand the terrible times when we are driven into exile, when we are beaten and enslaved, when we are killed with less thought than a shochet gives a chicken. The Holy One has made us His partners, the sages teach. He gives us wheat, we make bread. He gives us grapes, we make wine. He gives us the world. We make of it what we will— all of us together. When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty. Bombs do not drop from God’s hand. Triggers are not pulled by God’s finger. Each of us chooses, one by one, and God’s eye does not turn from those who suffer or from those who inflict suffering. Our choices are weighed. And, thus, the nations are judged.”
Carefully, Iacopo removes his cracked spectacles. Elbows on his desk, he presses his fingers into his eyes and weighs his own obligations. He ca
He can close the synagogue school on his own authority. Suora Marta has offered to enroll Jewish children in a boarding school run by her order in Roccabarbena. The repubblicani have closed the state schools, but Mother of Mercy is also an orphanage, and classes are in session. Inland, away from industrial targets, the children can continue their education in relative safety.
On Monday, Iacopo will bring Angelo to Suora Marta himself, and urge other parents to follow his example. And then he will ask— no, he will beg Lidia Leoni to take Mirella and the baby to Decimo, where they can hide on a tenant farm owned by her Catholic son-in-law’s parents until the war is over.
Iacopo is aware of the irony. All these years, he has refused to bless mixed marriages, alarmed that so many of his congregation’s young people were marrying Catholics— the inevitable result of shared lives, shared neighborhoods, shared values. He considered those marriages heartening proof of Italy’s religious tolerance but a threat to Jewish survival. Such unions may be the salvation of the Italkim now.
Replacing his glasses, he picks up his grandfather’s pen. “The Jews of Italy have always striven to be a source of generosity in the world, for God has often granted us koach latet: the power to give. For centuries, we Italkim have supported the victims of persecution and expulsion. In the days to come, remember this: when we accept the generosity of others, we are the occasion of the Holy One’s blessing on our benefactors for their kindness. May God guide us all,” he concludes, “from war to justice, from justice to mercy, and from mercy to peace.”
He caps his pen and taps the paper into a neat stack. His muscles are cramped, and his mind seems packed in cotton wool. Even so, before he goes to bed, he reaches for the small Bible he keeps on his desk for easy reference. Holding it in one palm, he opens his hand and lets the book fall open where it pleases. “I ca
“I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side,” he reads. “But I trust in you, O Lord.”
EN ROUTE TO ROCCABARBENA
VALDOTTAVO, PIEMONTE
Mussolini’s trains contrive to leave stations on time, only to slow and stop repeatedly. Damaged rails must be repaired. Military transports sidetrack civilian trains. Locomotives break down, or run out of coal.
“Bring food,” everyone advised. “It’ll take all night to get there.”
Third class was crammed with passengers who would doze and cough and curse, but when Suora Marta boarded, a conductor recognized her from a geometry class in 1931. Crooking his finger, he led her and her companions to a safer and more private compartment shared by three well-dressed gentlemen who treated the nuns with courtesy and smiled at the little boy. On Marta’s left, nearest the sliding door, Suora Ilaria drew out her rosary; within minutes, she was snoring peacefully, black beads clutched in fingers clawed by arthritis. Squashed next to the window, the rabbi’s silent son stared at the countryside until he, too, fell asleep.
Bookended by her companions in the motionless train, Marta shifts carefully, trying to restore feeling to her thick little legs, without notable success. Unable to sleep, she offers up the pincushion sensation and starts another drowsy rosary.
Outside, welders work: demonic in iron masks, lit blue and brilliant white by acetylene torches. Sparks scatter from a section of twisted rail. At last, and slowly, the train makes its way past the workers, onto a different track. The gentleman sitting opposite lifts his chin toward the window. “That’s why we were delayed, Suora.”
First she sees only her own unappealing reflection. Her breath catches. A young man’s body hangs from a rope tied to the crossbar of a telegraph pole. A placard slung around his neck reads “Saboteur” in Italian and German.
“Troublemakers,” the man grumbles as the train’s movement smooths out and gains speed. “They only make it harder for the rest of us.”
“We must pray for his soul,” Suora Marta counters, pugnaciously pious.
The man snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. No one in the compartment speaks again.
They arrive in Roccabarbena just after dawn. The station isn’t large compared to those at Sant’Andrea or Genoa, but this is an important, if small, city. On five tracks flanked by crowds and crates, Roccabarbena gathers in Valdottavo’s olive oil and wine, cornmeal and chestnut flour, pork and fruit, and sends this bounty to the coast in exchange for manufactured goods, dried cod, sardines, and anchovies.
Small valise in her right hand, Suora Marta has only her left to deploy, and debates which of her charges to hold on to: the little boy or an old nun in her second childhood. Either might wander off.
Suora Ilaria’s veiled head tosses and swivels; she reminds Suora Marta of a horse trying to see around blinkers. “This didn’t use to be here,” Ilaria says, glaring at the railway station. “I’m sure this didn’t use to be here!”