Hostage Read Free

court, during the Third Meal, tinged with melancholy, they implored the Lord to slow the rhythm of time, to suspend it, since the parting from theSabbath was so painful. It heralds the return of the everyday with its dangers and fears. Everywhere, men and children were hoping Mother or Grandmother was not in a rush, that she still had time to recite “
Gott fun Avrohom
,” “God of Abraham,” the song of farewell to the Sabbath, that she could extend the peacefulness for a few more minutes—the sun had not yet set at the glowing red horizon.
    Like his son, Haskel looks out the window to see if three stars are shining in the firmament, signifying that the holy day has ended. Day and night battle for the last rays of the sun. The young Shaltiel, with his naïve and poetic imagination, is convinced that the presence and departure of the Sabbath depend on his father, on the songs he sings in a strong or halfhearted voice, that his father’s power is immense.
    As soon as the evening prayer is finished, father and son hurry home to light the candles that separate the sacred from the profane and Israel from other nations. And they wish each other “Good week, good week.” Let it be good for each of them. But, Shaltiel thinks, how could it really be good as they will not be together? From morning to night, his father will knock at the doors of hardhearted strangers, and he, Shaltiel, will be isolated at school from the boys luckier than he, listening to the tutor or imagining an invisible chessboard.
    Later on, he will find the word describing his state of mind: exile. That is what he is all week, torn away from his parents, an unpopular exile who arouses uneasiness everywhere, and who drags his anguish along with him. A vague anguish, elusive, pernicious, imperceptible but all-consuming. Stifling. Worse: demeaning.
    In school, at first, people made fun of young Shaltiel. Theyteased him and tried to provoke him. They had no compunctions about hurting him.
    Months went by, but he remained solitary, powerless. More than the others, he suffered from the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer. Some classmates occasionally wore new clothes for the holidays. Not he. Often a scapegoat, he didn’t take part in games, and didn’t laugh with the others when one of them acted stupidly or insolently. He was unconnected.
    Then, one day, he made a friend.
    He must have been entering his eleventh or twelfth year. That day, Reb Haskel had fallen ill. Shaltiel (or Shalti, as his relatives called him) wanted to stay by his bedside, but Haskel wouldn’t hear of it.
    “A boy’s place is in school,” he ruled.
    With a heavy heart, Shaltiel could only obey. In school, he could think only of his father. For the first time in his life, he didn’t listen to what was being said around the long, rectangular table.
    It was winter. The streets of Brooklyn were covered with icy patches buried under snow. As though grieving, the city breathed in slow motion. The skyscrapers were wrapped in mist, in a hush.
    That day, the students were studying the Treatise on Punishments in the Talmud and, in the Bible, the chapter where the young Joseph, hated by his jealous brothers, is cast into a pit filled with snakes and scorpions. In tears, he implores his enemy brothers to get him out. Impervious to his pain and fear, they sit down to calm their hunger. The tutor waxed indignant: “Howis this possible? Isn’t it a disgrace? Joseph is suffering and crying, and his brothers think only of their stomachs? And after that, what do they do? They sell him into slavery! He, son of Jacob, grandson of Isaac and great-grandson of Abraham! It is hardly surprising that in the Talmud our Sages, blessed be their memory, declare that day as one of the darkest in the history of our people! They sold him for a bit of money and shoes!”
    At that point Shaltiel could not hold back his tears. The tutor noticed him for the first time, really, and congratulated him: