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Michener Novel 'The Source' Relates Pride in 'Deuteronomy' L tiatin

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"You catch me off guard," Eliav replied.
"The nonsense I've been hearing today. I'm disgusted. I'd like
to bite into something solid."
"You've read De Vaux, Kaufmann, Albright?"
Cullinane nodded.
"Maimonicles?"
"He's the best."
"There's one better."
"'What?"
"Read Deuteronomy five times."
"Are you kidding?"
"No. Deuteronomy. Five times."
"What's your thought?"
"It's the great central book of the Jews and if you master it you'll
understand us."
"But is it worth five readings?"
"Yes, because most Gentiles think of the ancient Hebrews as curious
relics who reached Israel ten thousand years ago in some kind of archaic
mystery."
"How do you think it happened?" Cullinane asked.
"Deuteronomy is so real to me that I feel as if _ my immediate
ancestors—say, my great-grandfather with desert dust still on his
clothes—came down that valley with goats and donkeys and stumbled
onto this spot."
"Will reading Deuteronomy give me such a feeling?"
"Read it five times and see," Eliav countered.
It was in this way that Cullinane renewed his acquaintance with
the old Jewish masterpiece which he had first seriously studied at
Princeton. Deuteronomy purports to be the farewell address of Gen-
eral Moses to his Jews as they are about to leave the wilderness and
enter into the land of Canaan, and at the opening line, "These be the
words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan," Cullinane
had the feeling that Deuteronomy resembled General Washington's fare-
well address to his colonial soldiers; and the analogy was apt.
At Makor there was no Douay Version of the Bible, so Cullinane
could- not use that Catholic translation; but this didn't bother him. At
Princeton he had become familiar with the Protestant King James Ver-
sion of 1611, and now as his eyes ran down the columns they caught
phrases and sentences which he had once vaguely supposed to be from
the New Testament: "Man cloth not live by bread only," and "From
the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water," and "Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy might." He discovered concepts that lay at the core of
his New Testament Catholicism: "But the word is very nigh unto thee,
in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." And he came
upon other phrases that jolted him regarding the story of Jesus; these
made him go back for a second reading: "If there arise among you a
prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder
. . . thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that
dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether
ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul."
When Cullinane finished his first reading he was inclined to tell
Eliav that he was now refreshed and could face the next busload of
tourists, but he had found the tall Jew to be canny in these matters,
and so, to indulge him, he began again at the beginning of Deuteronomy.
This time he gained a sense of the enormous historicity of the book:
the unknown author, who had used the literary device of speaking as
Moses, had been a scholar immersed in Jewish history and spoke of it
as if it had happened yesterday—as Eliav had said, in the life of his
great-grandfather--and this involvement began to communicate itself
to Cullinane. He now read the Ten Commandments as if he were among
the tribes listening to Moses. It was he who was coming out of Egypt,
dying of thirst in the Sinai, rereating in petulant fear from the first
invasion of the Promised Land. He put the Bible down with a distinct
sense of having read the history of a real people . not the real
history, perhaps, but a distillation of hundreds of old traditions and na-
tional memories. Eliav had guessed right: Cullinane was beginning
to feel that a band of living Hebrews had one day come down these
gullies to find Makor. He wondered what new thing he would uncover
on the remaining three readings. At this point Eliav appeared with a
book under his arm and took away the King James Version. "John,
I wish you'd do your next two readings from this new English transla-
tion done by a group of Jewish scholars in Philadelphia.
"Why Jewish?"
Eliav hesitated, then said, "It's a ticklish point. But Deuteronomy
is particularly Jewish in nature. It's our holy book and it means double
to us what it could posibly mean to a Catholic or a Baptist. Yet
everybody reads it in Protestant or Catholic translations . . ."
"To me a translation's a translation," Cullinane protested.
"Not so," Eliav retorted. "Even when the King James Version was
made it was purposefully old-fashioned. Something beautiful and poetic.
Today it's positively archaic, and for young people to study their re-
ligion from it can only mean they'll think of that religion as archaic—
clothed in dust and not to be taken as contemporary."
"Perhaps, but why a Jewish translation?"
"The other thing that's wrong with the King James Version is that
it's purely Protestant in its choice of words. You Catholics discovered
that early: so you held to your Douay Version, which was just as /op-
sided or the Catholic side. And all the time, the book you're wrestling
over is a Jewish book, written by Jews for the instruction of Jews in
a very Jewish religion. We can be forgiven if we feel that we ought
to have a translation which takes these things into account . . . especi-
ally with Deuteronomy."
"So now you've slanted everything into a Jewish bias."
"We didn't, but that's not the point. Do you know Isaiah 7:14?"
Cullinane was always impressed with the way Jews could cite the Bible,
and now Eliav repeated the Old Testament words that lay at the heart
of New Testament Christianity: "'Therefore the Lord himself shall give
you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall
call his name Immanuel'."
Cullinane consulted his Protestant Bible and satisfied himself that
Eliav had quoted accurately. But then the Jew said, "Now look it up
in the Jewish translation," and there Cullinane found the word virgin
translated as young woman.
"On what authority did they make that change?" he asked in some
surprise.
"Look at the original Hebrew," Eliav suggested, handing him a
third version, and in the original language of the Bible the word virgin
was not mentioned. It had been introduced by Christian scholars as
a device for proving that the Old Testament prophesized the New and
that the New should therefore supersede the Old. "Throughout the
centuries," Eliav explained, "hundreds of thousands of Jews were
burned to death or massacred because their own Bible was misused
against them. I think we're entitled to an accurate Jewish version."
When Eliav left, Cullinane began what was to be a startling ex-

perience. The new Jewish translation, by divesting Deuteronomy of its
Shakespearean poetry, offered the reader a blunt and often awkward
statement. The old and the new compared in this manner:
Hear, 0 Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your
ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.
Hear, 0 Israel, the laws and norms that I proclaim to you this
day! Study them and observe them faithfully!
He checked the modern translation against the original Hebrew
and discovered the Jewish translation to be literal and the King James
Version not. He tested half a dozen additional passages and satisfied
himself that the Jewish translators had at least tried to render their
version faithfully if not poetically.
But gradually his critical judgment receded and he found himself
reading for the pure pleasure of contemporaneous expression; and on
his second run he came upon that verse which had such a powerful
hold upon the Jewish reader: "It was not with our fathers that the
Lord made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is
here today." And the point Eliav had been trying to get across was
burned into Cullinane's consciousness: Deuteronomy was a living book
and to the living Jew it had contemporary force. When he came to
the scene in which the Jews, having received the Ten Commandments,
urged Moses to go back to God for further instructions, the simple
idiom of the new translation gave him the sensation of being actually
with the Jews at Horeb as the commandments were being delivered.
"You go closer and hear all that the Lord our God says; then you tell
us everything that the Lord our God tells you, and we will willingly
do it."
When he was finished with his fourth reading he told Eliav, "I see
what you mean. It has a sense of actuality. You can almost touch
the Jews."
"Now for the last one, this time in Hebrew. Just as it was written
down."
"My Hebrew's too rusty," Cullinane protested. "Pll take your word
that it's a fair translation."
"I want to prove quite a different point," Eliav said. "And for
it your Hebrew's adequate. Skip the words you don't know."
It took Cullinane about a day to make his way through the Hebrew
text, and it was one of the best days he was to spend at Makor, for as
he dug his way into the powerful Hebrew, in almost the same way as
he had to dig through the soil hiding Makor, he came upon that quiet
yet singing declaration of faith that is the core of Judaism, the passage
which expresses the essence of Jewish history: "My father was a fugi-
tive Aramaean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and so-
journed there; but there he became a great and very populous nation.
The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us: they imposed
heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers,
and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our
oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an
outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He
brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk
and honey."
At dinner Eliav said, "The point I wanted to make is this. The
Hebrew used in writing Deuteronomy sometime in the seventh century
B.C.E. is the same Hebrew that we've revived in Israel after it had been
a dead language for a thousand years. Call over one of the kibbutzniks.
Son!" A youth of fifteen ambled over, sloppy, happy, his sleeves rolled
up for the job of cleaning the dining hall. Eliav asked, "Can you find
me someone who speaks English," and the boy said that he did, so
Eliav handed him the Hebrew Torah, pointed to a passage in Deuter-
onomy and asked, "Can you read this?"
"Sure."
"Go ahead." The boy studied the words, some of the oldest writ-
ten in Hebrew, and said tentatively, "`My father was an Aramaean_with
no home. He went to Egypt. Not many. There he became a nation'."
"Good," Eliav said, and the pleased kibbutznik returned to his
work.
Cullinane was impressed. "You mean . . . any educated Israeli
today can read the Bible exactly as it was written?"
"Of course. For us this is a living book. Not necessarily a re-
ligious book, you understand. That boy, for example. Son!" The youth
came back, smiling. "You ever go to synagogue?"
"No!"
"Your parents religious?"

"But you know the Torah? The Prophets?"
"Sure," and he left.
"That's what you must remember, Cullinane. Every Jew you see
on this dig can read the original Bible better than you can read
Chaucer."
"You've proved your point," the Irishman admitted.
"I haven't got to the point yet," Eliav corrected. "We Jews per-
sisted in history . . . where are the Babylonians, the Edomites, the
Moabites with their multitude of gods? They're all gone, but our ten-
acious little group of Jews lives on. And we do so because what you've
been reading in Deuteronomy is to us a real thing. One crucial passage
you must have noticed. It was an historic actuality, whether you Gen-
tiles and we Jews like it or not."
"Which one?"
Without consulting the Torah, Eliav quoted, "For you are a people
consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth the Lord
your God chose you to be His treasured people'."
What a remarkable theme, and how beautifully done—and how
well it inspires reading of the Bible and studying the background of
the Jew!
It is in this spirit, while also handling current Israeli affairs with
great skill, that Michener has produced a classic work about Jews,
Judaism, Israel and the history of religions.
Michener was in Israel for an entire year to write "The Source."
The man's skill is reflected in the work. He has deep understanding
and his brilliance as a story-teller is in evidence throughout this great
work which should be among the best sellers for a very long time.—P.S.

Stage Hate Rallys
in Buenos Aires

(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)

BUENOS AIRES — Two anti-
Semitic demonstrations, one
staged by Tacuara and Guardia
Restauradora Nacionalists, t h e
other by a group calling itself the
Federation of Arab Entities, staged
anti-Semitic demonstrations here,
publicly proclaiming hostility
against Jews in general, against
Zionism and against Israel.
While both Tacuara and the GRN
are officially banned by the gov-
ernment, the two ultraright organi-
zations joined before the monu-
ment to General San Martin, the
Argentine national hero, to stage
a rally directed "against Free
masonry, Communism and .1'
daism."
Guarded by youths wearing
brown shirts reminiscent of the
uniforms worn by the Hitler youth,
the principal speaker, Guillermo
MacGreen, leader of Tacuara, an-
nounced initiation of an anti-Semi-
tic, antidemocratic drive, threaten-
ing "Our next gathering will be
with arms."
Meanwhile, the Federation of
Arab Entities at a separate meet-
ing said it was commemorating the
17th anniversary of "the ousting of
the Arabs from Palestine." Among
the speakers were two members of
parliament, Carlos Cornejo Linares
and Isias Nouges, who participated
in a ceremony commemorating
"The genocide in which hundreds
of Arabs lost their lives."
Another of the speakers was the
Rev. Msgr. Elias Andraos, an anti-
Semitic priest. Attacking Zionism,
he stated "After having crucified
Jesus, the Israeli people have no
mission in Palestine. They must
abandon that land."

.

British Jewry Protests
Moscow Discrimination
in Nationwide Resolution

LONDON (JTA)—A resolution
protesting sternly against the de-
nial of equal religious, cultural
and certain civic rights to Soviet
Jews and calling upon the British
government to "make appropriate
representations" on the issue to
the USSR government, was adopted
unanimously at a special meetir-Th
here, at which virtually eve,
major Jewish organization in Great -
Britain was represented.
The meeting, convened by the
Board of Deputies of British Jews,
included two delegates each from
the board as well as from the An-
glo-Jewish Association, the Asso-
ciation of Jewish Ex-Service Men
and Women, Bnai Brith, League
of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, the
British section of the World Jew-
ish Congress, World Sephardi Fed-
eration, World Union for Progres-
sive Judaism and the British Zion-
ist Federation.
Earlier, Pope Paul VI indi-
cated concern to American war
veterans over continuing in-
stances of anti-Semitism in the
world, especially in the Soviet
Union.
The Pope granted a private ts
dience on May 3 to National Com-
mander Ralph Plofsky, of the Jew-
ish War Veterans of the U.S.A.,
and National Commander Charles
Shelley, of the Catholic War Vet- ,
erans of the U.S.A., who visited
Rome together.
The meeting followed by exact-
ly a year a previous audience
granted by the Pope to leaders of
the Jewish veterans group.

German Scientists Are Reported Leaving Jobs in Cairo

LONDON (JTA)—At least 80
German scientists and experts who
had worked in Egypt on Nasser's
rocket and jet programs have re-
turned to West Germany in the
last five months, according to re-
ports from Cairo.
Other Germans are scheduled to
go home on vacation in the next
few months, the reports declared,

and there is doubt whether the "va-
cationers" will return to Egypt.
Among the reasons for the re-
turn of the Germans, Cairo report-
ed, were a decline in their morale,
due to the recent disagreements
between Cairo and Bonn about the
latter governments' decision to ex-
change diplomatic relations with
Israel; a lack of hard currency

in Egypt for meeting the salaries
of the Germans; and financial in-
ducements by the German govern-
ment and German industry, luring
t h e scientists a n d technologists
back to Germany.

40—Friday, May 21, 1965
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS