The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg

Author:Steve Sem-Sandberg [Sem-Sandberg, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: lisa
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Published: 2011-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

Five days after the eighth and final day of Hanukkah, the Chairman of the ghetto held bar mitzvah for his adopted son, Stanisław Rumkowski. The ceremony took place in the former preventorium at 55 Łagiewnicka Street, where Moshe Karo used to hold his minyens, and where rumour had it that the Chairman had met the Hasidic Jews. Moshe Karo walked at the head of a little procession, carrying the Sefer Torah scroll from the locked gallery at the Talmud Torah School in Jakuba Street right through the ghetto; and he carried the Torah scroll openly, fearing neither informers nor unbribable Kripo men.

It was a cold and frosty winter’s day. The smoke rose as straight as an arrow from chimney stacks to a sky that neither received nor turned away anything.

In addition to close members of the family, thirty of the ghetto’s honoratiores were invited; apart from people close to the Chairman such as Miss Dora Fuchs, who ran the General Secretariat, and her brother Bernhard, the guests included Mr Aron Jakubowicz, head of the Central Labour Office, Judge Stanisław-Szaja Jakobson, Mr Izrael Tabaksblat and, of course, Moshe Karo, whose resourceful action had once saved the young boy’s life, and who was perhaps more of a father to him than the Chairman had ever been – though naturally such a thing could not be said on a day like this. As a sign of the special affinity between them, however, it was Moshe Karo who had given the boy the gift of the prayer shawl he was now wearing for the first time as he sat waiting on the podium.

Then the Torah scroll was brought in, and since there was no rabbi to officiate at the ceremony, it also fell to Moshe Karo to go round with it to the whole assembly, so each and every one of them could kiss the tassels of their prayer shawl and touch the scroll. A warm and intimate atmosphere spread among those assembled in the chill hall, an atmosphere further emphasised by Mr Tobaksblat reading the day’s text from the Torah. According to the calendar, the reading from the Prophets for that day was taken from Ezekiel, and young Rumkowski read in a clear, distinct voice the text he had been taught to read.

For thus saieth the Lord:

Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land.

And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.

Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them, so shall they be my people, and I will be their God.

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