The Gates of Zion by Bodie Thoene, Brock Thoene Read Free Book Online

the length and texture of a collie’s, over massive shoulders and narrow hips. Shaul had no tail. Occasionally he would cower and slink, but that was only when Grandfather growled at him, “You son of seven fathers! I’ll sell you for Arab stew meat!”
    For Yacov, the dog became the brothers and sister he had lost, the sweet comfort of a mother and father vanished in the smoke of Auschwitz crematoriums.
    Yacov stroked the dog’s broad head and tried again to remember the face of his mother. “Such a beautiful girl she was,” Grandfather had said tenderly as he showed Yacov a faded photograph of his daughter, Etta, a young Orthodox girl. She had married Aaron, one of Grandfather’s Yeshiva school students, a bright boy from a good Jewish family in Warsaw. He had come to Jerusalem to study, and Etta had returned to Poland with him.
    Grandfather had showed him her letters, carefully penned in Yiddish.
    She had been a scholar herself, unusual for a young woman. Her letters spoke of happy times, a good life in Poland, and the birth of a daughter and three sons, of whom Yacov was the youngest. Together he and Grandfather had gazed for a long time at the picture of his mother, father, sister, and brothers, with the baby Yacov sitting properly on his mother’s lap.
    Yacov had studied the face of his father: dark, serious eyes, full beard, high cheekbones and a large, straight nose. Handsome, Yacov thought, but not at all like the face I see in the mirror each day.
    However, David, his oldest brother, who was nine years old then, as Yacov was now, seemed a reflection of himself: curly hair, small and fine-boned features. Grandfather often said that the boy’s clear gray blue eyes were just like their mother’s. And the older sister was more beautiful still. Even in the photograph, though there was no color, Yacov had seen the resemblance and longed to reach out and touch the faces that were so much like his. Tonight he wondered again why he alone, among those six precious human beings, had escaped.
    After the Nazis had come to Poland in September 1939, the happy letters had stopped. Nine months later, in June of 1940, Yacov had been smuggled into Palestine under the noses of the British, then into Jerusalem, into the basement room, and into Grandfather’s impoverished life. Yacov remembered nothing of the days before Grandfather. But sometimes at night, with Shaul smuggled onto his cot and breathing against his cheek, Yacov thought that he could feel what he had forgotten. Once again the pretty young woman in the picture held him on her lap and sang to him. He must never have been cold then … or lonely.
    Grandfather was a rabbi and an Old City Yeshiva schoolteacher who delighted in the law of Moses and whose daily hope was the coming of the Messiah to restore Israel. He resented these new Jews who had invaded Palestine with programs and politics of Zionism, demanding a Jewish homeland without a Messiah.
    Years of endless study and prayer had stooped his frail shoulders and streaked his once-black beard with gray. For Grandfather, the needs of this life were minimal, the needs of a small boy incomprehensible. He survived, as many others of his vocation, on the charity and donations of others—threadbare coats, cabbage soup, and the Torah. It was not enough. Never enough.
    So Yacov survived by becoming a thief.
    Selective about whom he robbed, he targeted mainly the British soldiers who roamed through the marketplace souks of the Old City looking for souvenirs to take home. Yacov picked their pockets without conscience and quickly passed the booty to Shaul, who faithfully trotted home as Yacov escaped over the rooftops.
    He knew the most obscure routes of escape from the grasp of some angry British sergeant in hot pursuit. The rooftops were second nature to him—a hiding place and a playground.
    In quiet moments he feared the disapproval of Grandfather more than the wrath of God or the British. But he had decided long ago