November/December 2008-Opinion

A New Meaning for "Who By Fire"
Gershom Gorenberg

I’m a rationalist. My grandmother’s mumbled imprecations against the evil eye seemed silly by the time I was seven. I don’t believe in omens. When I read ancient stories, I understand that the characters are frightened by an eagle flying overhead to their left, but I don’t resonate with their fear.

Not normally. But I confess: On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, my rationalist reflexes proved weak when we arrived home from shul and found two cops with flashlights standing in puddles of water and soot in our dark, smoke-filled Jerusalem apartment.

The firefighters had smashed open the front door, drowned the flames and left before we got back. The police were there to give us the bad news. One of them showed us our kitchen with his oversized flashlight. The top half of the refrigerator, as my younger daughter said, looked like a roasted marshmallow. The doors had burned off the cabinets above it where we store our Passover dishes. The dishes were black. Of the bookshelf that had held notebooks full of recipes collected from friends and now-departed mothers and grandmothers over 30 years, only ash remained. After three minutes in the apartment, I was coughing. The cops must have had a different kind of lungs. The one who did the talking spoke in a low calm voice. “There was a short circuit in your refrigerator,” he said. “You have no electricity. You can’t sleep here.”

When you’ve just finished greeting the new year by asking God to inscribe you in the book of blessings, and you discover that meanwhile flames were eating your home, rationalism is a poor defense against the feeling that your request has been turned down. You think (or at least I thought): This is a very bad sign.

My wife went out with the policemen to their car to give them the information they needed. My elder daughter went to the neighbors we know best to ask if we could come over to their place while we gathered our wits. Several minutes later, smelling as if we’d come from a bonfire rather than from services, we were sitting at their table, while Shaya served us a holiday meal and Gitit assigned her kids to share rooms to make space for us.

“If you want a sign for the year to come,” said my wife, usually the more superstitious one, “here’s your sign: People will be amazing. They will take care of us.”

Perhaps she’s better than me at reading omens. The next morning, walking to shul, still smelling vaguely singed, we met the first friend who offered an empty apartment where we could stay while rebuilding.

By the Torah reading, the news had rustled through our congregation. We’d been invited several times over for the rest of the holiday meals. I was mildly afraid of a rumble during the haftarah over the privilege of hosting us. A friend told me that the shul’s tzedakah fund provides free loans to members in trouble. Someone whose son studies with my son told me that a neighboring synagogue had a complete set of linens and utensils collected in less than no time when one of its families lost everything to fire. Later, the family gave back the emergency-response household kit. Just tell me if you need it, he said.

We had three more offers of empty apartments. One came from the guy who’d been in charge of Simcha Torah services two years ago. I’d argued with him too loudly about changes he’d made that cut down the time for dancing. Now he whispered to me that his in-laws were overseas. He nearly hugged me as he offered their flat. (Note to myself: Don’t take shul politics seriously. Underneath, people have wonderful hearts.)

Another offer was from a friend who takes care of an apartment owned by a Jewish American family. It’s their second home, and they use it only a few weeks a year. They’d be happy to have you there, she said. (Note to myself: Please erase last year’s complaints about well-off diaspora Jews who buy Jerusalem real estate and leave buildings unlived in. Wealth can be God’s way of letting people express their generosity.)

Walking home, I thought about the fire. It only consumed a piece of the kitchen. After a neighbor smelled smoke and phoned, the firemen must have arrived in three minutes or less. (Note to myself: No more standard Israeli complaints about Israeli inefficiency.) I remembered the policeman waiting in the apartment. He spoke in a tone that I sometimes think is taught in a special diction course in the Israeli army’s officer training: absolutely gruff, to hide the warmth underneath. “I know you are in shock,” he’d said. “But no one is hurt. It will be all right.”

What those Rosh Hashanah prayers—“who by fire, and who by water”—really tell us, I decided, is that much of life simply happens. It is written for us in advance. But it’s written in an alphabet we knew in a dream and have half forgotten. It’s written in the middle of the page, and around it we write commentaries that teach us how to live. We are given real omens. But we decide what they mean.

Gershom Gorenberg is a Jerusalem-based journalist and the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977.