In the Balance

“What shall we do, Reb Moishe?” wailed a man in the shelter (actually, it was only a room in the ground floor of a reasonably stout building, but calling it safety might make it so-names, as any kabbalist knew, had power).

“Pray,” Russie answered. He’d begun to grow used to the title with which the Jews of Warsaw insisted on adorning him.

More explosions. Through them, the man cried, “Pray for whom? For the Germans who would kill us in particular or for the Lizards who would kill everyone who stands in their way, which is to say, all of mankind?”

“Such a question, Yitzkhak,” another man chided. “How is the reb to answer a question like that?”

With the Jewish love of disputation even in the face of death, Yitzkhak retorted, “What is a reb for, but to answer questions like that?”

It was indeed the question of the moment. Russie knew that, only too well. Finding an answer that satisfied was hard, hard. Through the different-toned roars and crashes of aircraft, shells, bullets, and bombs, the people huddled against one another and passed the terrifying time by arguing. “Why should we do anything for the ferkakte Nazis? They murder us for no better reason than that we’re Jews.”

“This makes them better than the Lizards, who would murder us for no better reason than that we’re people? Remember Berlin. In an instant, as much suffering as the Germans took three years to give us.”

“They deserve it. God made the Germans as a scourge for us, and God made the Lizards as a scourge for the Germans.” A near miss from a bomb sent chunks of plaster raining down from the ceiling onto the heads and shoulders of the people in the shelter. If the Lizards were God’s scourge on the Germans, they also chastised the Jews, Russie thought. But then, scourges were not brooms, and did not sweep clean.

Someone twisted the argument in a new direction: “God made the Lizards? I can’t believe that.”

“If God didn’t, Who did?” someone else countered.

Russie knew the answer the Poles outside the ghetto’s shattered walls gave to that. But no matter what the goyim thought, Jews put no great stock in the Devil. God was God; how could He have a rival?

But fitting the Lizards into God’s scheme of things wasn’t easy, either, even as scourges. The Germans bad plastered Warsaw with posters of a Wehrmacht soldier superimposed over a photograph of naked burnt corpses in the ruins of Berlin. In German, Polish, and even Yiddish, the legend below read, HE STANDS BETWEEN YOU-AND THIS.

It was a good, effective poster. Russie would have reckoned it more effective still had.he not seen so many naked Jewish corpses in Warsaw, corpses dead on account of the Germans. Still, he said, “I will pray for the Germans, as I would pray for any men who sin greatly.”

Hisses and jeers met his words. Someone-he thought it was Yitzkhak-shouted, “I’ll pray for the Germans, too-to catch the cholera.” Cries of agreement rang loud and often profane-no way to speak of prayer, Russie thought disapprovingly.

“Let me finish,” he said, and won a measure, if not of quiet, then of lowered voices: the advantage of being thought a reb, someone whose words were reckoned worth hearing. He went on, “I will pray for the Germans, but I shall not aid them. They want to wipe us from the face of the earth. However badly these Lizards treat all mankind, they will treat us no worse than any other part of it. Thus I see in them God’s judgment, which may be harsh but is never unjust.”

The Jews in the shelter listened to Russie, but not all followed his way of thinking. Punctuated by blasts outside, the dispute went on. Someone tapped Russie on the arm: a clean-shaven young man (Russie was almost sure the fellow had fewer years than his own twenty-six, though his beardless cheeks also accented his youth) in a cloth cap and shabby tweed jacket. He said, “Will you do more than simply stand aside while Lizards and Germans fight, Reb Moishe?” From under the stained brim of the cap, his eyes bored into Russie while he awaited his reply.

“What more can I do?” Russie asked cautiously. He wanted to shift his feet. He’d not been under such intense scrutiny since his last oral examination before the war, and maybe not then; this young, secular-looking Jew had eyes sharp and piercing as slivers of glass. “And who are you?”

“I’m Mordechai Anielewicz,” the smooth-faced young man answered, his offhand tone making his name seem small and unimportant. “As for what you can do…” He put his head close to Moishe’s-not, Russie thought, that there was much danger of anyone overhearing them in the noisy chaos of the makeshift shelter. “As for what you can do-you can help us when we hit the Germans.”

“When you what?” Russie stared at him.