(Reviewer: Tamar Saks, Vol. 67, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2012)
The well-known South African journalist and Zionist activist Michael Belling has written a novel which is, according to the blurb, “both a tender love story and a story of Israel in its early years”. It’s called My Right Hand’s Cunning, a lovely title, derived from the biblical verse “If I forget you, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning”. This is most fitting, not only in that it is a story about Jerusalem, but in that one of its major themes is in fact remembrance.
The story is dominated by Meir Rosen, a Holocaust survivor who protects himself from the horror of his own memories by building and maintaining a solid wall of silence around himself. His is an “airless, secluded, insulated soul”, taciturn, acerbic, blunt to the point of rudeness and, with good reason, altogether a miserable beggar. Meir is the sole survivor of his family (barring his niece, Tamar, who managed to get out of Europe before the war). The only patches of color in a life of rigidly enforced greyness are his volunteer work at the Talpiot refugee camp, Tamar and her husband Avi and the only friend who survived like him, Yehuda Rabinowitz. The basic storyline of the book is how his relationship with Rachel Levy breaks the wall and releases him. Just one more Holocaust story, one might think, but this book is more than anything a story of Israel, in the years when the idealism and commitment that launched it was still fresh and vigorous.
The hope is tangible, but so is the fear. The people struggle with the paradox of Jewish survival. History both buoys them up and weighs them down. The awareness of the world’s hatred is inevitable – not only are the wounds of the
Holocaust still fresh, with the hooded, carefully blank eyes of the survivors visible on the very streets, but the evidence of past attempts at Jewish extermination are all around. This is the land, remember, where the bones of Jews can be found crushed under Roman ballistae. There are also the refugees, living proof of present hardship.
The atmosphere thrums with the magic of Israel, the layers and layers of history, the political quagmires, the heroism of the army, the curious mixture of hope and cynicism that is so peculiarly Jewish. Hebrew catch-phrases and sayings – many derived from the Bible – abound: Taharat haneshek – purity of arms, Mah yiheyeh? – What is going to happen? Ein breira – There is no choice. The whole is punctuated by discussions and debates that reveal the state of mind, not only of the main protagonists, but of the people in Israel’s formative years. The young are steeped in history, because “in this country, history was all round them, Biblical names were not just part of the fabric of history and legend, but interwoven in their daily lives.”
Another theme of My Right Hand’s Cunning is a kind of dialogue that takes place between hope and the awareness of past horrors. Hope is personified by the youth, by Avi and the pregnant Tamar. Awareness of the past is personified by Meir and Yehuda. Yet the roles are exchanged during the course of the story. Avi and Tamar are, by the very fact that they live in Israel, more than aware of the past and the hatred that the nations bear Am Yisroel. And Meir’s despair is eventually overcome by Rachel and their mutual love. There is a strong sense of history, and of place, throughout, and a fascination with politics (very Israeli!) that gives the book weight and authenticity. Added to this, the story and its compelling characters make for an absorbing read.
My Right Hand’s Cunning: A Jerusalem Story by Michael Belling, Tange: Johannesburg, 2012, 297pp.
Tamar Saks matriculated at Beth Yaakov School in Johannesburg. She is currently studying at Ateres Bnos Yerushalayim girls’ seminary in Jerusalem.
