Pinchas will be sent with his brother-in-law to Jerusalem, under the Ottoman rule, in 1906. He will chafe at being a Yeshivah student and, instead, will become the apprentice to Itamar Ben-Yehuda, the first native-speaking Hebrew child in 2,000 years. When he meets Itamar, the latter will be a dashing 26-year-old editor of the first daily Hebrew newspaper in history. Itamar’s father will literally have taken what was a dead language and, in less than two decades, re-created it into a modern language with poets, Nobel Prize-winning authors, pickpockets, streetwalkers, fishmongers… And one of the most incredible love stories in the history of Jerusalem. Pinchas will be the go-between between 26-year-old Itamar Ben-Yehuda and the sixteen-year-old beauty, Leah Abusheddid. In those days, the Sephardic Jews of Jerusalem – those from Morocco, Yemen, Babylon and Turkey – were the wealthy upper and educated classes. The Ashkenazim, the poor Jews from Eastern Europe, were looked down upon by the Sepharadim. The city of Jerusalem at that time was, contrary to popular opinion, a primarily Jewish city, where Jews and Arabs coexisted in relative harmony. In the Jerusalem of the turn of the century, it was the Christian factions who were at war with each other, though war is too harsh of a word. The conflict manifested itself in fistfights and insults. Itamar Ben-Yehuda was not only in love with the sixteen-year-old beauty, but wanted to marry her. The girl’s mother adamantly refuses. Pinchas urges Itamar to use the weapon at his disposal, to win his lady love; namely, his newspaper. With Pinchas’ encouragement, Itamar will publish a love poem, with banner headlines, every day, as well as editorials about the cruel family keeping the young lovers apart. Jerusalem will be divided not between Arab and Jew, but between those supporting the young lovers and those supporting the mother. Riots will literally break out in the markets of the Old City, as this modern-day Romeo and Juliet plays out. Finally, the six great religious leaders of Jerusalem - the Greek Orthodox and Latin Patriarchs, the Anglican Bishop, the Muslim Imam and the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis, will come to the mother and tell her she must end her refusal and accept the betrothal, for the peace of the city. On the day when Itamar Ben-Yehuda and Leah Abusheddid are married, all the church bells in Jerusalem will ring in triumph.
From that lyric, almost medieval fairy tale, Pinchas will be plunged into the horrors of war as a member of the Zion Mule Corps, the first Jewish military unit in 2000 years, fighting as part of the British Army during the Battle of Gallipoli. There, he will be part of the totally useless slaughter of almost 500,000 men during that hopeless battle. But in that hellacious battlefield will be born the seeds of the Jewish army. He will become friends with Ze’ev Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement, journalist and poet, and travel with him to London to lobby for the creation of a Jewish Legion to fight alongside the British for the liberation of Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. Not only will a Jewish Legion be formed, and fight under Allenby for the liberation of Jerusalem, but Pinchas and Jabotinsky’s efforts will help result in the Balfour Declaration, which will lay the legal groundwork for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Pinchas will have found his life’s purpose; to work for the creation of a reborn Jewish Commonwealth in its ancient homeland; the Land of Israel.
His wife will die in childbirth, leaving him with one son; Meyer Yisrael Levy. The boy will be raised in a kibbutz, while his father travels back to Europe, together with Jabotinsky, to warn the Jews of Europe about the impending dangers of the rise of Nazism. Their pleas, by and large, will fall on mostly deaf ears and Pinchas will find himself swept up in the Holocaust. He will be caught and transported to the infamous Sobibor Concentration Camp, where some 250,000 Jews will be exterminated in the gas chambers. On October 14, 1943, Pinchas and a Jewish Soviet lieutenant will lead a prisoner uprising of some 600 Jewish inmates, killing their Nazi captors. Half of them will succeed in escaping the camp and, of those, some fifty, including Pinchas, will elude capture and join partisan units to continue fighting the Nazis, until the liberation of Poland. Pinchas will make his way overland, to hook up with forces of the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, in which his son, Meyer Yisrael, has been serving throughout the Italian campaign. The Brigade will, in defiance of the British ban on Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine, smuggle tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors to the soon-to-be-born Jewish State.
Back in Israel, Pinchas will join the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin. Here, father and son will have a falling out. Meyer Yisrael, raised as a kibbutznik, is a leftist and member of the Haganah Jewish Underground. The Irgun believe that the only way to get the British out of Palestine is to engage in acts of terror against them. It will literally pit Jew against Jew. Hoping to get arms for the Irgun, Pinchas will turn to his brother, Davey Boy the mobster, who will help smuggle arms to Israel. David Ben-Gurion, the new Prime Minister, issues an order that all militias, both Left and Right, be dissolved and that only one Army of Israel exists, and all arms be turned over to it. Begin and Pinchas are on the ship Altalena, bringing in arms for the Irgun. They refuse to turn it over to the Israel Defense Forces, and Ben Gurion issues the order to bombard the Altalena. It will be a civil war of Jew against Jew, and the ramifications will last generations. Meyer Yisrael will literally be in charge of giving the order to fire the artillery on the ship which, he doesn’t realize, is carrying his father. Later, however, it will be Pinchas who, together with Menachem Begin, will make the peace between Israel and its largest Arab neighbor, Egypt, in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. And it will be Meyer Yisrael, Pinchas’ son, who will become one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, hoping to lay the groundwork for peace between the Palestinians and Israel… In the City of 72 Names.
