A Journey to Sodom:
SINGER, ISAAC BASHEVIS
A Journey to Sodom An account of conditions from Beersheba to the Dead Sea By Isaac Bashevis Singer Warsaw-born Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of the leading writers in the Yiddish language. The...
...When the atmosphere is clear in Israel, one can see across great distances...
...the flies perform absolute wonders...
...Like Jerusalem...
...Our journey, like almost every sizable journey in Israel, is accomplished by miracle...
...Our chauffeur takes another torch...
...Most of the houses are made of stone...
...The border here is open, and Arabs can come in freely...
...The sea is playing at hide-and-seek with the traveler until one approaches very close indeed...
...This article was translated for The: New Leader by Professor Milton Hindus...
...Once water is brought in, it will become a paradise...
...It's easy to say "town...
...Our first step was to take a taxi as far as Beersheba, which is the town from which Jacob once set out for Haran...
...We have all read about Sodom in the Bible...
...Usually, the roads are crowded in Israel...
...There is a bus-station and an office...
...Here there were once cities...
...It is dry here through long, dreary months, but the dry-spells are followed by rains which are regular floods...
...The Dead Sea is at the bottom of a deep valley, in a depression of the earth over three hundred meters deep...
...He can be seen standing beside a pile of half-rotten tomatoes and picking some...
...From a distance it is hard to distinguish between the salt hills and the hills of real rock...
...Only a tiny part of the sea belongs to Israel...
...But wherever there is plowing there will probably be a crop as well...
...We are a little nervous, because several times recently travelers have been ambushed on this road, But the atmosphere of Israel inspires one with courage...
...Not a sign of human habitation has been left...
...But it is still apparently not wet enough...
...They are used to scrounging for their living, and, if necessary, they can live on next to nothing...
...The plow is drawn by a camel, and it is a wooden plow...
...We grope our way in semi-darkness...
...One is struck by the number of garments worn by the Arabs on the hottest days...
...We pay a few piastres and are led into these caves...
...They are often barefoot and bedecked with all sorts of adornments...
...They are as noisy in winter as in the summer...
...now it is an attraction for tourists...
...Others resemble houses with chimneys...
...No defense against flies has yet been discovered in Israel...
...Nearby are some taxis...
...On closer inspection, one can see the glint of the salt...
...Water and wind have worn away these hills for thousands of years...
...Of course, it is not the American kind of construction...
...One can see hillocks flattened out to look like tables...
...The few women whom I did see were all distinguished in stature and very slender...
...The first part of the trip is made along the road which leads to Jerusalem...
...What complete devastation this must have been...
...The further one goes along this second road, the browner and more deserted the landscape becomes...
...But the road to Sodom is almost completely deserted...
...But to be in Israel and not to see Sodom and the Dead Sea was something I could not bear...
...The road to Sodom is brand-new and is accounted one of the great accomplishments of the community...
...I suggested to one of my journalistic colleagues that he accompany me, and we were off...
...Suddenly, the Dead Sea flashes and lights up like a mirror from between the rocks...
...Some are barefoot, others wear sandals or worn-out shoes...
...Age-old earthquakes have torn the earth asunder...
...Beersheba proper is divided into three parts...
...It has been raining the last few days, and the earth is soaked with water...
...In Israel, there no such thing as fear...
...Everything is continually at stake, land as well as life...
...From time to time, a truck passes bearing potash or salt...
...The builders are Jews from the east or from Africa...
...One hears ordinary housewives using the language of heroes...
...Under the earth here is a city still to be excavated...
...There is a lot of traveling going on all the time...
...Outside of Beersheba...
...It is surrounded by naked hills, Arab hills...
...But in the beginning the costs will probably be too high...
...Second, there is "old" Beersheba...
...The chauffeur indicates certain hillocks on the left--behind them the enemy...
...There is neither enough money nor enough manpower...
...I have just made a journey from Tel Aviv to Sodom and the Dead Sea...
...The Arab thinks that the best way to protect himself from the sun and even from the heat--is to cover his body as much as possible...
...At least half the books one sees in the show-windows are in English...
...Bushes and roots grow there, and large tracts of land are under cultivation...
...They are at home everywhere, even in the most expensive hotels and restaurants...
...Most of the land hereabouts belongs to Arabs, who can be seen plowing...
...It is necessary to stoop down very low when one is in the entrails of a salt-monster, which can only be Lot's wife...
...Camels, sheep and goats are not epicures...
...Who has any business in Sodom...
...Imagine meeting a fellow-countryman on the shores of the Dead Sea, right near a cave in a salt mountain, in the very midst of Sodom, on the border of Moab and Edom...
...he talks a lot as he does the shopping for the meager household supplies...
...Now we see a new kind of hills: hills of salt...
...Occasionally one sees a flock of sheep or goats...
...We emerge from the caves and I get into a conversation with the fellow who runs the little restaurant...
...The living conditions are primitive, and building things up like this out of nothing is a miserable business...
...In the summer, the heat is unbearable-over a hundred degrees in the shade--but this particular day is cool and pleasant...
...Their beards are small and trimmed...
...Here and there one may see a group of Bedouins with tents and camels...
...When there is a great accumulation of waters in this trough, they swirl about with terrific force and tear away the rock...
...And of the Hebrew books, another half are translations from English and other languages...
...Though Beersheba--especially old Beersheba--is a small place, there are as many bookshops as if it were a big city...
...Everything is being done on a small scale...
...Some wear black coats, others wear white coats...
...As yet, it is hardly a village...
...Here and there, an Arab woman can still be seen carrying a jar upon her head...
...One sees many pipes lying about on the way...
...which however is not so very old...
...The sun pours down its fire on this land for a period of eight months, sometimes longer...
...It is a town of narrow streets, Arab houses, small shops, and an Arab cemetery where the gravestones are fallen and lie amid refuse...
...I watch the making of potash in pits where the water that contains the potash is allowed to boil away...
...During the war for independence, the wounded were placed here...
...Our guide, a fellow named Isaac, lights a torch...
...The light is gone in a moment, then it comes back again...
...I too once came from Warsaw...
...The wind and the rain also leave their imprint on the rocks...
...Here and there one passes a little settlement and stops in the town...
...They were sinful and God erased them from the earth...
...more perhaps than in other towns, one feels that one is among the Arabs...
...The head especially must be thoroughly swathed...
...These creatures munch roots, and sometimes it seems that they even eat earth...
...In the few restaurants in Beersheba...
...One can't afford to be timid where the dangers are so great...
...Only a few steps away are the famous caves which the water has dug for itself in the salt hills...
...Beersheba is full of stones...
...In the small shops one can buy pots and plain iron utensils...
...As he picks, he also bargains...
...The Arab woman is seldom seen in the streets...
...First, the ancient city of Beersheba, which lies beside a bare hillock...
...The soil becomes yellow, with a reddish tinge...
...There are plans to introduce a great new irrigation system here...
...Not perfectly formed crystals, to be sure, but broken ones, crushed ones...
...The air was pure, sharp, clear and fresh...
...Here...
...We approach a kind of hotel, which consists of wooden huts, and come up to a restaurant where one can get practically nothing...
...At a point along this road, one turns off for Beersheba...
...It is by a combination of these elements that the fantastic landscape of Sodom has been sculptured...
...On occasion, Arabs have attacked Jews on the road there...
...If this enemy desired or dared, he could easily put this road under fire...
...The water on the outside has excavated an opening...
...We made our trip on an exceptionally clear day...
...The sky looks down into the cavern...
...In Beersheba...
...I must say it is not an entirely safe journey to make...
...there are stones everywhere on the ground: stones stick out of all the walls...
...Everybody says the same thing: The Negev is fertile, but still lacks water...
...Our automobile goes downhill all the way...
...And sometimes there is a patrol car with soldiers, carrying machine-guns...
...What we mean is that it will be a town some day...
...The border is near at every moment in our journey...
...Arabs can be seen on every side...
...They are building stone houses here, but they live now in makeshift wooden shops...
...the real desert begins, though it is not quite such a desert as I had imagined...
...Salt has settled here and piled itself up in towering crystals...
...There is a suspicion that this may be done to entertain the tourists...
...Third, there is the new city of Beersheba, which Jews are in the process of building now...
...We twist and turn and crawl our way about until we emerge into a cave with an open ceiling...
...Long-forgotten American romances are translated into Hebrew with great pomp, and Jewish youth eats these things up out of a feeling of nostalgia for "the great world outside...
...Though the land hereabouts is now parched with drought, the waters once covered it...
...It doesn't take long for me to discover that he originally came from Warsaw...
...The Negev is being built...
...It is the man who walks about the streets...
...At noon, when the sun is at the zenith, this cave is lighted up by all the colors of the rainbow...
...I take a taxi from Beersheba to Sodom...
...But, all in all, the Arab woman is little seen out of doors...
...The author of The Family Maskat, Satan in Goray and other novels, he recently visited Israel as a special correspondent for the Jewish Daily Forward...
...It is not long before we catch sight of the hills and hillocks of Sodom and of the opposite shore of the Dead Sea...
...The road must be guarded...
...They look like Oriental princesses...
...Yes, it is a salt sea (that is the name of the Dead Sea in Hebrew) and these are salt hills...
...Arabs look a little like Jews, but there is something about their eyes that is fierce and hard and that is not Jewish...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 10
