RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Look,” he said, shaken and pointing to a photo on the front page. “A Jewish soldier.”

Then I saw him crying and understood how incredible this was. This was 1948. For 2,000 years there had never been Jewish soldiers.

Not a single one during Father’s pogroms and the Holocaust he’d endured. This image was colossal.

The news spread even among us kids. There now existed a new breed of King Davids. What about us?

Taken from the Land of Israel, can the picture of a Jewish soldier lift the spirits of Jews everywhere? From the corners of the earth, do we all stand taller?

Now during this time we were menaced regularly by the French gangs that marched up from below St. Lawrence Street – the dividing line between French and English-speaking Montreal. We were tough ourselves, but we were no match for these French who had the advantage of genetic indignation.

Also, they surpassed us in numbers – there seemed no end to them. Their ferocious violence needed no provocation, and here we were. Especially Sundays.

Then they’d be waiting for us at the Talmud Torah Hebrew School. There, in the afternoons, we flocked for the movies of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.

I do not use the word “flocked” in vain.

Because sheep that we were, we fell to the blows of the French who were gathered at the entrance to punish us coming and going.

Fight back? Whoever heard of such words?

But that week, Israel had been declared a State, and that Sunday came that photo of a Jewish soldier standing so gloriously – and everything changed.

We let them have their way when we entered the Talmud Torah, but once inside the darkened auditorium there was no longer that sense of weakness and fear.

Something unspoken passed between us. We were of a single mind.

After the movies, which nobody really watched, the lights came on and we rushed for the doors. I was somewhere in the middle of this army and by the time I got out the fighting had already begun. Doodie was pummeling the leader of the French, a boy twice his size.

Doodie had him propped up against a Chevy, striking him repeatedly in the midsection. The boy grew weak and wobbled to the pavement.

This gave us the signal and we went after them one by one. As for the French – first they were stunned. What was this? Jews fighting back?

Next, they turned and tried to run, but we caught them and gave measure for measure.

When I got home, I was drenched in blood. My mother made me take a bath. She kept muttering about this and that – as mothers will do about their sons.

As for my father, he gave me a wink and a big secret smile.

Adapted from the book of memoirs, Escape From Mount Moriah.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com