75 - Washington, D.C.
Thursday, the day before the March was scheduled to begin, was a frustrating day for the organizers. The shopping mall bombings destroyed any prospect of Congressional support. Even a few of the Jewish members of Congress found it expedient to say they would be attending but they preferred to remain with their constituents in the crowd rather than be separated from them by being on the podium.
Hocksberg asked Shapiro to come along when he visited the March offices to meet with Rabbi Garfinkle.
Representatives of Jewish organizations from across the country were crowded into the office space when Shapiro and Hocksberg arrived. Rabbi Garfinkle was speaking. Shapiro had never met the man. He’d expected to see an old man with a beard, a stooped back and dark suit.
Instead, the man standing in front of the group of forty or so organizers from around the country was younger than Shapiro. He wore jeans and a corduroy shirt. His brown hair covered his ears and he spoke with a hint of a Southern drawl, but not enough to disguise the serious tone of his voice.
“I just returned from a meeting with a representative from the White House,” he said. “Wilson Harrison, the Attorney General.”
“Acting Attorney General,” a voice shouted from the corner of the room. “I know him from law school. He was a jerk then. He’s worse now from what I hear.”
Rabbi Garfinkle continued, unperturbed.
“I can’t say he was the most pleasant person I’ve ever dealt with. But I understand he has the President’s ear. He was quite emphatic in what he said.” The Rabbi paused to collect his thoughts. “He said the President wants the March called off. It is too dangerous, he said, too dangerous for a million people to gather in the city at this time.”
“A million Jews, he means,” another voice called out. “That’s what he doesn’t want to see.”
“Please, let me continue,” the rabbi said. “Mr. Harrison did not actually come right out and say it but he hinted that the government has received some sort of information about a plot against the marchers, that somebody, he didn’t say who, was planning on doing something horrible if the March goes forward.”
“What did he say exactly, Rabbi?” a woman in the middle of the crowd asked.
“OK, you should hear exactly what he said,” the rabbi continued. “He said a national security agency, that’s how he described it, a national security agency obtained information that an anti-Jewish organization planned on letting loose some sort of biological agent in the middle of the crowd tomorrow, Friday.
“That’s all he said, except to say that that the President was concerned for our safety and that the President begged us to call the March off. So, what do we do?”
“That’s a load of bullshit, pardon my Yiddish, Rabbi,” a man in the middle of the room gently pushed his way forward to stand next to Rabbi Garfinkle.
“Sam Lowenstein. New York. ILGWU,” he looked around the room. “That’s the International Ladies Garment Workers Union for those of you who were born yesterday.”
He smiled.
“We used to be a big time union. In your grandmother’s time. I don’t believe one word from that asshole of an Attorney General, or from his boss, the former great close friend of Israel, President Quaid. They’re scared shitless of having a million Yids camped out in front of the White House, that’s what this is all about. And they don’t have the political balls to ban us. So they’re making up this fairy tale to scare us. They want us to tuck our tails between our legs and go home. Then they’ll call us cowards. No way. I’m staying, and so are my people.”
Rabbi Garfinkle looked around the room. “Anybody else?” he asked.
A tall woman in a conservatively cut, expensive-looking suit raised her hand.
“May I speak,” she said. “My name is Shirley Zarick. I am the chairman of the Hadassah Chapter for the Jewish Community Federation of Sonoma County, that’s near San Francisco, of course.
“I agree with everything the gentleman from New York said, although I might not have put it quite so colorfully. And, as an aside, Mr. Lowenstein, my mother, may she rest in peace, carried her ILGWU card until the day she died. She sang “Look for the Union Label” to my children when she put them to bed.
“I agree one hundred percent. They are trying to scare us. Show us proof of this threat. Give us some evidence. If they can’t do that, then shame on them for telling lies. That’s what I have to say.”
“Anybody else?” the rabbi asked.
A man wearing a suit and tie, standing near the doorway, spoke.
“Dan Glickstein. Feldman, Brownstein, Rabinowitz and Stern. We’re the law firm that donated this office space. Our expansion space, but we didn’t seem to expand as quickly as we thought we would. Glad to donate the space. Our good deed, right?
“What I want to say is that my partner, Sol Rabinowitz, works pretty much full time as a Congressional liaison, you’d call him a paid lobbyist, I suppose. I had breakfast with Sol this morning. He said the Hill is buzzing with a resolution that Quaid is rushing through the House and Senate today.
“Sol tells me that Quaid is trying to pull a Bush 9/11, that’s what it is. Sol says that his people tell him they just took the war powers bill passed in that frenzy after 9/11 and changed the dates but nothing else. They’re gonna give the President the power to do whatever he wants, no limits, just like Bush got.
“Remember what we got the last time they did that. War in Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Iraq. That concentration camp at Guantanamo. Torture. Secret wiretaps. The damn Patriot Act. Sol tells me it’s going to be the same thing all over again. But this time its not because of the Muslims. This time their tails are on fire because of us, Jews, Jewish bombs, Jewish soldiers, the, pardon the expression this time, the full Megillah. I tell you, this is what scares the daylights out of me, not some made-up story about unnamed anti-Semitic biological weapons.”
Rabbi Garfinkle looked around the crowded room. Nobody else made any effort to speak. The rabbi smiled.
“Now that is a minor miracle,” he said. “Forty Jews in the same room and nobody wants to say anything.
“I’ll take that as a consensus then. The March goes on. I’ll get a message to the Attorney General expressing our confidence that the police will be able to protect peaceful marchers from any threats.
“For those of you speaking tomorrow, remember, ten minutes each, no more. For the rest of you, I’ll see you tomorrow at 10 a.m. To quote one of my favorite Jews from another planet, Mork from Ork, be there or be square.”
Shapiro and Aaron Hocksberg returned to the suite at the Renaissance. Shapiro stopped in the hallway to surreptitiously to check his cell phone for Sally’s message, feeling guilty that he’d ignored her telephone call during his drive to D.C.. There were two messages from his office, nothing from his wife. Fuck her, he thought. I know she called. If she won’t leave a message I’ll be dammed if I’ll call her.
Returning to the Hocksberg’s suite, Shapiro found Judy Katz on the balcony engaged in conversation with a plump woman. Katz’s face lit up when Shapiro joined them. When Shapiro walked up to the two women, Katz placed her hand on his arm and left it there comfortably.
“Ben, this is Sarah Goldberg,” she said. “Sarah’s from Portland, Maine. I told her that you are going to be speaking tomorrow. She is, too.”
Sarah laughed. “I’m only going to be speaking if I can figure out what I’m going to say,” she said. “I’d planned on talking about non-violence. I still could I suppose. My husband threatened to beat me if I do though.”
She saw the shocked look on Katz’s face.
“Kidding, just kidding, that was a joke,” she said quickly. “I guess this is no time for jokes. Seriously, my husband was not especially upset by those mall bombings. He’s rather, to understate it, rather militant. To tell you the truth, I think he was jealous of the bombers.”
Shapiro and Katz were silent, not knowing how to respond to that. Shapiro spoke. He sounded sad.
“Sarah, I understand where your husband is coming from. Look, I’m a lawyer. I believe in the system of laws. But I’ll tell you, I don’t believe the legal system, or even the political system, is going to do the right thing now. No judge is going to stand in the way of this political wave.”
“Especially this Supreme Court,” Katz said. “Most of them have been there since the last time the Republicans ran both the White House and the Congress at the same time. They’ll be the first ones waving the flag in front of the detention camps, like the Supreme Court gave its stamp of approval when Japanese-Americans were herded into concentration camps.”
“I can’t disagree with you there,” Shapiro said. “The politicians are even worse. We can’t find a Senator willing to sit on the podium tomorrow, much less vote to intervene to save what is left of Israel.
“No, it isn’t going to happen by either legal or political means. I’ve been tossing around at night thinking that Israel has been destroyed, that maybe a million Jews are in concentration camps run by Arabs this time instead of Germans and that this country isn’t lifting a finger to stop it.
“Even worse, what am I doing about it? Filing law suits that will get nowhere? Making speeches? As if words are going to save a single life or feed a single child in Israel. No, Sarah, I understand what your husband is saying.”
“And just as bad, now we’ve got our own concentration camp for Jews sitting on Cape Cod,” Goldberg added. “And a President who seems to want to leave his name in the history books by stomping on Jews.”
Judy Katz, standing between the other two, put an arm on Sarah’s shoulder and her other on Shapiro’s back, rubbing him lightly, casually, possessively.
“I don’t think either of your speeches tomorrow is going to make a whole lot of difference,” Katz said, tried to lighten the mood. “But why don’t we find a place for some lunch and we can work on both your speeches anyway.”
Shapiro was silent as they rode the elevator to the lobby. He was shocked by his own words. It was the first that he’d expressed out loud a feeling growing in him for several weeks. If there is no legal solution and if there is no political solution, what course of action is left?
If you know a Holocaust is coming, what action is justified to try to stop it? Or, he thought, looked at another way, is there any action that would not be justified if it would help stop a Holocaust?