82 - Washington, D.C.
Shapiro wasn’t scheduled to speak until 3:00. Sarah Goldberg was tentatively scheduled for 4:15, but she was told she might be bumped over to the next day if the speeches ran late the first day. More than seventy seats were available on the large platform constructed in front of the Capital building. They were asked to stay in their podium seats throughout the day. The difficulty organizers experienced in getting speakers meant that there were more than a dozen empty chairs. They wanted as many seats filled as possible.
By noon, after the first four speakers each doubled or tripled his ten-minute quota, Shapiro was getting stiff from having remained in his wooden folding chair for so many hours. He was pleased when Judy Katz snuck up onto the platform and sat in an empty seat next to him and Sarah Goldberg.
“Why don’t you stay up here with us,” Sarah told Katz. “We’re off on the side anyway, and this is where all the empty seats are. Nobody will care.”
“Sure,” Katz said, moving her wooden chair a bit closer to Shapiro’s. “At least I’m out of the sun.”
After a few minutes, Judy snuck her hand onto Shapiro’s leg, where she let it lie softly. He placed his hand on top of hers. She turned to him and smiled, then looked back toward the speaker.
Katz, Shapiro and Goldberg were distracted when a tall woman in a wide hat, wearing sunglasses and accompanied by two extremely large men wearing nearly identical dark suits and sunglasses of their own walked up the steps at the end of the platform and moved along the row of occupied seats, stopping at the vacant seat next to Sarah.
“Is that seat available,” the woman asked quietly.
“Yes, it’s been empty all day,” Sarah answered, turning to look at the woman. There was something familiar about her, despite the sunglasses and hat, which drooped down to cover much of her face. The two men stood behind her on either side of her chair. They ignored the requests of people sitting behind them to sit down.
She’s somebody, Sarah thought. An actress maybe. Trying to be as subtle as possible, she elbowed Shapiro, sitting to her right, and nodded her head to indicate the woman. Shapiro leaned forward to look at her. He nudged Katz, to his right, and pointed toward the woman with much less subtlety than had Goldberg. Judy leaned far forward and turned her head to stare at the woman.
She looked away, beginning to shake her head to indicate that she didn’t recognize the woman either, when she suddenly leaned forward again and looked at the woman closely.
“Holy fucking shit,” she said, loud enough for several people to twist their heads to see what the problem was.
Katz ignored those people and looked directly at the woman.
“You’re Mrs. Quaid, aren’t you, Catherine, Catherine Quaid. The First Lady,” she exclaimed.
The woman smiled. “As a matter of fact, I am, all of those things,” she said. “I volunteered to address the attendees and my offer was graciously accepted. I’m supposed to be speaking shortly.”
Sarah was stunned to find herself sitting next to the First Lady. She didn’t know what to say to her, fumbled for words and finally blurted out, “Does your husband know you’re here?”
Catherine Quaid smiled again, this time more enthusiastically. “Why does everybody ask me that? No, I didn’t feel it necessary to obtain his permission. I’m hoping it will come as a complete surprise to him.” She swiveled her head to speak to one of the men behind her. “It will be a surprise to him, won’t it be, Joe?”
“I expect you’ll get his attention, ma’am,” the man sat flatly.
They sat quietly for a moment as the First Lady listened to the speaker, deep in thought. She turned to Sarah.
“These yellow stars,” she asked, “are they for all the speakers? May I have one, too?”
Shapiro was the first to speak.
“I don’t think there’s anything formal about the speakers wearing these,” he said, indicating the yellow star pinned to his shirt. “Lots of people in the crowd seem to have them on.”
He looked at the First Lady. “You do understand the significance of these stars, don’t you?” he asked quietly.
She nodded her head. “I most certainly do,” she said. “I’m not ignorant of Holocaust history, you know. In fact, when I heard my husband’s speech last night, on television, alone in my bedroom, by the way, the first thought I had when he talked about issuing special Americards to Jewish citizens was that the Nazis did something just like that.”
Katz unpinned the star from her blouse.
“Would you like to wear mine?” she asked.
Catherine Quaid reached out to accept the yellow cloth. She pinned it to her jacket and lifted her head.
“I would be proud to do so, honored. Thank you so much,” she said.
They sat quietly for another few minutes. Shapiro turned to the First Lady and asked, “Do you know about the King of Denmark?”
The surprised expression on the First Lady’s face indicated she had no idea what he was talking about. He continued.
“There is some doubt about whether this story is true or not,” Shapiro said. “But Leon Uris put it in his book “Exodus,” so that’s as good as being true, I suppose.
“Anyway, the story goes that when the Germans occupied Denmark, they ordered all Danish Jews to wear these same stars, like that one you’re wearing. The Danish King, King Christian, rode his horse every day through the streets of Copenhagen, to show that he was still around, I suppose.
“The day after the Germans ordered all the Danish Jews to wear this yellow star, the king himself had one pinned to his arm as he rode through the city.
“After that, the Germans rescinded their order.
“By the way, did you know that the Danish people managed to smuggle just about every Jew in Denmark out of the country into Sweden?”
The First Lady did not respond to Shapiro for so long that he thought that he might have insulted her somehow.
“I suppose I am as close as this country has to a queen,” she said softly. “Mr. Shapiro, I will be so proud to wear this star when I speak.”
Sarah Goldberg smiled at Shapiro and Katz, then turned to Catherine Quaid.
“We, we all know what your husband has been doing, to Jews, about Jews,” she said hesitantly. “I, we want you to know how much we appreciate what you are doing right now.”
Catherine Quaid’s mouth tried to form a smile but failed.
“Thank you. You know, when I am faced with a decision I ask myself what is the right thing to do,” she said softly. “And then I do it, always.”
She finally managed a broad smile.
“Then I pay the price.”
Shapiro nodded.
The speaker was just finishing. The next speaker was introduced as the chief rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in Skokie, Illinois. Shapiro leaned across Goldberg to whisper to the First Lady.
“The American Nazis marched in Skokie when I was in law school,” he said. “The ACLU represented their right to do so.”
He hesitated, then continued. “I’ve represented Nazis’ free speech rights myself. Nazi rights somehow seem different now, though.”
The speaker was a fragile, elderly man, assisted to the microphone by a young woman. She pulled a chair next to the microphone. “Pappa, sit while you talk,” she said softly.
“Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik,” the old man barked at her. Rabbi Garfinkle, who was at the microphone to further introduce the man, smiled.
“He told his daughter to stop speaking nonsense,” Rabbi Garfinkle said. “And you know what, I have a feeling he’s going to say the same thing to President Quaid.” The crowd cheered. He placed his arm on the old man’s shoulder and drew him close.
“I met Rabbi Yehuda Cohane when I was a rabbinical student. He was my teacher. He still is. I can honestly say that I have never encountered a sharper mind or a person who is less afraid to speak what is on that mind.”
Rabbi Cohane braced both his hands on the wooden speaker’s stand, then stood as straight as his twisted back would allow. Both his daughter and Rabbi Garfinkle stepped back, leaving the elderly man alone at the microphone.
“I listened to President Quaid’s talk last night,” he said in a voice filled with more strength than his body appeared to possess. “When he was finished, my daughter, here, turned off the television. She was crying. Poppa, she said, why do they do this to the Jews?
“I didn’t know how to answer her last night. But I thought about her question all night. That sharp mind they say I have, you know. Sometimes it’s so sharp I cut myself with my own thoughts.” He laughed at his joke.
“I thought and thought. I thought about Jewish history. I thought about American politics. Most of all, I thought about God.
“And I came to a conclusion, a conclusion I want to share with you all today. They do this to the Jews, time after time throughout our long history, a history longer than any other people on the planet, all right, almost any other people, we don’t want to insult any Australian aborigines, do we, they do this to us because we let them do it to us, we let them, Jews let them do this to us.
“We let them because we never fight back.”
He leaned closer to the microphone, his lips inches from it, and whispered in a voice magnified by the giant speakers.
“And they think we won’t fight back this time,” he whispered.
The old man paused, collecting more strength. He spoke again in a loud, full voice, gaining volume as he spoke.
“They’re wrong. Sometimes we do fight back. Let me read you something.” The old man took a sheet of paper from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, then pushed it aside and recited slowly from memory.
“It is essential in the present state of world affairs, that we prove to the world that our right to a Jewish State is not only an historical and human right but that we are ready and prepared to back it with military force,” he said. “Those are old words, not new ones. They are from the June 1939 Declaration of Principles of the IZL, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Irgun, the Jewish Freedom Fighters – some people called them terrorists – who liberated the Land of Israel from British Rule.
“The President talks about terrorism, as if when our people are being murdered, are being herded into concentration camps by their blood enemies, when the land that God himself, blessed be his name, gave to our people is taken from us, when our own country, our America, turns its back on our people, as if terrorism is something to be ashamed of rather than something to be proud of.
“When we celebrate Chanukah, when we tell the story of how Judah Maccabee drove the Roman legions from Israel, we celebrate the victory of terrorism, Jewish terrorism. Were the Jewish heroes who drove the British from Israel, who bombed hotels and police stations, were they terrorists? Of course they were, but it didn’t stop us from electing them our prime ministers, did it?”
He paused. His daughter walked up and whispered in his ear, but the old man shook his head from side to side violently and gestured for her to sit.
“When I finally dozed off last night I slept as soundly as I have in years. And when I woke up this morning, it was with a realization. I realized that while I slept, my mind kept thinking, thinking about terrorism.
“And I was stunned at what I had realized, in my sleep, and at the very front of my mind the instant I awoke. In my sleep I came to understand who the greatest terrorist of all is. I lay in my bed and my body shook with the power of that understanding, shook because I knew I would be coming here to address the largest gathering of Jewish people in the history of this nation at the time of the greatest threat to American Jews. I shook because of the powerful and wonderful and terrible message I knew God gave me to deliver today, the message I will deliver to you today, in fact, not just to you but also, also to Mr. President Lawrence Quaid.
“Here is the message I come to deliver. My message is about terrorism.” The word, terrorism, was dragged out slowly, gradually. TERRRRRORRRRISMMMM.
“My message is about the greatest terrorist of them all.”
He paused as his legs appeared to momentarily lose their strength. His daughter stepped toward him but, without even turning around, he waved his right hand behind his back to ward her off. The rabbi took a deep breath then lifted his head high to look out at the crowd.
“The greatest terrorist of them all is God, the Lord. Let me recite some of his acts of terror when his people were in the most danger. I’ll recite them as we do every year at Passover. We dip our finger in the cup of wine and remove one drop for every act of terror.”
The rabbi held up an imaginary wine glass with his left hand. He dipped his right forefinger repeatedly into this glass, shaking off an imaginary drop of wine, repeating the Passover Seder ritual.
“He turned their drinking water to blood.” Dip, shake. “He infested their land with frogs.” Dip, shake. “Then lice, then flies. Their livestock suddenly dropped dead. Then boils broke out on the people’s skin.” Dip, shake. Dip, shake. Dip, shake. Dip, shake.
The elderly rabbi dropped his hands and looked out at the crowd.
“Tell me, does this sound like terrorism, like maybe biological warfare? God’s weapons of mass destruction, maybe? But God was not finished.” He raised his imaginary cup again and again dipped his finger in it repeatedly.
“Hailstorms, locusts, darkness. And all those horrible actions were not sufficient to save Israel. So what did God the terrorist do next? Talk about weapons of mass destruction. He killed the first born son of every Egyptian family.
“Weren’t those all acts of terrorism? Was it speeches or marches or email campaigns that changed Pharaoh’s heart, that forced him to free the Children of Israel from bondage? No. It was terror, acts of terror more terrible than the world has seen since. God used this terror to save the Jewish people long ago. If God could take such actions to save his people then, can’t we take such actions to save his people today?”
He turned and gestured to his daughter to come to him. She gently held him by the elbow and they walked back to his seat.
Catherine Quaid turned toward Sarah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro and Judy Katz.
“I’m supposed to speak next,” she said. “How in the world do I follow that?”
She paused.
“My husband is going to be very, very pissed.”