Exodus

The flashback to 1884 commences with an introduction of the Rabinsky family, who live in the Pale, an area designated for Jewish settlement in a swath of territory that includes portions of modern Ukraine and adjoining provinces.

Simon is the father of the Rabinsky family, a man devoted to Torah and the Jewish way of life. His two teenage sons, Jossi and Yakov, are a study in contrasts, with the older Jossi being mild and reflective, and the younger Yakov headstrong. The Pale is essentially an oversized ghetto: It allows for Jewish cultural and religious life to flourish, but with the constant threat of persecution and pogroms.

Yakov has quietly begun attending meetings by a group called the Bilus—the Lovers of Zion, who are starting to encourage Russian Jews toward reestablishing a Jewish presence in Palestine. Jossi, while entranced by the group’s ideas, does not initially want to go along with his brother, knowing that their father would take it as a rejection of Jewish cultural life in the Pale.

Eventually Jossi also goes to a Bilu meeting, but feels he must confess when later confronted by their father. Simon does not rebuke them outright, but challenges their ideas, preferring to hold that the Messiah will be the one to enact the return to Palestine at some future date.

The Rabinsky family’s life is thrown into turmoil when a pogrom attacks the Jewish seminary. Yakov and Jossi rush home to discover that their father has gone to the synagogue to protect the Torah scrolls, and there he has been beaten to death.

A month after their father’s death, Yakov slips off to murder Andreev, the pogrom’s organizer. In response, the rabbi sends them away rather than letting their presence imperil the Jewish community further. The two teenagers thus begin a long journey by foot, making their way overland through the Caucasus mountains. It takes them nearly four years, and in 1888, they come within sight of the northernmost province of Palestine: “Yakov put his hand on Jossi’s shoulder. ‘We are home, Jossi! We are home!’” (221).

The Rabinsky boys face diverging feelings as they enter Palestine. On the one hand, the sheer joy of being there brings a thrill of satisfaction. On the other hand, it is apparent everywhere that life in Palestine will be a disillusioning experience. Far from being a land of milk and honey, Palestine is a mixture of fetid swamps and rock-strewn, desolate hills. The Arabs they meet are hospitable but suspicious of them, and the Jews are an uninspiring lot, subsisting entirely on handouts from the international Jewish community.

As they move from Galilee to Jerusalem, their disillusion grows: “The boys then saw themselves as intruders in their own land” (227). By the time they reach the little community the Bilus had told them about so long ago, they are overwhelmed by the daunting prospect of bringing the desolation of Palestine back into a livable landscape.

The flashback sequence shifts to encompass global Jewish history during the period of the Rabinsky brothers’ settlement in Palestine. France, which had proudly allowed its Jewish population to assimilate, suddenly turns, and in the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, reveals the persistence of rank antisemitism under the surface.

Those events play a major role in the political thought of Theodore Herzl, an Austrian Jew who becomes the progenitor of the Zionist movement. In 1897, he and a number of delegates gather in Switzerland and state their goals: “The aim of Zionism is to create a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law” (231). Herzl works indefatigably, appealing both to Ottoman rulers and colonial powers. Eventually the British become Herzl’s closest partners, and a wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine (known as an Aliyah) arises.

In Palestine, Jossi and Yakov continue to work toward the goal of a sustainable Jewish settlement in Palestine. The brothers differ in their approaches to dealing with the Arab population. Yakov goes to work on an experimental farm with other Jews, while Jossi starts working for a foundation set on buying land for future Jewish settlement, which entails direct work with Arab effendis (men of high rank and social standing).

Jossi becomes close with Kammal, an Arab friend who shares his interest in the history of the land. While Jossi and Kammal study the cultural and ethnic dimensions of their surroundings, a new Aliyah is on the rise, driven by a 1905 pogrom in Russia.

This Second Aliyah brings a contingent of Jews who are willing to do menial labor and work the land themselves, unlike some previous Jewish communities. These new Jewish settlements, however, feel they need better protection than the traditional bribes paid to Bedouin groups, so they ask Jossi, with his understanding of Arab culture, to be the cultural liaison for a new armed Jewish guard force.

Jossi reluctantly agrees, and through use of aggressive diplomacy and a bull whip, he earns a grudging respect from the Bedouins. Along the way, he meets Sarah, a Jewish emigrant from Silesia, and the two fall in love, get married, and move to a new settlement that Jossi helps organize: The city of Tel Aviv.

The Jews’ experimental farms are failing in Palestine, running into trouble ranging from security concerns to the difficulties of land reclamation. Eventually, however, they strike on a model that works, in which farming and social life are done communally. The new arrangement is attempted at Shoshanna, a settlement that Jossi helps to arrange, built on swampland procured near the Sea of Galilee.

Eventually Yakov settles in Shoshanna as a permanent member of the new community, the first true kibbutz in Palestine, and there he meets his own future wife, Ruth.

Among the new movements in Jewish society is a growing push to return to their linguistic roots. Jossi, though initially unconvinced, is eventually persuaded by this vision, and returns home to tell Sarah that they will henceforth be speaking only Hebrew and taking Hebrew names. She resists the idea, but he insists and chooses the name “Barak Ben Canaan” for himself.

Just then, World War I breaks out and the Jews of Palestine side with the British instead of the local ruling power, the Ottomans. The Ottomans do not crumble as quickly as their enemies hoped, however, and Barak is forced to flee Palestine while he and his brother Akiva (formerly called Yakov) serve in the war effort.

The Zionist activities in favor of the British during the war secure them one of their most precious diplomatic victories: The Balfour Declaration, which discloses the official British intent to provide a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Though found and tortured by Arab police, Sarah (pregnant at the time) does not reveal where her husband has gone, and she eventually bears a healthy son, Ari Ben Canaan. Meanwhile, the British begin to turn the tide in the war. General Allenby conquers Palestine from the Ottomans, and in short order Barak and his brother Akiva return home, and Barak is able to meet his son.

The Balfour Declaration, the British resolution to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is ratified by the international community after the war. Jews are able to proceed with major land buys in the Jezreel valley, and new kibbutzim are established.

The Jewish community is governed by an elected body of representatives, the Yishuv Central, who seek to work with the British in their administration of Palestine. Affairs with the British, however, soon get rocky as a new Arab leader, Haj Amin el Husseini, becomes Mufti of Jerusalem and stirs up his people against the Jews. The Arab population lashes out, and Akiva’s family is killed in one of the raids.

The British, now believing that favoring the Jews might upset the delicate balance of Palestinian society, backtrack on their promises. Due to the rising pressure, the Jews raise an underground army, the Haganah, for the defense of their settlements.

With new arrivals of Jews after the war, the kibbutz movement flourishes. A breakaway variant, the moshav movement, retains the communal social order of the kibbutz but allows more room for property, farming, and family life to be managed on a personal basis.

Barak’s Arab friend Kammal sells Barak a long-desired piece of land in the Huleh valley, and Barak and Sarah move there to start a moshav, called Yad El. As they adapt to the labor of the land-reclamation life, Barak and Sarah’s family flourishes, welcoming a daughter, Jordana, while the young Ari forges a close friendship with Kammal’s son, Taha.

Barak sends Ari to a nearby Arab town to have Yad El’s grain milled into flour, but some of the local Arab boys beat him and steal the grain. In response, Barak teaches his son how to use his old bull whip. Equipped with his father’s weapon, Ari’s next visit to the village sees him triumph over the Arab boys.

Ari falls in love with Dafna, a girl from a nearby farm, and though only teenagers, the two begin working with the secret Jewish army, the Haganah. International affairs are growing more tense as Hitler comes to power in Germany. Many Jews are trying to escape to Palestine, but the British, alarmed at the rising immigrant numbers, begin blocking them. The Haganah, headed by Avidan, works to arrange an undercover immigration movement called Aliyah Bet.

Meanwhile, Arab violence against Jews in Palestine grows, and a few Jews, like Akiva, think that the Haganah focuses too much on defense, so they found a strike unit called the Maccabees. This alarms Barak and other Jewish leaders, leading to a rupture in the relationship between Barak and Akiva.

Ari and Dafna’s young romance blossoms, but the ongoing tensions see them getting more and more involved in Haganah and Aliyah Bet activities. The Mufti, Haj Amin, continues stirring up the Arab population to strike the Jews, leading to the death of Kammal—now seen as a traitor for his sympathy toward the Jews.

While the Yishuv Central and the Haganah try to exercise restraint and avoid escalation, Akiva and his Maccabees take a different tack and aim at the British as their primary enemies. This does not encourage the British to treat the Jews more kindly; they build a series of “Taggart forts” across the country, from which to exercise police rule. Meanwhile, the Haganah plan a new settlement in the north, near where Arab raiding parties have been coming out of Lebanon, and Ari and Dafna go there to man the outpost.

Ari and the young people with him find great success at the outpost, but not without dreadful consequences. Dafna is kidnapped, and they later find her body, having been brutally raped and murdered. Ari holds his fury in: “Ari accepted this tragedy in the same way that the Yishuv had learned to accept such things—not by being stirred to violence, but only by deepening his determination not to be thrown from the land” (293).

Around the same time, a new British officer arrives, P. P. Malcolm, and he bucks his army’s position by explicitly favoring the Jews. An eccentric Christian, he is also a military genius, and he trains the Haganah into an elite fighting force. Eventually Malcolm is recalled by the British, who tilt back in the other direction again by issuing their White Paper, which on the eve of World War II forbids all further Jewish immigration to Palestine.

The British now seek to pressure the Jewish administration into bowing to their policies, even jailing members of the Yishuv Central. Ari, working for the Mossad Aliyah Bet, is sent into Europe to smuggle out as many Jews as possible.

In Berlin, he manages to secure the safety of many Jewish children and important intellectuals, even getting a final trainload of children off to safety in Denmark (the same train on which the young Karen is sent away) before fleeing Germany himself.

As war breaks out, Akiva and the Maccabees call a truce with the Haganah. The British seek Jewish support once again, which leads to the formation of the Palmach—a guerilla branch of the Haganah, focused on fighting German incursions in the Middle East.

In a new role as an officer of the British-allied Palmach, Ari leads a group of younger soldiers—including David Ben Ami and Zev Gilboa—in forays against Vichy French/Syrian forces. General Haven-Hurst assigns Ari the task of coordinating an invasion of Syria. Assisted by the keen espionage skills of a young Moroccan Jew, Joab Yarkoni, they prepare their plan. When they invade, however, one of the arms of their movement advances too quickly, and Ari’s unit is forced to hold a pass in the mountains unassisted for six hours. Their mission is successful, but Ari is sent home for the rest of the war to recover from his injuries.

Despite Jewish assistance in the war effort, the British still hold their hardline stance on restricting Jewish immigration, and the Maccabees strike out in terrorist actions against the British headquarters.

Returning to the events of late 1946, the Exodus is finally ready to leave Cyprus. As the children make ready for their voyage to Palestine, they celebrate the festival of Chanukah on board. David Ben Ami narrates the ancient story of Judah Maccabee and his courageous defense of Palestine. By the time they get to the third night of the festival, the Exodus has arrived in “Eretz Israel.”