Faith Confronts War, and Wins

By JUDY LASH BALINT

ADJUSTING SIGHTS
By Haim Sabato.
Translated by Hillel Halkin.
144 pages. The Toby Press. $19.95.

Many rabbis are writers, but few turn to fiction, and even fewer are successful at it. For Haim Sabato, author of the profoundly moving Adjusting Sights, writing is his second successful career. In addition to being a prize-winning author, Sabato (whose rabbinic title does not appear anywhere on the book) is a leading teacher at the prestigious Birkat Moshe yeshiva he founded in Ma'ale Adumim just outside Jerusalem.

In this novel, which won both the Sapir and the Sadeh Prizes in the original Hebrew version, Sabato invites the reader into the inner world of a young Israeli soldier during the period surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The narrator, Haim, is similar not only in name to the author, but in circumstances, too. Like his protagonist, Sabato arrived in Israel as a child of Egyptian immigrants in the 1950s, served in the tank corps in the Yom Kippur War, and is a man of deep religious conviction.

Adjusting Sights, with its deceptively simple story line, is in fact a book about profoundly challenging issues. "My point of view for this story," Sabato says, "is in fact a way of examining the relationship–during times of extremity and testing–between man and his Maker. I wanted to tackle questions such as the impact and meaning of prayer on life and death, the questions of faith that arise during war, the fate of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel."

In the book, Haim tries to come to terms with the disappearance of his best friend Dov. The two boys, barely out of yeshiva high school, are sent to train together as tank operators in the Sinai. Haim is the gunner, Dov the loader. They pass their time on the night watch discussing passages from the Mishnah. Suddenly, with the outbreak of the war, their unit is sent north to defend the Golan Heights, where they're assigned to different companies. It's the last time they will see each other.

Sabato describes with painful clarity the searing impact of war on the young Haim and his longing for news of Dov. Haim tells his story in the sparing, almost naïve language of a yeshiva student, interspersing narrative with reflections on the fundamental questions forced upon him by the war: "It was true, I thought. Sometimes God had mercy on the undeserving and shone His light on them. That mercy and that light stayed with you forever. They were a debt you had to repay. There was no getting around it. I thought of the vow I had made while dodging bullets in the wadi. I knew the world would never be the same."

Throughout the tumult of the days of intense battle that bring about fundamental changes in Haim's world, the young man never forgets his religious obligations. He constantly reaches into his philosophical bag to extract meaning from the bizarre situation in which he finds himself. One Saturday night in the midst of battle, Haim and a fellow soldier of Hasidic background manage a makeshift observance of the Melave Malka festive meal, bidding farewell to the Sabbath. As they make the blessing and savor the sip of wine they've managed to scavenge, Haim ponders aloud a passage from Maimonides, which says that a man who goes to war mustn't fear. Using his yeshiva-acquired skills, Haim relates the idea to the weekly Torah portion, and finally concludes that Maimonides "forbade not the idea of fear itself, but the yielding to it." The young Haim concludes that dwelling on the horrors of war will weaken him and his will to fight. "And the truth is that as soon as we were in combat, we thought only of destroying the enemy's tanks."

These flashes of insight into the struggles of a young combat soldier distinguish this novel from most other writing on Israel's wars. Many of the other books about the war are written from the strategic or political perspectives of the commanders and planners, according to Sabato, while Adjusting Sights is much more personal. "This book just poured out of me like a stream," he says. For Sabato, writing a lightly fictionalized account of his own experiences was not only personally cathartic but a unique window into a painful period in Israel's history. As a result, heads of yeshivas as well as kibbutz members have responded positively to Adjusting Sights.

Some readers unfamiliar with traditional Jewish texts may have difficulty with the preponderance of Talmudic and Jewish prayer references, but thanks to Hillel Halkin's finely rendered translation, Sabato's compelling tale of faith in difficult times may now engage a wider audience.