“Your Honor,” insisted Azariah, leaning forward as if he were about to throw himself off a cliff. “I promise not to detain you, sir, for any more than exactly forty seconds. Haste, as they say, killed the bear. And it’s your right to be in possession of all the relevant information so that you can consider the matter rationally and come to your own conclusions. Yonatan Lifshitz, sir, was the only friend I ever had. He was a big brother to me. In Russian you say, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ Maybe, sir, you’ve forgotten what it means to be someone’s blood brother. Through hell and high water. Till death do us part. Never mind who I am. Let’s even say I’m a fink. Or a clown. That’s all strictly beside the point, so to speak. Perhaps I’m just a poor slob. But that’s what people call you too, sir. Behind your back, of course. What you have to know, Mr. Prime Minister, is that Yonatan set out to look for the meaning of his life. Not the meaning. The purpose. He did so because every last one of us is born free. Nobody is public property. Or the property of his parents, or of his wife, or of his kibbutz, or even—please excuse me, Your Excellency, if I’m being presumptuous—the property of the state of Israel. Truth before manners. The fact is that an individual belongs only to himself, if even that. That’s what Jewish ethics have to say about the matter, and we Jews, sir, have made that principle into a universal rule. You surely don’t need to be reminded of our prophets and all that. So what’s wrong with his having decided to go off somewhere? Is that a crime? And if he preferred not to leave a forwarding address, what law did he break? I can’t believe, sir, that all of life is like being in the army. He just wanted to go away. It’s as simple as that. So why don’t you call off your dogs? This isn’t a matter for state jurisdiction. Your Honor, too—I heard this from Yolek himself—ran away from home to come to Israel. I’m sorry if ‘ran away’ sounds invidious. I’ll take it back if you’d like. But nothing else. And in one of your debates with Mr. Ben-Gurion, sir, you said in so many words that a man’s personal decisions must be honored. That was concerning one’s relationship to the party, I’m sure you remember it, sir. Yonatan went where he did of his own free will, knowing exactly what he was doing, and before he left, he entrusted to me—or rather, I should say, he gave me—his wife. So that now she’s mine. I admit that, morally speaking, Hava and Yolek are my parents, and that Srulik is also like a father to me too, but the truth comes first. They have no right to hound Yoni and no right to demand of me that I give up my woman. There’s a limit to making concessions. A red line, so to speak. I’m quoting what you, Mr. Prime Minister, said the day before yesterday in the Knesset, and you were one-hundred-percent right. As you generally are, sir, because it’s not you, but Mr. Ben-Gurion, who is the enemy of freedom. We don’t live in a jungle. We live in a Jewish state. You should be consistent, Your Excellency. Meaning that you should back me up on this. Because she’s mine. De facto, of course., not do jure. This isn’t a matter for the police, or for the law, or even, with all due respect, sir, for the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. No one can try to take her from me. Please explain that to them, Mr. Prime Minister, before you leave. Tell them the facts. And since you’re on your way to the Syrian border, where you’ll be fed all kinds of lies, or at most a lot of half-truths, let me suggest to you—”