“Pain? Yes, my dears, pain of an indescribable kind. I was forced to curse every ounce, each cell, the very hairs of my body, all of which conspired to draw me down, downward, when the only relief from my suffering would be somehow to float or fly. I do not know how long I remained thus suspended. I fainted and woke and fainted again. It seemed to me then that nights and days were going by, although I could not have sustained myself in such a condition for more than hours. At last I woke painlessly, thinking that surely I had died. Around me, instead of the gloom, there was only white light. Was this heaven? Was I, so giddy and lightheaded, in the realm of angels? Of clouds? Alas! Not heaven! It was only the bitter dawn. And there, in the snow, not an arrow shot from me, was a yellow-skinned lion, with brown and yellow eyes.

“For some little while we stared at each other. Snow dust, I saw, was on his name. Then he started purposefully toward me. I attempted to scream, to kick at the jowls, at the trembling throat, but like a man in a dream no sound came from me and my legs hung limply down. Suddenly the beast reared upward and—was this not a dream as well?—stood before me upon his hind legs. He roared. He boxed the air. It was the Lion of Judah!

“Then the tan beast dropped his paws upon my wretched shoulders. It was no dream. No! No! I knew then the events of my life had taken place in a trance, and that this was my waking moment. ‘My people!’ I cried, not knowing whether I meant the Jews I had left behind me—those in the homeland, those who had drowned—or the tribe that since then I had joined. ‘I shall never abandon you!’

“The next instant I was on the ground! The lion had gnawed the rope through! I could not move for stiffness, but the beast, gently, although using its jaws, lifted me upon its smooth back. I reached into the mane; I clung there, while the animal carried me swiftly up the mountain. Higher and higher we went, so high that the air became thin, too thin to breathe; and yet, though I was gasping, and the creature itself desperately panted, we went higher still.”

The Elder sighed once, deeply, and stopped speaking. He did not move. Was this the end? The end of that lifetime? No. Faintly, having to struggle, he resumed. “How white everything was. Blinding! I let my eyes drop closed, but beneath my eyelids it was just the same. Like looking through eggshells. That whiteness, children! The sun! The clouds! The snow!”

A stop. A start again: in no more than a whisper.

“At last we broke through to the peak of the mountain. The lion and I sat side by side. A vast land stretched out below us, and beyond the land a great panorama, the whole great curve of the earth, green-colored and blue and brown. I saw the various seas, with ships on the waters, sailing ships and steamships, and the continents crossed by the shadows of clouds. And in all this I spied out a single island, saw it as plainly as if I had been a bird flying above it, its green hills and white beaches, the cocoa-bearing plants, the red pepper berries on all of its trees. It was a sight that perplexed me. Why was I shown a vision? What was this place? It is only now, a half century later, and here, in our Ghetto, that the answer to those questions at last becomes clear. Children! My own children! Can you guess it? Ha-ha!”