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Show Anting Alone Page 266 is doomed already. So why bother the Rothschilds? Now, Abraham has heard that whole ghost towns are for sale cheap in the central steppes, or what have you, of North America, where no Cossacks exist, but only strong, healthy, industrious American people and the occasional wild red Indian - no threat to us: they are reputed to be descended from one of our own lost tribes. With nothing to lose, everybody decides to take Abraham's suggestion, to make this one wild request of the Rothschilds: buy our entire shtetl passage to America, and buy us a town in Nebraska^ America. And the Rothschilds consent to do so, to everybody's joy and amazement, so they can use the vacated farmland as a tax writeoff or something. But before they've even gotten themselves on the boat, a major argument breaks out. Dr. A.'s courageous precursor fights with the community leaders about their decision to disguise the new American shtetl under a typically American name. "Our name will be us!" he cries. "It will be our children as well!" But the legendary timidity of the men of this particular shtetl wins out. Back at home they were traditionally so timid that the only defense they ever provided their daughters during times of pogrom was to commit them unto God's hands, conceal them as best they could in the synagogue and flee for the primeval woods. "Where we're going there will be no primeval woods," Dr. Abraham's father futilely declaimed. "There will be fewer trees than Cossacks, and no Cossacks whatever. Should we bother then to hide our faces behind a false name taken from a language not our own?" Sam just now couldn't recall the name they'd adopted in spite of |