Джеймс Миченер - The Source

In the days following the departure of the runners, the town soldiers, obedient to a plan laid down by Tarphon before he left, launched another search of Jewish homes to see if any were disobeying the laws of Antiochus Ephiphanes, and without warning they descended on a group of widely scattered families, including the home of Paltiel the farmer, and there they discovered that his infant son had been circumcised. Grabbing both the child and his parents they hauled them to jail and sent a runner—an official messenger who ran alone bearing an ebony wand of authority—to Ptolemais with news for Governor Tarphon: “The Jew Paltiel has been caught flagrantly disobeying the law. In accordance with plans approved by you, he and his wife should be executed within two days. But do you wish the executions delayed until your return?” That afternoon the same messenger returned with the expected reply: “It is impossible for me to leave Ptolemais. Proceed as planned.” The soldiers had accurately guessed that their governor, who had initiated the search, would want to be absent when the executions took place, and it was for this precise reason that the search had been carried out while he was away.

It was one of those days of incredible beauty that come to the Galilee toward the end of autumn, when the summer heat has ended and the winter rain has not yet started. The earth stands refreshed with heavy dew and the olive trees rest from their burden of fruit. The vines are empty and the oxen are idle. In the sky not a cloud appears, not even haze from the sea, but cool breezes move casually across the landscape, bespeaking the cold weather that lies ahead. In all seasons of the year the Galilee is a masterpiece of nature, an area to make the heart glad that man is an animal who can love the earth as a deer loves the cool highlands or as the bee eater loves the fields over which he skims; but in autumn, when the seasons are about to change, it has a special beauty, and if great thoughts have sometimes come from this small region it is partly because this magnificence of the land—the magnificence that lies in familiar things rather than in great waterfalls or towering mountains—has always impressed itself upon the people who lived in the area. Never was the Galilee so lovely as in this fateful year when the empire of the Seleucids seemed so securely entrenched not only in the Galilee but in all of Israel, even to Jerusalem. It was as if nature herself were holding her breath to see what would happen in the conflict between the imperial might of Antiochus Epiphanes and the unarmed resolution of a few Jews.

That autumn, in Makor at least, it seemed obvious that Antiochus must win, for when the Jews of the town were assembled before the temple of Zeus they were a terrified lot. There the guards had erected two pillars and had provided two lashes fitted with lead-tipped thongs. In the hush of an exquisitely beautiful morning, the family of Paltiel was led forth: the little farmer with protruding eyes, his wife who could have moved unnoticed in any crowd, and their infant child. The swaddling clothes of the latter were ripped away and the child was held aloft by his feet to demonstrate that it had been circumcised in defiance of the law.

With hideous swiftness a sword flashed and the child was split in two.

Before the parents could express their anguish, they were stripped and tied to the poles, where they were lashed fifty times. The effect of a lead-tipped thong upon a man’s body was terrible, striking fear into the hearts of all, but upon a woman’s body the effect was overwhelming. Those required to watch lowered their heads.

The mutilated bodies were thrown to the ground, where knives cut away any remaining skin, and then the torsos were hacked apart and thrown on a heap of rubbish outside the town where dogs and jackals came to feed. But in the late afternoon of that perfect day, a solitary soldier, who had broken some minor rule, appeared with a bucket and a broom to wash away any stains that might remain before the temple of Zeus, for the Greeks were a meticulous people to whom cleanliness and beauty were imperative.

That night the crushed Jews of Makor sent a few of their men to the synagogue, where they met in silence, merely to pray. Jehubabel, who should at that moment have stood forth as the spiritual leader of the community, was mute, caught in the grip of self-condemnation. He had permitted Paltiel to circumcise his son. Indeed, he had himself wielded the knife that completed the covenant, and it should have been he who stood at the lashing post, not Paltiel. He had allowed his own son to go over to the Greeks and had permitted him to stand naked in the sunlight like a young pagan who knew not YHWH. It had been Jehubabel’s counsel that had persuaded the Jews to allow pigs to be sacrificed in this synagogue, defiling it forever, and the words he had spoken with Governor Tarphon, his friend, had come back to crush him. But even now, in this hour of humiliation, he was unable to call forth any vigorous statement that would enlist his Jews in a rebellion against their oppressors. When at last younger men asked what must be done, Jehubabel answered sententiously, “We must be prudent, for he that is slow to anger is stronger than the mighty, and he who controls his temper is more powerful than he who rules a city.”

But his commonplaces received a bold challenge when toward midnight the next voluntary martyrs stepped forth: the baker Zattu and his wife Anat appeared with their infant son to repeat the terrible words: “Our son is eight days old.”

“You were at the execution,” Jehubabel mumbled.

“We were,” they said.

“And you’re willing to take this risk?”

“If we are not faithful to Adonai, we are nothing,” the couple recited in a phrase they had memorized together.

Jehubabel looked about the synagogue. “Is there a spy among us?” he asked apprehensively, and each man knew that the life of the community lay in his hands, so the baker Zattu went to each and asked, “Have I your permission to circumcise my son?” and each man was required to acknowledge his own complicity in what the Jews were about to do.

Against his own better judgment Jehubabel went home to procure the small knife; and again his wife asked what was afoot and he brought her back to the synagogue with him, that she, too, might be a part of that solemn covenant; and finally all commonplace words were driven from his mouth and he announced simply, “What we are doing tonight puts us at war with the kingdoms of the Gentiles, There can be no turning back. We shall have to flee Makor, to live among the swamps like the beasts of the field. Do you wish me to proceed?”

There was a murmur of assent, but after his brave start Jehubabel lost courage. Turning to Zattu and Anat he asked pitifully, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

Together they repeated their formula: “If we are not faithful to Adonai, we are nothing.”

And then a transformation came over Jehubabel, and one not of his directing: At the first circumcision he had been forced by the martyr Paltiel to perform and had he been left alone he would have avoided that confrontation. But the moment had come when he must stand by himself before YHWH, without the protection of aphorisms or evasions. The leader of the Jews must now lead, and as he faced the congregation, not knowing what to say, he remembered those solemn words which YHWH himself had spoken to Abraham and he began to recite the oath which bound the Jews to their special destiny:“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee …This is my covenant, which ye shall keep … Every man child among you shall be circumcised …And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations …And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant …And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin … And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.”