Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Yigal was not the kind of Jew to whom townsmen would ordinarily listen. He was neither tall like the oldest of the priests, nor bulky in figure like the governor; nor was he a brilliant man. He was of medium height, frail, brown-haired. His eyes were not blue nor were they brown, but a kind of gray-green, and both his nose and his chin were small to the point of being ridiculous. His teeth were uneven but strong, and his voice was not commanding but it was clear, without rasps or muffled vowels. He was certainly not a man one would choose for a leader, and the reason why he had remained merely an assistant at the olive grove was that he had failed to impress the owner with any ability other than honesty and promptness. If he was paid for twelve hours’ work a day he delivered that number or more. Even his love of Judaism did not differentiate him from the other Jews of Makor, for he could never be a zealot. In simple terms, he found in his dedication to the laws of Moses a satisfaction which he knew did not come to Romans who worshiped Caligula-Jupiter nor to Greeks who clung to the Zeus-Baal of the region.

“We are powerless,” he continued that day, “but we are not without strength. For this night I shall walk to Ptolemais, with my wife Beruriah and my three sons, and there we shall lie down before the legions of General Petronius and we shall tell him that we would rather die than have his men place images of his emperor in our synagogues. If all of us do this, if we are willing to bare our throats and the throats of our children to the Roman swords, Petronius must listen. He may order his men to slay us. Tomorrow night I may be dead, and my wife may be dead and the children I love so dearly. But we will have proved to the Romans that they may not do this wrong thing unless they kill every Jew in this land.”

Simeon, the acknowledged leader of Jews in this part of the Galilee, ridiculed Yigal’s plan, saying that even nine hundred Jewish throats would not impress a man like General Petronius, but Yigal was not to be silenced. He resumed his argument and to his surprise a farmer called Naaman, older than Yigal but like him a man of no substance, joined the plea and added, “We have learned in the past that unless we protest with all our energy we will be smothered by the Romans. Here is the final test. If we surrender our synagogues to the statues of Caligula we are doomed. Truly there is no escape, and I agree with Yigal that we must march to Ptolemais and throw ourselves before the Roman legions, telling them to kill us there. I shall go with him.”

“You fools!” Simeon warned. “The planting season approaches and you’re needed in the fields.” For it was the Jews who tended the countryside, Greeks alone serving as merchants in the towns.

To this Yigal replied, “Those fields can be our major weapon. If we refuse to plant, the Romans will be forced to listen.”

“No!” Simeon said. “Against the Romans no one can prevail.” And so the town was split into two parts, most agreeing with Simeon that submission was the only way to preserve the Jews but some siding with Yigal and Naaman that opposition must be made now, even though the Roman legions were fully armed while the Jews had nothing.

All that day, while the Roman ship in Ptolemais unloaded its statues of Caligula, the Jews in Makor continued arguing, and at about the time that General Petronius was ready to begin his march to Jerusalem, depositing a statue in each conquered place, but saving the two largest for the temple, Yigal finally persuaded about half the Jews in Makor that the moment of decision was upon them. Standing in the forum he said simply, “We shall trust that God Almighty will illuminate the heart of General Petronius and prove to him that he dare not kill all the Jews of Judaea. If we accomplish this, even though we lose our own lives, what great work we shall have done for the Lord.”

“You will never halt the Romans,” old Simeon wailed.

“We have no other choice,” Yigal countered. He bowed his head and prayed for a few moments, then gathered up his wife and his three sons and started slowly toward the main gate. The farmer Naaman and his family followed, and they were joined by others who understood what Yigal was attempting, but most of the senior Jews and all of the Greeks laughed at the improvised army of four hundred that marched with no weapons and no general to guide them.

Yigal went out the main gate and onto the stone-surfaced road that led westward to Ptolemais, and with slow, patient steps so that the women and little children could keep pace, he started the historic march to the seaport where the Roman legions waited. His ragtag army passed the checkpoints where, the old Phoenician guard posts had stood and came late in the day to that barren mound along the Belus River where for three thousand years the original port of Akka had faced the Mediterranean. As dusk approached, the Jews reached the plain leading to the new city, perched on a peninsula, which King Herod had graced with a cluster of delightful buildings, and there, in the shadow of the walls of Ptolemais with its massive gates, Yigal and his people sat upon the ground and waited. Night fell and the shadows of Roman troops could be seen upon the walls, lit from behind by fires that burned in the city. The Jews had no fires, and the night was cold, but they huddled on the ground—fathers and mothers making sleeping circles in which the children nestled—and all wondered what the Romans would do on the forthcoming day.

When the sun was up General Petronius surveyed the rabble from a lookout post on the wall, and making nothing of the scene dispatched some legionnaires to apprehend the leaders of the mob, and when the soldiers arrived Yigal and Naaman offered themselves as hostages. They were marched inside the gates, where in a public square decorated on three sides by handsome Herodian buildings, General Petronius met them, backed up by the sixteen senior centurions of his legions. The Romans wore battle dress, short military skirts, metal-studded sandals, shin-guards, loose-fitting garments about their shoulders, and marks of their rank. They were resolute, relaxed warriors, ready at the command of their general to kill a hundred thousand Jews if necessary for the completion of their assignment. Hardly a Roman soldier in Ptolemais believed that Caligula, an offensive man with ugly habits, was a god; but all believed that if the emperor wished to tell his distant dominions that he was, the provinces had better obey. The soldiers watched with contempt as the two Jews in cheap civilian robes approached.

“Who are those people out there?” Petronius asked in Greek. He was a tall, handsome man, son of a good Roman family and a scholar given to reflecting upon the lessons of history. He always spoke Greek, which he had learned from Athenian slaves.

Using the same language Yigal replied, “We are Jews. Come to beg you not to bring statues into our land.”

Some of the soldiers laughed, and Petronius said, “Statues of Caligula are to rise in every land. It has been ordered.”

“We will sooner die than permit them here,” Yigal said quietly. Again the soldiers laughed, not in ridicule of the inconspicuous field hand but at the humor of the situation.

General Petronius said, “At seven this morning we shall begin marching to Jerusalem, and your Jews had better step aside, for we must deliver our statues.” Behind the officers Yigal could see the first of the huge white images which slaves would haul over hilly roads for many months. With his twoscore marble faces Caesar Caligula, the god, looked benevolently down upon the scene.

“Respected General,” Yigal said, “if you wish to move those statues into our land you will have to kill all of us on the plain.”

The simple force with which he spoke these words evoked two reactions. At first General Petronius was astonished at what the man was saying, but quickly he recovered his composure and grasped the mild-mannered Jew by the throat. “Are you challenging the power of Rome?” he demanded.