Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Yohanan,” the groats maker said gently, “we must first try to find what God’s will is in this matter.”

“I want to get married,” the big man mumbled.

“My reply must be what it was last week. Tirza is a married woman. No man may ask her to marry until we have proof … proof.”

The big stonecutter growled, “Three years ago her husband ran off with the Greeks. He’s dead. What more proof do you want?”

Almost as if he understood the symbolism of his act the little rabbi took his hands from beneath his beard and placed them upon a scroll of law. “In cases where the husband’s death can neither be proved nor disproved, we require fifteen years to pass before the woman can be declared a widow.”

“He used to beat her. Must she wait fifteen years for him …”

“Until the fifteen years have passed, Tirza remains a married woman. The law says …”

“The law! The law! Fifteen years for a woman who’s done no wrong?”

“So far she’s done no wrong. But if she lives in sin … outside the law …”

“We don’t care,” the big man shouted, rising to his feet so that he towered over the little rabbi. “I’m going to marry Tirza today …”

“Yohanan, sit down.” Without touching the stonecutter Rabbi Asher forced him back onto the chair, saying quietly, “Remember Annaniel and Leah. He went to sea and the boat foundered. Six witnesses swore that he must have drowned, so against my counsel Leah was permitted to remarry, and five years later Annaniel wandered back. He was still her husband and because we had broken God’s law two families were destroyed.” The little scholar replaced his hands beneath his beard, lowered his voice and added ominously. “And Leah’s lovely children were declared bastards. You know what that meant.”

Silence lay upon the small room as the stubborn workman stared at the man who had brought God into the discussion, and Rabbi Asher, thinking that he had convinced the stonecutter, decided to offer consolation. “God is not selfish, Yohanan. He forbids you Tirza but He has placed here in Makor many fine Jewish women who would be happy to marry a man like you. Shoshana, Rebecca …”

“No,” the tormented giant pleaded.

“With any one of them you could build an honest family …”

“No!” the big man repeated, leaving his chair for the last time. “Today I shall marry Tirza.” And before the little rabbi could argue further, Yohanan had left the place of law, rushing into the larger, freer area of the town, where he ran through the streets until he came to the house where the deserted woman Tirza lived, and he swept her into the air, shouting, “We are married.” From the door of the house he cried into the street, “Three men of Israel, come to hear me!” And he collected a crowd before whom he held up a band of gold which he had bought from a Greek merchant, and in a proud voice announced, “Behold, the widow Tirza is consecrated unto me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel.” And they were married; but Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker, watching from the edge of the crowd, knew that they were not married.

As the rabbi returned home from the improvised street wedding, he grieved over the obstinacy of the big stonecutter and was about to enter his study when he was gripped by an irrational desire to leave the passions of the town and walk in the quieter countryside, so in a mood of perplexity he wandered toward the sloping hill that led from Makor down to the Damascus road, and he arrived there just as the procession of Queen Helena, the emperor’s mother, departed in grandeur for Ptolemais, and the little Jew stood aside as the horses, the donkeys, the palanquins, the soldiers and the bearded priests marched westward to the seaport, where their ship lay waiting. When they were gone Rabbi Asher started to return home, having forgotten in the excitement of their departure his intention to walk among the trees, but he had taken only a few steps when he was gripped by the shoulders, as it were, and turned back to his initial purpose.

He left the ragged town and wandered among the gnarled olive trees; his attention was arrested by one so ancient that its interior was rotted away, leaving an empty shell through which one could see; but somehow the remaining fragments held contact with the roots, and the old tree was still vital, sending forth branches that bore good fruit; and as he studied this patriarch of the grove Asher thought that it well summarized the state of the Jewish people: an old society much of whose interior had rotted away, but whose fragments still held vital connection with the roots of God, and it was through these roots of law that Jews could ascertain the will of God and produce good fruit. He was distressed that the stonecutter had decided to ignore that law, for Asher was certain that disaster of some kind must follow.

His attention was distracted from these matters by a gaudy bee eater flashing through the olive branches, above whose gray-green tips he could see a stork drifting idly on upward currents as if on his way to speak with God in heaven. As the rabbi stood thus, contemplating the mystery, he became aware of a noise at his feet, and he looked down to see a hoopoe bird rustling about in search of worms, and he watched as the industrious digger came upon a colony of ants. The groats maker bent down to study these minute creatures, saying to himself: Whether man looks to the soaring storks or to the tiny ants, what he sees is God. And as he knelt there close to the olive press, vacant now, for the fruit was not yet ripe, his closeness to God brought forth what could be described only as a vision: in the clearing reserved for the press he saw floating in the air a scroll of Torah, and around it—also suspended in air—a golden fence shimmering in sunlight; outside the fence were hundreds of Jews, young and old, male and female, reaching out their hands to encompass or perhaps damage the Torah, but the incandescent fence prevented them from doing either. And while he watched, a woman who could only have been Queen Helena of Constantinople, whom he had seen a few minutes before, knelt and caused a new church to rise from the earth, and about her head shone a radiance which filled the orchard; she vanished and her church, too, but the Torah remained, still protected by its golden fence. With blinding light those two dreamlike realities hung in the air, imprinting themselves upon Asher ha-Garsi’s brain; then slowly even the Torah vanished and he was left alone.

To interpret this vision he did not require wisdom. He sat on the stones of the olive press and stared at the gnarled trees with that insight which comes to a man only once or twice in his lifetime, allowing him to see ahead into the structure of the years. His first impression was of the radiance that had surrounded Queen Helena, and the power of Byzantium whereby she had drawn from the earth of the Holy Land a new church, and he foresaw that the Galilee would never again be the same. A new force, represented by Helena and her son, had entered the world, and Rabbi Asher knew that it would never be turned back. The position of the Jew in relation to this new religion would remain undetermined for some centuries, perhaps forever, but a dominant power had arrived and to ignore it would be folly. If Queen Helena, kneeling in the public square of Makor, said there was to be a basilica on that spot, Rabbi Asher was willing to believe that one would rise, for in his vision the crown of this queen had been neither copper nor brass; it was pure, radiant gold, and he knew that gold carried with it the power to command.

But his more persistent vision was that of the Torah protected by its golden fence, and he recognized this as an imperative to him personally. In wondering what he must do he recalled certain events that had taken place not far from this spot when, two and a half centuries before, General Vespasian had finally crushed Makor, destroying its walls and killing or enslaving all Jews inside. In those fearful days the greatest Jew that Makor was to produce had escaped through the water tunnel at midnight and had gone on to rally the Jews after the traitor Josephus had aided the Romans in their destruction of Jerusalem. Rab Naaman of Makor, the old man was called, a white-bearded rabbi who had lived to be a hundred and three. In his ancient years, when he weighed less than ninety pounds and could scarcely be heard through his ashen beard, he had discovered a student much like himself, a peasant who till the age of forty could neither read nor write but who had developed into one of the leading scholars of Jewish history—the legalist Akiba—and these two self-made men conspired to save Judaism; for they assembled the law whereby Jews could live now that the external focus of their religion, the temple in Jerusalem, was no more. Once all Jews had lived either in Galilee or the south, but now only a small percentage did so, for the Romans had driven the majority to Spain, to Egypt, to Babylonia, to Arabia and to countries not yet named. How scattered they were, how powerless, yet always bound to Israel by the work that Rab Naaman and Akiba had performed.