Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Perhaps we could use a line of them? Around the wall?” Asher ventured to suggest.

“That’s what I was thinking,” the stonecutter growled.

“What is it?”

“I saw it in Persia. A running wheel.”

“What’s it called?”

“Swastika.” And in this manner the notable design, common throughout Asia, became virtually the symbol of the Galilean synagogue, for all visiting rabbis who saw the effective frieze wanted swastikas for their buildings, too.

So the synagogue progressed and Rabbi Asher became smug; he even visited the quarries to pick out superior stones, but one day as he returned along the Damascus road he felt the world suddenly grow quiet, as if all birds had fled and he alone were present. A choking filled his throat and his knees were pulled, as if by giant fingers, to the earth, and as he knelt in the dust he witnessed the same burning light that had accompanied his first vision, and once more it illuminated the Torah and the golden fence that protected it. This time there was not one church but many, with towers and battlements, and the synagogue was in ruins. All the work that Yohanan had completed, under Rabbi Asher’s urging, had apparently accomplished nothing. The churches and the ruins faded until there remained only the Torah and the fence, noble and unchanged, so blinding in its power that Rabbi Asher threw himself prone in the roadway, a frail-bodied Jew with a long black beard to whom God was speaking, and he now had to acknowledge that on the former occasion he had not understood.

“Almighty God, what did I do wrong?” he pleaded, knocking his head in the dust. The only answer was the shimmering vision of the Torah and the fence; but from his prostrate position the groats maker saw something that he had overlooked the first time: the fence guarding the Torah was incomplete. God’s divine law was not fully protected, and now the intention of the vision was made manifest. Rabbi Asher was being summoned to dedicate the rest of his life not to the building of an earthly synagogue but to the completion of the divine law.

“O God!” the humble little man whispered. “Am I worthy to go to Tverya?” And as soon as he pronounced that name the golden fence completed itself and he bowed his head to accept the heavenly commission. “I shall place my feet upon the road to Tverya,” he said.

In the middle years of the fourth century there was in the Roman city of Tiberias, called Tverya by the Jews, a lively community of thirteen synagogues, a large library and an assembly of elderly rabbis who met in continuous session to discuss the Torah and its later commentaries, seeking thus to uncover the laws which would govern all subsequent Judaism. For hours and even months they debated each phrase until its meaning was made clear, and it was to this body of men that Rabbi Asher directed himself in the spring of 329. He had no need to hurry, for the assembly had been in session, off and on, for a hundred years and would continue for another century and a half, if not in Tverya then in Babylonia across the desert.

On his white mule Rabbi Asher rode eastward over the beautiful hills of Galilee and looked out upon the broad plains across which Egyptians and Assyrians had battled. He rode into the cliff-perched town of Sephet, which General Josephus had fortified against the Romans of Vespasian, and it was from that high point that he caught his first sight of Tverya, its white marble buildings scintillant against the blue waters of the lake. “If men can find truth anywhere,” he said to his mule, “they ought to find it down there.”

From a distance Tverya was an enchanting city, for the spacious buildings of Herod Antipas had made it a rival of Caesarea, with marble steps leading down to the lake and luxurious baths for visitors, but when Asher rode inside the walls he saw that it breathed an atmosphere of death, as if its future were abandoned. Few new buildings had been added in recent centuries and those which survived had fallen into disrepair behind their marble façades. Thus Rome was dying in its farther provinces. In Tverya there would be no miracles, but there could be the work of honest men, and it was to this work that he now directed himself.

Stopping strangers he asked where the scholars met, and the first four citizens did not even know that the group had been convening in their city for more than a century, but each volunteered to tell him how he might find the hot baths. Finally he met an old Jew who led him to an insignificant building in which the great work was being done; and, tying his mule to a tree, Asher approached the low mud-brick house. He knocked softly on the door, but was left to stand in silence. He knocked again and was admitted by a grumbling old woman who had come from the kitchen. She led him through the house to an extensive courtyard in which stood two pomegranate trees and a large grape arbor, beneath which huddled a circle of old men who did not bother to look up at his approach. At their feet, literally, crouched groups of students, following their words affectionately, while at a table under one of the pomegranate trees sat two scribes making notes of how the argument progressed. When decisions were reached, these scribes would compress into a few pithy lines the debate of months, and that would be the law. This day they wrote little as four rabbis engaged in energetic debate on a minor point.

FIRST RABBI: We are concerned with one question alone. Protecting Shabbat. I say that the man may not wear it.

SECOND RABBI: Speak out. On what authority do you make this claim?

THIRD RABBI: Then listen. Rabbi Meir had it from Rabbi Akiba that if a woman goes out of her house on Shabbat with a bottle of perfume so that she may smell nice, she is guilty of vanity and has broken Shabbat. This case is the same.

FOURTH RABBI: More to the point. The law of the sages prevents a man on Shabbat from carrying in his pocket a nail from a gallows. Why? He carries it only for good luck and it is forbidden.

SECOND RABBI: What nonsense. The man we are talking about does not seek good luck.

FIRST RABBI: Listen to the sages. A woman must not leave her house with braids of cloth. Why not? It makes her hair more attractive, and is forbidden. This is what we’re talking about.

FOURTH RABBI: Nor shall she go into the street wearing a hair net. The same case, surely.

SECOND RABBI: But remember this. A woman may go abroad on Shabbat sucking a peppercorn to keep her breath sweet.

FIRST RABBI: Only if she placed it in her mouth before Shabbat began.

THIRD RABBI: Also, the sages always held that if she happened to drop the peppercorn from her mouth during Shabbat, she could not put it back until Shabbat had ended.

SECOND RABBI: To all of that I agree. But our man is not going to drop it from his mouth. And he placed it there before nightfall on Friday.

FIRST RABBI: On those requirements we agree. It must be in his mouth before Shabbat begins.

THIRD RABBI: The real question. Has he any right to have it there at all on Shabbat? No, because it is an act of vanity. Like a woman wearing a gold ornament. Which is obviously forbidden.

SECOND RABBI: Agreed. If it is merely an ornamentation, the man must not have it in his mouth on Shabbat.

FOURTH RABBI: And I insist that it is merely an ornament.

SECOND RABBI: Hold now! He wears his false tooth in order to eat better.

FOURTH RABBI: But he could eat just as easily if he didn’t have it. A false tooth for a man is no more, no less, than a gold headdress for a woman.

SECOND RABBI: That cannot be the case. The headdress is ornamentation. The tooth is a necessity.

THIRD RABBI: False. A gold tooth is just as attractive to a man as a gold …

SECOND RABBI: Who said a gold tooth? I said a tooth. A false tooth added to the mouth for the purpose of chewing better.