Джеймс Миченер - The Source

THIRD RABBI: Is there a difference between a false tooth and a gold false tooth?

FIRST RABBI: Indeed! The gold tooth is worn for decoration only.

SECOND RABBI: Not true! A man buys a gold tooth because it fits better than stone and wears longer than wood. He acts from prudence, not vanity.

FOURTH RABBI: Error! Error!

THIRD RABBI: Is not a false tooth placed in the mouth the same as a woman’s curls added to her forehead? And do not the sages say that she may not wear such curls unless they are sewed on permanently?

FOURTH RABBI: Why permanently?

THIRD RABBI: Lest she inadvertently add them to her head on Shabbat.

FIRST RABBI: Sewing she can be trusted not to do because three acts are involved. Needle, thread and sewing. She knows that each is forbidden. But pinning a curl to the head is not a usual act and this she may forget, so it is forbidden.

THIRD RABBI: And a false tooth is not added to the mouth permanently, but must be put in each day, and is therefore exactly like the false curl of the woman, which may not be worn.

During the first four days that Rabbi Asher spent among the learned men of Tverya he was kept standing by the wall, a small, tentative figure, listening as his elders hammered away at the false tooth. As they inspected the problem from all philosophical and material angles, Asher learned that they had been on the subject for two months, hoping to establish from it a broad principle governing the use on Shabbat of objects that were both useful and ornamental, and at several points in the argument he felt that he had ideas to contribute, but the expositors ignored him and modesty prevented him from trying to attract their attention. On the evening of the fourth day, bewildered, he left the convocation. Did the rabbis intend to ignore him permanently? Or had he through vanity misread God’s command that he join them?

He sought guidance on these matters at the one logical place in Tverya, a small hill northwest of town, which he climbed at sunset until he came to a cave that was already holy but which would become more so as the centuries advanced: the grave of Akiba, greatest of the rabbis and savior of the law. Here Asher sat humbly, hands folded and hoping to receive from the long-dead rabbi instructions concerning his present plight, but none came. Now, whether this cave actually held the bones of the Jewish saint could not be determined, for just as Queen Helena had gone through the Holy Land arbitrarily deciding where the cherished relics of Christianity were, so devout Jews had established categorically where the saintly scenes of their religion had occurred. At Sephet certain of the great men were said to be buried, but Tverya was allotted Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Akiba, and pilgrimages to their supposed graves would continue as long as there was a Judaism.

But if Rabbi Asher was unable to communicate with the great rabbi he did find something equally important: sitting before the cave he watched the sun depart from the lake and the city of Tverya; and the play of sunset colors upon the eastern hills, the panoply of gray and purple and gold upon the grassy cliffs was so ghostlike that he felt the presence of God even more strongly than he had in the olive grove, and he submitted himself to whatever wishes God might have regarding his stay in Tverya. In this state of euphoria, while light diminished and the marble city began to fade, a wind passed down the deep valley, coming from the north, and it rippled the surface of the water as if a figure were moving across the waves. Entranced, Asher watched the progress of the giant steps, and they came directly to Tverya, where they seemed to mount the spacious marble wharf that faced the waterfront, and whatever it was that had agitated the surface of the lake took residence in the city. Reassured and exhilarated, Rabbi Asher climbed down from the tomb and returned to Tverya, satisfied to remain there until the rabbis took notice of him.

On the fifth day there was no change. He resumed his silent position against the wall and listened as the great men continued their discussion of the golden tooth, and for the entire two weeks that he was kept waiting this tooth remained the only concern; but his observation of how the rabbis worked had one salutary effect: he learned that the exposition of the law was a serious matter requiring both subtlety of mind and mastery of learning, and he understood that in settling the exaggerated problem of the tooth they were automatically deciding all lesser conflicts between utility and vanity. As he stood in the shadows he remembered the old description of a true rabbi, “that basketful of books,” and he pledged that if the time came when the men of Tverya finally consulted him, he would respond with subtlety and wisdom.

On the nineteenth day, when the guardians of the law had pretty well agreed that if a man wore a gold tooth on Shabbat he was transgressing, and when they were about to formulate a law permitting a stone or a wooden tooth, a rabbi who was trying to make a point about the inherent vanity of man, turned abruptly to Rabbi Asher and snapped, “You, from Makor. What did Rab Naaman say?”

Softly, without moving from his shadows, the groats maker explained, “Rab Naaman of blessed memory said, ‘Why did God create man only on the sixth day? To warn him. If ever he becomes swollen with pride it can be pointed out to him that in God’s creation of the world even a flea came ahead of him.’” He paused. “Rab Naaman also said, “The camel was so vain he desired horns, so his ears were taken from him.’” Without out comment the rabbis listened, and Asher concluded, “Rab Naaman said, ‘Man is born with his hands clenched, but he dies with them wide open and empty. The vanities he clings to elude him in the end, so he should not bother himself with them during his life.’” The rabbis listened approvingly, and without speaking one old man made a place for Asher to sit, and in this way God’s Man became one of the great expositors, laboring to construct the basic framework of Judaism.

To the four great planks which God possessed for the preservation of the Jews—monotheism, Torah, personal lyricism, prophecy—He would now add two more: the Talmud, and rabbis to interpret it, after which He would have a complete structure within which His Jews would henceforth live. God’s concept of the rabbi was easy to understand, for he was not much different from the ancient priest of El-Shaddai or the newer ones who were being called forth by the Christian church of Byzantium. The rabbi was apt to be more learned than the former and more personally committed to daily life than the latter, for he was required to have a wife and his congregation was always happier if he had five or six children, for then he would appreciate the burdens of the common man. The rabbi would also work for his living—of the sages meeting at Tverya during Rabbi Asher’s apprenticeship one was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, one a woodchopper, one a ritual butcher and one a scribe who made copies of the Torah—and no Jewish rabbi would ever accept discipline by a hierarchy of any kind: his contract was a personal one with the community that invited him to guide them. Often, as in the case of the greatest rabbi, Akiba, he would be a brilliant scholar with a memory that would be difficult to match in any other profession. He would serve as conscience, arbiter, monitor and judge of life and death. Rabbi Akiba had warned: “When you sit on a court which condemns a man to death, do not eat all day, because you have killed part of yourself.” Of every segment of his community the rabbi was a part, and when it suffered its periodic agonies, he suffered more than all, and it was this basic relationship that Asher ha-Garsi exemplified, for in the long discussions held under the grape arbor of Tverya, he quickly established himself as God’s Man, for he spoke with but one concern, to ascertain the will of God, and he always spoke humbly, as if he were only a little man incapable of knowing God’s wishes directly but able somehow to detect them by lowering his face and catching the passing whisper. Being closer to God than most men he suffered more deeply when ordinary men acted contrary to God’s law, and he was always willing to humble himself in trying to bring God and man together.