Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Day after day Rabbi Asher encouraged his students to pursue their adroit reasonings, and when the last had been proved specious, he surprised everyone by saying, “Now bring me a hundred reasons why the lizard cannot be eaten,” and when this had been accomplished he felt that his students were beginning to acquire the tenacity required of anyone who presumed to study Jewish law. He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.’”

While Rabbi Asher in Tverya taught this compassionate interpretation of the Torah, Yohanan and his son hiked back to Makor under the heavy burden of their portion of the law, and when Menahem reached home he sought consolation in hard work at the groats mill, where Jael came to talk to him, and he told his father, “I cannot go to Ptolemais”; so Yohanan went alone and after some days returned with two donkey-loads of purple glass and a small parcel of golden cubes. He was now ready to proceed with his masterwork.

In an open-front shop not far from the new synagogue he installed six men whose job it was to take the slabs of colored limestone which had been quarried from the Galilean hills and to saw them into long strips somewhat less than half an inch square across the face. Then, with chisels, they took the lengths of stone and chopped off half-inch segments, so that at the end of the day each man had about his feet a little pile of colored cubes, and when the reds and blues and greens and browns had accumulated in sufficient quantity Yohanan began building the mosaic.

In his fourteenth and fifteenth years Menahem helped his father place the cubes: on a bed of thin cement spread over the original floor Menahem would fill in the background spaces with ordinary gray-white cubes, while his father sketched the areas where color was required, and gradually the two would bring the large design down to a small focus where some bird or tree was indicated, and here with deft, stubby fingers Yohanan would construct from a bagful of mixed stones the gracious forms that made the pavement come alive. With a small wedged hammer he would strike off slivers of brown rock and with these would build a midsummer fern, dry and withered as it bent in the wind off the hills, and on the tip of the fern he would place a bee eater, perfectly constructed of pastel blue and yellow squares, with bits of the purple glass for wing tipping; slowly the father and son evoked in the synagogue of Makor the essence of their homeland: the sweeping hills and silvery streams, the crested hoopoe bird in mauve and white, his tail outlined in purple glass from Ptolemais. It never occurred to the two modest workmen that they were creating a masterpiece, but they did sense from time to time that they were composing a muted song to the goodness of the Galilee as they had come to know it.

The day finally came when an olive tree was needed in one corner of the design, and Yohanan stepped aside to watch approvingly as Menahem constructed his first object: with brown and green stones, with a few touches of red and blue, he built a living tree on the floor of the synagogue and Yohanan realized that in his son he had found an artist. But with each stone the boy laid down he grew older; he was now sixteen, when Jewish youths could be betrothed, and in the mornings as he worked at the groats mill he would listen while Jael—now a striking child with flaxen hair—chattered about the wedding of such-and-such a couple. If things had been otherwise, a young fellow like Menahem with a good job and clean appearance would have been considered a catch; but no uncles with nieces of marriageable age came to discuss wedding contracts with Yohanan, and the last years of work on the mosaic were spent in deepening bitterness.

Menahem became eighteen and nineteen and the net of the law closed more tightly about him. Now the boys his age were mostly married and some had children of their own, but no girl in the town would look at him, except young Jael, who was becoming a beautiful young woman. At fifteen she found it embarrassing to wait at the mill, but sometimes she intercepted Menahem as he walked from the mill to the synagogue, where the final stages of work were in progress. Occasionally the two would leave the town and stroll among the olive trees, and there one evening beside the ancient tree in whose cavernous interior Menahem had once slept he kissed the rabbi’s daughter for the first time. It was like the creation of a benevolent new world, the first experience of belonging he had known since childhood, and his love for Jael became the cardinal hope of his ugly life.

The ensuing years were as painfully lovely as any that Menahem would know: he could not court Jael openly, but he could kiss her secretly; yet he knew that she was reaching the age when proper suitors must appear with attractive offers. Her marriage was delayed only because Rabbi Asher still had one older daughter to marry off before he got to Jael, and this occupied his attention when he was in Makor. Finally, in the year 350, the groats maker found an unlikely family with a son who had a slanted eye and no great prospects, and this fellow agreed to marry the rabbi’s older girl, so Menahem knew that Jael’s turn was next.

One day as he worked in the mill filling sacks which the rabbi held open, he blurted out, “Rabbi Asher, can I marry Jael?”

The little rabbi, now sixty-nine years old, snapped his head forward so that his beard interrupted the flow of the groats. “What did you ask?” he demanded.

“Jael and I want to marry,” the boy said.

Rabbi Asher let the mouth of the sack fall shut, ignoring the groats that Menahem spilled about his feet. Without speaking he left the mill and went to the synagogue, where he upbraided Yohanan. “What have you encouraged your son to do?” he asked.