Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Work hard. Save money. And leave this place.”

“What did you tell him about my daughter?”

“I never spoke to him …”

“That’s not true!” the rabbi stormed.

Getting no satisfaction from Yohanan, he ran home, where he found Jael working with her mother. Unawed by her father’s excitement the girl admitted that she loved Menahem. “He’s so much wiser than the others. He works hard, too.”

Her words had to be respected, for they carried their own justification; in the five unsatisfactory marriages which Rabbi Asher had arranged for his older daughters he had not come close to locating a husband as promising as Menahem ben Yohanan. In a kind of desperation he had been forced to accept men who were lazy, or not observant Jews, or stupid, and now his youngest daughter had discovered for herself a husband who would be an adornment to any household: a young man capable of running the groats mill and likely to prove a good father. Without speaking further the little rabbi left Jael and went to the room where it was his custom to pray.

Throwing himself on the floor he cried, “God, what must I do?” He rose, dancing here and there, bowing his body, running backward and forward, and again prostrating himself full length in the dust. He then prayed for nearly an hour, struggling with the concepts of God, of Torah and of law. Finally, a little man worn out from his wrestling with the deity, he lay humbly on the floor and accepted judgment. When he understood clearly what was required he rose, returned to where Jael waited and kissed her with a tenderness unusual even for him who had never feared to demonstrate his love for his children. Without speaking he left the house and went to the dye vats, where within a few minutes he arranged a contract for the marriage of his daughter Jael to Abraham, son of the dyer Hababli.

With maximum speed the wedding was arranged. A canopy was erected at the rabbi’s house and jars of wine were purchased from the Greek who kept a shop near the old Christian church, but on the morning of the wedding Jael imprudently ran to the groats mill, where she stood before Menahem, sobbing, “Oh, Menahem. It was you I wanted.”

Her father, having anticipated such rashness, quickly appeared to lead his daughter home, and Menahem spoke to her no more. That evening he watched from the edge of the crowd as Abraham, whom he had known as a graceless boy and a bully, stood with a gold cap on his head, waiting under the canopy as ashen-faced Jael was brought to him: he had not expected his father to acquire for him so lovely a bride. When the improper wedding was concluded, the prayers having been recited by Rabbi Asher himself, when the glass was broken and feet had trod the pieces, Menahem, watching in anguish, swore that he would no longer live in such pain.

He waited until the bride had been carried off by the still befuddled groom, and the guests had drunk the wine and had departed in the night, then sought refuge in the olive grove where he hid in the darkness. When morning came he went soberly to the home of Rabbi Asher and asked to speak with him. The little guardian of the law sat in his alcove, his long beard covering his hands, and he asked, “What do you wish, Menahem?”

“Am I truly sentenced to such a life?”

Slowly Rabbi Asher took down a scroll of the Torah, unrolling it to a passage whose words he indicated with a thin forefinger: “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to his tenth generation.” He took away his hands and the scroll rewound itself, as if it had a life of its own.

“I cannot accept it. I’ll go to Antioch.”

To Rabbi Asher the threat was familiar: nearly a quarter of a century before in this room Yohanan had uttered those same words, but the stonecutter had found himself held fast by custom and had not gone to Antioch. Quietly the little rabbi explained, “If you did flee to some other city, you would find yourself in the arms of Jews, where the law abides.”

“There’s no escape?”

“None.”

It was now that Menahem voluntarily reopened the subject which he had first heard discussed twelve years before under the grape vines of Tverya and which he had often subsequently pondered. With deliberate care he asked, “But if tonight I steal goods worth ten drachmas …”

Eagerly Rabbi Asher replied, “We would arrest you, sell you as a slave, marry you to another slave, and after five years set you completely free.”

“And I would be clean?”

“Not you. But your children.” The old man paused. He was approaching his final years and was increasingly aware of his responsibilities as God’s Man, and something of the joy and love of the non-legal discussions in Tverya flooded his heart, and he confessed, “Menahem, you are my son, the keeper of my mill. Please, please steal the ten drachmas’ worth and win back your place within the law.” Leaving his parchments he ran with short steps to where Menahem stood, and throwing his arms about the young man, kissed him and cried, “At last you shall be a Jew of the congregation.”

In this way Menahem finally submitted himself to the law. Departing from the rabbi he headed back to the synagogue to ask his father to arrange a theft and an arrest before witnesses so that he might be sold as a fictitious slave; but as he went to inform Yohanan of his submission he met coming up the hill into town a caravan of donkeys, architects, stone masons and real slaves led by the priest Eusebius, a tall, sober Spaniard who had served in Constantinople and who was now coming in his black robes and silver crucifix to build the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene. He was a thin, solemn man of imposing stature, gray at the temples, lined in the face, and he entered Makor with the stately spirituality of one familiar with God. The first citizen he encountered was Menahem, visibly perplexed, and for a moment the two strangers stared at each other. Then, surprisingly, the Spaniard’s austere face broke into a warm, enveloping smile; the lines in his cheeks deepened and his somber eyes glowed with a promise of friendship. He bowed slightly to Menahem, who felt himself drawn to this impressive churchman who had come to modify the town.

… THE TELL

When John Cullinane lived in Chicago he attended Catholic mass occasionally and funerals rather often, but whenever he worked overseas he tried to attend local Catholic churches regularly in order to see their rich variation in architecture and ritual. For example, at the end of two months’ work at Makor he had prayed with the Carmelite monks on Mount Carmel, with the Salesians at Nazareth, with the Benedictines at the Galilean church of Loaves and Fishes, with the Syrian Maronites in Haifa, and with the Greek Catholics in Akko.

He found the strange services exciting, not only from the spiritual point of view but also from the historical; there were some liturgies he could scarcely understand, while others seemed rather close to the Irish church he had known as a boy, but common to all was evidence of Catholicism’s ability to accommodate itself to many cultures, relying upon a central core of authority to insure the continuity. The more Cullinane saw of his ancient church in the Holy Land the more impressed he became with its vitality, for although the state of Israel was predominantly Jewish, Cullinane discovered everywhere this vigorous Catholic continuum based upon Arab Christians who, sometimes against formidable tyranny from either Rome or Constantinople, had retained their special rites since the early centuries.

By no means had Cullinane visited all the types of Catholic church available in the Galilee; he hoped especially to see those mysterious branches which had broken off from Rome: the Greek Orthodox in Kefar Nahum, the Russian Orthodox in Tiberias. And he was interested in the Monophysite groups that had rejected both Rome and Constantinople: the Abyssinians, the Armenian Gregorians, the Egyptian Copts. But the nature of his work halted Sunday excursions, for at Friday noon each week all digging at Makor stopped, and none of course was permitted on Saturday, which was the Jewish Shabbat. Then on Sunday digging resumed, and since this was the first workday of the week, he felt that he must be present. He was thus kept from exploring further into the local life of his own church, and although this irritated him somewhat as an archaeologist, he felt no loss as a worshiper, for had he been at home with a free American-style Sunday he would rarely have gone to the local cathedral.