Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Abd Umar could recall the morning on which he said good-bye to Ben Hadad for the last time: he was twenty years old and about to start his caravan on a trip to Damascus when Muhammad and some followers launched a discussion under a nearby tree, and as he heard the inspired message that came from the Prophet’s lips he delayed the departure of his camels and listened, realizing for the first time that he—the dark slave of a Jew—was being summoned to a lifelong mission. He lingered far beyond the prudent time for starting, hearing with awe the revelations of the man from Mecca:“When the sun is overthrown,

And when the stars fall,

And when the hills are moved,

And when the camels big with young

Are left by the wayside,

And when the wild beasts are herded together,

And when the seas rise, And when souls are reunited,

And when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked

For what sin she was slain,

And when the pages are laid open

And when the sky is torn away,

And when hell is lighted,

And when Paradise comes near,

Then every soul will know what it has done!”

At the conclusion of this apocalyptic vision he had prostrated himself before the seer, crying, “I am your servant.”

“Not mine, but God’s,” the Prophet had replied, and at that moment Abd Umar entered into the covenant which had subsequently guided his life, transforming him from a slave into a captain of the faithful.

In his new-found exaltation he had gone to Ben Hadad, saying, “Father, I’ve surrendered to the Prophet.”

At first the red-haired Jew had scowled, but then had said generously, “I hope you find comfort.”

“Will you join me?”

“No, there’s one God and for Jews He speaks through the Torah.”

The conviction of Ben Hadad’s reply caught his son off guard, but finally the slave understood. “You’re a leader, so you have to remain a Jew. But the others …”

“Will they join Muhammad?” The merchant laughed. “Son, we’re Jews because we believe certain things. None of the others will join.”

The Jew’s reply disturbed Abd Umar and he felt obliged to say, “Then this may be the last time I’ll take your caravan to Damascus.”

“Son,” Ben Hadad replied with humor, “I brought you up to be a man of God, In Damascus the Christians are men of God, too. So is Muhammad. We’ll all work together somehow.”

Yet Abd Umar’s prediction was correct. That was the last trip he would make to Damascus for the Jew, but how could one explain, even to himself, the reasons that had ended their relationship? In spite of every overture made by Muhammad, the Jews of Medina had remained obdurate. In Abd Umar’s absence they had even joined an enemy in war against Muhammad. They had ridiculed his Koran publicly and had cooperated with pagans in attempts to halt his acceptance, so on one dreadful day which the new religion would long try to forget, the eight hundred Jewish men of Medina were marched into the market place, led to an open trench and beheaded one by one so that their skulls and torsos pitched into the waiting grave. At the moment of death each Jew was offered his life if he was willing to answer one question correctly.

“Will you forswear your religion and join us?”

Ben Hadad laughed at the question and his head rolled one way while his body tumbled another.

That day seven hundred and ninety-nine Jews rejected Muhammad; only one saved his life by converting, and when the tragedy had ended, two facts were clear; Jews were not going to join the new religion, but it was impossible to execute them all. They were good farmers and they were needed on the land, so a grudging truce was arranged: if they behaved themselves they could cling to their Book, but they would have to pay higher taxes and would no longer be free to move about.

To demonstrate his own willingness to forgive, Muhammad took recourse to a dramatic gesture. When the sickening massacre was over and repentance was in the air he moved among the five or six hundred Jewish women who had been made widows that day and selected a beautiful girl whom Abd Umar had known well, Rihana, a merchant’s wife, and the Prophet married her. In the next year, when he was forced to execute another rebellious Jewish leader, he married that man’s widow as well, the gracious Safia, and with his two Jewish widows he had lived amicably, depending upon them to mitigate the opposition of the Arabian Jews.

As Abd Umar’s soldiers were riding through the Galilee forest their captain reviewed these gloomy memories, and the trees, to which the Arabs were not accustomed, depressed both him and the troops and he recalled that mournful day when he had returned from Damascus to find that Ben Hadad had been slain. He had run to the long grave to honor the good Jew who had taught him so much and there he had reflected: Of every ten boys I played with as a child, nine are buried in that grave. The weight of ugliness he had experienced that day would never leave him; it moved with him through the Galilee.

His attention was taken from these matters, however, when the road through the forest opened to display a view of the surrounding hills, and on one, where Safat hung like a star in the sky, the Arabs could see fires burning. They watched with strange emotions: their brothers had reached the town, but they were destroying it in the manner that was to be forbidden in the future. A soldier said matter-of-factly, “Abu Zeid got there.”

Abd Umar turned brusquely in his saddle and snapped, “The days of fire have vanished.” After staring again at the rising smoke he added, “We’ll take Makor with none of that.” As he urged his camel back into the gloomy forest, rain began to fall and he knew that the transit of the swamp would be difficult, but he thought not of these immediate matters; his mind remained focused on that afternoon when he had first seen the long grave of the Jews. It was there, at the place of death, that he had become the kind of man he was now: willing to fight and a courageous leader, but a man who would never condone vengeful killing.

Within the mean and narrow streets of Makor, Jews awaited the ominous coming of Islam. They knew of the fall of Damascus and the capture of Tverya, their once-sacred city on the lake, and they shivered, for this was the season of storms, when rabbis added to their prayers a phrase giving thanks to God for having sent the rain: “You, O Lord, are mighty forever. You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall.” Once more a third of Maker’s population was Jewish, and in the surrounding valleys were many additional families working their farms, for the Jews still preferred rural life to the business ventures in town, where money matters remained in Greek hands. But these Jews were allowed to play no significant role in the Christian town, for Constantinople had laid down the rule that no new Jewish buildings could be started nor improvements added to those already standing. Furthermore, even if a synagogue were in existence, it must not compete in either height or appointments with Christian churches in the same community, and since the Nestorian minority in Makor could afford little, the synagogue was truly a hovel.

Nor was the Jewish deficiency expressed only in externals; the bewildered rabbi who led the community was as bedraggled spiritually as his synagogue was physically. He was neither an old man wise in the traditions of Palestinian life, nor a young scholar imbued with the inner potential of the Talmud; he was merely a forty-year-old man subservient to the Byzantine majority and a blind adherent of the legalistic formulations of the Talmud. He was a kind of moralizing bookkeeper who considered it his job to keep his Jews obedient to the civil law of Constantinople and the religious dictates of the Talmud. In the long history of Judaism there would be many such rabbis, and in spite of them the religion would survive, but a real rabbi, like Akiba, who faced with Rome the same problems that the Makor rabbi faced with Byzantium, and who in the process enlarged the whole scope of Judaism, making it nobler than it had been when he received it, would have been appalled at the pettiness of mind that characterized the local rabbi. Only one favorable comment could be made of the man: he was no worse than the Christian priests who served this little town during the death throes of the Byzantine empire in Palestine.