Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Between the immensity of God and the insignificance of man the Zohar postulated ten spheres of divine manifestation, each of which man can approach or even encompass: the supreme crown of God, the wisdom of God, the intelligence, the love, the power, the compassion, the everlastingness, the majesty, the root foundation and the kingdom of God. These ten spheres, through which God emerges from his unknowable state, can be represented in the form of a tree, but it is known that the sap of this tree, the vitalizing power, is and must be the ultimate spirit of God.

It was through the exploration and contemplation of these spheres that Ximeno and Abulafia reached the mystical point at which sometimes, after having manipulated the letters of the Hebrew alphabet for hours, they would come close to the ultimate secret of God Himself. Then the four separate letters of the mystical tetragrammaton, YHWH, would appear on the paper before them, properly fused into the Name, and they would become aware of the actual presence of God Himself.

But when the searching fingers of the Inquisition began to clutch at one secret Jew after another, Ximeno had warned, “Companion, we had better burn our books,” and with moral confusion they had burned their copy of the Torah, even though it was a holy book for the Christians, too, and their tracts from the Talmud, but when it came time to burn the Zohar, Abulafia had promised, “I will burn it tonight,” and without telling Ximeno he had secreted it in a wall of his cellar, for the book which had illuminated his soul he could not burn. Later Ximeno had cautioned, “We must no longer write Hebrew letters. A child might find an un-burned scrap or your wife might see scratches on the desk.” And they had formed the habit of sitting together in absolute silence, two secret Jews, each contemplating the mystery of God in his own way.

It was surprising, Abulafia thought, that the Inquisition had not identified him as one of Ximeno’s friends, but he remembered that Diego had wisely refused ever to meet Abulafia socially; he had come always as a patient, claiming a persistent nasal condition. “I will not tell even you who the other Jews are,” he had once said, “for the day may come when we shall be called upon to resist harsh tortures and we must not know who our neighbors are lest we prove not strong.”

Now, in the white room, Dr. Abulafia tried to reconstruct what he knew of Ximeno’s habits: He came frequently to visit me, and I was a Jew. He also visited the shop of Luis Moro. Could it be that … He slammed his hand across his lips to stop even the speculation, because if he were called to the torture he must not even have suspicions to give the judges. He would strike the name Luis Moro from his memory forever and if …

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” he cried aloud. Then he quieted himself and wondered: How did Diego have the courage to keep my name from his lips? Abulafia wanted to utter lamentations in the streets for Ximeno, to pray for this great soul whose life had expired in flame, but he was afraid. Silently he wept, not even allowing the tears to form in his eyes lest his wife come suddenly upon him.

Choking on his grief and sense of sin Dr. Abulafia reached a decision: I will flee Spain. I can no longer endure this horror. He hoped to find some quiet spot where he could study the Zohar in peace, seeking to find some way whereby the ten spheres of Godhood might lead ordinary men to an awareness of Him. But where could a Jew find freedom? And how could he escape Spain to get there? To Abulafia’s rapidly moving mind came the memory of a letter he had once seen from a German Jew who claimed that in the empire of the Grand Turk, Jews could live without persecution, and he began constructing an involved plan for reaching Constantinople.

It was amateurish and almost impossible of execution, but he was in such a state of panic that he could be excused for his grotesqueries. First of all he would abandon his wife and children, and this was a grave decision of itself, for Maria Abulafia was a beautiful, compassionate wife whom he had loved deeply and his two sons were sturdy, laughing boys; but he reasoned: Even if they wanted to be Jews I couldn’t get them out of the country. And if they preferred to remain Catholic how could I trust them to keep my secret? He decided to tell them nothing, unable to realize that his own flight must surely bring them before the Inquisition as his suspected accomplices.

Next he took another equally foolish step. He slipped down into the cellar, moved aside two stones and took out Diego Ximeno’s manuscript of the Zohar and a small seven-branched candelabrum, an heirloom menorah which Ximeno had given him on the day in 1522 when they had mutually confessed to being secret Jews. To try to smuggle these two items out of Spain, especially through the port of Seville, was madness, for detection would mean certain death, but he would not leave without them.

In the morning he kissed Maria and the boys good-bye, informing them that he had been called to Seville on medical matters, and at an inn along the way he coldly forged documents directing him to proceed to Egypt on behalf of the Crown to investigate medicines developed by the notable Spanish doctor, Maimonides, who had served the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo. A more clever man would have produced a document so perfect that it must look suspicious; Abulafia’s was so patently absurd, with the royal seal—transferred from another order—upside down, that it passed as honest.

In Seville he was nearly trapped three times: once at the inn where a suspicious clerk wanted to inspect his luggage and actually had the Zohar in his hands; once when he presented his forged sailing orders at the citadel; and finally when the Dominicans interrogated him, as they did all passengers, for final clearance. “Wasn’t this Maimonides a Jew?” they asked.

“Yes,” Abulafia replied, clenching his whole body to keep from trembling. “Hundreds of years ago. But he is treasured as a Spaniard.”

“Why does the king want you to study Jewish medicine?”

“You know what they say about Maimonides. If the moon had consulted him, it wouldn’t have spots on its face.”

The Dominicans laughed. “Have you any Jewish blood?” they asked.

“None.”

“What are you carrying?”

“Medical books.” And thus he fled Spain.

As soon as his ship touched Tunis, Dr. Abulafia went ashore to find a butcher shop, where he slashed his outer garments and smeared them with blood. He paid a Muslim to carry the evidence back to the captain with word that the Spanish doctor had been stabbed by robbers and that his body lay somewhere at the bottom of the bay. He then carried his precious luggage to a small inn and waited nervously until he saw his ship sail back to Spain. His childish plot had worked.

He summoned the innkeeper and asked to borrow a pair of scissors and a candle, after which he locked the door to his room and broke the candle into seven parts. Placing them in Diego Ximeno’s menorah he lit them, prayed in Hebrew and symbolically washed the water of baptism from his head. Then with trembling hands he took the rusty scissors and started to circumcise himself. The first cuts were so unexpectedly painful, the rush of blood so sudden, that he came near to fainting. But he strengthened himself, whispering, “Fool! Think of Ximeno’s feet,” and with a fortitude that had not previously been tested, he proceeded with his commitment. In exultation he threw open his window, crying in a loud voice the sanctified prayer of Judaism, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Passers-by looked up at him as if he were a Jewish muezzin calling them to his mosque, and he shouted, “Ximeno, I am a Jew! I am a Jew!”

And after many years he came to Safed, bearing a book.