Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“You asleep?”

“Not now,” the Jew replied.

“I can’t sleep. I’ve been hammering at some ideas and I’d like to try them out on you.”

“Shoot.” Eliav sat up and grabbed his knees to his chest, while the Irishman sat on the foot of his bed. Only moonlight illuminated the tent, and the men spoke in low voices so as not to disturb Tabari.

“I’ve been perplexed …” He hesitated, as if in embarrassment. “By a matter of religion.”

“Why not? We’ve been digging in it for long enough.”

“And I wondered what a believing Jew …”

“Don’t look at me. I’m no orthodox rabbi, spending his time in the synagogue.”

“I’m no priest, spending his time at mass.”

“You mean,” Eliav suggested, “that we’re both illiterates?”

“Exactly, except that it’s people like us who keep the thing moving.”

“Agreed.”

“So let me ask it again. What does an average, non-orthodox Jew like you think of the parallel development of Judaism and Christianity?”

Eliav let go his knees and leaned backward on his pillow, thought for some time, then drew himself forward and said, “I’ve always thought that classical Judaism was about ready for a new infusion sometime around the year 100 C.E. The old patterns were ready to be enlarged. For proof, look at the concepts we get from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or the development of the Talmud. So I’ve never resented the eruption of Christianity. The world was ready for it.”

“Why?”

“Possibly because Judaism was a hard, tough old religion that didn’t give the individual enough free play. It could never have appealed to the world at large. The bright, quixotic religion of Christianity was ideally suited for such a proselytizing need.”

“Is brightness the difference between the two?” Cullinane pressed.

“Partly. Because, you see, when Judaism did reform by means of the Talmud it went backward toward its own nature. It became harder and more irresponsive to modern change, whereas the Christian church moved forward psychologically, and in a time of wild change an organism that is retracting has less chance than one which is expanding.”

“Seems to me it was unfortunate for Judaism that in the years of decision you had the inward-looking rabbis, whereas we Christians had outward-looking church fathers.”

“Right there you beg the question,” Eliav said slowly. “You say you were lucky that in the critical years between 100 and 800 CE. Christianity went forward, and we were unlucky that during the same years Judaism went backward. Don’t you see that the real question is forward to what, backward to what?”

Cullinane reflected for a moment and said, “By God, I do! That’s what’s been bugging me without my knowing it, because I hadn’t even formulated the question.”

“My thought is that in those critical years Judaism went back to the basic religious precepts by which men can live together in a society, whereas Christianity rushed forward to a magnificent personal religion which never in ten thousand years will teach men how to live together. You Christians will have beauty, passionate intercourse with God, magnificent buildings, frenzied worship and exaltation of the spirit. But you will never have that close organization of society, family life and the little community that is possible under Judaism. Cullinane, let me ask you this: Could a group of rabbis, founding their decisions on Torah and Talmud, possibly have come up with an invention like the Inquisition—an essentially anti-social concept?”

Now it was Cullinane who rocked back and forth, and after a while he confessed, “I’m afraid that in those days we did treat you rather badly.”

Eliav groaned. “Why do Christians always use that marvelous euphemism, ‘treated rather badly’? John, your Inquisition burned to death more than thirty thousand of our best Jews. I read the other day that a leading German had confessed that his nation had ‘treated the Jew rather badly.’ He had fallen back upon this inoffensive term to cover the destruction of a people. Judaism would simply not permit its rabbis to come up with solutions like that. Judaism can be understood, it seems to me, only if it is seen as a fundamental philosophy directed to the greatest of all problems: how can men live together in an organized society?”

“I would have thought,” Cullinane suggested, “that the real religious problem is always ‘How can man come to know God?’”

“There’s the difference between us,” Eliav said. “There’s the difference between Old Testament and New. The Christian discovers the spirit of God, and the reality is so blinding that you go right out, build a cathedral and kill a million people. The Jew avoids this intimacy and lives year after year in his ghetto, in a grubby little synagogue, working out the principles whereby men can live together.”

“About the euphemism, ‘treated rather badly.’ What does a Jew like you feel about that … now?”

Again Eliav relaxed his hold on his knees and fell back into the darkness. “I think it was very good for the world,” he said slowly, “that Martin Luther came along.”

“What do you mean?” Cullinane asked.

“I mean that up to then you Catholics had really treated us Jews, as you say, rather badly. If one made a simple list of all that your church did to mine it would quite destroy any moral justification for Catholicism to continue, and if a man like me felt that what your people had done to us was an essential characteristic of Catholicism, then I don’t see how we could co-exist. But fortunately for world history, Martin Luther came along to prove that Protestants could behave with equal savagery. After all, it wasn’t misguided Catholics in Germany in 1939 who fired up the furnaces. It was good, sober Protestants. It wasn’t Catholic political leaders who shrugged off the whole affair. It was Protestant prime ministers and presidents. So a man like me reasons, ‘What happened in Spain was no part of Catholicism. And what happened in Germany wasn’t Protestantism. Each was merely an expression of its times, a manifestation of the deadly sickness of Christianity.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That it’s the Christians who kill Jews, not Catholics or Protestants.”

“Yes,” Eliav said. “The tremendously personal religion that evolved around the figure of Christ was all that He and Paul had envisaged. It was brilliant, penetrating and a path to personal salvation. It was able to construct soaring cathedrals and even more vaulted processes of thought. But it was totally incapable of teaching men to live together.”

There was a stirring in the other bed and Tabari came over to Eliav’s cot. “Don’t believe a word of what he’s saying,” the Arab said. “The only reason the Jews haven’t behaved like the Christians is that for the last two thousand years they haven’t had anyone they can kick around. That’s primarily because whenever they form a kingdom it quickly comes apart at the seams. How long did the empire of Saul and David last? A little over one hundred years. In an area as small as Palestine they broke up into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern. John, you’ve heard what they say about Jews? Two Jews get together, they build three synagogues. ‘You go to yours, I’ll go to mine, and we’ll both boycott that son of a bitch on the hill.’”

Eliav laughed. “You may have something there, Jemail. Historically, we’ve found it just about as difficult to get together as you Arabs have.”

“About the same,” Jemail agreed. “But as I listened to you two fellows argue I thought: Why should I lie here silent, when I have the solution?”

“What is it?” Cullinane asked.