Джеймс Миченер - The Source

It would have been difficult to find a poorer propagandist for marriage than Rabbi Zaki; Safed required very little time to classify him as uxorious and his wife as a shrew. As for the three girls whom the fat rabbi offered as God’s blessing to unmarried men, they were ill-tempered, petulant and bad-complexioned. It seemed unlikely that the older girl, Sarah, would ever marry, for she had a sharp tongue and a drawn face, while the two younger girls, Athaliah and Tamar, though prettier in feature were equally acid in nature.

And then one day a muleteer from Damascus, a stolid Jewish lad who had never read the Talmud or heard of the yeshivas of Safed, climbed down the many levels of the town to sit with Zaki at the shoemaker’s bench: “On the trip from Akka I watched your daughter, Rabbi.”

“You did?” The fat shoemaker leaped. “Which one?”

“Athaliah. She has a better manner than the others.”

“She’s a wonderful girl!” Zaki cried impulsively. “Oh, this girl she can cook … she can weave.” He became so excited that his words stumbled over themselves, for his daughters were getting old and this was the first time that anyone had even obliquely discussed marriage … He stopped cold, “You do want to marry her, don’t you?” he asked bluntly.

“Yes,” the muleteer mumbled. “I’ve told my mother.”

“Oh, Rachel!” the fat rabbi cried. And he summoned his family; and when the girls were lined up he announced, “This fine young man from Damascus … What’s your name?” He choked, grew red in the face and grasped Athaliah by the hand, delivering her to her suitor.

As soon as it was decently possible the muleteer led his bride away to Damascus, and that night Rabbi Zaki initiated the tradition that was to make him beloved in Safed and renowned throughout the Jewish world. He went to bed at dusk, for it was written in the Talmud that men should not be abroad after dark, but he could not sleep, for he was possessed by a great happiness at having found a husband for one of his girls; and when he thought of the way doomed Jews were living that night in Podi and Portugal and Spain, he felt driven to rise from his bed and dress and go out into the narrow streets of the town, and to walk up and down, crying, “Men of Safed! How can you sleep in your tranquillity when Jews throughout the world are unhappy and miserable? Do you appreciate the magnitude of your blessing? Jews of Safed, you happy, happy Jews, let us rise now and go to the house of God and give thanks.” And he routed out the scholars and the leaders and the men who would always know more than he and drove them to the synagogue, and there, in the light of a few candles, he recited the triumphant passages of Deuteronomy, and in his simple way brought many of the citizens of Safed closer to God than did all the Talmudic scholars and all the Kabbalists.

Two or three nights each month this sensation of absolute happiness would overcome Zaki, and he would roar through the narrow streets, summoning the Jews of Safed to praise their God for His bounty; and whereas it had been obvious to the scholars that Zaki of Italy would not attain a place of eminence in their schools—not even as a student, for he could not understand what men like the legalist Caro or the mystic Cordovero were talking about—he could, by the sheer simplicity of his faith, become one of the memorable rabbis of Safed. Although he left no writings, he so impressed his humanity upon the town that he modified subsequent religious behavior.

The keynote of his teaching, repeated again and again in his midnight discourses, was charity. “Gold does not grow out of the land,” he taught. “It is found in man’s labor. And those who profit from the gold must give a fair share back to the poor.” He used simple explanations, saying, “The mills of Rabbi Yom Tov could not run for a day if God stopped the mountain streams that feed them. If we live on God’s charity, should we not share what God gives us?” He argued that a man should distribute at least twenty per cent of his income to the needy, saying, “And if he gives less than one part in ten he may not call himself a Jew.” Again and again he pleaded with his listeners to be generous, and the joke was circulated through Safed: “Rabbi Zaki wants more than anything else in the world to give things away … especially his daughters.”

Outside the synagogue Rabbi Zaki was even more effective, for from his workbench he reviewed the homely precepts of the Jewish sages: “The great Akiba tells us: ‘Whosoever neglects the duty of visiting the sick is guilty of shedding blood.’ Have you been to see Rabbi Paltiel’s wife since she fell sick? Go now, and you can have your shoes when you return.” His round face and luxuriant beard became a trademark of humanity throughout the Jewish section of Safed, and he was the favorite Jew of the Arab quarter, too, for he offered his Muslim friends no religious argument, only laughter and mended shoes.

The young men of the town, watching his jovial passage, argued, “If his daughter, Tamar has lived with him so long, she can’t be as bad as she looks,” and one day a man came to the shop and said, tentatively, “Rabbi Zaki, I’ve been thinking that I might like to marry your daughter.”

“Sarah?” he cried. “She’s a fine girl.”

“I meant Tamar.”

“She’s a fine girl, too!” the shoemaker said enthusiastically, but after the marriage was celebrated he asked his son-in-law, “About Sarah. Do you happen to know any other men …”

“No,” the groom replied firmly, but that night Zaki again coursed through the alleys, calling for the Jews to celebrate the paradise they knew in Safed, so that the more cynical observed, “Watch! When he finally gets rid of that oldest daughter we’ll have midnight services for a month.” But Safed enjoyed the exuberance of their fat rabbi, for everyone acknowledged—even the great scholars—that from time to time someone ought to call the attention of the people to the everyday joys and triumphs of a decent life. “And there is no greater triumph imaginable,” dour Joseph Caro opined, “than finding a husband for a daughter like Tamar.”

If charity was the pragmatic heart of Rabbi Zaki’s preaching, the philosophical core was found in a passage of Maimonides which he revived for Safed: “Everyone throughout the year must regard himself as if he were half innocent and half guilty. And he should regard the whole of mankind in the same way. If then he commits one more sin, he weighs down the scale of guilt against himself and against the whole world. And he himself causes the destruction of all. But if he fulfills one commandment, he turns the scale of merit in his favor and perhaps he saves the entire world. He by himself has power to bring salvation and deliverance to all the men of the world.” He frequently recited this passage, adding, “And every man in Safed tonight, Arab and Jew alike, has this divine opportunity. The charity you do tomorrow, you, Muhammad Iqbal, may save the world.”

The gentle teaching of the little rabbi was the more impressive in that his personal life was such a shambles. In retrospect Rachel had grown positively fond of Salonica, the largest Jewish city in the world thanks to the Spanish expulsion, though when she had first landed there from Africa she had assured her daughters that it was a stinking place where the Turkish governors were despicable, the Greek citizens inhospitable and the Jews irreligious. In Safed the same people who listened with deepening respect as their humble rabbi talked of the good life, heard that same man’s wife berate him as a fool; but the one did not seem to affect the other.

Rachel’s ill temper was understandable. She had convinced herself that if the family had remained in Salonica, Zaki would by now have found a husband for Sarah, but when the rabbi looked at that unfortunate girl, now twenty-five and with a worsening complexion and disposition, he wondered. He sympathized with Sarah. With her two younger sisters married she was bound to be miserable, but she made herself so disagreeable that Zaki had pretty well stopped offering her to the young men who came to his shop.