Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“I’m afraid of Rabbi Eliezer,” they explained.

“I’ll speak to him if your parents ask me,” Zaki said. But to one young man, shorter even than himself, Zaki said, “Forget Elisheba. She’s tall and you’re short, and men and women who marry should fit together in all ways.” He arranged a different marriage for this suitor, and later the man said that the fit was good.

Twice Rabbi Zaki went to Eliezer to speak on behalf of suitors, but the German Jew, reluctant to lose his memory of Leah, told him, “Elisheba can wait a little longer. Besides, I like to watch her as she brings the books.”

In the next years Rabbi Zaki was struck by two personal tragedies which diminished his ebullience; the only consolation he found was in the fact that the first took place before the second, sparing his wife additional sorrow. In early 1555 Rachel fell ill. Dr. Abulafia was called and could do nothing for his mother-in-law; and some men claimed, “She’s poisoning herself with her own bile.” For some time she had gone back to heckling her husband as to why he didn’t build a big synagogue of his own plus a yeshiva in which to teach.

“I have nothing to teach,” he replied.

“You would have if you weren’t so fat,” she said irrationally. In bitterness and unfulfillment she approached her death, for the three marriages of her daughters were not working out well, but on her last morning she whispered, “Husband, I’d like a little glass of wine,” and for a while as he sat by her bed she relaxed her animosity and said, “We should have stayed in Salonica. But I agree that Safed is better than running half-naked through the streets of Podi. It was better this way … since you insisted on being so fat.” And with her death Zaki became lost in tragedy and for half a year was little seen in Safed.

At the end of 1555 his mind was taken from his loss by the arrival of a refugee from the Jewish community in Ancona, the Italian seaport north of Podi, and this man convened a meeting in the largest synagogue to report on the disaster that had befallen his city. “For long years,” he said, “we Jews who fled from Spain lived happily in Ancona and even had grandchildren born on Italian soil. I had a weaver’s shop.” He hesitated as if recalling some insupportable sorrow, then said softly, “Of eighteen who lived on my street, only I escaped.”

“What happened?” Rabbi Zaki asked.

“Four Popes in a row had confirmed our right to live in Ancona, even though we had been forcibly baptized when passing through Portugal. But this year came a Pope who announced that the Church must now solve the Jewish problem once and for all. We believe his nephew wrote out the new rules, but he issued them.”

“Are they much different from before?” Zaki asked.

The refugee turned to study the fat rabbi and said, “Aren’t you Zaki, who fled Podi?”

“Yes.”

“The new rules are different. First, no city in the world may have more than one synagogue, and if a city does, the others are to be torn down at once. Second, every Jew in the world must wear a green hat. Men and women. Sleeping and waking. Inspectors may break into the home at any moment to see that Jews are wearing their green hats. Third, all Jews in a town must live on one street.”

“For years we did that in Germany,” Rabbi Eliezer said. His prophecy was coming true.

“Fourth, no Jew may own property. If he now owns land he must sell it within four months for whatever the Christians wish to offer. Fifth, no Jew may engage in any kind of commerce, save the resale of old clothes.” He droned on through additional proscriptions: no Christian may work for a Jew; no Jew may apply medicine to a Christian; no Jew may work on a Christian holiday; nowhere at any time, not even in synagogue, may any Jew be addressed with a title like Messer or Rabbi or Master.

Rabbi Zaki, listening to the recital, tried to find what hope he could. “These are simply the old laws made harsher,” he said.

“But now we have two new ones,” the man from Ancona said, “and it was from these I fled. Thirteenth, all previous laws which granted Jews any kind of protection are abolished, and the fathers of each town are invited to impose any additional restrictions they desire. Fourteenth,” and his voice dropped to a whisper, “if the Jew protests at any point he is to be punished physically, with great severity.”

In the silence practical-minded Yom Tov ben Gaddiel asked, “But when the laws were announced did anything happen?”

“No,” the Ancona man said, and throughout the synagogue the Safed rabbis could be heard breathing with relief. “But on my last night in the city a Christian who owed me much money came quietly to my house and said, ‘Simon ben Judah, you’ve been a good friend. Here’s half the money I owe you. Flee the city this hour because at dawn there will be many arrests.’ I asked, ‘What for?’ And he shrugged his shoulders: ‘After all, you are heretics.’ And as I hid on the hill behind Ancona I saw, toward four in the morning, torches moving out through all the streets where Jews lived.”

“So what happened?” Rabbi Yom Tov asked.

“I don’t know. I escaped to Podi.”

“Were Jews arrested there?” Zaki asked, his big face wet with perspiration.

“No. Your duke said that in Podi the new laws did not apply and in this defiance he was supported by his brother, the cardinal. Agitated messengers came from both Ancona and Rome to argue with the brothers, but they stood firm and allowed no arrests. Nevertheless, I grew frightened and took passage on a Turkish ship.”

“Tell me,” Zaki asked. “Jacopo ben Shlomo and his wife Sarah, were they well?”

“They were well,” the Ancona man reported. “They still have their red house by the fish market.”

That night Rabbi Zaki returned to his lonely shoemaker shop and prayed, but his lips moved heavily, for he could see his Jews of Podi standing on the wharf that day so long ago, with signs of fire on their foreheads. And then, in the summer of 1556, Safed received, along with a shipment of wool, another of the terrifying broadsheets which cities in Europe found morbid pleasure in circulating during the middle years of the century. The new printing press in Podi had produced this one, which, with harrowing woodblock prints providing details, told the world that in 1555 and 1556 the Holy Inquisition had saved Podi by burning alive twenty-nine Jews, and the name, the description, the heresy of each was reported in detail, with twenty-nine woodcuts showing how each Jew had reacted to the fire.

Fat Jacopo, who had run in the last race with Zaki, had died praying. Thin Nethaneel had begged for mercy. And Sarah, the wife of Jacopo, had died with her hair a living torch. In horror Rabbi Zaki read the predicted history of his congregation; it was as if the Inquisition had reached across the Mediterranean, calling him back to the punishment he had escaped by flight.

It was then that Rabbi Zaki, the amusing rotund man, fell into that sense of guilt which characterized his last years. The two blows coming together affected him profoundly, for he felt that if he had been a better husband Rachel might not have grown so bitter; and in fleeing Podi he had abandoned his congregation to the stake, just as surely as Dr. Abulafia had abandoned his family to its torture. For some months he was a man partly deranged by self-recrimination, and in neither Torah nor Talmud could he find consolation. He tried sharing his sorrow with Rabbi Eliezer, who had done the same in fleeing Gretz, but the austere German was so preoccupied with the law that he had no time to offer comfort, nor did the law itself, which stated what a man must do when mourning for the dead but not what to do when those dead were hung about his neck, burning in perpetual fire, so that the smoke blurred his vision. In his extremity he found aid in an unexpected quarter. Dr. Abulafia came to him in the shoemaker shop and said, “Zaki, father-in-law and friend, the time has come in your perplexity for you to study the Kabbala,” and the devout Spaniard explained in simple terms certain concepts of the mystical world that learned Jews had been perfecting in recent years. “The mystic perceives with his heart what his mind knows to be true … but cannot prove,” Abulafia began. “And we know that prior to creation God must have been immanent in all things. Without God there could be nothing. But if a merciful God is all things and is responsible for all things, how can we experience events like the burning of the Jews of Podi? Because just before God created the world, He voluntarily withdrew to make space for the physical world we see. But to remind us of His presence He left behind the ten vessels of which you have often heard me speak. And into these ten vessels He poured His divine light so that His presence might be amongst us. But after the first three vessels had caught their portion of the light and saved it for us, the lower seven were struck with such a flood of splendor that they could not retain it, and the vessels were shattered. Thus came confusion and tragedy into the world. Today you and I stand among the shattered vessels and the memory of our betrayals in Podi and Avaro. Sin is upon us and it becomes our responsibility, through dedication, prayer and extra-human effort, to reconstruct these shattered vessels, so that the light of God can exist in its intended receptacles. Zaki, you must co-operate with all men of goodness in their task of gathering together the shattered pieces and reconstructing the vessels.”