György Spiró - Captivity

Master Jehuda, however, decided that Uri could not go.

“You’ve been placed under my care,” he said, with something that almost resembled affection. “I couldn’t bear it if any harm were to befall you on the way.”

Uri protested that no harm would befall him, but Master Jehuda was unbending. Of course, Uri thought gloomily; he’s my jailer, that’s what he was instructed by the fire signals. He’s frightened I’ll make my escape.

In the end, they sent someone else, with whom Uri was not acquainted; he was a young man but already married, and he spent a long time in whispered conversation with Jehuda in a corner before eventually setting off. He returned two days later, and again there was a lengthy whispered conversation with Master Jehuda.

On the next law-day, when at dawn people reluctantly trudged off toward the house of prayer, clay tablets under their arms, Uri stood in front of the house, watching them, and Master Jehuda greeted the two elected magistrates with a transfigured countenance.

“I’ve got the solution!” he exclaimed jubilantly.

They ate challah, sipped wine, and the master expounded. He announced with some sorrow that the messenger’s trip had proved fruitless. Master Joshua had provided no advice of any use, even though he did possess a lot of the oral tradition in written form. Still, the Teaching did not have to be in written form so long as it was in heads and hearts, Master Jehuda declared. He nodded in agreement with himself and the two elected magistrates enthusiastically joined him.

The Eternal One, Jehuda made known, did not wish for this complex affair to remain unresolved, and while the messenger was talking with Master Joshua, who had no ideas to offer, the Creator had divulged to Jehuda the solution to the problem in a dream.

The bill of divorce was original; there could be no doubt about that, and there was no need to call in new witnesses. An error had been committed when it came to transferring the orchard portion of the property, and that error could be attributed to the fact that Ezekiel, may he rest in peace, had not been of sound mind when he dictated the ketubah. If he had not been of sound mind when he made the list of his wealth, then it was reasonable to suppose he did not wish to divorce either, since Martha had been a faithful wife, as anyone would be able to attest. On those grounds, then, the whole bill of divorce was null and void.

Jehuda went on. “Martha is lucky that Thomas miscalculated. Only the Eternal One could have clouded his mind when he muddled up the details of the orchard, just as it is the Creator dictating our judgment, blessed be His name.”

Master Jehuda had made a wise decision; the parties were able to acquiesce to it, and it satisfied Uri’s sense of justice. Still he would gladly have sought out that Master Joshua in the seventh village to ask him whether it was true that no ideas had occurred to him — along the lines, say, of Ezekiel not being of fully sound mind. He also considered whether partial judgments based on preconceptions were reached in all matters that were even just a tiny bit complicated.

Master Joshua’s name came up again soon enough.

Uri woke up one morning to find Master Jehuda standing gravely over him.

“Did I oversleep?” asked Uri in a panic, and sat up.

Master Jehuda shook his head.

“No, you didn’t oversleep, but for a week starting today you cannot sleep in the barn.”

“What did I do?” asked Uri, a little irritated.

“You didn’t do anything,” said Master Jehuda. “That’s an order, though. You are going to sleep in my room for a week, starting today.”

Uri scratched his head; the change was not much to his liking.

Since it was not a law-day, he was free to gaze at the slow, leisurely puttering of the assistant cabinetmakers, an agreeable activity given that it was blazing hot outside. It must be tough out in the fields right now. When the day drew to a close he went into the master’s place.

The master was reclining on his bed and staring at the ceiling. His wife sat by the window, sewing something in the dark. They had not yet lit a lamp.

When she saw Uri, she jumped up, furiously snatched a blanket, and clattered out of the house.

“Have I done something to offend her?” Uri queried.

“She offended you, the guest, for leaving without showing you any hospitality!”

Uri still didn’t understand. Jehuda sat up.

“Master Joshua,” he said, “big brains that he is, explains the law by saying that a menstruating woman need not sleep separately, but tradition makes it absolutely clear that a women should sleep for a week outside the house because she’s unclean! Master Joshua is stirring women up against us! It has driven my wife mad as well; at this time in the month she rages outside in the barn for a week! The custom is quite clear, though, and she knows it full well!” He then added confidentially, “Master Joshua, big brains that he is, uses his explanations of the law against me, but I can see through his game!”

Uri felt uneasy and did not have a single pleasant dream the whole week. Meanwhile, he had to listen to Master Jehuda’s infernal snoring from the other bed.

He did not see why Master Jehuda had to banish his wife for a week when they didn’t even share a bed.

As far as they knew in Rome, married partners in Palestine shared beds.

Master Jehuda’s wife might be glad that she was able to sleep outside in the barn, Uri thought. At least it was quiet there. Why had she stormed out so angrily?

Uri took notes in Master Jehuda’s house up till Shavuot, which fell on the sixth of Sivan, fifty days after the first day of Passover, which also marked when reaping of the wheat began. Because the gathering of the barley was still in progress, every hand was needed, Uri’s included.

Shavuot was a splendid festival, the ending of the Feast of Weeks. Flowers would be gathered to decorate the houses, wine would be drunk, and prayers said. People would go in procession to the shul, sing psalms, and listen to readings of the Torah, which would invariably include the Ten Commandments. The passages would be explained by prayer leaders, the masters among them. Work was still an urgent matter, and people got up at daybreak the next day for the harvest. Uri was put to work gathering the ears of grain, bending down like any of the women, a serrated blade in his right hand. His back ached but he did not complain.

The women wanted to hear the Book of Enoch from him all over again, but anything they did not understand they would ask to have explained, taking it for granted that Uri had a much better understanding (after all, he was the one reading it). I’ve become Enoch’s priest, Uri realized. The scroll was not there, but Uri was able to recite it from memory. When they asked about the large house built of crystals, he shared the vision that had come to his mind upon reading it, which differed from what the women imagined. He did not believe in the existence of angels but was obliged to give an account at particularly great length, given that the Book of Enoch passed on very little information about them. He spoke about the archangel Uriel, who radiated light but was unaware that inside him was the eternal flame of a sanctuary lamp. It was something he had made up, and it pleased the women.

He noticed that in the fields he was improvising ever more audacious tales. When he became wary of this and hesitated, the women pleaded with him until he felt bound to continue. Merged into the Book of Enoch were embellished and modified Greek and Roman fables. Uri astonished himself with how readily the storytelling went. There were times when he came to a standstill, because sometimes he too had to work and lost his breath, but the women would not stop urging him to continue. Uri once suggested someone else continue, it wasn’t so difficult, and provoked a general outcry. The women were convinced that Uri had already read secret chapters of the Book of Enoch back in Babylon (Why Babylon? Wasn’t Edom their name for Rome? Uri asked himself) and that it was his duty to share that knowledge with them. So Uri always picked it up again. Somehow, whenever he had to repeat a story he had already told and got to the first sentence, a picture would come to him, and he would begin telling the women about that picture. The picture would then come to life, and all he had to do was to relate what was transpiring before his mind’s eye, as if the image actually existed but he were the only one who saw it and had to describe it for the blind. When they questioned him on where he took the stories from, Uri himself would fib that back home in Babylon he had indeed read and heard other bits of the Book of Enoch. That would set their minds at rest, but Uri became uneasy. There was something sinful about his telling stories as if he were reading, and although he did not believe in devils, it was still a bit like having Satan dictate what he said.