György Spiró - Captivity

Uri then asked where all the crops and animals ended up. Were they shipped across the Great Sea to Italia?

No, because the present emperor had forbidden it. All the meat and grain had gone bad on the long journey, and since then it had been used locally, sold at the bigger markets. The money received from that was used by the prefect to maintain the soldiers and officials. That tax stayed local.

“We keep our occupiers going,” said sage heads.

“In the same way we brought them down on us!” said even sager heads.

Uri made a quick mental calculation. If the Roman tax, including the water levy, the house tax, the road taxes, the frontier-crossing tolls, and the produce were put at five or six percent of the total harvest, that was probably not far off the mark.

He quizzed people about the exact taxes on the Jews of Judaea, and they readily and proudly enumerated them.

They gave the Levites one tenth of everything edible, out of which one tenth went to the priests.

They also put aside another tenth for themselves to cover the three big festivals. They consumed this during the long journeys and in Jerusalem itself, and it was generally insufficient. There had been cases when they had to go hungry and thirsty for two or three days during the walk back home.

When adjudged guilty, they would pay for sacrifices in sin and guilt offerings. That was quite common, to be sure. The Lord created us as sinful beings, but He did not hold any ill will if we duly repented and propitiated Him.

If a wish or vow of ours should be fulfilled, a votive offering would be given, with the breast and right shoulder of the sacrificial animal going to the priests. We would gladly give these because the supplication would be heard by the Eternal One, may He be praised.

The priests received all first fruits and every firstborn male animal, and that was precisely what was being collected now, as Uri could see.

The ground tax was the year’s first fruit of the wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and honey. The priests also had a right to the very best of the crop, which was was also being collected that very day. That meant the best of the food that stemmed from any plot of land or tree. Either a person knew himself what was best or else the experts — the masters and supervisors — would draw his attention to it. The most important of these products were the wheat, wine, and oil. One fifteenth of their entire income would be put aside for that purpose, even though nowhere had it been set down in writing and it was not even measured. The heave offering comprised a cake of the first of the dough, which was due on wheat, barley, oats, and rice, and it was not food as such but the offering had to be given in the form of dough, being fixed at one twenty-fourth if it was for private consumption, or one forty-eighth if it was for sale by baker.

A toll had to be paid at the gates of a city to enter.

All adult men paid half a shekel of sacrificial money annually at Passover, which is two drachmas.

They would also have to pay to get coins changed because sacrificial money could not display a graven image of anyone.

To buy two doves they would have to pay the price of three.

A pe’ah was left with everything.

Deductions were made to pay for alms, the tzedakah, the rations that went to the neediest, the disabled, the infirm, and itinerants. This differed from place to place, being whatever the master said.

They paid for the upkeep of the ritual bath.

They paid for the teacher who instructed the children.

They paid for the kosher butchers, the shochets.

Uri mused on how much all that might amount to — no doubt more than half of an average year’s income, even though altogether it was not all that much.

But none of that was Roman tax, those were just the Jewish dues, though the Jews were unaware of the fact.

Five percent imperial tax as against at least fifty percent Jewish dues.

It wasn’t certain, Uri reflected, that the tax Rome received was worth the trouble. The empire in the provinces was self-sufficient, and what went on was economically rational; in fact Rome was not seeking profits, yet it still aroused hatred in people’s souls.

If the imperial tax was assessed on self-declared income, as it was in Rome, Uri went on thinking, then men would not declare even one tenth of their real income, and maybe one would perchance forget all about the age of that seven-year-old child and therefore not pay the poll tax for the child for a year or two more, and if Rome genuinely did not have enough people or means to check the authenticity of the self-declaration, then the Jews of Judaea were barely paying any taxes to Rome.

As if they were not even a province of Rome!

It was a free country, but its inhabitants were unaware.

Rome did not impoverish them; Rome made no money on the Jews.

He sensed that it would not be a good idea to enlighten them; they would stone him. They considered themselves pariahs, oppressed and eviscerated by a foreign power, with their sole enemy Rome, or Edom, no one else.

Barefooted, tattered men, women, and children were standing around next to him. They had no festive clothes to don to observe feast days; these were the same garments they wore on the Sabbath. In Rome even Jewish beggars did not look so strapped and shabby, however hard they might try.

It was necessary for their self-esteem to see the foreign power as being responsible for their misery, yet it was not the cause.

Rome had nevertheless taken something: their pride. It was not a sound policy, which should be brought to the emperor’s attention. How could pride be expressed in monetary terms? What unit should be put on it? Half a pride equals two oxen?

The priest looked up at the sky. The day had begun to draw to a close. He asked something of Master Jehuda, who then launched into an enthusiastic explanation. The priest shook his head, and Master Jehuda gesticulated disconsolately, but the priest demurred and dragged himself back up onto his cart.

“He will not be spending the night with us,” people around Uri muttered in disappointment.

The katholikos got up onto the box seat, the soldiers clambered onto their cart, the tax collector scrambled onto the last one, and the eight carts moved off onward toward the north. They could collect at one more village before nightfall.

The carts left clouds of dust floating over the dry land. The drought was my fault, it came to Uri’s mind. Master Jehuda was lying on the ground on his stomach, his big belly pushing his backside up. The villagers fell to their knees or likewise prostrated themselves. Uri kneeled. Another psalm was chanted, with Uri joining in. By now he knew both the Judaean text and the melody. “Give us this day our daily bread,” he chanted.

It had been a joyous day. They had partaken of a priestly benediction, the Everlasting Lord had forgiven them for all the sins they had committed since the last priestly benediction, and they could sin again until the next time. Their firstborn and their best livestock as well as their best ripe fruits would end up with the Lord; very few had been found to be imperfect, which was something to be proud of. At the end of it all, that was the sense of this fine day, and the woeful figure of the tax collector was long forgotten.

As in Rome, everybody would be granted forgiveness anyway by going to the bank of a nearby river at the start of Rosh Hashanah and throwing in some object. The sins of the past year would adhere to that object, and the river would carry them away with it, while they would be left, cleansed, on the bank.

These people are not sinners in any case, Uri thought. They have neither time, nor strength, nor money, nor imagination for that.