György Spiró - Captivity

They supped more wine; by now there was little water in it.

“Cornelius, the proprietor,” said Aaron, “is just as much a father of the synagogue — Pater synagogue — as I am. He offered it a mosaic floor (ten thousand sesterces, it cost), and not as the proprietor of a brothel, but as a merchant. After all, he does trade as well. The community accepted the gift.”

“Has it ever happened,” an overwrought Uri queried, “that a marriage was not dissolved by the evening of the next day?”

Neither Aaron nor Matthew nor Plotius had yet heard of such a miracle.

Hilarus strenuously disapproved of a mockery being made of the sanctity of married life in a brothel, and he was of the opinion that it was the duty of jurists to hunt out objections to such cases.

Plotius snorted: there were no jurists, only priests and believers. Interpreters of the law were noxious beings, because they did not take their stance on the ground of the Pentateuch of Moses but set themselves up as religious experts upon their own authority without having been granted any sort of legitimacy by the Lord.

Uri was amazed at the ferocity of the fires in the eyes of Plotius, who had himself just been expounding a law that certainly had not been revealed by God. Maybe it had been put forward to Him at some time, but He had not yet gotten around to endorsing it because once He did, it became doctrine.

Aaron had a more indulgent attitude toward the secessionists, the name used for the masters, of whom there were many over there in Palestine, and who had been instructing the population for at least one hundred years. They had acquired prestige with their advice and interpretations of law, and they had seats in the Sanhedrin — admittedly only in a minority. Their legal counsel was called upon in Jerusalem and other cities alike to adjudicate on complex cases.

“So, what does one of those masters advise in this case?” Uri was curious.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said, “but I can imagine tough debates went on in the Sanhedrin about prostitution. Not that they had any outcome: there is complete silence about prostitution. As if it did not exist. Yet they too are Jews, and there are scads of them over there.”

“That’s not quite true,” Iustus interjected. “A courtesan, like an exciseman, is disqualified from testifying in a court of law, not even in her own case. A regulation has been passed against them.”

“True,” said Aaron, “but anyone who uses a courtesan is allowed to give witness; he suffers no penalty, even though he is not sleeping with his wife. He is sinning, but he is not punished for that. What else would you call that but confusion? There are some masters over there who take the side of the courtesans, pleading for compassion to be shown toward them because they are not allowed to partake of the tzedakah or charity-box; or in other words, they are unable to quit the business or else they would die. It’s a vicious circle, but the high priests have never said a single word about it up till now.”

“Is there a priest here in Syracusa at all?” Hilarus inquired.

“Sometimes there is,” said Aaron. “There’s one who usually comes for a few days from across the sea. He shuttles. It just so happens that he’s here right now; you will meet him in the house of prayer tomorrow morning. But he’ll soon be off again; his family lives in Jerusalem, close to the fire. That is where the sacrificial meals are given out; they never come over. He has something like eight children, if I’m not mistaken…”

“And what has he got to say about this disgraceful practice?” Hilarus asked, gesturing with his head toward the neighboring building.

“Nothing at all,” Aaron laughed. “What should he say? Forbid sailors from sleeping with a woman after they have spent weeks cooped up at sea? Tell them to switch to brotherly love? Hardly! Apart from anything else, that would be a grave sin he was proclaiming. So he holds his tongue. Though I don’t know,” he added, “how much he gets, or from whom, for holding his tongue. In the final analysis, he would be within his rights to call down a curse on the place, but he has never done so. Though I also don’t know whether anyone has paid him to lay a curse on the house.”

“So, what happens when the Sabbath overtakes a ship at sea?” Uri asked. “Do the slaves lay off rowing? Do the sailors stop climbing the masts?”

“That’s a quite different situation,” Matthew responded. “There is a threat to life, so they are allowed to work. In such cases the law of the exception pertains, according to which man does not exist for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath exists for man.”

“It doesn’t say that in the Torah,” said Uri.

“But it’s there in our tradition,” said Matthew.

“All but two short of one hundred years ago it was not there,” persisted Uri. “When Pompey occupied Jerusalem, the Jews did nothing, because it was the Sabbath; they didn’t defend the City by pulling down the rampart the same day. It can’t be all that ancient a tradition, even if it has been added since. But then where is it written down?”

“It’s written down all right,” observed Plotius. “I’ve seen hefty collections of laws in Judaea and Galilee, more than one of them containing not the word of the Torah but subsequent laws that are based on the Torah. They are guarded in stout, locked chests, and they are of such value that not just anybody can consult them. I asked how much one would have to pay for something like that, and they looked at me as if I were insane: they are so precious that they have no price, they can’t be bought and sold; they are passed as a bequest from a master to his favorite pupil, to his first-born son, or to his brother. The new laws cannot be recorded in principle, as there are numerous instances where they conflict with the laws of the Torah; in short, these collections of laws do not officially exist. But all the same, in practice even those who have never seen such a book stick to these collections of legal cases. If the designated judges have to adjudicate on a complex case and in the end are at a loss what to do, they send envoys with the questions to the masters who are familiar with these collections. Naturally even they only know them through hearsay, as is permitted — though of course they have never seen anything of the like. Perish the thought! Of course, on getting the advice, the judges pass judgment according to their own discretion because there is no necessity to reach a judgment according to a nonexistent book of laws, but oddly enough in most cases they do reach them. It is what in Rome is called the law of precedence.”

Could this be the deficient legal security in Judaea of which Plotius had spoken?

They were now drinking the pure wine that Valerius, the wine king, had now ordered for their throats, and their consciousness became so weighed down that the next day none of them awoke in time, and they did not go to the house of prayer and did not take part in holy worship on that Sabbath.

“It’s only the meal you need to feel sorry about,” said Aaron, placing a wet towel around his head as a compress. “I contributed to acquiring it and it must have been celestial. On the other hand, you were let off having to listen to the sermon. Our priest is long-winded and boring in teaching virtue. He hardly ever lets anyone else get a word in edgewise; stupid, the poor man, but what can we do…”

It was good that a Torah was kept on hand for such cases, and from that they could read what was due to be read on the Sabbath. Anyone was allowed to read what was designated so long as they were among a community of at least ten men. There were precisely ten of them, including Aaron and his sons, so there was no need for them to pray together with the slaves. Matthew quickly unrolled the Greek Torah scroll and read out what had to be read, and at least they were sober enough by then to say the “Amens” in the right places.