György Spiró - Captivity

They related the story—“that was when you were not yet with us”—of how they would wet the ground first with water then set oxen loose to tamp the soil down solidly. They would repeat the wetting for several days, and the oxen would tamp the ground for several days, and, as he could see, the consistency was just fine.

They would then set to scattering the grain around with spades.

The grains were covered with husks and other bits of chaff. Uri found it hard to envisage how the grains would be picked out from a sea of what looked like debris. All the same, he too turned back with the others to pack more of it into the sacks.

They were treading a good, thick heap of crop by the time a strange treadmill appeared on the threshing ground one fine day. Uri recalled that he had seen something of the kind on the very first day: a plank drag contraption on two stone wheels, drawn by a pair of oxen, which left a trail after it. Now he was able to see one close up and from underneath. The plank was not very wide, about two feet or so, and another plank, some two or three times as long and studded irregularly with basaltic rocks, was fixed under the axle of the stone wheels. The women said the device was called a morag , or a threshing board. The supervisor, who seemingly could not do enough to make good the damage caused by the stick blow he had meted out previously, declared proudly that this was an instrument used by Jews alone in the world and unknown anywhere else. Threshing was done elsewhere too, of course, but in such a way as the Arabs, for instance, did it, with the oxen being driven around on the heads of grain, whereas in Syrian villages a stick was used to beat out the grain from the chaff, as of course was the case in Judaea with lighter grains, but a morag was something that could only be found in Judaea, and what a wonderful device it was too, being Jewish.

Uri watched as the oxen set off on the carpet of grain, with the rocks set under the plank tearing into the heap and, as Uri saw when he bent over, most of the grains dropping away from the husks.

The ox-drawn sledge would be passed slowly two or three times over the crop, then it was taken out to the fields, because it could also be used where the ground was firm.

However, Uri could still not see how the grain was going to be picked out.

“It is left like this,” said the supervisor, “while we wait for a wind.”

Uri put heads of grain into sacks for three days, and his back was getting used to the work by the time the wind picked up. It was noon. Everyone left the field and hurried toward the threshing ground. By the time they got there the threshing floor was full of people, each beating away with a wide, flat, wooden-handled bronze shovel called a mizreh .

Women and men alike had begun digging into the heap of grain, swiftly lifting the mizreh above their heads to toss the crop into the air.

The crop rose in the breeze to rain down on their heads and get caught up in their hair, and they sneezed and laughed as they bent down to scoop up another shovelful of the crop into the air.

Uri also picked up a mizreh and did likewise. He too sneezed, spat chaff from his lips, blew the straw and grains from his nose.

By the time they had finished, the breeze had also died down, but by then they were surrounded largely by grain, the heavier parts, as the breeze had blown away the lighter husks and chaff.

That’s clever, Uri thought.

The supervisor asked Uri if he wanted to be one of the guards; if he did, he would not have to fill any more sacks.

Uri agreed.

He did not have to fill any more sacks or do any more flailing; he could sleep by day, and when evening drew in he would stroll out with a few men to the threshing ground, staying there with them until a new day dawned, when they would be replaced by some elderly women who, though she might not be able to withstand even the weakest of robbers, could, on the other hand, unleash horrific screams, which were more effective.

A crop that size was worth stealing, he came to understand the first night, so the grain needed to be guarded every night from now on until the wheat was milled.

“Who would steal it?” Uri asked.

“Robbers,” he was told in some wonder, as if he were being instructed on a widely known natural phenomenon.

Uri was interested in robbers, but he had no desire to say anything publicly on the subject. Were there any in that area? They were to be found anywhere caves existed, and caves were to be found everywhere. Anywhere the Creator, blessed be the Eternal One, had let slip an opportunity to make a cave, robbers would gouge a lair out for themselves. They too need to eat, so they steal.

“Are they entitled to the pe’ah?” asked Uri.

Anyone who was needy could take from the pe’ah, and robbers, let’s be honest, are needy. They are not wealthy, because if they were they would be bankers in Jerusalem.

They could laugh at that.

“Can’t we steal from it?” Uri queried further.

The men were astonished. Well, the riddled grain was measured, hadn’t Uri seen? No. Well, anyway it was a separate team of men engaged to do that; the grain they were guarding right now had been measured, and tomorrow or the day after would be taken away to a barn and guarded there. A new lot of the freshly reaped grain would be brought here, and when that had been flailed and winnowed, that too would have to be guarded. So it would go to the end of the reaping season in Av, or even Elul.

That process could be shortened, Uri supposed, if all the plots were harvested at the same time, and naturally also sown at the same time in the winter. He even said as much, but they did not understand what he was going on about. Uri repeated it, adding that they would gain a bunch of time in the summer and could occupy themselves with something else.

That was not allowed, they said in alarm. It was prohibited to sow all the seeds at the same time! If some calamity were to befall the crop, then it would all be lost. The sowing was spread over two months for that reason, and the reaping over two or three months, but it had never been the case that all of the sown seed had been lost, thanks be to the Everlasting Lord, who had enjoined that it was prohibited to sow all the seeds at once.

Uri then inquired what sort of people his companions were, and they in turn recounted all the ways to get engaged in plowing or the other agricultural jobs there were for those who had no land, or were slaves, or were not firstborn sons, or had been obliged to sell their father’s land because the family failed to hit on a decent way to share it out after he died.

Many men went to Jerusalem in search of work, but there was no work in Jerusalem. It was impossible to find employment among the building works on the Temple as those jobs were inherited; there were around twenty thousand men working there, but it had been impossible for generations now to gain admittance to that sort of work. The Temple building workers were even paving the streets now, that was the latest fad, and it was impossible on that account even to obtain a job as a street paver. There were not many being taken on by the Jewish police force, because their pay was too high, and anyway the police did not do a thing; all they did was supervise in Temple Square and sometimes beat people up, and that was only when the three big feast days came around. Otherwise they just sunned themselves.

The craftsmen who sold mementos during the holidays were not taking people on either, and even if they could one could not rent a room in Jerusalem if you had not been a house owner for generations — though you could make a tidy sum from that during the holidays.

There were many men who went to Jerusalem despite all that. Many preferred begging and sleeping out in the streets to being robbers. They were tolerated when they used what they made begging to pay off the police, but they still kept getting kicked out of the City. Those wretches had finally lost touch with the land, even though it was both the Holy Land and holy in being meant for agriculture, even if it had not long belonged to the Jews.