György Spiró - Captivity

It was also good that at last he was able to do exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way, and as well as the others. Any idiot, any am ha’aretz, can keep an overnight vigil, of course, but Uri did it even better; he never dropped off to sleep, whereas from time to time the others did. But then again, they were not looking to do a better job of something that any fool could do.

Uri was expecting to be questioned about Rome and the big, wide world, and to have to answer lots of questions about which he had no clue, but that didn’t happen; people took note of the fact that Uri had been born in Rome and also lived there, and the information had spread around that the Jews in Rome bought everything in shops, which the peasants had trouble coming to terms with, but Uri was asked about nothing else.

Or rather, he was asked if he had spoken with the emperor.

It was a word that they uttered somewhat dubiously, and it occurred to Uri that perhaps they might not even know who the present emperor was by name. Indeed, from the standpoint of a Roman Jew it made no difference either. Whoever the emperor was, he ruled over them.

He told them that he had not spoken to the emperor.

The Judaean peasants shook their heads in disapproval.

An emperor’s role was to get to know his subjects, hear their complaints, and take good suggestions to heart. He should not step into the Lord’s shoes and have statues made of him or his image minted on coins.

Uri pointed out that the peasants were not allowed to see a high priest eye-to-eye, but that was different, they said: a high priest was not an emperor.

Uri maintained doggedly that they hadn’t seen the prefect either.

A prefect was only a prefect; he didn’t count.

“But the emperor is your emperor too,” said Uri, “and you also haven’t seen him.”

“He’s not our emperor but theirs.”

“Whose is that?”

“The Edomites.”

“I see. So, what about me? Does that make me a full-fledged Edomite?” Uri tried to pin them down.

That proved a trickier question than they initially thought, and two nights was not enough to get to the bottom of it. After all, Theo was Jewish just like them, but then he was also living among the sinful Edomites who were enemies of the Israelites. This made Theo sinful because he was unclean and lived among the unclean.

“Except he is here in Judaea right now. Is he sinful here?”

“Here he’s not sinful because he is cleansed among us.”

“And if he goes back, then what?”

“Then he becomes unclean again.”

“Is everyone in the Diaspora unclean, even if they keep their faith?”

Opinions on that were exceedingly divided, but most of them thought that he would indeed be unclean. Every Jew should reside in the dwelling place of his ancestors. The Eternal One had given them Canaan, and everyone was under an obligation to fight dispersal in his own way. If that could not be while he was alive, then he should certainly return to the Holy Land after death.

Their advice to Uri was not to go back to Rome; he was in a good place here. No one who farmed the land starved to death; he also received two slices of bread, though he hardly did anything, and he should appreciate that. He could also drink free wine every Sabbath, and if he were to learn how to plow eventually, he would get daily wages, no small amount at that, and within half a year he’d be able to buy himself a pair of sandals. If he was looking to start a family, he could do that; he was the right age, and there were heaps of girls here who were just ready for the picking.

They warned him not to miss out on the next time they had to take their tents to Jerusalem, on the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the days that follow — a long holiday that everyone from the neighborhood attended right through to the end. He should go up onto the Mount of Olives, where the marriageable girls danced every day and anyone could pick and choose to his heart’s content.

Girls would be dressed up very nicely for the occasion, having sewn the white linen dresses themselves. Girls from the neighborhood all danced there at the beginning of autumn — even those whose fathers kept them hidden at home all year, either because they were exceedingly pretty creatures, the apples of their fathers’ watchful eyes, or because they were shamefully hideous. But at Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, all the girls danced up there at the Mount of Olives, pretty and ugly alike, and that is somewhere Theo really should visit, they said. He wouldn’t come back empty-handed, they’d guarantee it.

There, in that peaceful Judaean night, Uri very much longed to look at the girls on the Mount of Olives, though he had no idea where it was located in relation to his prison cell and the Antonia. He longed to take his pick among the girls and to satisfy his duties to married life not just on Fridays but on every single blessed day that the Lord gave them.

He asked them if they had chosen brides for themselves on the Mount of Olives.

No, not them, but lots had.

“Which of you are married, anyway?” he inquired.

A few were, but most were unmarried. One needed a lot of money to start a family, but Theo could do that because his father would surely send him money from Edom.

Uri did not feel it was his duty to enlighten them as to his family’s financial situation, as they wouldn’t understand in any case.

It became clear that many rich Roman Jewish heads of families gave financial support to family members left behind in Judaea, even if the fathers or grandfathers had never even seen them. The shores and provinces of the Great Sea were interwoven with far-reaching, invisible family spider’s webs, and Uri was not in the least surprised when he was told that there were even people in nearby villages who, being the relatives of prosperous Jews living in the Parthian Empire, sometimes quite unexpectedly received an allowance of one kind or another from Babylon. It wasn’t unusual for even the most learned masters who specialized in this sort of thing to be unable to disentangle their precise ties of kinship, yet all the same these unexpected gifts arrived from afar.

It was among these uneducated and illiterate peasants keeping watch over the crop by night that Uri came across a marvel with an exceptionally good memory. He was unable to say how old he was, and he too was called Simon, like the magus, and he had not left the village even once in his life. But he was able to retain every single thing he had ever heard; his memory was unable to delete a single thing. That was how the Everlasting Lord had created him, and the wretched creature was totally satisfied with his lot. He was a short, bald, pot-bellied, lazy man, with lots of laughter lines under his eyes. Whatever subject was under discussion he was able to string together such a multiplicity of anecdotes, with explanations tagged on, that his companions just couldn’t stop laughing. Simon had no liking for keeping vigil, but then he did not like to plow either; he preferred not to eat for days, or else he gleaned and roasted the grain somewhere. He had no family and no place to live.

Uri dared quietly to ask this Simon the name of the village whose hospitality he happened to be enjoying.

“Beth Zechariah,” said Simon.

That was what the hunchback had said, wasn’t it!

“It’s quite a famous village,” declared the homeless, roofless Simon. “When the Hasmoneans revolted, Judah Maccabee, the son of Mattathias, made an alliance with the Romans, occupied Jerusalem, and raised a new altar, but Antiochus Epiphanes, at the head of an army of fifty thousand foot soldiers, five thousand horsemen, and one hundred elephants, invaded Judaea from Syria, occupied Bethsura, and razed it, leaving no trace, and it was right here, in the defile where Beth Zechariah lies, that Antiochus clashed with Judah and his forces. And Judah’s younger brother, Eleazar ben Mattathias, singled out the biggest of the elephants, supposing that it was on the back of this one that King Antiochus was seated. He wounded the elephant from below, in the belly, and it collapsed, burying Eleazar beneath it. It was not on this elephant, however, that Antiochus was seated but a common soldier, as a trick. The Jews lost the battle too, and Antiochus went on to occupy Jerusalem, but he was not in a position to do much, as his food ran out, so he trailed back to Syria. Judah Maccabee could not handle the opportunity, and he fell in another battle, and the next of his bothers, Jonathan the Hasmonean, was also killed…”