Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

by Anne Rice

  All this about my mother's fearfulness I hadn't really put together in my mind until it changed. My mother's fearfulness was her manner. But now as it changed, I was happy.

  And another thought came to me, a secret thought, one of the many I couldn't tell anyone: my mother was innocent. She had to be. If she wasn't innocent, then she would have been afraid of men, wouldn't she? But she had no fear of men. No, and no fear of going to the stream for water, and no fear of going into Sepphoris now and then to sell the linen she had woven. Her eyes were more innocent than those of Little Salome. Yes, a secret thought.

  Old Sarah was far too old to do any fancy work with a needle, or anything with a needle for that matter, or a loom, but she taught the young girls how to make embroidery, and they gathered around her often, talking and laughing and telling stories with my mother very nearby.

  Now with all the hammering and polishing and fitting and sewing and weaving, the courtyard was a busy place. Add to that children screaming and crying and laughing, babies crawling on the stones, and the open stable where the men tended to the donkeys who carried our loads to Sepphoris, and the older boys going in and going out with loads of hay, and a pair of us rubbing the gold into a new banquet couch, one of eight for the same man, and the cooking over the fire in the brazier, and then the mats spread out on the stones for us to eat, and all of us gathered in prayer, trying to make the little ones be quiet for just a little while as we thanked the Lord for all our blessings; add all this, and you have a picture of our lives that first year in Nazareth which engraved itself upon my mind and which stayed with me over all the many years I was to live there.

  "Hidden," Joseph had said. I was "hidden." And from what he wouldn't say. And I couldn't ask. But I was happily hidden. And when I thought of that, and of Cleopas' strange words to me, that someday I must answer the questions, I felt like I was someone else. I'd feel my skin all over and then I'd stop thinking about it.

  My schooling went very well.

  I learnt new words, words I'd always heard and said, but I came to know what they meant, and they were from the Psalms mostly. Let the fields be joyful, yes, joyful, and all the trees of the wood rejoice. Make a joyful song to the Lord; sing praise.

  The darkness was gone; death was gone; fire was gone. And though people did talk of the boys who had run off to fight with the rebellion, and there was now and then a woman howling in her sorrow when she had news of her lost son, our life was full of sweet things.

  In the long late light, I ran through groves of trees up and down the slopes until I couldn't see Nazareth. I found flowers so sweet that I wanted to pick them and make them grow at home. And at home, there was the sweetness of the wood shavings, and the nice smell of the oil that we rubbed into the wood. There was the smell of baking bread always, and we knew when the best sauce was there for dinner as soon as we came home.

  We had good wine from the market of Sepphoris. We had delicious melons and cucumbers from our own soil.

  In the synagogue, we clapped our hands and danced and sang as we learned our Scripture. It was a little harder in school, with the teachers making us write out our letters on our wax tablets, and making us repeat what we didn't do well. But even this was good and the time went fast.

  Soon the men were harvesting the olives, batting the branches of the groves with their long sticks and gathering the berries. The olive press was busy, and I liked to pass there when I could and see the men at work, and the sweetsmelling oil pouring out.

  The women of our house crushed olives in a small press for the purest oil at home.

  The grapes in our gardens were ready for picking, and the figs, we had had all the figs we could want to be dried, to be made into cakes, to be eaten as they were. The later figs were so many from our courtyard and the garden that some were taken to the village market at the bottom of the hill.

  The grapes we didn't eat were put out to dry as raisins; no wine was made from them as the land around Nazareth had no vineyards, but was for wheat and barley and sheep and the forests I loved.

  As the air grew cooler, the early rains came with great force. Thunder roared over the rooftop, and everyone offered prayers of thanks. The cisterns of the house filled, and the freshwater poured into the mikvah.

  In the synagogue, Rabbi Jacimus, who was our strictest Pharisee, told us that now the water from the gutters flowing into the mikvah was "living water," and that when we purified ourselves in "living water," this is what the Lord wanted of us. We must pray that the rains were enough not only for the fields and for the streams but to keep our cisterns full and our mikvah living as well.

  Rabbi Sherebiah didn't completely agree with Rabbi Jacimus and they began to quote the sages on these points and to "dispute" in general, and finally the Old Rabbi called for us to offer our prayers of thanksgiving that the Windows of Heaven had been opened, and the fields would soon be ready for the planting to begin.

  At night, over supper, as the rain came down on the roof high above, we talked about Rabbi Jacimus and this matter of "living water." It was troubling to James and to me too.

  We'd come to Nazareth after the rains. And the mikvah was empty when we came. We'd replastered it, and then filled it from the cistern in which the water had been resting a long time. But this was rainwater, was it not? Had it been living water when we filled the mikvah?

  "Wasn't this living water?" I asked.

  "If it's not living water," said James, "then we were unclean after the mikvah."

  "We bathe often in the stream, don't we?" Cleopas asked. "And as for the mikvah, it has a tiny hole in the very bottom, so the water continues to move always. And when the rain filled the cistern, it was living water. It's living water. So be it."

  "But Rabbi Jacimus says that's not good enough," said James. "Why does he say this?"

  "It is good enough," said Joseph, "but he's a Pharisee and Pharisees are careful. You have to understand: they think that if they take great care with each part of life, they'll be safer from transgressing the Law."

  "But they can't say that our mikvah is not pure," said my uncle Alphaeus. "The women use the mikvah—."

  "Look," said Joseph. "See two paths on a mountain ridge. One is close to the edge, the other is farther away. The one farther away is safer. That is the path of the Pharisee—to be farther from the edge of the cliff, farther from falling off the cliff and into sin, and so Rabbi Jacimus believes in his customs."

  "But they aren't Laws," said my uncle Alphaeus. "Pharisees say all these things are Laws."

  "The Rabbi Sherebiah said that it was the Law," said James timidly. "That Moses was given Laws that weren't written down, and these were passed down through the sages."

  Joseph shrugged. "We do the best we can do. And now the rains have come. And the mikvah? It's full of freshwater!"

  He threw up his hands as he said this and he smiled, and we all laughed at it, but we weren't laughing at the Rabbi. We were laughing as we always laughed at things we talked about for which there seemed no one answer.

  Rabbi Jacimus was hard in his ways, but he was a gentle man, a wise man, and he told wonderful stories. Stories were our history, and who we were, and there were times when I liked nothing better than stories.

  Yet I was coming to understand something of the greatest importance: all stories were part of one great story, the story of who we were. I hadn't seen it so clearly before, but now it was so clear that it thrilled me.

  Often in the school and sometimes in the synagogue, Rabbi Berekhaiah stood up, though he was shaking on his bent legs and he raised his arms and with his head bent and his eyes cast upward he would cry out: "But who are we, children, tell me?"

  And then we would sing it out after him:

  We are the people of Abraham and Isaac. We went down into Egypt in the time of Joseph. We became slaves there. Egypt became the smelting forge and we suffered. But the Lord had redeemed us, the Lord raised up Moses to lead us, and the Lord brought us forth parting the water
s of the Sea of Reeds, and into the Promised Land.

  The Lord gave the Law to Moses on Sinai. And we are a holy people, a people of priests, a people of the Law. We are a people of great Kings—Saul, and David, and Solomon, and Josiah.

  But Israel sinned in the eyes of the Lord. And the Lord sent Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon to lay waste to Jerusalem, even to the House of the Lord.

  Yet Our Lord is a Lord slow to anger, and steadfast in his love, and full of mercy, and he sent a redeemer to end our captivity in Babylon, yea, this was Cyrus the Persian, and we returned to the Promised Land and rebuilt the Temple. Turn and look towards the Temple, for there every day the High Priest offers a sacrifice for the people of Israel to the Lord on High. All over the world there are Jews, a holy people, faithful to the Law and to the Lord, who look towards the Temple, and know no other gods but the Lord.

  Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One.

  And you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength.

  And these words, that I command you this day, will be in your heart:

  And you will teach them diligently to your children, and you will talk of them when you sit in your houses, and you walk by the roads and when you lie down and when you get up.

  We did not have to be at the Temple to keep the sacred Feasts. Jews all over the world kept the sacred Feasts.

  It was not safe yet to travel to the Temple. But the news came to us that the fighting had stopped in Jerusalem, and that the Temple had been purified. The fire signals coming from Jerusalem told us all was well.

  And we went out at dawn before the Day of Atonement to watch for the first light because we knew that the High Priest was rising with that first light to begin his ceremonies in the Temple, his bathing which he would do again and again that day.

  We hoped and prayed there would be no rebellion, no trouble.

  Because on this day the High Priest would seek to atone for all the sins of the people of Israel. He would put on his finest vestments. The Rabbi Jacimus, the anointed priest himself, had described to us these holy garments, and we had learned how they were to be from the Scripture:

  The long tunic of the High Priest was blue, and tied with a sash at the waist, and its hem was trimmed with tassels and small golden bells. One could hear these bells when the High Priest walked. Over this tunic the High Priest wore a second garment called the ephod which had much fine gold and fancy work on it, and a breastplate of twelve shining gems, one each for the tribes of Israel, so that when the High Priest went in before the Lord, he would have there the Twelve Tribes. And on the head of the High Priest was a great turban with a golden crown. It was a "glorious thing to behold."

  But before the High Priest put on these beautiful vestments, these vestments as fine as those of any pagan priest in any Temple anywhere, he would dress in simple linen, pure and white, to perform the sacrifices.

  On this day, the High Priest laid hands upon the bullock to be sacrificed for Israel. And he would lay hands upon the two goats.

  Now one of these goats would be sacrificed, but the other, the other would carry all the sins of the people of Israel out into the wilderness. It was the goat for Azazel.

  And what was Azazel? We little boys wanted to know. But we already knew. Azazel was evil; it was the demons; it was the world "out there," without the Law, in the wilderness. And everyone knew what the word "wilderness" meant because all the people of Israel had once roamed through the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land. And the goat would carry the sins back to Azazel to show that the sins of Israel had been forgiven by the Lord, and evil could take back what was evil as we would have no more of it.

  But the most important thing which the High Priest did was to enter the Holy of Holies of the Temple, the place where the Lord Himself was Present; the place where only the High Priest could go.

  And all Israel prayed that the power of the Lord there would not break out upon the High Priest, but that his prayers of atonement would be heard for himself and for all of us, and that he would come out to the people having been in the Presence of the Lord.

  In the late afternoon, we gathered in the synagogue where the Rabbi read the scroll that the High Priest was reading in the Court of the Women: "And on the tenth day of the seventh month there shall be a day of atonement. . . and you shall afflict your souls."

  The Rabbi told us what the High Priest was telling the crowd in the Temple Court: "More than what I've read out before you is written here."

  At last darkness came. We stood on the rooftop barefoot waiting. Those on the highest places cried out. They could see the fire signals from the nearest villages south, and now they lighted the fires to spread the word north and east and west:

  Everyone was shouting with joy. We were dancing. Our fast was ended. The wine was being poured. The food was put on lighted coals.

  In a cleansed and renewed Temple, the High Priest had completed his task. He had come out of the Holy of Holies safely. His prayers for Israel had been complete. His sacrifices complete. His readings complete. And he was gone now as we were to a banquet among his kindred in his home.

  The early rains had been good. The planting had started.

  And hard on the Day of Atonement came the Feast of Booths where all Israel had to live for seven days in booths built of tree branches to remember the journey from Egypt into Canaan, and for the children this was special fun.

  We gathered the finest branches we could from the forest, especially the willow branches from along the stream, and we lived in these booths, all of us, men, women, children as if they were our houses, and we sang the happy Psalms.

  Finally, news came that Herod Archelaus and Herod Antipas had arrived home, along with all those who had gone to Caesar Augustus. We gathered in the synagogue to hear the announcement from a young priest who had just returned from Jerusalem and was charged with giving the word. He spoke Greek very well.

  Herod Antipas, a son of the dreaded Herod the Great, was to be the ruler of Galilee and Perea. And Herod Archelaus whom everyone still hated very much would be the Ethnarch of Judea, and other children of Herod ruled other places beyond. One princess of Herod was given the palace of the Greek city of Ascalon. I thought that was a pretty name.

  When I asked Joseph about the pretty city of Ascalon later, he told me there were Greek cities all through Israel and Perea, and even in Galilee—cities with temples to idols of

  marble and gold. There were ten Greek cities around the Sea of Galilee and they were called the Decapolis.

  I was surprised to hear it. I had become so used to Sep-phoris with its Jewish ways. I knew that Samaria was Samaria, yes, and we had no doings with Samaritans though they were very close to our borders. But I hadn't thought there were pagan cities in the land. Ascalon. I thought it beautiful. I formed a picture in my mind of Princess Salome, the daughter of Herod, wandering around her palace in Ascalon. What was a palace to me? I knew what a palace was, as surely as I knew what a pagan temple was.

  "It's the way of the Empire," said my uncle Cleopas. "Don't be distressed over it, that we have all these Gentiles among us. Herod, King of the Jews," he said in a mean tone of voice, "built plenty of temples to the Emperor and to those pagan gods. That's our King of the Jews for you."

  Joseph put his hand up for Cleopas to be quiet. "In this house we are in the Land of Israel," he said.

  Everybody laughed.

  "Yes," said Alphaeus, "and outside that door, it's the Empire."

  We didn't know whether or not we could laugh at that, but Cleopas nodded to it.

  "But where does Israel stop and start?" asked James, who sat with us.

  "Here!" said Joseph, "and there!" He pointed. "And anywhere that there are Jews gathered together who keep to the Law."

  "Will we ever see those Greek cities?" I asked.

  "You saw Alexandria, you saw the best of them, the greatest," said Cleopas. "You saw a city second only to Rome."

/>   We had to nod to that.

  "And remember her and remember all of this," said

  Cleopas. "Because in each of us, you must realize, is the full story of who we are. We were in Egypt, as were our people long ago, and as they did, we came home. We saw battle in the Temple, as our people did under Babylon, but the Temple is now restored. We suffered on our journey here, as our people suffered in the wilderness and under the scourge of the enemies, but we came home."

  My mother looked up from her sewing.

  "Ah, so that's why it happened this way," she said, like a child would say it. She shrugged her shoulder and shook her head, and went on picking at the embroidery. "Before I couldn't understand it—."

  "What?" asked Cleopas.