Saul lifted his head and again stared at his father’s face. Hillel smiled sadly.
“I have told you, and the Scriptures have told you, that no man can comprehend God nor His creation, for what He sees in immediacy and in eternal noon, and near, can be conjectured by man only in terms of our feeble world reality of time and space, which is a delusion.”
He said, taking Saul’s hand again, “He who seeks God will surely find Him—and let him beware when that happens, for it is a gift which can either kill or save or drive mad! Surely it is best only to love Him and let Him reveal Himself gently, as He wills, and not to demand all. For Moses alone saw the Face of God, and of that Vision, it is said, he expired.”
“But we have been told of the Messias, and that we shall see Him with our mortal eyes, and we shall not die of it,” said Saul.
“You have forgotten,” said Hillel, and he was much cheered, for a glow had appeared on Saul’s haggard cheek, and even the sunken eye had a light in it. “The Messias will be clothed in our flesh. ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.’”
Part Two
MAN AND GOD
—For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.
Chapter 15
HILLEL BEN BOBUSH said to Reb Isaac, in Tarsus: “My son is of an age to marry, and even beyond it, for he is twenty years old. He has completed his studies with you. He has learned the art of a tentmaker, and he will earn what he will, as befits a teacher, who cannot accept payment. He has distinguished himself in the University of Tarsus, in Roman law and other studies. He has learned sedulously from his Greek teacher, Aristo.”
Reb Isaac nodded his white head reflectively. “He is, then, a man of the world.”
“A man of the Book,” said Hillel.
“A man must be many men these days,” said Reb Isaac. “It is not enough, any longer, that he be learned in the Scriptures and the holy disciplines of our people. He must be a Roman, a Greek, an Egyptian, and others. He must move freely about the world, discovering new textures of humanity, new smells, new ideas, new thoughts, and, probably, new depravities. That is the modern world. Bah,” said Reb Isaac. “Better it is that a man in these evil days becomes an Essene or a Zealot and removes himself from the world and walks with bare feet in the wilderness and eats wild locusts and honey and the uncultivated grains of the field, and strange fruit, and lives in caves or in the mountains and does not shave his beard, and wears outlandish garments and, when he ventures into the stinking cities, shouts in the streets in contempt and condemnation and utters execrable oaths.”
“And is beaten or arrested by Roman soldiers, or the guard,” said Hillel. “Come. You would not have Saul an Essene or a Zealot, Reb Isaac?”
The old man replied gloomily, “Who knows what a young man should be these evil days? Should be withdraw totally from the world and despise it—and it is worthy to be despised—or should he become part of it, mouthing meaningless words, giving meaningless smiles, because it is not only expected of him but demanded of him? Shall he do what his parents, his teachers, his kinsmen, his neighbor, think desirable for him, or shall he say, ‘I am a man in my own right and I will do what I will, and please none but myself’?”
“You are not serious,” said Hillel, smiling. “Are you discussing chaos?”
Reb Isaac shook a gnarled finger at him. “Let that nation beware that becomes fat and complacent and the men of her cannot be distinguished by their faces or their words from their neighbors! Are we ants, beetles, flies, worms, which cannot be told apart? No. We are men. I, for one, do not denounce chaos, which is man’s last desperate rebellion against conformity in habit and in living, a last desperate striving to be himself, unique, individual—though he make a monstrous fool of himself in the process. I prefer such a fool to a man who, like a coin of the same minting, cannot be told from another coin.”
“I thought,” said Hillel, “that we were discussing a possible marriage for my son, who is not stamped, like a coin, with the self-same image on other coins, and who is individual, so individual at times that I fear for him.” He was surprised at the old man’s strange diatribe.
“I am speaking of others, and in particular some of my present students,” said Reb Isaac. “Do they want holiness? Do they want the mystery of the Scriptures? Do they wish to divine the occult words, the profound meanings, the labyrinthine thoughts? No. No. They wish to be men of this world, and woe to Israel—again—when she goes whoring after strange gods, such as the Sadducees do.”
“You know my son has always wished to be what you would have him be, not to please you, Reb Isaac, but to be a learned Jew, and to please God.”
“True,” said Reb Isaac, in a surly tone. “But I am not so certain he is pleasing God, blessed be His Name. He is sedulous and fervent enough in his prayers, but I have the thought frequently that he is like Jacob wrestling with the angels, but this time the angels are not only triumphant and will not reveal secrets to him, as they did to Jacob, but they depart. What would you know of this, Hillel?”
“Nothing,” said Hillel, with sadness. “I have discussed it with you many times. I have a stranger for a son.”
“So do we all,” said the old man, shrugging.
It seemed to Hillel that Reb Isaac had changed enormously in the past years and that he was doubtful of his former surety and certitude, and so was irascible.
As if he had divined Hillel’s thoughts Reb Isaac said, “I am an old man now, and I admit that the years, instead of enlightening me, have confused me. A man comes to me now in grief but not in repentance, and says to me, ‘I have lain with a good woman, whom I love and cherish, for the wife chosen for me against my will is a woman evil in her nature if not in her deeds and of a foul tongue and is a curse to my household and a terror to my children, who flee from her. I would divorce her save that I cannot return her dowry—which she has spent in her extravagance—and I would not have a divided household and leave my children to her vile humors. So I have violated the Commandment that I must not commit adultery and I find no sorrow in my heart, for she I love is like warm milk and pomegranates and the sweet dates of life, and enfolds me and comforts me. Condemn me if you will.’
“What shall I say to such as this man? Thirty years ago I should have thundered at him and mentioned the wrath of God and sent him from my threshold with anathema. I should have felt righteous, and justified. But, should a man be condemned all his mortal life to loneliness and despair? It is said that a man must accept the life ordained for him, with meekness and try to discover some meaning in it for him alone.” Reb Isaac shook his head. “I tell you, I no longer know. It is said that we must not murder. But if a thief enters our household and threatens our lives and the lives of our family and our servants, is not the householder justified in killing him, if possible? God has not condemned the wars we have waged, yet often He has spoken that to Him the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Syrian, the Philistine, and others, are also beloved of Him, and that He has intervened in their distress. Who are we to interpret the Almighty? Shall we say, ‘He has spoken thus, and therefore He means thus?’ We know only that He is full of lovingkindness, and that the sinner, to Him, is often more to be cherished than the man who spends much of his time in the Temple, offering sacrifices.”
Hillel said, “God sent bears to devour the children who mocked Jeremias.” And he smiled again.
“So it is written,” grumbled Reb Isaac. “We shall never know the meaning of God until He sends us His Messias, blessed be His Name, and He shall make all things clear. It is said,” added the old man, sourly.
“We were speaking of Saul, and his marriage,” said Hillel.
They were sitting in the hot gardens of Reb Isaac’s house, in the shade of a striped awning, and were drinking cool spiced wine and eating honeycomb and fresh wheaten bread and refreshing fruits and a cold broiled fish. The date palms were heavy with fruit. Grapes, ripening, climbed the burning walls which enc
losed the garden and scented the air deliriously.
“Ah, yes. Saul,” said Reb Isaac. “He will go to Jerusalem soon, to study under Rabban Gamaliel, A mighty Teacher, Nasi of the Temple. I know him. Saul will also pursue the trade of the tentmaker.” The old man chuckled. “When his hands are sore he will become more humble. No matter. Have you a maiden in mind?”
“Yes,” said Hillel. Reb Isaac waited. He eyed Hillel shrewdly. The younger man had aged beyond his years; his once golden beard and hair were almost white, and his figure was bowed and there was sorrow in his brown eyes and secret grief. Was it possible he was still mourning for his Deborah, who had had the mind of a. child, and was that the reason he had not taken another wife? Hillel said, “I would that he were safe as soon as it is possible.”
“Safe? And why?”
But Hillel did not answer. He only looked down at the hands clasped on his knee. Reb Isaac frowned. He had great intuition. It appeared to him that he was moving in the lonely darkness of Hillel’s mind, in which there was no light and no flowering, and only muteness of soul.
“No man is ever safe,” said Reb Isaac. “This is a most terrible and dangerous world, and always was it so and always will it be. It is the delusion of parents that they can protect their children and assure their happiness, so they vainly lay up treasures and properties, thinking—though they know it is not true—that a rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and his happiness also. I tell you, no man born of woman is happy, and if he say so, then he is a liar or a fool. Nor is there ever safety, for the world constantly changes and new governments arise, and new taxes, and often a man’s wealth is like water.”
Then Hillel spoke in a very low voice. “I would that my son be safe. In love. In the care and comfort of a good woman, who will cherish and soothe him and wipe away his tears, who will bear him children who will bring him a little joy in this dolorous world, and console his age and give him the gift of peace.”
Reb Isaac was about to say, with sarcasm, “Such as the one you possessed?” But the very cruelty of the words appalled him. He had not thought that he had the capacity for such derisive heartlessness. He prayed internally for forgiveness, marveling, as always, at the intricate chambers of a man’s mind, and the fearful inhabitants thereof, of which the man, himself, often has no knowledge until such an occasion as this occurred. Now I understand why a man can kill, and without regret, or commit any other crime, he thought, for the demons are forever lurking and waiting in the dark chambers, and the man inadvertently opens the door for them. Of such fearful stuff are we made! The larvae in our souls are deadly, and they eat away our virtues, until we are poisoned and hollow.
The old man repeated what he had said before: “Have you a maiden in mind?”
Hillel looked at him straightly, and said, “Yes. Your granddaughter, Elisheba.”
Reb Isaac gaped, amazed. He stared at Hillel and his old eyes became very wide and startled. “Elisheba? She is but a child!”
“Fourteen, is she not? Of an age to marry, according to the Law, and even above the age.”
Reb Isaac swallowed visibly, and Hillel thought of an old shepherd with a favorite ewe-lamb, for Elisheba was to her grandfather that lamb, and very comely and beautiful, slight and delicately formed, with hair like smooth black silk flowing down her slender back, large dark eyes with thick lashes, a pale but luminous small face, a soft little nose and a wondrously pink mouth like an almond blossom. She was young, but she was nubile, and her voice was the voice of a tender woman when she was cajoling her grandfather, and she possessed a deep long dimple in each cheek.
It was obvious that Reb Isaac was profoundly aghast at the thought that his Elisheba was of an age to marry and that she ought now to be espoused.
“It is ridiculous!” he exclaimed, making a gesture with his hands as if rejecting something preposterous. He forgot Hillel, and brooded. He loved all his grandchildren and thanked God that he was not their father, but Elisheba was like the child of his own loins and a perpetual babe who would never grow old, but would remain at his side forever a child until he died. He could not conceive of a day without Elisheba. He had quickly married off his daughters, and his two older granddaughters and had expressed his pious gratitude that they were no longer in his house but securely in the houses of their husbands. He had not thought this of Elisheba, who was uniquely and only his own. Now his anger was rising. He winced at the vision of his Elisheba in the profane arms of a sweaty man, and he not there to rescue and defend her, she who would be weeping for her grandfather.
“You are mad,” he told Hillel.
“Why?”
Reb Isaac fumed. His stare at Hillel was inimical. His wrath became stronger.
“It is true,” said Hillel, “that Saul will have no great fortune, for I returned to Sephorah her mother’s dowry—and one can be certain that Shebua ben Abraham counted every shekel of it! But I had had it wisely invested and lost not a copper of it, and I have kept the interest, and that, too, is growing. Saul will not want, nor will his wife.”
“Ha!” said the old man, and his withered face became crimson. “You know I am not without resources, nor is Elisheba’s father, and that she will have a handsome dowry! That is what lures you, Hillel ben Borush.”
Hillel sighed. “You know that money has never been of importance to me, Rabbi. I am not rich, nor am I poor, according to my bankers and my brokers. What I have will be Saul’s. I have even returned Deborah’s jewels and Sephorah has them.” A pallid darkness began to flow over his face, and Reb Isaac forgot his outrage for a moment to wonder at the shadow, and to feel compassion for the thought that had caused it. Hillel continued: “My family is not without note and has an honored name in Israel, and Deborah’s mother had an illustrious family. Let us consider my son. You have said it yourself, that he is of enormous intellect and power of mind, and once you remarked that the Finger of God had touched him—”
“Ahah!” cried the old man, joyous that he had discovered an excuse to reject Saul. “I wish no grim prophets in my family, especially not for Elisheba, who is a blossom! The Finger of God! It is wise not only for men to avoid the company of a man who has been so touched—but it is even wiser for women! It is not well to be in such a man’s proximity. There are dangerous lightnings.”
Hillel could not help smiling broadly. “Does so pious a Jew as Reb Isaac speak this? Have you not bewailed the fact that we have no Jeremiases nor Aarons nor Hoseas to marry our daughters in these debased days? Not even Joels. But my son—”
“I know all about your son!” shouted Reb Isaac. “He is possessed! He is entranced! I sometimes gaze at him with fear, for all my affection for him. He shall not have my Elisheba!”
“Then, being so fair and her grandfather so adamant against men of God, she will doubtless marry a Roman or a Greek, or worse still, a Sadducee. Alas.”
Reb Isaac could have struck him. He sat in his chair, his rheumatic knees asprawl, and he trembled with rage. His white beard shook as if in a gale and his black eyes glinted and sparkled. He tried to speak and could not and so he impotently beat his thighs with his clenched fists.
“Or possibly a gross rich merchant of Tarsus, or even an Egyptian,” said Hillel.
The eye fixed on him brightened with ferocity.
“There are few learned and pious Jews remaining in the world, alas,” Hillel continued. “Regard the youths whom you teach, and their worldliness, and their ennui with your exhortations. Have you frequently said that you would wish no damsel to suffer marriage with them? I tell you, Reb Isaac, Jerusalem now seethes with such, If not worse. I could speak of abominations—”
Reb Isaac lifted his hand and shook it furiously. “Halt! You have said enough!”
As he sat in his chair he gathered his robes about him and gnawed bis lip and the corner of his beard and stared at the ground. Occasionally he glanced up at Hillel with a look that avowed his hatred, but Hillel was not disturbed nor startled.
Then the ol
d man said, “Your son is not of a handsome countenance. What florid appearance he once had has diminished. Moreover, his right eye droops. His constitution, it would appear, is not the best. His disposition, once inclined to be merry and expansive and generous, has become leonine and cold and distant, though I see passions not of this earth sometimes flash across his face. Is such one fit for my gay Elisheba, who is like a lamb in the springtime, or a nightingale? He would break her heart.”
“It is true,” said Hillel, with new sadness, “that Saul would appear to have changed, but in truth he is the same as always. I experienced premonitions when he was but a babe. But I tell you, Reb Isaac, that something has whispered in my heart at night that he is destined many things! Ah, you smile darkly, but it is true, and have you not hinted so, yourself? As for his appearance, he is not handsome, he is not revolting, and there is a strange charm about him, brought to my attention by his tutor, Aristo. He has a most eloquent voice. He will be heard in the Temple. He will move men’s hearts. He is devoted to the service of God. He is virtuous. These are a few of his attributes. At the last, Shebua ben Abraham offered me his favorite granddaughter as a wife for Saul, and Shebua is no fool.” He paused. “The damsel could make a meaner marriage.”
“Tell me this!” shouted the old man. “If you were Elisheba’s father and I the father of Saul, would you agree to such a marriage?”
Hillel was taken aback. He thought. He tugged at his beard. Then he said, for he was an honest man, “I do not know. But my daughter, Sephorah has married one less distinguished, and with fewer of the attributes we value, and she was the flower of my heart.” He paused again. “I do not know if Saul would bring happiness to Elisheba, but we do not count happiness in this world the highest good. But of a surety he would never betray her nor treat her lightly nor darken her heart with accusations of pettinesses nor tempers nor humors. Saul is not trivial, not petulant. She will have pride in him. As for Saul, I should like to know that Elisheba is his wife, for her sweetness would lighten his life and her kindness would enfold him. I have been candid. I can do no more.”
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