The Convert

  IX

  Cambridge

  One journey still awaits me, a journey Hamoutal, the eternal fugitive, never made and could not even have imagined: in pursuit of her letter of recommendation, the letter that Rabbi Obadiah wrote for her in Monieux. My destination is Cambridge, England, home to the manuscript collection that Solomon Schechter brought back from Cairo. There I hope to see for myself the document she carried with her – maybe even touch it.

  When I arrive in the university town, the heat is intense. The inviting quads of the old colleges are heavy with the scent of blossoms. Students perch on window ledges, absorbed in Maynard Keynes, Thomas Aquinas, Milton or Wittgenstein. On the edges of the ponds, Pre-Raphaelite beauties are highlighting their anthropology readers in fluorescent colours. Guides drift past in punts through the shallow waters of the River Cam, playing their energetic part in the town’s little Venice. This is the life of the centuries-old elites, charming and a bit unworldly, the centre of the old civilised classes who stubbornly pretend half the world is not burning down. Girls, the same age as Hamoutal when she fled Rouen, tuck elegant white earphones into their blonde hair, listening to ambient loops of Hildegard of Bingen supplied to them by torrents without name.

  I stroll down the avenues through the scent of mown grass to the old tower of the University Library, climb the wide steps to the entrance, pick up my library card at the desk, step through the electronic gate, take the broad staircase up to the first floor, cross through the grand reading rooms, mount the narrow steps to the tower’s third storey, pass the endless bookcases that line the entire North Wing, and find, at the far end, a modest door. I push it open, traverse another narrow corridor, and at last reach the Manuscript Room, maintained and guarded by people every bit as courteous as the guides who must be waiting for us at the pearly gates. I leave behind all the things the folder says I can’t take with me, like ballpoint pens, fountain pens and ring binders; bags, hats, scarves and mittens; pencil sharpeners, pocket knives and paper cutters.

  Once I’ve been relieved of these modern-day burdens, my card is scanned, the small glass security gate opens with a soft click, and I step into the reading room. At the end of the service desk, a trolley is waiting for me with two large black boxes from the Cairo Genizah Collection, bearing the numbers 12 and 16. They are about 100 by 50 centimetres in size and 10 centimetres high. I sign the declaration, take a seat at the assigned table, open my small laptop, and remove my magnifying glass from its old case. I start by opening box 12 and finding document T-S 12.532. This colourful scrap of paper looks more like an old map than a letter, or maybe a primitive cut-out of a half-imaginary continent. It never ceases to amaze me that these ancient fragments have reached our hectic age, or that their discovery had such an impact.

  In 1964, two years before Norman Golb reported his findings on Monieux, the historian and textual researcher Eliyahu Ashtor discussed this document. It describes the near-execution, in the vicinity of Nájera, of a proselyte who had lost her husband in a pogrom. Three long decades later, in 1999, the researcher Edna Engel in Tel Aviv suggested a possible link between this manuscript and T-S 16.100, the letter about the Proselyte of Monieux. She presented strong evidence that the two were written by the same author: the handwriting, the distinctly Sephardic turns of phrase and the materials used. Her article, first published in the Hebrew-language journal Sefunot, includes a summary of the document’s contents. Joshuah Obadiah of MNYW, the named author of the first letter, may therefore have written this manuscript as well. If he did, it may be about the same woman from MNYW – an unexpected new chapter in the proselyte’s life. But because the woman was led to the stake in the northern Spanish town of Nájera, Edna Engel decided that the place where she fled after her release was not Monieux, but Muño, a long-vanished medieval village near Burgos in Spain. The Hebrew writing system, which leaves out the vowels, allows for this possibility. Her thesis received additional support from Joseph Yahalom, who quoted her in his article on old Spanish documents and stated without reservation that the place in question was Muño.

  But what were the exact words of T-S 12.532? I wanted a literal translation. So I asked Cambridge University to send me an electronic reproduction of this manuscript, just as I had obtained a copy of T-S 16.100 earlier. Then I forwarded the copy to Norman Golb’s son, Dr Raphael Golb, who gave it to his father to read. The scholar from Chicago was perplexed; the philologists who had challenged his theory with such confidence in 1999 had never contacted him. Golb, a very elderly man by now, became intrigued once again by this story from the early days of his illustrious career. A colleague of his prepared a word-for-word translation of the tattered manuscript. I was surprised to read Golb’s conclusion: T-S 12.532 provides little new information about the places or circumstances. It is clear, however, that the woman was tied to the stake in Nájera until, at the last minute, her freedom was unexpectedly purchased. Her generous rescuer’s somewhat unusual name is given in the document: Yom Tov Narboni. Vivid details are thrown out in passing: after her redemption, the woman was sent away at midnight. The document ends with a fragmentary list of names: Samuel bar Jacob, David bar […] and Iusta. Jacob and Iusta were the names of Hamoutal’s children; the other two names almost match those of her husbands. Each name is followed by the words ‘the departed’. Does T-S 12.532 show us that Hamoutal’s children had died? In that case, why did she turn up in northern Spain? Did Obadiah really write this letter? Is it really about Hamoutal? I peer at the strange letters but keep running up against those frustrating edges where the text breaks off. I am stuck with my questions.

  I return box 12 to the desk and am given box 16. I open it and see an even thicker stack of documents in plastic sleeves. The binder starts with number 1. I carefully slide each large sheet over the metal rings until I reach the hundredth and final document: T-S 16.100. It’s one of the best-preserved manuscripts, and very beautiful too. Through the plastic sleeve, it’s hard to tell whether it is parchment, as Norman Golb suggests, or handmade paper – though that was a rarity in the eleventh century. The letters are the colour of oxblood; the manuscript is pale yellow to greyish-white, with darker tones here and there. I look for the smallest opening in the sleeve, which is sewn shut, and place my fingertip there for a moment, on the edge of the document Hamoutal carried against her body. The room is so quiet I can hear myself breathe.

  With my magnifying glass, I pore over every detail of the surface, each tiny wrinkle, concentrating on the worn spots, which bear the traces of events that can no longer be reconstructed. The ragged document has four holes of different sizes, three caused by visible wear and tear, humidity, and the gradual weakening of the material. But towards the top, near line 9, is a monster of a hole, in a spot where the material is firm and shows no wear. It looks more like a piece was torn out. Through the glass, parts of the Hebrew letters mem, nun, yod, vav are visible along the upper edge of this large hole: . MNYW. Where and when was that hole made? Did someone rip something out on purpose? Did Hamoutal brush against something sharp and tear the letter by accident? Was it damaged by David’s tefillin in her bag? Was the hole made in the depths of the genizah, during those nine centuries in the dark? When Jacob Saphir visited the synagogue in 1864 and asked to see the genizah, the guard assured him there was nothing in that lightless hole but snakes and demons. The moisture that ate away at the document could have been sweat, blood, seawater, or even mould. For the first time I think to turn over the letter, carefully, in its transparent sleeve. To my surprise, I see two large creases on the back; the parchment was not rolled up, as I had always assumed, but folded lengthwise into thirds. The creases are sharp; it stayed folded for a long time. So Hamoutal could have hidden it under her clothes. Strange that those creases are invisible on the front of the document. The patch of moisture damage is brownish on the back. This letter was soaked through, and not just with Nile water. I take another long look at the document through my magnifying glass. If the letter was folded
into three parts, as it seems, then the large hole was on the inside. A mystery. What could have happened? T-S 16.100 will always remain a riddle. I take photographs of this light-sensitive hide covered with letters. Make a few notes. Sit and stare a while longer. I know so little.

  The puzzle exerted such a pull on Norman Golb that he visited Monieux twice, in December 1966 and 1967. His articles were accompanied by his own photographs. After publishing his landmark essay in 1969, he contributed an article to the French-Jewish news magazine L’Arche in 1978 in which he mounted another, succinct and persuasive, defence of the Monieux thesis. In 1979, the same magazine published a brief response from a reader, noting the existence of a so-called Jewish cemetery in Monieux, well known to the locals. I have a copy of an old photograph showing the Golb family seated on a bench in front of the house where I’ve written this book.

  In April 2016, Golb published a new article on the website of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, entitled ‘Monieux or Muño?’, based on the information I’d sent him about Yahalom and Engel’s articles and my own research in Monieux. He too concluded that nothing could be said with certainty about either the interpretation of MNYW or the relationship between the two manuscripts. Yet for topographical reasons, he had doubts about the Muño scenario and still had faith in the viability of the Monieux thesis. It seems improbable, I might add, that the chief rabbi of Narbonne would have sent the two fugitives to Muño, down the road to Santiago de Compostela, heavily trafficked by Norman knights. Monieux was a much more sensible route, especially considering that Provence was then still part of the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that Joshuah Obadiah’s Hebrew shows Spanish influences is easy to understand, considering he may have studied in Narbonne, which was then mostly Spanish-speaking, and must have had a personal connection to Rabbi Todros. Although Edna Engel’s philological observations were correct, I believe she draws the wrong conclusion.

  In any case, T-S 16.100 is well known as the story of the Proselyte of Monieux. In his magnum opus The Story of the Jews, Simon Schama uses that title without reservation, and devotes a short paragraph to her. Even the Jewish Virtual Library, based on the Encyclopaedia Judaica, refers to ‘a Cambridge manuscript, evidently from the town of Monieux, Provence’.

  This is where my search ends. It’s hard for me to leave the quiet reading room. Later, I walk the streets of this peaceful, old-fashioned town. The Fitzwilliam Museum has an exhibition about Egyptian burial rituals. I wind my way through the dim galleries of sarcophagi and canopic jars, distracted by thoughts of Cairo and my evenings on the banks of the Nile. It’s like coming full circle. As I leave the building I notice that, out of the warm, bright sky, an almost invisible rain has begun to fall.

  X

  The Treasure of Monieux

  1

  On All Souls’ Day 1968, an article in the Provence newspaper Le Méridional was devoted to what the two journalists called the secrets of the plateau. They went in search of the last remaining locals with stories about the famed treasure of Monieux, said to be hidden somewhere under the rocks or in a secret cavern. They evoked the atmosphere of these Alpine foothills in the language of travel brochures: the farandole is not danced here, no cicadas sing, this is a place of ‘équilibre et austérité. Here you find yourself not in picture-postcard Provence, but in the old and nameless landscape of the mountains all around the Mediterranean. No plane trees, but horse chestnuts and old lime trees along the road. Small Alpine cattle roam some meadows, and sheep bells ring from morning to night. A shepherd snoozes in the grass by the wayside. Little has changed since time immemorial. It’s like stepping into one of Virgil’s Eclogues.

  In their dealings with the dour villagers the journalists put on a naive, cheerful air, and this stratagem paid off. Mrs Calamel, a woman of a respectable age even then, told them her grandfather had spoken of the hidden treasure. The baker recalled that Mrs Jussiand, at the age of nearly a hundred, had known a thing or two about the treasure, but she’d died without ever giving away her secret. Ferdinand Bres, a local with a divining rod who was persuaded to accompany the journalists, travelled back and forth several times that day along the steep, dangerous road between the medieval tower at the top of the cliff and the village at the bottom, clambering over the rocks and stones. Next to a ruined section of the old ramparts, his twig started to tremble and shake ominously. Gold, there must be gold here somewhere! The rod leapt about so frantically that it fell out of Mr Bres’s hands, onto the path that runs through the wild palms. Just a few metres away, that’s where you should dig. The villagers observing the proceedings shook their heads in disbelief. Nonsense! How could it be here? Hasn’t the story always been that the treasure was left in the entrance to a collapsed cave somewhere over there, high up in the rocks?

  So what? Isn’t that just a legend?

  The journalists returned to the town hall to consult with the elderly mayor. Are there any archives of old public records? No, that sort of thing has all been lost – even the exact year when they completed the medieval tower, an impressive thirty-metre-tall structure in a state of serious decay. You see, some time in the nineteenth or eighteenth century – who can say? – there was a huge fire and the old archives went up in flames. Whatever’s left may be in Carpentras, who knows. Would you care for a glass of wine?

  In slight desperation, the journalists turned to a couple of villagers looking on in silence.

  Do you believe the story?

  Of course I do, Mr Ughetto said primly, at least until someone proves otherwise.

  And yes, there are tales of fruitless quests, of treasure hunts, digs and disputes, of clues leading this way and that, past the bend in the road, down some ravine or other, third cave to the left or right, not quite sure any more, ancient weapons were found there once, an old Roman stone, Neolithic axeheads, all kinds of rubbish turns up around here. There’s a well near the Augier farm, no purer water to be found, who knows what you might discover there, and no, say the old folks who’ve just laid their lamb chops in the hot ashes to cook, we don’t believe a word of it. Someone else suggests there may have been an underground passageway from the tower up there to the Tour de Durefort on the other side of the valley, a ruin about five kilometres away. If they could find the entrance, maybe they’d find the treasure.

  A glum voice asks, How could they have dug a five-kilometre tunnel a thousand years ago? We can barely sink our picks into this rocky ground today!

  People tell so many stories.

  The last interviewee was a Belgian, a police commissioner from Antwerp who spent his summer holidays in an old house there, with the front cracked from top to bottom. His name was Albert Schilders, he looked friendly and flamboyant, and the surprised journalists reported that he spoke French ‘sans accent’. Well, sure, he told them, I’ve dug a hole or two, thirty centimetres at most, I’m too lazy for real work. He shrugged, posed for his picture, flashed an amiable smile, and settled back down to his book on his small terrace overlooking the valley. In Albert Schilders’s detailed diaries, I find no written record of his exceptional interest in the matter. I stare out through the window of the house where for decades he likewise sat and looked out over the valley.

  2

  It is the summer of 2015. Hot August days slip by like threaded beads; for weeks the sky remains a spotless blue. The blue is especially deep to the west of town in the early morning, so deep it dizzies you to see it over the ruins of the old tower. These days I take a lot of walks, tracing all the possible routes by which the Jewish proselyte could have reached the valley. I follow the path deep into the gorge, to the old cliffside chapel of St Michael. It’s a mystical place; the ancient building is inside a natural cave. The old walls were carved with low reliefs and scratched with now-illegible words by reclusive monks. Just in front of the cave, nearly lost in the thick undergrowth, the Nesque is not much more this summer than a trickling line of water. The smell of damp rock and stone.

  Sitting down b
y the stream, I remember that in Andy Cosyn’s book Le trésor de Monieux, a couple of eighteenth-century characters naively imagine that the famous treasure is hidden here. Cosyn takes pleasure in toying with the reader’s curiosity, including photos in the book of a cave he discovered somewhere in the area, with skulls inside. They may have been so well preserved because no air could enter the cave till he hacked it open. Were they the skulls of the men who buried the treasure, trapped under the rubble of a collapsing tunnel? Everyone knows it’s just idle speculation, but before you know it, you’re walking down hard, rocky paths to solitary places and trying to guess where the treasure might be.

  For what it’s worth, I’m now convinced that the centuries-old legend is really about the meagre possessions of the synagogue of Monieux, which Joshuah Obadiah and two other men tried to hide in a safe place: in other words, several brass candleholders, maybe a few gold coins, and above all their Torah scrolls, a few sets of tefillin, and their own collection of documents, like the one in the Cairo Genizah – manuscripts that could not be destroyed because they bore the name of Yahweh. In other words, the greatest treasure of Monieux, which might strike us dumb with astonishment if it were discovered, could only be a genizah. The Hebrew word genizah, I might add, can be found in the Hebrew Book of Esther in the meaning of ‘treasure chamber’.

  If anything is left of the manuscripts from the genizah, the shemot of Monieux, I suspect they cannot be found here in the depths of the gorge but in a place called the Combe Saint-André, a small, steep ravine impossible to enter without professional climbing equipment. A rope ladder may have hung there in those days. Two holes are visible in the rock face, one above the other – ideal places for hiding things, and not far from the synagogue if the fleeing men passed through the Petit Portalet, the highest watchtower on the Jewish side of the village.