The Source

by James A. Michener

  “He will have to,” one of the younger Jews answered, and the crowd shouted its approval.

  “Are you ready to fight even Caesar?” Petronius asked.

  “We shall die … all of us will die … before we allow his statues to enter.”

  On and on the discussions went, and in spite of all Roman threats the Jews remained adamant. Petronius appealed to their self-interest: “Don’t you want to form a helpful part of this great empire?” He cited economics: “What kind of farmer allows his fields to lie idle in the sowing season?” He discussed theology: “Other nations in the empire accept Caligula as their god while in secret they honor their ancient deities. Can’t you do the same?” And because he was a man of honor, trained in the philosophies of Greece and on the field of battle, he sometimes betrayed his position by speaking as a humanist: “Would you force me to slay women and children—which I must do if you refuse any further?” And when he said this the Jews knew that he had already decided not to slaughter the multitude, even though he himself might not yet realize that he had reached this conclusion.

  Each morning this worried gentleman—for Petronius was that in the most significant sense of the word—ate a light breakfast, stood on his palace balcony to study the glorious mountains that surrounded the Sea of Galilee, then went below to conduct his arguments with the stubborn Jews. At noon he ate lunch with his centurions and in the afternoon went on foot to the refreshing hot baths that made Tiberias such a pleasure, and in those bubbling mineral waters that welled up from some deep volcanic disturbance he would lie and try to forget the dilemma in which Caesar Caligula had placed him. He prayed that some miracle might occur to solve the problem for him: The overdue dagger of the assassin might find its way to the tyrant’s heart. In the hot baths Petronius muttered such prayers. But no solution came.

  Finally at one meeting he shouted at the Jews, “For weeks you meet with me and don’t even have the grace to bring before me the man who started all this.” He dispatched Roman messengers to fetch Yigal from Makor, and when the young Jew reached Tiberias, Petronius took him to the hot baths, which an ordinary workman like Yigal could never otherwise have seen, and the Roman laughed when the young Jew refused to undress. “I’ve seen circumcisions before,” Petronius joked, and he persuaded Yigal to enter the bath; and there the two men talked with neither the panoply of glory nor the conceit of individual honor.

  “Young man,” Petronius pleaded, “if you Jews obstruct me now, you will have to face Caesar Caligula later. He will be a hideous opponent. He will burn you alive as if you were men of straw. Or crucify you by dozens on every hill.”

  “Then we shall die,” Yigal said.

  The two men left the steaming waters and were attended by slaves, and when they were dressed again, Petronius said, “Please, consider what you are doing.”

  “We can do nothing else,” Yigal replied.

  “You damned Jews!” Petronius exploded, and with a mighty blow of his fist he knocked the frail workman to the floor. But as soon as he had done so he stooped and gathered the stunned Jew in his arms. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “These meetings are driving me mad.” He helped Yigal to his feet and brushed his garments. “Is there no hope of a settlement?” he pleaded.

  In the marble dressing room of the Herodian baths Yigal replied, “You will have to kill every Jew in Galilee, after that Sebaste, and then Jerusalem.”

  That evening Petronius assembled the negotiators at an inn near the lake—that marvelous body of water so deep in the earth, so crowded by mountains on each side, yet so sweet and marked by repose—and he said, “Jews of Galilee, your crops must be sown. No land of the Roman empire can lie idle in the sowing season. I am therefore sending you home to plant your fields.” The Jews greeted this with suspicion, for so far he had made no offer to withdraw the statues, and this could be a trick. Then the great general lowered his head and said in a whisper scarce heard above the waves of Galilee, “The statues I will take away. With the help of your god I shall try to persuade Caesar Caligula that he cannot override the will of his Jews in Galilee. Romans cannot murder an entire population.” He rose, straightened his battle dress and asked for his baton. Then, in full imperial dignity, he said, “If I fail, I perish. But I shall die gladly if by my action I save so many men of honor.” And he embraced Yigal.

  That night he struck his camp in Tiberias, as if he could not bear to sleep again in that obstinate place. Bivouacking in the countryside like a general at war, he rose before dawn and marched back to Ptolemais, but as he came down the Damascus road and spotted the walled town of Makor nestling beneath its mountain, he stopped to study the zigzag gate and the white walls of the gymnasium, and against this background he visualized Yigal. “The most obdurate man I’ve ever confronted,” he growled.

  And then a torment of humiliation possessed him, a full general of Rome repulsed by an olive worker, and he cried, “How did such a town defeat three Roman legions? I should put to death every Jew inside those walls and erect ten statues of Caligula to be worshiped by their ghosts.” Behind him he could hear the marching feet of the two legions retreating with him and in that burning moment he decided to turn them loose on the undefended town. “Centurions!” he shouted. “We’ll teach a gang of Jews to abandon their fields!”

  But as the men marched forward he looked at the fields where women had begun to plow and their men to sow, and at the olive grove where work had been resumed, and in these fields of Makor he saw the type of sturdy peasant who had once made Rome strong: men and women who loved freedom, who worshiped their own god in their own obstinate way, who paid their taxes and fed the empire. For a moment he visualized his own farm in Istria and remembered the satisfaction he had known working its fields, and to his centurions he said quietly, “Proceed to Ptolemais.” It was in this manner that Makor through its reliance on the one God vanquished the full power of the Roman empire.

  A man can read ten thousand pages of history and find only the corruption of power and the defeat of hope, but occasionally he will come upon an adventure like that of General Petronius, who, because he was at heart a Greek philosopher, refrained from destroying Makor and returned to the port city of Ptolemais, where he crated the statues of Caligula and marched his legions aboard ships for transportation back to Antioch. There he composed his report to Caesar Caligula: “Mighty God, Spirit of Power, Light of the World, in pursuit of Your august instructions I invaded Judaea on schedule, but at Ptolemais I found five hundred Jews offering themselves to be sacrificed rather than permit statues of the new god, Caligula, to enter their territories. At Tiberias, I consulted with the leaders of the district and satisfied myself that in order to place the god Caligula’s statue in the temple at Jerusalem, I would have to kill every Jew in the Galilee. For generations Your granary would lie barren. The name of Rome would be cursed forever. Unless You wish, August One, to kill on a scale not yet seen in our empire, I must beg You to withdraw your instructions to me. You must allow the Jews to worship as they have in the past.”

  The dispatch reached Caligula at an evil moment. He raged at the contempt of the Jews and at the pusillanimity of his Syrian general. By swift messengers he sent news to Antioch that the Jews must be completely destroyed and that Petronius must commit suicide; but on the day his messengers sailed from Podi the patriots of Rome rose up and murdered their vile emperor, as they had known for some months that they must. So another messenger was dispatched by another boat to Syria, commending Petronius and annulling the order of execution, but none dared hope that this reprieving news could reach Antioch before the general was dead.

  Sailing across the same sea, eastward from Rome, the competing ships—one bearing death, the other life—traversed the same waters; and unexpected storms caught the ship of death and held it prisoner for three months, while the ship of life sailed calmly to port, informing General Petronius of Caligula’s murder and his own salvation.

  Thus Petronius and Makor were saved, but Ro
me was not, for it continued to fall into the hands of degenerate emperors, and murder became the accepted preamble to nomination. In 37 C.E. the tyrant Tiberius had been smothered, only to be succeeded by a worse tyrant, Caligula. Now in 41 C.E. Caligula was murdered, to be followed by Claudius, husband of the incredible Messalina, and both of them had to be murdered for the welfare of the state and public decency; but they were followed in 54 C.E. by the worst tyrant of all, Nero, who having kicked his pregnant wife to death turned his demented attention to the distant Jews at the edge of his empire. “What is this you say about a Jewish rebellion?” he asked, and his generals explained.

  Under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, they said, there had been disturbances over the gaudy flags carried by the legions when they served in Jerusalem: golden eagles attached to these flags were worshiped by the Roman soldiers, and Jews insisted that these idols be removed before entering the Holy City. Additional difficulties had arisen because of a crucifixion which Pilate seemed to have bungled. There was also the matter of Paul of Tarsus, a very troublesome Jew, who claimed that his god had spoken to him on the Damascus road and who was stirring up trouble among both Jews and pagans. But primarily, the generals reported, the Jews of Jerusalem were talking of the establishment of their god’s kingdom and were beginning to grow contemptuous of Roman rule. “They are openly challenging us,” the generals reported, “and the source of their strength is their temple, from whence all agitation stems.”

  “Has there been fighting?” Nero asked, and he was told that in November of the year 66 Jewish zealots had driven all Roman forces from Jerusalem and had actually slain more than six thousand Roman troops in doing so. The bull-necked emperor gave two simple commands: “Destroy Jerusalem. Level the temple.”

  It was no ordinary general to whom Nero delivered these instructions for his final solution to the Jewish problem. He chose no Petronius weighed down by the moral burden of Greek philosophy and susceptible to the pleas of Jews devoted to their god; Nero picked the heavy, plodding fifty-seven-year-old commoner, Vespasian, who would be assisted by his energetic son Titus. They would be given the Fifth Legion Macedonia and the Tenth Legion Fretensis, two of the best-known fighting teams in the world, composed not of mercenaries but of free citizens of the Roman empire. And one of the first things Vespasian did upon assuming command was to send Titus to Egypt to pick up the Fifteenth Legion Apollinaris as well, a mercenary unit trained for desert-type warfare under the command of a flint-hard strategist, Trajan.

  At Antioch this crushing army assembled—the Fifth and Tenth, plus twenty-three cohort divisions, six wings of cavalry, and auxiliary troops from commanding kingdoms, plus engineers, workmen, slaves and servants—a total of nearly fifty thousand hardened men. Swiftly Vespasian marched to Ptolemais, where he was joined by Titus and Trajan, who had brought the Fifteenth Legion, rested after its long inactivity in Egypt.

  As he stood poised with this overwhelming force Vespasian was one of the strong generals of Roman history: when required, he could be adamant, as he had proved against the Germans; or conciliatory, as he had shown when serving as military commander in Britain; or a ruthless tactician, as he had demonstrated in Africa. He was stubborn, big of body, heavy of face and generous of mind. His troops idolized him and would in the end make him the first decent emperor Rome had known in half a century; he was a man who had learned to respect both allies and adversaries and to treat each with honor. He was, perhaps, that spring of 67 as he waited in Ptolemais, the outstanding Roman of his generation, the poor son of a poor farmer, a man who had risen to extraordinary heights solely because of his unimpeachable character. Compared to men like Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, this leather-hard general was indeed a god, but such claims were a foolishness he would not indulge in.

  Nor did he engage in intrigue, but he did realize that even though he was then nearly sixty and Nero only thirty, the emperor had already given so many signs of derangement that he might one day have to be strangled, and if Vespasian could crush the Jews quickly he could well be in line for the purple when Nero vanished. He therefore directed his centurions to sweep directly toward Jerusalem, basing his future upon the chances of a swift triumph. Yet as he studied his maps he saw the same ominous fact that had faced many other would-be conquerors of the Jewish kingdom: to get at Jerusalem he would first have to pass through the Galilee, that ancient home of warriors and determined men; and to enter the Galilee he would have to subdue the little walled town of Makor.

  Assembling his staff he asked, “What is the final word on Galilee?” and they replied crisply, “As difficult as ever. Hilly. Filled with caves occupied by zealots. Little walled towns on hilltops. And all commanded by the best general the Jews have ever produced.”

  “Who?”

  “Josephus. A young man educated in Rome. About thirty. Brilliant in the open. More brilliant when cornered. So far the Romans have never beaten him. In victory he’s arrogant, in defeat brazen. In some miraculous manner he rescues both himself and his troops to fight the next day.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Lucky for us he’s in Tiberias, wasting his time.”

  “You’re sure he’s not in Makor?” Vespasian asked.

  “No. He seems to have overlooked its significance.”

  “You’re certain he’s not in Makor?” Vespasian repeated.

  “Our spies from Tiberias saw him on the lake last night. Our spies from Makor say he’s never been in that town and isn’t now.”

  “Then we shall speed with all force to take this point.” And the broad, stubby forefinger of the Roman leader obliterated the dot on his map that signified Makor; so on April 4 in that critical year of 67, General Vespasian, assisted by Generals Titus and Trajan, left Ptolemais with nearly sixty thousand men and one hundred and sixty major engines of war. Nero’s vengeance against the Jews was about to be exacted.

  • • • THE TELL

  On one aspect of life in Israel foreigners rarely received a straight answer, not because Israelis practiced duplicity, but because no one living in Israel saw the problem the way outsiders did. By curious accident John Cullinane finally received honest instruction on the matter, but when he did he found that he could discuss it with no one, because the others had not shared his experience.

  From his earlier work in Israel, Cullinane knew the outlines of Hebrew history and understood that there were two types of Jews—Ashkenazi from Germany and Sephardi from Spain—but he had supposed that any basic differences between them had long since dissolved. Nevertheless, he kept seeing cryptic references in the press.

  “What’s this Ashkenazi-Sephardi business?” he asked Eliav.

  “Nothing of consequence.”

  “Are Jews still divided into the two groups?”

  “Yes.” Obviously Eliav wanted to stop the conversation.

  “Which are you?”

  “Ashkenazi, of course.”

  Cullinane got the impression that his pipe-smoking colleague was proud of his Ashkenazi background. Later, when he had asked her about the matter, Vered was even more abrupt than her fiancé had been. “A trivial difference,” she snapped.

  “Which are you?” he asked.

  “Ashkenazi, of course,” And she, too, seemed proud of the designation. Then he began seeing short statements in the press to the effect that “the Sephardi Jews can better their relative position in Israel only by education.” He asked Vered what this meant and again she brushed him off: “John, it’s a minor educational problem that we’ll take care of in time.” But a few days later one of the leaders of the Sephardi community—whatever that was—stated: “In education we Sephardim are outrageously discriminated against, as indeed we are in all aspects of public life in Israel.” Again Cullinane asked what it meant, and again Vered assured him, “It’s nothing you would understand, John.”

  Unable to get satisfaction from his colleagues, Cullinane went to the library, where the standard histories confirmed his rough
understanding: the Ashkenazim were mentioned in the Torah as a minor Jewish people, whose name was ultimately used to designate Germany, and since it was from there that Jews emigrated to countries like Poland, Russia and America, most Jews in the western world tended to be Ashkenazim; whereas the Sephardim were those Jews who had moved first to Spain and thence to countries like Morocco, the Balkans and the less civilized parts of the world. Between the two communities a feud had developed: the Sephardim constituted the aristocracy of Judaism while the Ashkenazim were the uneducated field hands. It was the Sephardim who produced many of the great Jews of history—Maimonides and Spinoza for example—and certainly in America they formed the elite, characterized by men like Justice Cardozo. But when education became available in eastern Europe, the Ashkenazim quickly gained the ascendancy, while the once-honored name Sephardi was denigrated and applied to all Jews who were not Ashkenazi, whether they had any association with Spain or not, so that today Sephardi meant loosely the oriental Jew as opposed to the European, the lumpen proletariat as contrasted to the sophisticated expert from Russia or Germany. The two groups differed in inconsequential ways: Ashkenazim spoke Yiddish based on German; many Sephardim used Ladino, a vulgar Spanish. They also pronounced Hebrew differently, the Sephardi usage representing the world standard; and they followed different synagogue rituals, where the Ashkenazi was often preferred.

  Prior to Nazism and the establishment of Israel the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi had been diminishing and indeed almost vanishing; of the 16,500,000 Jews in the world, a full 15,000,-000 were Ashkenazi, and they controlled all significant movements and committees. “I doubt if I ever knew a Sephardi Jew,” Cullinane reflected “There probably weren’t many in Chicago.”

  But with the extermination of 6,000,000 Ashkenazim in World War II and the bottling up of another 3,000,000 in Russia, the Sephardim became proportionately more important; and when the state of Israel was launched, its geographical position in Asia meant that it contained more Sephardi oriental Jews than Ashkenazi Europeans. Suddenly what had been a diminishing factor became one of central significance.