The Source

by James A. Michener

  “Come, my Beloved, let us meet the Bride.

  The presence of Shabbat let us receive.”

  And the Vodzher Rebbe, so old that he seemed immortal, looked up from his corner approvingly.

  But the synagogue which in the end enlisted Cullinane’s steady patronage was the small Sephardi one in Akko, into which he had stumbled that day when he joined the procession to Elijah’s Cave. It was neither spacious like the one in Haifa, nor emotionally intense like the Vodzher Rebbe’s in Zefat, but it was a warm, congenial place of worship. The Sephardi ritual, more lyric than the Ashkenazi, was to Cullinane’s liking and its tune for the Lecha Dodi became his favorite, for it moved along with a spirit that seemed the essence of Judaism: these Sephardim were actually welcoming God’s holy day, and when at the height of the song all in the congregation turned to face the entrance, as if Shabbat herself were about to join the singing, it was a moment of transcendent joy that Cullinane had not experienced in other religions.

  Once, sitting in the Akko synagogue on Friday evening, he thought: As a place of worship this is really a dump. The other day I drove to the top of Mount Tabor to attend mass at the Franciscan basilica. It must be one of the most exquisite churches in the world. And now this. I wonder why synagogues are physically so unattractive? Judaism must be the only major religion that doesn’t stress beautiful temples. Perhaps it has something more important … a sense of participating brotherhood, of unity in diversity. On this Friday, as the sun moves across the earth from Fiji where the day begins, to Hawaii where it ends, when sunset comes Jews everywhere will be chanting this same song of welcome … each to his own preferred tune.

  The next day as he sat worshiping with the Sephardim in this small synagogue, Cullinane received a strong rebuke which he would not forget during the remaining years at the dig. Jewish congregations did not take public collections the way Christians did; they clung to the very old custom of gathering money to run their synagogues by selling off certain ritual functions: in most synagogues of the mid-twentieth century these contributions were arranged in private, but the Sephardim of Akko—following an ancient tradition—actually conducted a Shabbat auction during holy worship, and it disturbed Cullinane to find the synagogue taken over by a brazen-voiced auctioneer who shouted, “Come now, who will pay fifteen lira for the honor of reading Torah?” And by such public bidding he sold off seven or eight of the holy functions, with the congregation aware of how much each man was willing to pay for his privileges. By some movement of his face Cullinane must have betrayed his disapproval of this profanation of a religious rite, for at the end of the worship the big woman, Shulamit, who had taken him to Elijah’s Cave, came up and asked in English, “Disgusting, wasn’t it?”

  “What?” Cullinane asked, trying to appear innocent.

  “That auction … in a house of God.”

  “Well …”

  “It’s almost as bad as the bingo games I used to attend in your churches … in Chicago.” And she threw her big arm about him and they went to an Arab restaurant by the sea, where they got drunk on arrack.

  • • •

  The first person in Makor whom Father Eusebius met officially was the military commander of the Byzantine garrison, under whose jurisdiction he placed the workmen he had brought with him; in Makor the relationship between church and army would be intimate and Eusebius was determined that it start correctly. He then proceeded to the existing Christian church, a sorry affair at the east of town, where he greeted the uneducated Syrian priest with gentle condescension; he intended no familiarity with this schismatic. And then, because he knew that a large portion of Makor’s population was Jewish, he picked his way carefully through the narrow streets to the groats mill, where he drew his black silk robes about him and stared down at Rabbi Asher, bare-armed and white-bearded as he sweated over sacks of cereal.

  The tall Spaniard nodded graciously, half-smiled and said, “I’m told that you’re a scholar, honored by your people.”

  Rabbi Asher wiped his forehead and tried to find a seat for his visitor, but the mill was disordered and he could locate nothing suitable. The austere visage of the Spaniard relaxed as he said, “On the boat I sat for many days.”

  “Fetch a chair from the synagogue,” Asher directed his foreman, and for the second time the slim visitor noticed Menahem.

  “Your son?” he asked as the young man disappeared.

  “I wish he were,” Asher said, feeling an instinctive liking for the Spaniard.

  “As you know,” Father Eusebius began, “I’ve come to build a basilica.” He hesitated. “A large basilica.”

  The acceptance that Rabbi Asher had begun to feel vanished. Why did he have to say a big church? he thought. But Father Eusebius continued, assuring the rabbi that it was his hope not to disrupt Makor but to bring it prosperity. “We shall build rapidly,” he explained, “and will import no more soldiers than we already have.” He paused. “I shall hope that you will instruct your Jews …” He left the sentence unfinished, Nodding graciously he left just as Menahem ran up with the chair. “We shall save that for another day,” he said charmingly as he went off to inspect the town which would occupy him in the years ahead.

  The Makor to which Father Eusebius had come to build his basilica looked far different from the way it had in its days of beauty under King Herod, and almost nothing that the meticulous Spaniard saw could have reminded him of the Greek charm that had once invested this place. The walls were down, so that the settlement lacked any external unity houses now perched precariously on the steep slopes and were propped up by timbers that gave the impression of a village hanging out its wooden washing. The lovely forum was gone; not a temple stood nor even the walls of a temple. The residential palace had long since been torn apart for building stone, and here and there throughout the town one could find the base upon which the statue of an emperor had once stood, now perched on end to form part of a kitchen wall. The gymnasium was gone: where were the statues of naked Epiphanes posing as a discus thrower or of fleet Hermes the runner?

  Even the two components that had best characterized Makor were vanished: the well was forgotten and the David Tunnel was no longer used. Its deep shaft was almost completely filled in, for during the past three hundred years it had served as the town dump. Now women of the town walked down a steep flight of wooden stairs that descended into the wadi, where a completely new well had been dug; Makor did not even remember the sweet source from which the town had taken its name.

  Father Eusebius, accustomed to the grandeur of Rome and Constantinople, did however find one structure with a kind of peasant charm, a building he could respect. It was the synagogue standing near the middle of town, and as he came upon it this first day he stopped at the southern end to study the heavy, stately façade shaped like that of a Greek temple but lacking the perfection that marked all true Greek architecture. The portico was supported on six rather ugly stone columns, and Eusebius remarked to his architect: “Whoever carved those pillars was no Greek.” But he had to grant that the effect was strong. Under the portico stood three doors topped by carved lintels, and the excellence of the western one showing grape clusters, date palms and a small wagon, intended no doubt to represent the holy ark, impressed the Spaniard and he stepped reverently upon the porch to peer inside; and there for the first time he caught a sense of Palestinian grandeur equal in its rough way to the fine things being built in Constantinople, for the interior ceiling was supported by eight columns of perfect proportion, differing in color and obviously stolen from some Greek or Roman building, for no Jew could have carved such pillars. They gave the synagogue a poetic beauty, but what impressed Eusebius more was the mosaic floor, in which he saw before him composed in cubes of local rock the design of Galilee: birds resting on an olive tree, sly foxes waiting in the rushes, and formalized little streams running down from purple mountains, a gathering of diverse elements into an artistic unity.

  “Demetrius!” he called. “Look
at this.”

  A Byzantine assistant came to inspect the mosaic and was impressed, for it was finer than his workmen were able to produce. “Who did it?” Demetrius asked.

  “They must have imported someone from Byzantium,” a workman in mosaic suggested.

  Eusebius went back onto the portico and asked in Greek of a passing Jew, “Who built your floor?” The man did not understand, but Menahem, returning the chair to the synagogue, moved forward to say, “My father made it.”

  The priest and the Jew regarded each other in silence, then Menahem added, “He’s working inside,” and he led the tall Spaniard back into the synagogue, where in a corner Yohanan was mending a clay pipe. “This is my father,” Menahem said.

  “Did you make the floor?” Eusebius asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You learn in Constantinople?” Demetrius inquired.

  “Antioch,” Yohanan replied, and for the first time since he had begun working on this floor he experienced the satisfaction of watching experts who understood what he had accomplished accept his design as a work of art.

  “Exquisite,” Father Eusebius said with controlled enthusiasm, and he could visualize such a pavement gracing his basilica, so on the spur of the moment he turned to Yohanan, saying, “Your work here seems done. In our basilica we have need for your skills.”

  “That glass costs money,” Yohanan warned.

  From a bag carried by an assistant Father Eusebius handed him more gold coins than he had ever seen before. “Buy the glass … now. We shall need a floor three times this big.” He turned to consult his experts, and they referred to their forthcoming basilica in such specific terms that Yohanan realized that in their minds it already existed. “Could we fit a floor this size into the space before the altar?” Eusebius asked, and his architect replied, “If we moved two of the pillars …”

  “The pillars we won’t touch,” the Spaniard said abruptly, “but between them … Wouldn’t there be room?”

  “Ample,” the architect agreed, but Demetrius pointed out, “In that case we couldn’t use a square design like here.” With his hands he indicated the dimensions available, and Eusebius nodded.

  The Spaniard turned to Yohanan and asked cautiously, “Could you produce just as fine a work? In these dimensions?” and he moved his hands in the air as Demetrius had done.

  Yohanan thought: These determined men have come to build, and I would like to work with them. Quietly he said, “I’m a Jew.”

  Father Eusebius gave the dry, ascetic laugh of a Spaniard descended from a long-established family and said, “There may be sections of our church hostile to Jews, but not here in Makor. Have no worry. This one,” and with a slight nod he indicated his architect, “is from Moldavia and still worships trees. There’s a Persian who prays to fire. Our German troops are followers of Arius, who hold that the substance of God …” He stopped, reflecting that Yohanan did not require to know these matters, but as a man secure in his own strength he added gravely, “As a Jew both you and your skill will be welcome.” And he took Yohanan by the arm, leading him persuasively from the synagogue.

  The next days were exciting. Father Eusebius relaxed his aloofness long enough to allow the local Syrian priest to identify the traditional spot where Queen Helena had knelt and this determined the altar area of the new basilica. Yohanan then watched as the Christians stepped back and forth across the area north of the synagogue, seeking the best position for their building, and since these were the days before the church insisted upon altars oriented to the east, many different locations were tested, but in the end Eusebius summoned Yohanan and asked him what he thought of a solution that would place the basilica at an angle to the synagogue, reaching toward the northeast. “Is the earth strong there?” the architect inquired.

  “Of course, but you’ll have to tear down …” And Yohanan called off from memory the names of men occupying the houses of that area: “Shmuel the baker, Ezra, Hababli the dyer, his son Abraham … thirty houses!”

  Eusebius nodded. “In the years ahead many will use this church. Pilgrims from lands you’ve never heard of.”

  “But thirty homes!”

  “What would you prefer?” the Spaniard asked, endeavoring to be conciliatory yet determined to be firm. “That we knock down your synagogue?”

  When Yohanan realized what was involved he sent Menahem to Tverya, advising Rabbi Asher that he had better return to Makor at once, as decisions were being made which would alter radically the future of his town; and when the young man reached Tverya he found his rabbi and spelled out for him what was happening: “Thirty houses will be torn down. Most of them Jewish. Shmuel’s, Ezra’s, your son-in-law’s …” He ticked off the families who had been named for eviction. Rabbi Asher sat with his hands folded beneath his white beard and listened patiently, then said to his surprised foreman, “The discussions here in Tverya will not recess for three days, and for me to leave before they end would be impossible. Go, return home, Menahem, and tell the families that they will have to vacate as the priest has indicated. I’m sure the Christians will find them new land and new homes.”

  “But, Rabbi Asher …”

  “We’ve known for a quarter of a century that it was God’s will that this church be built,” the old man said, “and we should all have been prepared for this day. I was.” And feeling no panic he returned to the grape arbor, where the great expositors were tackling the question of the remarriage of a widow, a concern that could occupy them for several years.

  But when the groats maker informed the other rabbis of what was happening in Makor they broke their legal discussion to inspect briefly the problem which had been encroaching upon them for some years. The rabbi from Sephet spoke for the majority: “I see no need for alarm. This so-called Christian church of Constantinople is merely Judaism in another guise. We’ve seen many such deviations in the past, and most have vanished.”

  But the old Babylonian rabbi understood what was happening, for from his two rivers he had followed the impact of Christianity on the ancient religions of Persia and he appreciated the engulfing vitality of this new movement. “It is not as you say,” he warned. “Jews have one God, Christians have three, and their church is not a deviation but a new religion. Furthermore, in the past no major emperor embraced any of the earlier deviations, but Constantine did, and there’s the practical difference.”

  “Have they such force, these Christians?”

  “I saw their armies. They fight with a spiritual fire.”

  The rabbi from Kefar Nahum said, “The only thing that disturbs me is the fanaticism of the pilgrims arriving in our town. Before Queen Helena’s visit we saw a few wanderers each year, but she stirred things up. Now hundreds come and ask, ‘Isn’t this Capernaum where the Jews rebuked Jesus?’ And they spit at the synagogue.”

  “It isn’t the pilgrims that concern me,” the rabbi from Sephet reported. “It’s the tax collectors. They’ve been forced to become Christians. And feel it their duty to annoy us.”

  The young rabbi from the white synagogue at Biri said he felt sure that the relations between Judaism and the new religion would stabilize satisfactorily. “As Rabbi Hananiah has just said, they are really Jews. They accept our holy Torah. They accept our God. We should regard them as any other minor sect …”

  “No sect is minor,” the old scholar from Babylonia repeated, “if it enrolls the emperor.”

  “We have outlived many emperors,” the Biri rabbi said.

  The discussions now turned to a series of troublesome incidents which had begun to disturb the Galilee, and when the rabbis finished exchanging information it was found that in all towns except Makor there had been disturbances in which young Jews had resisted the Byzantine tax collectors, whose demands had become indeed excessive. In Kefar Nahum resistance had been so vigorous that Byzantine soldiers were required to put down the protests, but open fighting had not developed. When viewed together, as part of an emerging pattern, the brawling wa
s ominous.

  And then the Biri rabbi broached the fundamental problem: “The tax collectors say they must raise more money to build churches for the new sect. My Jews cannot accept such impositions, and the soldiers cry, ‘You crucified Jesus, didn’t you?’ and tempers are inflamed.”

  At this point Rabbi Asher, now one of the older members of the group, proposed the working rules which were to guide the rabbis: “God asks us to share this land with a vigorous sect of His religion. Children who are growing into manhood we treat with dignity; let us treat this new movement in the same way. Gently, gently.” And of the expositors present that day, only the Babylonian referred to Christianity as a new religion; the others saw it as a continuation of that series of Jewish particularist movements which had included the Essenes and the Ebionites. At best, they considered Christians as comparable to the Samaritans: Jews who accepted only the Torah and refused to believe in the divine inspiration of the rest of the Old Testament. As the Biri rabbi rationalized: “The Samaritans cut our holy book in half while the Christians double it with a new book of their own. At heart each remains Judaism.”

  It was in this unsettled mood that Rabbi Asher said farewell for the last time to the expositors of Tverya. Unaware that he would meet with his colleagues no more, he departed without pausing for a last look at the grape arbor beneath whose protection the fence around the Torah had been built, or at the bearded faces who had argued with him so passionately during the past twenty-two years. When his white mule ascended the hill to Sephet he did not turn to inspect the autumnal splendor of Tverya, with its Roman buildings slipping silently into desuetude, but next morning as he started for Makor he did catch a final glimpse of the Sea of Galilee, and along its western shore he saw for the last time Tverya, that beautiful city, home of the Herods, haven of those who loved quiet nights, sacred to the birth pangs of two religions, where Jesus slept and rabbis argued, where Peter fished and great Akiba lay in death, the city where soft waves whispered along the shore as the Talmud was being born, Tverya, Tverya.