by Marek Halter
No one person was any longer in a position to impose decisions that could guide and regulate our lives. On that day of mourning, I was sure of only one thing: that we had come to Jerusalem looking for light, and now we were groping in darkness. And the darkness would only increase unless Ezra recovered the power of his mind and was once again in a state to decide things undisturbed.
I ordered Axatria and Sogdiam to bolt the door of our house, and to prepare herb tea and food.
It took a great deal of persuasion before Ezra agreed to eat. Axatria’s herb teas worked miracles. He fell asleep, and did not wake for two days.
While he slept, I had to defend myself against the zealots and the priests. They were angry that I had taken Ezra away from them. They screamed and shouted, rousing anyone who would listen to them.
The priests wanted to pray continuously in the purified Temple, and for some reason they felt they could not do so without Ezra. The Levites wanted my brother to give them specific tasks and appoint them to particular positions and ranks, according to the Law and the writings of David. Our house was surrounded but, fortunately, Ezra did not wake.
Since I would not yield, they concluded that I was plotting against them. I let them talk. But their anger had reached fever pitch, and the fear that Gershem’s warriors would return merely increased it. ‘Just wait until tomorrow,’ I said to them. ‘Let him rest! You’re killing him with work. Do you want to march behind his coffin? Can’t you understand how patient Yahweh is?’
My words aroused protests, as the wind raises sparks from a fire.
‘What business is it of yours, woman?’ they replied. ‘Ezra should be in the Temple assuaging the wrath of Yahweh, and you stand in our way! Who has given you that right? It isn’t our demands that exhaust Ezra, it’s the stupidity of those like you who cannot hear the wrath of Yahweh. Don’t you realize you’re playing Toviyyah’s game, and Gershem’s? You’re paving the way for all those who hate Israel! You’re going to kill Ezra, and us with him!’
The stronger their words, the more aggressive they became. Sogdiam was powerless to protect me. Those he had fed devotedly for weeks now jostled him and called him a cripple, a good for nothing, a nokhri – a stranger. It was not until Yahezya and his friends came and stood in front of my door, armed, that we were left in peace for another night.
At last, after a good meal, after Axatria had rubbed his pitiful body with ointments and oils and massaged his tired shoulders, Ezra seemed in better condition. But when I told him, laughing, how we had had to defend his sleep, and had been insulted for our pains, he was not amused. At first, he wanted to rush out, as if he were at fault, but I held him back: that could wait awhile. I begged him to reflect before he was caught up again in the clash of incompatible demands and desires.
He yielded with a sigh. ‘They’re right to be angry, Lilah. Something is wrong with the way I handle things. We’ve only just purified the Temple and already our houses are destroyed. We’ve not long arrived in Jerusalem, and already the troubles are starting – just as they did in the time of Nehemiah. Tomorrow we’ll rebuild the houses destroyed yesterday, but the following night Gershem or the Horonites will attack the Temple, smash the ramparts, destroy our crops in the fields … They’ll attack anything, as long as it is ours, and they’ll keep on doing it, endlessly, because Yahweh is not with us. I thought He was, but He isn’t. The Covenant is still broken and these are the consequences.’
As he spoke, he fingered the leather case that hung round his neck. His eyes sought mine for consolation, which I was incapable of giving him. His heart was heavy, and I was powerless to lift it. The words he had spoken expressed exactly what I was thinking.
‘Lilah, my beloved sister,’ he said, with tears in his eyes, ‘what must I do that Yahweh will judge us pure and good enough to grant us His strength?’
I could find nothing to say.
He froze.
He grimaced strangely and stared at me, unseeing. The muscles of his neck tensed. I expected him to run from one room to the next, as he did when he was angry or excited. Violently he tore the leather case from round his neck and pressed it to my breast. ‘Everything we need to know is in this scroll!’ he roared, shaking like a tree in the wind. ‘What good are these walls? Yahweh doesn’t care about walls! We’re wasting time building houses that disappear in fires or fall down on our heads! Yahweh is mocking us. He doesn’t expect us to become masons! He’s testing us, and he’ll go on testing us until we hear His Word. We must obey His Law, that is His will. And we go around asking, “Why? Why?” It’s a question I answered in Susa, and my answer is still the same: because we’re not living according to the Law!’
I smiled. I understood.
I took hold of his wrists and said calmly, ‘Master Baruch used to say, “The word of Yahweh is in the Word of Yahweh. Nowhere else.” He loved to repeat Isaiah’s words. “Hear the Word of Yahweh! What is the point of offering rams and fatted calves? I want no more of the blood of bulls and goats. Stop bringing me these hollow offerings.” You’re right. Building the walls was Nehemiah’s task. Establishing justice, teaching the Word of Yahweh, is Ezra’s.’
He smiled. His frail body shook with joy as it had shaken with fever not long before. ‘Yes, yes! What is the point of these walls of gold, this incense, if the Word of Yahweh falls on deaf ears and blind eyes?’
I tied the leather case back round his neck. ‘Teach everyone what is written in the scroll,’ I said. ‘You alone can do it. If Ezra commands it, everyone will agree.’
His dark mood returned as quickly as it had previously vanished. ‘How can I? More than half of those who’ve come with us from Susa and Babylon can’t even read or write. As for those who were living in Jerusalem before we arrived, they’re worse still.’
‘Anyone can learn to read and write.’
‘Don’t dream, Lilah,’ he said, in a harsh, mocking tone. ‘In Jerusalem, dreams lead to bloodshed.’
‘I’m not dreaming. Let all who can read and write teach the others. Let them each copy part of Moses’ scroll. They’ll learn the Word of Yahweh by writing it.’
For a while, he said nothing. Then he closed his eyes, with a radiant smile that I could not remember having seen for many moons.
‘The Temple of the Word of Yahweh will enter their hearts,’ he said at last. ‘No one will be able to set fire to it or reduce it to ruins. The joy of Yahweh will be a fortress for His people. And the people of Yahweh will be the people of the Book until the end of time.’
And that is how things were done.
It was not easy, and there was a great deal of reluctance.
Many of the priests considered it unclean for Moses’ scroll to be copied by hands not designated for the task in King David’s tablets. The Levites, too, greeted the idea with horror. How could Ezra think of abandoning the Temple, even if only for a short time?
The idea soon gained ground that this was proof of my malevolent influence. This was why I had taken advantage of Ezra’s weakness and kept him away from the Temple. And when Ezra quoted Isaiah, they quoted Jeremiah: ‘Now the days are coming when I will make the cry of battle to be heard among the sons of Ammon. His cities and his daughters will be burned, and Israel will inherit the land from his heirs.’ According to them, we had to make war on Toviyyah. Such was the will of Yahweh.
But Ezra held firm. ‘Let us get to work,’ he said. ‘On the first day of the seventh month, the whole city, men and women, husbands and wives, will gather at the Water Gate. And everyone will read with one voice the Law that Yahweh taught Moses.’
Sometimes, after you have had one calamity, and you are sure that another is coming, happiness appears unexpectedly, at least for a time. It came now to Jerusalem, moving from alley to alley, from house to house, where people bowed their heads over letters and words. A song of joy rippled through the city, as hands guided other hands to move a stylus over a scroll. A song of joy throbbed in the houses, when, after learning the alphabet, fa
thers and mothers amused themselves reciting it at night to their children so that it might feed their dreams.
There was no longer any distinction between the great and the small, the learned and the untutored. All that remained was the will of a whole people to be strong in its knowledge and its words, including the great Word the Everlasting had given it, a nation that had the whisper of memory always on its lips, as a lover has his beloved’s name.
Oh, Antinoes, my husband, you would have liked that time!
A time of milk and honey, a time of abundance in the land of Judaea! We were together, united in a single cause. All of us, men and women, young and old, were deciphering the same letters, uttering the same words, each and every one of us with the same desire for justice.
There were no more complaints, no more quarrels.
And perhaps the hand of Yahweh was upon us, for we no longer heard anything of Toviyyah, Gershem and the Horonites, or the harm they wished to do us.
I started to hope again. My doubts vanished. We had been right to urge Ezra to leave for Jerusalem. Our separation, Antinoes, was a good price to pay for his reward. In my heart, this was compensation for my humiliation at the hands of Parysatis.
For the first time since my arrival in Jerusalem, I felt at peace. I gloried in this madness called happiness and hope.
Yes, I thought, I could keep my promise after all. Soon, everyone would know Yahweh’s Law, everyone would live according to His justice. Soon the Everlasting would renew His Covenant with His people, and the houses of Jerusalem would ring with peace and joy as now they hummed with thousands of voices reading.
Then my duty would be done, and I could set off for Susa, Karkemish or the other side of the world to rejoin you.
According to Ezra’s wishes, on the first day of the seventh month of the year, rams’ horns blew on the square in front of the Temple. Others echoed across the land, from Galilee to the Negev. Thirty or forty thousand people gathered by the Water Gate. There were so many of us, so tightly packed together, that the earth looked like a carpet of human flowers.
Ezra and the priests climbed the steps to the ramparts. The sun was not yet high and the air was cool. Swallows sang as they gorged themselves on insects.
And then there was silence. True silence. Over Jerusalem, and all Judaea. Those who were there will swear it to the end of time. A silence such as belongs only to the Everlasting fell on His nation at that moment.
Ezra took Moses’ scroll from its container. In the silence, everyone heard the rustle of the papyrus against the leather. He spread the scroll, put one end between the fingers of an old priest, then unrolled it in its entirety. It stretched for perhaps five or six cubits.
Again in the silence, the forty thousand heard the crackle of the papyrus, which had once been touched by the finger of Aaron, heard Ezra’s sandals scrape against the stones of the rampart.
The swallows were gone. There was only the blue sky, and the white stones of Jerusalem the beautiful.
Ezra placed his finger on the papyrus.
My throat was dry. Doubt took my breath from me.
What if this was madness?
What if Ezra’s desire to turn a whole nation’s heart into the heart of a word was again nothing but a mad dream?
Was it possible that these thousands of people could become the nation of the Book, the nation that made the Word of Yahweh its Temple?
Then Ezra looked at us. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. In its place, a single voice, made up of thousands of women’s voices, thousands of men’s voices, old and young, launched the first words into the sky.
In the beginning,
Yahweh created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was empty and formless,
Darkness was above the deep.
The spirit of Yahweh
Moved over the seas.
The voices trembled. Perhaps the blue sky trembled, too, and the white stones, and Ezra’s finger.
Then his hand glided over the papyrus, and pointed to the following words: ‘Yahweh named the light.’ And the forty thousand, with one voice, continued the reading.
All Jerusalem trembled. All Judaea trembled.
The reading became a chant. Until the middle of the day, until we were sitting in our own shadows, we read. And everyone knew the words of the text.
At the end, our joy overflowed. We danced and laughed and wept, all at the same time.
‘Today is the day of Yahweh, our God,’ Ezra cried, ‘not a day of tears! Go! Eat your fill, drink sweet wine and eat meat, for today is Yahweh’s day! The joy of Yahweh is now on your fortress and no one can drive you from it! Open your eyes, open the scrolls of the teaching, and there you will find your Temple, for ever. Your Temple will be the Word and the teaching of the Everlasting: the Book. Tomorrow, go to the hills and gather branches. Tomorrow, build tabernacles in your houses, and in the public squares. Build them everywhere. Sit in your tabernacles and read the teaching of Yahweh. You will see that there is no need of walls to read the Law of our Covenant with the Everlasting. In the Book, you will be safer than anywhere else. And no one will drive you away. The Word of Yahweh is a fortress.’
And, like my forty thousand companions, I laughed and danced. In the evening, I danced in the arms of Yahezya, in the arms of Baruch, Gershom and Jonathan, Ackaz, Manasseh and Amos … There were so many names, so many arms in which a young girl, a young wife, a young widow named Lilah could dance.
We were no longer alone. We drank wine, ate meat, swayed our hips and swelled our chests, we, the thousands of wives.
We had read like the men, all united. Daughters of Israel, wives of the sons of Israel. All united, without distinction. All wives and mothers.
That was the last time.
Ezra was right: the joy of Yahweh is a fortress.
This is how it happened, three days after the reading and the celebration that ensued. Everyone was laughing, building their tabernacles and sitting in them to read.
The priests and Levites, those who call themselves the princes of the Temple, appeared before Ezra. ‘You proclaim that Yahweh is happy with us. You are wrong. We say to you that Yahweh is angry. We warn you that soon those who hate us will strike harder than ever. They are already here. They are in Jerusalem, they are in your tabernacles.’
‘What are you talking about?’ my brother asked in surprise.
‘How can you teach the Law if the Word of Yahweh is not respected? How can the children of Israel appease the wrath of Yahweh if the first of His rules is not respected? Open your eyes, Ezra. Look at the faces, listen to the words. The peoples who surround us and live in abomination have married their daughters to our sons! That is the truth of it.’
‘Ezra, beneath the roofs of Jerusalem,’ others cried, ‘the unclean mix indiscriminately with the children of Israel. The unclean are among us. Worse still, they multiply like clouds. The Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and so many others around Jerusalem, have given their daughters to the men of Jerusalem. Their babies have been filling our beds since Nehemiah left. And this rabble walk the streets of Jerusalem as if they were the children of Israel! Soon they, too, will be of an age to mix their unclean stock with that of the people of Yahweh. Our destruction is inevitable. And you, Ezra, would like Yahweh to renew His Covenant with us? To place His hand upon you?’
I was not present at the scene. A child was being born not far from our house and I had been sent for. But I was later told all the details of what had happened.
Hearing these words, Ezra rushed onto the steps of the Temple. There, he tore his clothes to shreds. He ripped his tunic and his cloak, as if twenty hands had grabbed hold of him. He demanded a knife. Before the eyes of the priests, the Levites and the zealots, he shaved his head and his beard. Now he was bare-headed and bare-cheeked, and as pale as a leper.
After that, he sat on the steps of the Temple and would not budge. He remained like that, mouth closed, eyes vacant, hands motionless.
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br /> The priests and Levites roused the crowd. People came from everywhere to see Ezra, and cried out at the sight of his head. They begged him to speak, to utter a word. But he remained silent. Instead, it was the priests who cried, ‘Ezra is naked before the Word of Yahweh! Ezra fears Yahweh! Ezra bears all the infidelity of the exiles on his shoulders!’
It was then that I joined the crowd.
I saw him with my own eyes, huddled on the steps, his face haggard, his eyes hardened by sadness. His mouth was like a line cut by a sword.
He no longer saw anything, no longer looked at anything. Or perhaps he was thinking of old times, old promises from the days of our childhood, which he was now preparing to break. Yes, that was my first thought.
My other thought was that I no longer recognized him: he was not the man who had wept in my arms only a few days earlier.
My brother had disappeared, and his beautiful mouth, his eyes full of hope had disappeared, too.
Or was it the pallor of his skull and cheeks that made me think that?
At the evening offering, he stood up suddenly. The crowd around the Temple fell silent.
A terrifying silence.
As I write this, I am afraid again. My hand is heavy with the words it is about to lay down on the papyrus.
Ezra approaches the altar. He walks up to the beautiful new basin, only recently purified. We hold our breath. Even the priests and the zealots are silent. They, too, are overcome with fear. You can see it in their eyes, the way they clench their fists in front of their mouths.
Ezra falls to his knees. He reaches out his hands to Yahweh, palms upward. Sounds come from him, not words at first, only moans. Then he cries, ‘My God, I am ashamed as I lift my head to you, for our sins are endless, our offences can be heard even in the vaults of heaven! We have been guilty since the days of our fathers, and we are still guilty. It is because of our sins that we have been delivered into the hands of foreign kings, have suffered violence and captivity, are humiliated, even now. We have abandoned your Commandments, as decreed by your servants and your prophets. “The land you are inheriting is unclean,” they said, “soiled by the surrounding nations and the horrors with which they nourished it. Your daughters must not be given to their sons. Their daughters must not be married to your sons.” Those were your rules. After all that has happened to us because of our misconduct, are we still going to disobey your orders, Yahweh? Are we going to ally ourselves with these nations and their abominations? How could you not be angry – so angry that you would destroy what is left of us? Yahweh, God of Israel, here we are before you, in sin. And we will not be able to stand upright until that sin has been atoned for. Oh, Yahweh, we cannot stand upright before you until the clean have been separated from the unclean.’