by Nino Ricci
From the very start we had our enemies, those who couldn’t bear that someone should come to us saying things which they themselves hadn’t thought of or who saw the devil’s work in anything that questioned their own authority. In Migdal, Sapphias was quick to speak out against Yeshua at sabbath prayer, as was the teacher at Kefar Nahum, and in Korazin one of the leaders there, Matthias bar Qeynan, whose injustices Yeshua had often denounced, had taken up cause against him. Then Yeshua called down on himself the wrath of the elders of Tsef when he spoke out against one of their judgements. The incident involved the stoning of a woman, a rare event in our region and in this case one that I had the misfortune of seeing with my own eyes, since my father and I happened to be at the Tsef market the day it occurred.
Tsef had always been much looked to for wisdom in the region. But its elders were a hard and unforgiving group, all of them followers of the house of Shammai. On this day they had condemned a woman for sorcery and had led her out to the gates at the head of a mob. Afterwards they claimed it had been their intention only to chase the woman from the town. But my father and I saw that the crowd had been incited and was already armed, and the poor woman had hardly stepped from the gates before people began to hurl their missiles at her. They chased her through the market until a throw caught her leg and she fell. The rest was too miserable to relate—what had been human was within minutes reduced to a bloodied mass. My father tried to shield me but I was as if spellbound, unable to take my eyes from the woman though I’d had only the most fleeting glimpse of her before she’d been rendered unrecognizable.
I had never witnessed a stoning and was dumbfounded at the violence of it. Afterwards the elders said they had never given the order for the first stone, but also that they would have been within the law to do so, since the woman, who was well known as a sorceress, had been caught in the very act of conjuring demons against them. But when Yeshua heard of the event he was quick to condemn them.
They want to make it seem that they’re both merciful and just, when they’re neither, he said.
He went to the town and spoke to the people there. Most of them, because they had been among the woman’s executioners, were ready to chase him away; but a few were willing to admit the woman had done no one any harm. So Yeshua stood at the gate and questioned the elders’ actions, and said the blood of the woman was on them for not preventing her death. The elders quickly sent their supporters to argue with him and ridicule his position. But when these were unable to defeat him by argument, they threw stones at him to silence him, seeming ready to repeat the crime they’d committed only days before.
In the following weeks several matters were brought to light that showed Yeshua had spoken truly. It was revealed that the woman was a Syrian and had long been an enemy of the elders, who had tried to cheat her of property that had been in her family for generations. In order to get their way the elders had stirred the town up against her, using the old blood hatred that still existed between the Syrians and the Jews. It was only because of Yeshua that these things came out at all, for no one else would have dared to question Tsef’s elders as he did. There followed a great debate in the region as to whether they had acted justly, though Yeshua, meanwhile, was accused of fomenting discord, even if it was the elders, as he pointed out, who had stirred people’s hate. The truth was that in taking the part of the Syrians, Yeshua had no doubt helped to stave off further bloodshed, for they thus were able to see that not every Jew was against them.
Even among Yeshua’s followers, however, there was some confusion as to what he intended in this matter and whether his own teachings, since he defended a sorceress, went against the law. He wouldn’t answer these people directly, but asked instead how many of them had broken the sabbath in some small way, or had kept an idol or charm in their homes, or had taken the Lord’s name in vain. He told the story from the scriptures of the man found gathering sticks on the sabbath who was put to death, and it was clear from the looks on his listeners’ faces that not one of them was guilty of less. In this way he made people think in a manner that hadn’t occurred to them before, and see how the law must be tempered with mercy or not one of us would be spared. Meanwhile I, who couldn’t put from my mind the stoning and the look on the woman’s face when she fell, was able to take some comfort from Yeshua’s defence of her. I thought of my mother, who, though my father always rooted them out, even now made secret idols of her old gods, and I wondered how many deaths she would have suffered at the hands of Tsef’s elders.
This incident earned Yeshua many opponents, especially among those who had power in one way or another and feared Yeshua would question their own authority as he had that of the leaders of Tsef. In Tsef itself, the elders issued an order condemning Yeshua’s teachings and barring him from the town. But the Lord worked to turn adversity to Yeshua’s favour, for there were many who hadn’t heard of him before or taken him seriously who suddenly paid him attention. Often a crowd gathered now when he arrived in a town to preach, where before there had been only a handful; and our evening meetings could no longer be accommodated in my father’s house or Shimon’s and often had to be held in the open or in the assembly house at Kinneret, where the teacher was sympathetic to us.
Because of the attack against Yeshua at Tsef, Shimon insisted that some of the men travel with him at all times now whenever he preached. It was mainly Shimon himself who did this at first, along with Yaqob and Yohanan, whom Yeshua called his Sons of Thunder. But soon they recruited others to help them—Philip from Bet Zayda, and Thomas and Aram from Kinneret, and Kaleb and Thaddaios and Salman from Kefar Nahum. Yeshua said he was afraid he would be taken for a bandit chief, travelling with such an army of men. But as time went on he came to enjoy their company, and even took to inviting the women with him when he preached, who were mainly myself, when my father could spare me, and Ribqah, and Noadiah, the sister of Yohanan and Yaqob, and Shelomah, a woman from Kinneret. Because we travelled in such a group, and the women a bit apart, no one remarked on us and we moved about freely, as far as Sennabris along the lake and Cana in the hills. In each town we visited there was a house we would go to that Yeshua had chosen, as he had chosen our own in Migdal; and here we would meet with his followers and often share a meal.
Many of the towns we went to in this way were ones that I had never laid eyes on before or knew little of, and it was a revelation to see the different ways in which people lived, how in the hills, for instance, they ate mainly lentils and meats, which we rarely saw on the lake, or made their fires of pine instead of poplar, which gave its own particular smell. The houses Yeshua visited in these places were often enough the merest hovels, yet that hardly mattered to him—he had come to them, I discovered, much as he had come to our own, because someone there had learned of him or heard him speak at the gates, and had been moved to take him in. So he let himself be chosen and refused no one who welcomed him, regardless of their station or their wealth, and in this way seemed always to find those who were truest of heart. There was such an intimacy to these house meetings—the talk of the men, the old women past hearing, the children who Yeshua always won over, staring out from corners—that I often felt as if I had stumbled into them by the merest good fortune. Later, when the crowds grew and we were forced to meet in the open, I missed those days of courtyards and kitchens with their cooking fires and the smell of food, the sense then of some tremendous secret I had entered into.
When we were among the crowds it was clear that something had been lost, since we couldn’t be sure of those who came and what their intentions were or if they understood. And from the questions that were put and the judgements we heard in the streets, we could see that despite all those who listened now, there were still few who accepted Yeshua’s message. Either people couldn’t make sense of him, or they thought him a rebel and were frightened, or they thought him merely clever like the charlatans in the cities and feared being taken in by him; and so while they were drawn to listen to him, becaus
e he spoke with authority, they wouldn’t dare to say that they followed him. Then there were some who had followed Yohanan who began to say that Yeshua had strayed from his teachings and was not fit to call himself his disciple, since Yohanan had spoken of repentance and of God’s anger like the prophets of the past while Yeshua spoke only of God’s love. Someone was sent to Yohanan’s prison cell then to ask him his view and Yohanan said, Since I didn’t speak like my teachers but only like Yohanan, why shouldn’t Yeshua speak like Yeshua. But this only caused more dissension, as some said he had supported Yeshua while others that he had not.
Then it happened once when we were in Arbela that a leper somehow escaped from the colony nearby and came to Yeshua as he was addressing a crowd at the gates. A shout went up at the sight of him, and some picked up sticks to strike him, chastising him for not declaring himself as he approached. But Yeshua at once quieted the crowd and asked the leper his business.
I heard a holy man had come, he said, and hoped he knew the way to make me clean.
Leave that to God, someone said.
But Yeshua, to the crowd’s amazement, went up to the man and removed the cowl that had covered his face. His skin was spotted with sores, festering and red.
I have a family that starves while I rot here, the man said, and Yeshua, surprising us, replied, I can help you.
He followed the man back to the colony, the crowd keeping pace behind him to see what he would do. At the gates the guards, who were Herod’s men, must have taken him for a priest because they let him through without argument, and did not seem to care that the man he accompanied had escaped from under their supervision. We were all startled that Yeshua so willingly turned himself over to impurity, though those of us who were his disciples were concerned for him, while those who were not thought him merely foolhardy. An hour passed, then more, until the crowd had dispersed and only we who were close to him remained.
It was almost sunset before Yeshua emerged. Aram of Kinneret, who was Thomas’s cousin, was with us then and said, Because of the leper you lost the crowd.
In the leper, I’m sure of a follower, Yeshua said. In the crowd I was sure of none.
But he’s a leper. You’ve made yourself unclean.
Is it a greater evil to risk uncleanness or to turn down help to someone who needs it, Yeshua asked, and Aram was unable to answer him.
When we returned to the lake, Yeshua washed to purify himself, then remained apart from us until the evening of the following day, as the law required. After that we thought no more of the leper, nor did we ask Yeshua what help he had given him, for we imagined only that he had prayed for him. But when some days had passed, a man appeared at Shimon’s gate while we were meeting there and asked after Yeshua. When we recognized him, we stood amazed: it was the leper from Arbela, cured.
Go to the priest in Tiberias, Yeshua told him, and have him pronounce you clean according to the law. But see you tell no one who cured you.
Those of us who’d been at Arbela were in awe at the sight of the man—it was as if some invisible hand had come down and wiped him clean. Had I not seen the change with my own eyes I would hardly have believed it possible.
Aram, who was with us, whispered that perhaps Yeshua had used sorcery. But Yeshua, overhearing him, said, If someone is well now who was sick before, where is the sorcery. Sorcery appeals to the devil, who only makes things worse. So if the man is better, it must be the will of God.
Yet it was true we were all of us made afraid by what we’d seen and for many days didn’t speak of it, heeding the warning that Yeshua himself had given to the leper. But the leper, for his part, didn’t hold his tongue, for it happened not long afterwards that others began to seek Yeshua out at the house of Shimon in order to be cured. The first who came, a mother with a child who had taken ill, Yeshua refused to see, making Shimon take him out on the lake by the back way. But when they returned to the house to find the mother still waiting at the gate, Yeshua did for the child what he could. In the morning the woman came back with a gift of olives and grain, saying her child was cured, and Yeshua, refusing her gift, sent her away with the same warning he’d given the leper. But the next day, instead of one at the gate, there were three, and because these too saw their ailments vanish after Yeshua had ministered to them, the numbers continued to grow.
In the towns of our region there were several who were said to be skilled as healers, both pagan and Jew. These, for a price, made infusions or balms or invested a charm or broke a curse, and so drew people in. But since our leaders didn’t approve of them and accused them of sorcery, they didn’t practise openly, and asked for payments that many of us couldn’t afford. Yeshua asked no price for his cures and refused payment of any sort even when it was pressed on him, so that at first people doubted him on that account. But it wasn’t long before it grew clear that he was more gifted than any of our own healers, though he shunned talismans and invocations and required no sacrifice or offering except thanks to the Lord. Because people had never seen such a healer before, they didn’t know at first what to make of him, except that they went away cured; and I could see that his healing was no mere magic or enchantment but a sort of power that flowed through him in his very touch, and that surely must have sprung from the Lord. Sometimes he need only lay his palm on a sick child’s brow for the fever to lift, or move his hands over a crippled leg for the bones to find their place, and the lame to walk again.
I had never seen such wonders nor heard their like spoken of even from Judea, and the truth was I felt a confusion now in the face of them, for this was a man I had known who had suddenly become a stranger to me in his power. I wondered why he had never revealed this side of himself to us, if he had thought us unworthy of it or imagined it beyond our comprehension. But soon enough it was clear what had deterred him, for once the word of his healing had spread he was immediately suspected of sorcery and of every manner of sacrilege. The elders of Tsef called for his banishment, saying it was only for the Lord to heal, since it was the Lord who afflicted; while others said that because Yeshua believed in life after death, as the Pharisees did, he did no favour to the sick by curing them, only delaying their journey to God.
Yeshua’s answer to these charges was always that it was only by God’s will that people were cured, not his own; and it was true that there were many who came to him for whom he could do nothing, though whether because of their own sinfulness and lack of faith, or because of God’s greater plan, Yeshua wouldn’t say. This led some to accuse him of deception, for if he couldn’t cure all those who came to him, then perhaps those he did cure were merely the ones to whom God would have tended in his own time. To these Yeshua said, Since I take no payment and ask for no tribute to myself but only to God, where is the deceit. Nonetheless there were still those who tried to stir people against him, saying that the scriptures condemned healers as devil-workers, even though they themselves often stole to them in the dead of night when they had need of them.
In the end, however, Yeshua’s enemies couldn’t touch him, not only because they lacked the authority but because of the immense need in our region for a healer who respected people and wouldn’t cheat them. I had seen the children who were brought to him with worms in their bellies or close to death with fever and those who came with crushed limbs or fits of possession or wounds that festered and reeked and wouldn’t heal. All of these Yeshua tended to, with good results, when otherwise poverty would have kept them from any healer, or worse, they would have spent their last pennies on charlatans without any respite from their suffering. I couldn’t imagine how any evil could be seen in this, or how the scriptures could forbid what was clearly good, though I too had been raised to believe it was for God to see to our fates, and only devilry to try to change them. So I had thought the sick cursed and deserving of their lot, but Yeshua taught us differently. What child deserved to suffer, he said, or what family to starve because the father took ill; and indeed it was clear to me, from being at Yeshua’s
side, that the sick were not any more given to evil than the rest of us.
It was in this time that Yeshua began to make his weekly visits to the camp at Arbela. He went about the visits quietly at first, so even those of us close to him were unaware of them; but as soon as the matter became known he went more openly and without shame. He insisted on going alone and so we knew only that the inmates welcomed him and that many were cured. But amongst ourselves we tried to make sense of his mission there, since the law told us to shun the very beings Yeshua embraced. Shimon and some of the others said it was Yeshua’s way to show us, as he taught, that we must look to the inner person and not the outer one, but in my heart I didn’t agree. Though I didn’t have the words to say the thing clearly, I thought it was exactly the outer person that Yeshua embraced, because he didn’t disdain the lepers’ rotting flesh but accepted it. It was what I had understood when I worked beside him with the sick—the imperfect flesh we were made of, the blood and the filth of it, and how Yeshua didn’t shun it but laid on his hands.