by Howard Fast
“You’ll live again,” he said evenly. “This is a house of death, Simon ben Mattathias. Come out in the sun.”
I followed him outside, and we stood there in the village street. The village was waking, giving its daily evidence of the tenacity of life. Somewhere, a child laughed. Three chickens fled through the dust, their wings beating. Jonathan and Eleazar came out of the house of Mattathias, and they joined us.
“Where is the Adon?” Judas asked them.
“He went to the synagogue with John and Rabbi Ragesh.”
“Bring me water,” Judas said to Jonathan, “so I can wash before I pray.” Jonathan brought him a basin of water and a towel, and he washed there, before Moses ben Aaron’s house. The men of the village greeted Judas quietly, as they went by on their way to the synagogue, and the women stood at the doors of their houses, some of them crying, some of them looking at us pityingly.
“Go ahead,” Judas told my brothers, and he walked behind with me, his arm around my shoulders.
“Who told you about Ruth?” I wanted to know.
“The Adon.”
“Everything?”
“The rest I can guess, Simon. Simon, I ask only one thing—that when the time comes, Apelles will be mine, not yours.” I didn’t care. Ruth was dead and nothing would bring her back.
“Promise me, Simon.”
“As you wish—it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. This is the end of something—it’s the beginning too.”
We came to the synagogue and entered. The ark stood bare and desecrated; no one had replaced the torn hangings. The men of the village stood in a circle around the Adon and someone else, and when Judas came forward, the circle opened, and I saw next to the Adon a small, wonderfully ugly man, sharp-eyed, alert, a little past fifty, perhaps.
“The Rabbi Ragesh,” Judas said, “and this is my other brother, Simon ben Mattathias.”
Ragesh spun to face me. He was incredibly alert and quick, with tiny blue eyes that seemed to sparkle always. Grasping both my hands in his, he answered,
“Shalom. I greet with pleasure a son of Mattathias. May you be a refuge for Israel.”
“And unto you peace,” I answered dully.
“This is a black day in a black year,” Ragesh went on. “But let your heart swell with hatred, Simon ben Mattathias, not with despair.”
Hatred, I thought, and I was being schooled. There was a time when I knew love and hope and peace, and now it was only hatred, and there was nothing else left, only that.
The Rabbi Ragesh was a guest, and he led the prayers. In the cool morning, the men stood motionless, wrapped from head to foot in their striped cloaks, their faces cowled as Ragesh intoned:
Sha ma Yisroel, Adonai Elohano, Adonai ehchad…
(Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.)
My eyes sought for Moses ben Aaron and found him, and then the sun rose and flooded the old synagogue with light. We prayed for the dead. I was also dead; I lived, but I was dead. We finished, and by now almost all of the village was in the synagogue, the women as well as the men, and children too.
“What does the Lord ask?” Rabbi Ragesh said, intoning it like a prayer.
“He asks obedience.”
“Amen—so be it,” the people said.
“Resistance to tyranny—is that not obedience to God?” the little stranger demanded gently.
“So be it,” the people said.
“And if a serpent strike at my heel, shall I not crush it underfoot?”
“So be it,” the people said, the women weeping softly.
“And if Israel is stricken, shall it not raise itself?”
“So be it,” they said.
“And if there is no man to judge Israel, shall it believe that God has forsaken it?”
“So be it,” the people said.
“Or shall a Maccabee rise up out of the people?”
“Amen,” the people said, and Ragesh answered them, “Amen—so be it.”
He walked forward through the congregation to where Judas stood, placed a hand on either shoulder, drew him forward and kissed him upon the lips.
“Talk to them,” he said to Judas.
I told you how Judas was humble, yet the humility was gone. He went to the front of the synagogue and stood there bathed in a great beam of sunlight, his travel-stained cloak hanging from his broad shoulders, his head bent, his auburn beard glowing as if there were a fire in it. I looked from him to my father, the Adon, and the old man wept unashamed.
“I walked through the land,” Judas said, very quietly, so that the people had to crowd up to hear him, “and I saw how the people suffered. As in Modin, it was everywhere, and there is no happiness in Judea. And wherever I went, I said to the people, What will you do? What will you do?”
Judas paused, and in the deep stillness of the synagogue there was only one sound, the weeping of the mother of Ruth. His voice louder, deeper, more resonant, Judas said:
“Why do you weep, my mother? Is there nothing but tears for us? I don’t come here for tears; I have wept enough and Israel has wept enough. I saw the strength of the people in all their thousands, but there was only one man who knew what to do, the Rabbi Ragesh, whom the people of all the South call their father. In the village of Dan, he asked the people, Is it better to die on your feet—or to live on your knees, you who are Jews and have made an ancient covenant not to bend your knee to anyone—even to God? So when the mercenaries came, he led the people into the hills and I went with him. For ten days we lived in caves. For weapons, we had only knives and a few bows, yet we could have fought. But Philippus came with his mercenaries on the Sabbath day and the people would not fight because it was God’s day, and the mercenaries cut them down. Yet I fought and Ragesh fought—and we live to fight again. Then I ask my father here, Mattathias, the Adon—I ask him what God demands! Shall we be slain, or shall we fight?”
The people turned to the Adon, who looked at Judas—and that way, minutes went by, and at long last, the Adon said:
“The Sabbath day is holy, but life is holier.”
“Hear my father!” Judas cried, his voice ringing.
The women still wept, but the men’s faces were turned up to Judas as if they had never seen him before.
***
How can I say what I felt, what I was, and what I became then, when this woman, who was all women, died? How can I say that—I, Simon, the son of Mattathias? It is recorded by the scribes who set down those things that I took a wife—but that was after, long after. Now there was only a cold hatred inside of me, and there was something else inside of Judas. Eleazar, the good-natured, the huge man, stronger and easier-going than anyone else in Modin—he too was not as he was before, nor was my brother Jonathan, still hardly more than a boy. Even John was strangely different, the gentle, passive John—the almost saintly John, who had already fallen into the old routine of so many Jews, a day’s work in the field, a bath, supper with his family—and then study with the scrolls in the synagogue, the holy scrolls that made us the people of the Book, the Word, and the words, where it is written:
How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwelling places, O Israel…
The warm aura of that, the enfolding quality of it—“Thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwelling places, O Israel!” We are a people of peace; consider it now, we have a greeting as ancient as the ages, in this fashion, “Shalom” to which one answers, “Alaichem shalom.” And thus it is: “Peace”… “And unto thee, peace.” Whatever the other nations say, when we raise a glass of wine, we have but one toast, Lachiam (Life), for is it not written that three things are holier than others—Peace, Life, and Justice?
We are a peaceful folk and a patient folk with a long memory—so long that it reaches eternally to that time when we w
ere slaves, when we were bondsmen in the land of Egypt. There is no glory in war for us, and we alone have no mercenaries. Yet our patience is not endless.
***
I must tell you how Apelles returned, and why his name too is written down by our scribes, so that Jews may always remember. But before he returned, the sons of Mattathias gathered under the old man’s rooftree, the five of us and the Adon—and there too was Rabbi Ragesh and Ruben ben Tubel, the smith. A strange man, Ruben the smith, short and wide and so powerful that he could bend an iron bar in his hands, and dark, dark of skin and hair with black eyes, and covered all over, from head to foot, with wiry black hair. His family was an old one, out of the tribe of Benjamin, and back to a hundred years before the exile his people had been workers in iron, always people of the forge and hammer. During the exile, his family was one that had not left Judea, but lived for three generations in caves, like beasts. He could work all metals, and like so many Jewish metal workers, he knew the secret of the Dead Sea silicate, how to blend it and melt it and blow it into glass. He was not a learned man, and even as a child I remarked and snickered over the difficulty with which he read from the Torah—but when I had laughed at him once openly, the Adon fetched me a sharp blow across the ear, telling me, “Save your laughter for fools, not for a man who knows secrets you will never dream of.”
On this evening, the Adon asked him to come. It was not often that he was under our roof. His wife had scrubbed his linen until it shone on him, white as snow, yet he entered gingerly, and when the Adon motioned for him to join us at the table, he shook his head. “If it please the Adon, I will stand.”
My father, who was so strangely wise with all men, did not press him, and all through our talk, he stood. His stillness, his deep and implacable calm, contrasted oddly with the nervous vitality of Rabbi Ragesh, who could not sit still, who was up and down and all over the room, pacing back and forth, darting at us suddenly, emphasizing his words by constantly clapping a clenched fist into an open palm, as when he said:
“Resist! Resist! Resist! That must be like a watchword, like a beacon up and down the land—wherever there are Jews—resist! Smite the conquerer—”
“And he smites back,” the Adon said softly.
“Oh, I am sick of that kind of talk!” Ragesh cried.
“My blood boils as hot as yours,” my father answered coldly. “I stood in front of all my people, and Apelles struck me, and I stood there so that the people could live to see another morning. And when I came to the Temple and a pig’s head sat upon the altar, I swallowed my grief and my anger. It’s easy to die, Rabbi! Show me a way to fight and live!”
“There will be no turning back,” John agreed, his long face sad and troubled. “It will not be as it was in the South, Rabbi Ragesh, where a few folk went into the hills and died. The whole land will rise up when they hear that the Adon Mattathias ben John has raised himself against the Greek. Then, when they come down on the land with twenty, or thirty, or a hundred thousand mercenaries—who will remain in Israel to weep?”
“And we fight back!” Ragesh cried. “What do you say—you, Simon?”
I shook my head. “You ask the wrong man when you ask someone who cares less for life than for death. But it would be slaughter—as it was when our fathers fought and our grandfathers. They take a mercenary at the age of six; they raise him in a barracks; day and night, he practices the art of killing. That is all he knows and all he lives for, to wear forty pounds of armor, to fight in a phalanx under heavy shields, to wield a battle ax or a sword. And against that we have our knives and our bows. And as for heavy weapons or armor—Ruben, how many men could you arm with the metal here in Modin, with spear, sword, shield and breastplate—just with that and no greaves and no helmet and no arm-pieces?”
“In iron?” the smith asked.
“In iron.”
Ruben considered, calculated on his fingers, and then said, “If you hammered out plow blades, sickles and hoes—twenty men under light armor. But it would be a long task,” he sighed. “And where would our crop come from when we hammered out our plows?”
“And even if it were possible,” I said, “and God gave us iron as he gave us manna, when we were a landless folk in the desert, where would the men come from? Could we raise out of Israel a hundred thousand men? Then who would feed them? Who would till the land? Who would be left? And if we raised a hundred thousand men, how many years would it take to train them to fight?”
“We know how to fight,” Judas said.
“In a phalanx?”
“Is that the only way to fight? What happened two years ago when the Greeks put their phalanx against the Romans? The Romans used the pilum and smashed the phalanx to pieces. And someday, someone will train mercenaries with a new weapon—no, it’s not new weapons we need, but a new kind of war. What kind of fools are we that when this king or that king marches his mercenaries into our land, we go up against them on a level plain and die! We send a rabble to be cut to pieces by a machine! That’s not war—it’s slaughter!”
The Adon leaned forward, his eyes alight. “What are you thinking, my son?”
“Of how men fight—and for a year I’ve thought of nothing else. They fight for booty, for loot, for gold, and for slaves. We fight for our land. They have mercenaries and arms. We have the land and a free people. Those are our weapons—the land and the people, our arms and our armor. We have our bows and our knives—we need nothing else. Spears, perhaps, and Ruben could hammer out a hundred spearheads in a week. Could you, Ruben?”
“Spearheads, yes,” the smith nodded. “A spear is not a breastplate or a sword.”
“And we fight our way—and they fight our way,” Judas cried, looking from face to face. “When Rabbi Ragesh led his people into the caves—and I did not know then, Rabbi—and they followed, the people waited to die. That’s not the way. We’ve died for too long. It’s their turn now.”
“How, Judas, how?” John said.
“Let them look for us! Let them send in their armies! An army cannot climb like a goat, but we can! Let there be an arrow behind every rock—in every tree! Let there be rocks on every cliff! We’ll never face them, never oppose them, never try to stop them—but cut at them and cut at them and cut at them, so that they can never sleep without expecting our arrows at night, so that they never dare enter a narrow pass, so that all Judea becomes a trap for them! Let them march their armies through the land—we’ll be in the hills! Let them come into the hills—every rock will live! Let them look for us, and we’ll spread out and fade like the mist! Let them put their army through a pass, and we’ll cut it up as you cut a snake.”
“And when they come to the villages?” I asked.
“The villages will be empty. Can they garrison the thousand towns of Judea?”
“And if they burn the villages?”
“We will live in the hills—in caves if we have to. And the war will become our strength, just as the land is our strength.”
“And for how long?” John said.
And Ragesh returned, “Forever—if need be until the judgment day.”
“It will not be forever,” Judas said.
And Eleazar, resting his great arms on the table, leaned forward toward Judas, his head lifted and smiling; and Jonathan was smiling too, not with mirth but with something he saw, his young face aglow in the lamplight, his eyes shining.
***
I could not sleep and I went out into the night—and there was a man on the hillside, and when I went close to him, I saw that it was the Adon Mattathias, my father, wrapped in his woolen cloak and looking at the valley as it slumbered in the moonlight. “Welcome, Simon,” he said to me, “and come and stand by me, for an old man is better with his son by his side.” I went to him, and he put an arm around my shoulders. “What do you look for, Father?” I asked him, and he answered, shrugg
ing, “It could be the angel of death who walks so often in Judea—or it could be these silver hills, and to look at them once more, Simon, for they cleave to me and this is the old land of my fathers. And you come out here because grief and hatred is a knife in you that cuts at your heart. Would you believe me, Simon, that I loved a woman as much once, and she died in childbirth, and my heart hardened like a rock and I cried out to the God of Israel, May you be damned, for you gave me five sons and took away the only thing on earth that I love! A just God weighs a man’s grief against his tongue, for consider how singularly have I been blessed in these, my withered years. My five sons have not turned against me, for all of my coldness and hardness, nor has one of them raised a hand against another, and of even the sons of Jacob, blessed of memory, that could not be said. How then, Simon, will your own heart turn to stone?”
“Do you want me to laugh with joy?” I asked.
The old man nodded, his long white beard sweeping his chest. “I do, Simon,” he said. “We are each of us here for a day. How long ago was it that Mattathias kissed a woman under that olive tree? I close my eyes, and it was no more than yesterday, and we are here for an instant on the body of old Israel. God wants no tears, but laughter, and the dead sleep well. For the living there should be a joyful time, otherwise fight no more, Simon—and how can you fight, or hope, or believe, if you cleave to the dead?”
“With hatred,” I said.
“Hatred? Believe me, my son, it’s poor fuel for a Jew. How is it written in the holy scrolls they burned? And proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. Did Isaiah command the people to hatred, or did he tell them to let justice well up as water, and righteousness as a mighty stream? Save your hatred for your enemy, my son—for your own people there must be love and hope, otherwise put down your bow before ever you lay a shaft on the string. Look now, Simon, did God give Ragesh, that tempestuous little man, the only right to say who is the Maccabee? Only the people can make out of themselves a Maccabee and raise him up. Yes, they will follow Judas because he is like a flame—and I, who am his father, say it to you, who are his brother, that never before in Israel was there such a man as Judas—no, not even Gideon, may God forgive me; but the flame burns out, and who will take the ashes and make new life grow out of them? Simon, Simon—”