The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  Galatea took her plunge. “I hope you won’t find my question inappropriate, Master Ezekiel, but I am struck by the color of the twine hanging from your waist. Does it hold a religious meaning?”

  Yehezkel said, smiling, “Oh, that. It’s just a personal amulet to remind me to go to Jerusalem.”

  “Is that what it’s there for?” asked Galatea, startled. “Have you ever been to the Holy Land? I’ve always dreamed of going, but . . . no, no, first I must know, please: how does that color remind you of your vow?”

  “To your first question: no, I haven’t been, but I trust God to grant me that privilege someday. As for your second question, the answer is complicated, but suffice it to say that for a certain school of Jewish mystics, there is a connection between this color and manifestations of the divine . . . in this world.”

  Galatea’s eyes widened in surprise. Yehezkel thought, “Lord of the Universe, this nun is dangerously beautiful. Why did you place her on my path? Are you putting me to the test? Don’t you think I could turn around, later, and say: ‘if you didn’t want me to do it, then why did you pull her out of the water and fling her into my arms?’”

  “Manifestations of the divine,” Galatea was thinking instead. “What greater authority than a ‘school of Jewish mystics’ could one turn to for the interpretation of mysteries glimpsed through visions? After all, had I not known of the divine nature of that blue?” Embarrassment and hesitation vanished.

  “Master Ezekiel, I hope you won’t take what I’m about to say as the ravings of a feverish nun . . . but it was no coincidence that you were the one to save me! Tell me, do you believe that certain men and women are granted dreams and waking visions of a divine nature?”

  “I believe it deeply, madame, more than my reason would like . . .”

  “Well, then you must know that I had a premonition of what happened Sunday night, of the name you bear, of the blue you wear, and of an enigma whose solution is in Jerusalem!”

  Except for Aillil, lost in his cup of hippocras, everyone was aghast, mouths half open, unable to believe they had just heard the abbess pronounce those words. They were likely witnessing the ruin of the mother superior of a Cistercian house, and in the sort of circumstances that give birth to legends. Then again, the rumormongers would have said, hadn’t falling into the lagoon under a full moon already raised doubts about Mother Galatea’s mental composure?

  Yehezkel was at once flattered by the attention to his person, intrigued by the mention of Jerusalem, and painfully aware of the spell cast by the reckless nun’s eyes. He felt the sudden need to avoid the rest of that conversation at all costs and turned to Gudrun. “Sister, here are some wild fennel, wild dill, and horehound. Please prepare a tisane for the abbess by boiling them in wine and straining the decoction through a piece of linen.”

  Then, to Galatea, with an embarrassed grin, “I am a pilgrim again from tomorrow, madame. Since Divine Providence so strangely brushed us against each other, please accept my blessing.”

  Galatea bit her lip. “He’s leaving tomorrow! I must wrench the secret of my destiny from him now, before he leaves the inn. But isn’t his departure a denial from above of the role I wish to assign him? No! Only he can lead me to the enigma!”

  “Forgive my insistence, Master Ezekiel, but I wish to ask you one last question, the answer to which is more important to me than you can imagine. I have a doubt I feel only you can resolve, and if you won’t do so . . . well, then it would have been better if you had let me drown!”

  Yehezkel remained strangely calm amidst the gasps of shock around him. From the moment he’d seen the senseless, dripping face of the woman he had plucked from the lagoon, he had known in his gut he would not be able to avoid what was happening. He nodded, waiting for her question.

  “I would like you to listen to the first two words of a hymn I’ve been dreaming every night, sung by six virgins. I don’t understand a word they sing, but I feel certain you will. It won’t take a moment . . .”

  With a deep breath, Galatea was about to put the finishing touch to the follies of her Passion Week, breaking into song before everyone like a totally different kind of female guest of that inn, but stopped when she saw Yehezkel gesticulating in horror before he could even get a word out.

  “Nooo! Please don’t sing, madame! It is expressly forbidden for a Jew to hear a woman’s voice singing!” He let out a long sigh, like someone just missed by a galloping horse. “I think . . . I think I’ve done everything my duties as a medicus required of me, in the circumstances. May God be with you, my good sisters, and . . . Happy Easter!”

  He grabbed Aillil’s hand, and they left before the abbess could even return the greeting.

  As he untied the skiff ’s mooring, Yehezkel said to himself that the nun seemed to suffer not so much from the travails of a mystic as from the lasciviousness that assails Christians who choose to perversely abstain from what the Torah calls “becoming one flesh” with one’s husband or wife.

  He stopped. “Now be honest, Yehezkel. You may not be a Christian, but you’re one of those, too!”

  As soon as they were back in the cottage, Rav Eleazar conducted the evening service of Ma’ariv. Aillil wandered through the dimly lit room, hungry and woozy from the hippocras. After a while, lulled by the drone of ten praying voices, now and then overlaid by a sudden strain of song, the boy drifted off.

  The rabbis of course knew of the Christian campaign to retake the Holy Sepulchre, long promoted by Innocent III and finally launched two years earlier by his successor, Honorius III. Damietta, a city at the mouth of the Nile, had been under Christian siege for over a year, and in a corner of the room, Rav Isaiah of Trani was questioning Rav Yehiel of Paris, who had been on board the season’s first ship to arrive from Acre and bore fresh news from Outremer. The news Rav Yehiel brought was not good.

  “Al Muazzam, Caliph of Damascus and brother of the new Sultan of Egypt al-Malik al-Kamil, may God grant him long life, has ordered Jerusalem’s walls demolished. Work was to begin last month.”

  “Whaat? It can’t be!” cried Rav Isaiah, throwing his short arms in the air. “That means al-Kamil intends to return the city to the Christians!”

  Yehezkel and another rabbi moved closer, intrigued. Rav Yehiel explained. “I’m afraid you’re right, Isaiah. Two months ago, al-Kamil had to abandon his camp in the Delta and rush back to al-Kahira*14 to deal with the plot of a Kurdish son of a dog from the Hakkarite tribe.”

  Everyone except Rav Eleazar had now gathered around the Parisian rabbi and hung on his every word.

  “The troops woke up without their leader and ran after the Sultan, leaving everything in the camp: arms, horses, tents, supplies. The cursed Franks took everything. And that’s not all: the Franks—may God confound them!—crossed the Nile branch west of the island and reached the foot of Damietta’s walls. The city has been completely encircled for two months!”

  Yehezkel tried to insert a sarcastic comment on the behavior of the Sultan’s army, but the others shushed him, urging the Parisian to continue.

  “Mercifully, God came to al-Kamil’s assistance. His brother arrived from Damascus in the nick of time, and together they dealt with the plot—many Kurdish heads rolled on the sand! Nevertheless, al-Muazzam’s orders, as Isaiah rightly says, imply that the sultan feels he may have to make a deal on Jerusalem with the Franks to save Egypt.”

  Rav Eleazar prefaced their last talk with the by-now-customary prayer for martyrs. It was particularly moving pronounced by the German mystic, since everyone present knew that on a winter night in 1196, in Mainz, cross-wearing knights had forced their way into his home and killed his wife Dulcina, his daughters Belat and Hannah, and his son Yaakov. Though badly wounded, he had escaped alive.

  After the prayer, he began, “My friends, sages of Israel, I asked you to come here because Satan has found out about our Talmud! That Christian attitudes toward us have changed for the worse is not news, but now I fear they’re turning their d
eadly attentions to the work of our blessed sages . . .”

  Rav Eleazar chose his words with care to describe the dangers hanging over the Talmud. “The bishop of Heidelberg is a friend of the Jews. On coming back from a trip to Rome, he told me what is happening in the church. Behind most accusations against the Talmud are Jewish apostates.”

  “May they be cursed for eternity!” cried Rav Yitzhak. “They hate Israel more than Satan does!”

  “But they must not be underestimated,” said Rav Eleazar. “As you know, once they accept baptism, the fools goad the monks against the Talmud, the very thing that kept us alive in exile these thousand years. They whisper in their ears that it is not from Sinai but is a recent work that contradicts the Torah . . .”

  He lowered his voice. “The bishop told me that a certain Domingo of Guzman, as sharp and fanatical as only Spanish monks can be, seeks out Jewish converts. He has convinced the pope to recognize his preaching order and wants the church to declare the Talmud a Jewish heresy!”

  Rav Isaiah said, “Yes, I heard talk of him in Italy. They say his mother dreamt of giving birth to a dog that set the world on fire. They call it a divine omen, but now her dog wants to burn the Talmud!”

  Yehezkel saw himself in another kitchen, the Spanish monk weeping on a stool in front of him. “I met him, ten years ago,” he murmured. “He claimed no connection to Guzman nobility then, and only called himself Domingo de Caleruega. We both spent the night in the house of the Cathar family who took in Aillil on the day Carcassonne fell . . .”

  Rav Yitzhak gave him an incredulous look. “You were at the siege of Carcassonne?”

  Yehezkel nodded silently and then said, “There were two perfecti there that night, too. I remember having the better of Domingo in a sort of disputatio, but a child could have done so in those days. The monk was so distraught he wept for the dead in Béziers as if he were a Cathar himself . . .”

  “So that’s why,” said Rav Yitzhak. “Carcassonne fell in August, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, on the fifteenth, to be precise. Why?” asked Yehezkel.

  “Because that was a month before the council at Avignon, in September. I read all the bulls issued at Avignon, Yehezkel. Your disputatio with Domingo was enough for the pope to forbid not just trading with Jews, but talking with them about ‘any topic whatsoever!’ Now I understand that phrase. The Spaniard must have insisted on including it after meeting you. You must have really provoked the cursed monk . . .”

  Rav Eleazar took back the reins of the conversation with unusual force. “Enough, Yitzhak. We’re here to defend the Talmud against that dog, not to discover why he hates it.” He hesitated. “There are things I cannot speak of, but it’s becoming clear that the church has decided to eliminate all threats to her continued control over the minds of goyim. The weakest threat, the Cathars, was the first to fall, and now they’re coming after us . . . when they have isolated, expelled, or massacred the Jews they will turn to their strongest enemy, the one they could never defeat today.”

  “And who might that be, Rav Eleazar?” asked Rav Isaiah, perplexed.

  “The Order of the Temple! Listen: Jews in Paris and Lisbon have heard rumors of a group ensconced in the heart of the order, who are enemies of both the Church and Christian doctrine.”

  The Hasid*15 was touching on confidential matters and didn’t want to say more than his audience needed to know. Not one of them, not even Yehezkel, would have dreamed of interrupting him.

  “The head of the group is a well-known cleric everyone thinks dead, but apparently he staged his own funeral, and now that he’s dead, he fights the pope from inside an order that only answers to the pope!”

  Rav Eleazar smiled, enjoying the looks of utter disbelief on the rabbis’ faces. “Also, there’s an ancient parchment involved, but I don’t know much about that, only that they call it the Parchment of Circles and that the church wants it badly.” The Hasid paused. “It seems the head of the secret cabal inside the Temple is also after it . . . this is only a hunch, but I suspect the secret cabal and the parchment are connected in some way . . .”

  Yehezkel had a fleeting vision of Pons Roger’s big red ears. “The night I met Domingo, one of the perfecti spoke of that parchment before the monk arrived. He called it a Cathar relic, ‘a circle within a circle’ drawn by Saint John the Evangelist, with writings in Greek that he called prophecies.”

  “Mmh . . . very interesting,” murmured Rav Eleazar. “What do you think, Yehezkel, would their Saint John write in Greek? I rather think he used Hebrew, or Aramaic. . . No, no, we haven’t the time to discuss things we know so little about.”

  The Hasid stood up slowly, as if to give weight to his next pronouncement. “Although some elders disagree with me, I feel the time has come to seek allies and prepare defenses. With God’s help, I intend to have copies of the complete Talmud buried in secret locations in France and the Rhineland. If you agree to be part of this enterprise, you will all travel to the places I will tell you, and report to me—by trusted messengers only, no letters—on the missions I am about to assign you.”

  As Rav Eleazar hoped, an unseemingly warlike spirit imbued the five scholars. Each one waited excitedly to know his role in the plans of that holy league for the defense of the Talmud. The Hasid pointed a finger at the Spanish rabbi first.

  “You, Yaakov, will go home and from there to Portugal to speak with astronomers and navigators at the Court, especially Templars. I want to know all about the unknown continent some of them claim lies three thousand leagues west of their coast. The day will come when Jews have to leave Christian lands for good; so we should look for somewhere else to go until God relents and takes us back to Jerusalem.”

  He turned to Rav Yehiel. “You, my friend, will go home and seek out trusted allies among the more enlightened knights of the Paris temple. I’ve heard there are quite a few.”

  Rav Yehiel nodded. Next was the little Italian. “Rav Isaiah, you’ll go to Rome and speak with Jews close to cardinals to find out who supports what regarding legislation on Jews. Also, start spreading the notion we intend to demonstrate: that the Talmud already existed in the time of Jesus!”

  The next mission was Rav Yitzhak’s. “You’ll go to Provence and seek out the perfecti who survived the first ten years of this war between Christians. Yehezkel knows many of them already, but I can’t send him because he might run into the Spanish monk again. Oh, and try to find out, as discreetly as you can, what the Parchment of Circles might be, and who the mysterious long-dead cleric really is . . .”

  Yehezkel was asking himself if being left for last was a good or bad sign when the Hasid turned to him.

  “I hope I didn’t bore you with all these politics, Yehezkel. After all, you’re a kabbalist, a mystic . . .”

  “No, no, don’t worry, Rabbi. I’m a bit of a strange Jew, a mystic who loves politics and sailing.”

  “When you’re older, Yehezkel,” said the Hasid with a smile, “you’ll find that all Jews are a bit strange. . . . As for sailing, you prophesied well. You’ll be going to Eretz Israel on a Templar cog taking pilgrims to Acre that sails in two weeks. If all goes according to plan, on board the cog will be Don Sancio de la Palmela, known as Doctus, the learned one. He was secretary and scribe to Guillaume of Chartres, the master of the temple who died at the siege last year, and has been summoned to the Christian camp at Damietta.”

  Yehezkel breathed deeply, a wide grin on his face. Erez Israel! The prophecy hidden in his name would be fulfilled! His heart on fire, he struggled to focus on Rav Eleazar’s words.

  “The Templar cog is waiting for Don Sancio before it sails. This is why I chose Venice as the venue for our meeting. You, Yehezkel, will find out from the scribe whether any document was found when the order dug under the Temple Mount a hundred years ago that can be used to prove the antiquity of the Talmud.”

  Rav Eleazar looked into Yehezkel’s eyes. “But that’s not all. Rumor has it that the head of the secret cabal is
in Eretz Israel, so the second half of your mission, should the scribe be unable or unwilling to help, will be to find the long-dead cleric and convince him to help you find the right parchments. Fighting Domingo seems to be his priority, too.”

  The strategy convinced everyone except Rav Yitzhak, who made a face at the idea that some ancient-looking parchment would dissuade the Castillan monk from his plan to outlaw the Talmud.

  Rav Eleazar saw a shadow cross Yehezkel’s eyes as the huge responsibility settled on his shoulders. “Your mission is the most important one, Yehezkel, and since I also consider it the most dangerous, I chose you for it, because I know you are a widower with no children. I might have wished for a quieter emissary, one with no ambition to become a maskil,*16 but everything comes from above. That you survived the siege at Carcassonne speaks well of your sangfroid, though it seems you’re also not afraid of beautiful Christian nuns. Sshh! No, no, Yehezkel, I know what you want to say, there’s no need to explain; God knows what he’s doing! If I sent a Talmudist, I would just get a list of the transgressions committed by every Jewish community between here and Jerusalem!”

  A good part of the night was gone. The rabbis recited some psalms, and then the Hasid blessed them all and concluded, raising his eyes heavenward, “Master of the Universe, I implore you, redeem Israel! But if you really don’t want to redeem your people yet, then at least redeem the goyim!”

  Two days later, on the Square of the Wheel, she saw him again.

  Galatea and Gudrun emerged from the bishop’s palace. The abbess immediately recognized Yehezkel’s ample shoulders and Aillil’s blond hair as they stood outside the Ottones’ inn. She almost broke into a run and then remembered how she constantly rebuked her novices for such impulsive behavior, and set off at a quick march, followed by her German pupil, to whom that brisk pace seemed to come naturally. As she crossed the square in long strides, her mantle flapping, she thought, “He only said he was leaving so he wouldn’t have to see me again . . . the arrogance of these people is truly unbelievable! Did he really think I wouldn’t find out he was still on the island?”