The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  The idea of teaching the techniques for pronouncing God’s Names to a Christian woman would have made Lunel’s kabbalists recoil in horror, but Yehezkel had reflected on her prophetic gift and her role in his mission and concluded that he sort of . . . owed it to her. In any case, nobody would ever find out. But there had to be method and logic to his instruction. He couldn’t start from the end, could he?

  The next morning, out in the sun, he handed Galatea the scarf she had dyed t’cheleth.

  “Madame,” he began, “Kabbalah is not a method to enhance one’s voice; it is an enormously complex system of thought. The secrets of the maskil, or pronouncer of God’s Names, are a discipline one can only learn after experiencing many other insights. Clearly, you’re a spiritually gifted lady, and since you are also instinctively certain of the divine nature of this color, I will begin with a short lesson on this blue.”

  Galatea, enthralled, sat cross-legged on the ground before him, and he joined her.

  “Just as a kabbalist recognizes the influence in this world of the Sephirot, God’s ten emanations, so does he—or she, from today—recognize the symbols through which God’s presence and plans are manifested. Saphir, the root of Sephirot, is a major symbol, it is the color of the divine, of the crystal the sages saw on Mount Sinai under God’s Throne, of the Heavens and the world above—and, as t’cheleth, of the cord in the tzitzith, which allows us a glimpse of Him.”

  Yehezkel paused. “Now the opposite symbol to blue is red, or crimson, the color of blood.” He hesitated. “Be indulgent with me, madame, for I’m about to make another unflattering comparison between our faiths, but what I mean to show you is the ubiquity of symbols, how the apparently haphazard way in which they litter our world is actually perfectly coherent. Just as blue is the color of Judaism—and I can guarantee you that when our exile ends, and there is once again a Jewish kingdom, its standards will be blue—in the same way, red is the color of pagans earlier . . . and Christians later.”

  Galatea started to protest but then decided to hear him out.

  “The heart of your faith is that you were saved by Christ’s blood. We remove the blood from all meat before we eat it. Blood is powerful indeed; it is life, it was sprinkled on the altar by the high priest, yet for Judaism its color symbolizes the earthly, sensual, pagan side of man. Isaiah says ‘your sins are as scarlet.’”

  The abbess silently considered these words.

  Yehezkel went on. “So it was only apparently of their own free will that the Roman emperors chose crimson and purple-red as the color of power, still so dear to cardinals that you speak of adorare purpuram.*30Edom is Hebrew for red and is also the nickname of Jacob’s twin brother Esau, who was ginger. Because it was used for Jacob/Israel’s opponent, it became the Talmud’s term for Rome, Israel’s eternal enemy. I could use your Scriptures, too. Saint John, in the Apocalypse, writes ‘meretrix circumdata purpura et coccinum.’”†4

  He concluded, “In a nutshell, madame, a kabbalist sees the battle between the angels above in hundreds of symbols; one of them is the struggle between blue and crimson. Kabbalah is a way of seeing things, and I felt happier for you to enter it through an odd awareness like this one, rather than theological talk.”

  Blue and crimson had played powerful roles in her visions since childhood, but that was not all. She believed that Jesus died for her sins, and that his suffering on the Cross was salvific, but in her heart of hearts, the power of the blood into which the Eucharist wine turned to save souls always had, for her, something unsettling about it. Since they were alone, she said, “I think I know what you mean by ‘a way of seeing things,’ Rabbi. As I told you, this blue represents God’s presence for me as much as it does for you, so I’ll just treasure the lesson on recognizing symbols, without dwelling too much on Christianity’s choice of crimson.”

  HERAKLION, 31ST MAY 1219

  The second time they entered Heraklion was on Friday morning, after a ride that had been kinder on their haunches. The peasants who had commented on the sight of a nun riding with a Jew two weeks earlier saw her go by again, this time with two Jews. There was dismay among some onlookers, the scariest thing being that all three riders, as in a satanic Sabbath, never stopped laughing.

  Heraklion’s Jewish quarter huddled around its synagogue by the port. Asking passersby, they soon found the home of Tofefloià Ha-Cohen, rabbi, merchant, and diplomat. They knocked on the small door and were let in. It was the typical abode of a wealthy Jewish trader, humble and somber from the outside, but rich and sophisticated inside. Galatea admired the Armenian carpets and silk cushions on the divan in the big salon. Persian and Syrian silver vases sat on low ebony tables. One wall was decorated with a fresco of David felling Goliath, which made both Jewish guests wrinkle their noses. A moment later the merchant walked in and, noticing the nun, greeted them in perfect Latin.

  “Peace be with you all! Welcome to my humble dwelling. I hope the two foreign rabbis will do me the honor of accepting my hospitality over Shabbat.”

  Yehezkel bowed deeply. “May your light shine for many years, distinguished Rav Tofefloià! I am your humble servant Yehezkel ben Yoseph, of Fustat and Lunel. This is Rav Shlomo del Medigo of Toledo and last, though she precedes us both in grace and virtue, Countess Galatea degli Ardengheschi, abbess of the convent of San Maffìo, in Torcello.”

  “Torcello? Are you a Venetian noblewoman?” asked Tofefloià, immediately attentive.

  “No, sir, the lands of Ardenga are in Tuscia. But the flock of nuns the Lord entrusted to my care is in the lagoon.” To herself, she thought, “Had entrusted, is what I should start saying.”

  Tofefloià Ha-Cohen was the obligatory ingredient in Cretan politics. Most recently, his name was mentioned in the doge’s palace for the nonchalance with which he put an end to the commercial war between Venetians and the Angeloi family that had raged since Venice’s takeover of the island. He loved to quote the Book of Proverbs on the fact that “a gentle tongue can break a bone.”

  He was as tall as Yehezkel and dressed in the style of Jews in Islamic lands: a robe of deep purple, its neck richly embroidered, and a low yellow silk turban. A black beard rested on his chest in orderly curls. Large, dark eyes and heavy, half-closed lids gave him a languid look, belied by a penetrating gaze. “I suppose you’re on your way to Jerusalem, signora. . . . Unusual as it is to see an abbess accompanied by two rabbis,” he said with a smile, “I must confess the sight fills me with joy. You know, I am the strongest supporter on this island of dialogue between the three faiths. I’m convinced that when Christians mention Christ, their inner thoughts actually go to the one Creator of Heaven and earth!”

  After comparing his Judaism with the sophisticated thought of the Greeks and the civilized traditions of Mohammedans, Tofefloià embraced the erudite, tolerant theological indifference that Don Sancio practiced. But for Yehezkel, if truth be told, what was admirable openmindedness in a Christian, was unforgivable compromise in a Jew. The kabbalist kept his silence but found it outrageous that a rabbi should even speak like that. Rav Tofefloià persevered. “I am very friendly with the Latin bishop of Candia, who recently said to me—and in public, on Easter Sunday!—that he considers Jews the ‘elder brothers’ of Christians and dreams of the day when he will be allowed to enter our main synagogue wearing his cross!”

  Unable to hold back any longer, Yehezkel blurted out, “Ha-Shem Yishmor!”*31 in a tone that made the meaning obvious even to the abbess. Tofefloià looked at him disdainfully, his arched nose and fat lower lip making the expression look natural.

  “Aah, I see you are of the intransigent school. Are you perhaps one of those . . . kabbalists?”

  Yehezkel said timidly, “With all due respect, Rav Tofefloià, one should not weigh the fundamentals of religion on the balance of reason and politics.”

  Tofefloià was a man of the world and had met kabbalists like this one, who wandered all over claiming to seek the road to the presence of the Lord but were in tru
th incapable of building a family and putting down roots in one place, at least until the goyim drove them out again. He smiled and clapped his hands, anticipating the debate, especially in the presence of a beautiful nun. In an instant a servant appeared. Tofefloià instructed him in Greek and then turned to his guests.

  “In Candia they make some of the best sweet wines, but none is better than the one prepared by my Jewish winemakers! Sit down; later you will tell me what brought you to my house, but now I want you to enjoy my hospitality and give me fresh news from the West.”

  Galatea sat on the divan, sipping malvasia and occasionally tasting a candied fruit or a pistachio nut as she listened to Rav Tofefloià treat them—in a polished but accented Latin—to his disenchanted version of events on the island since the Polis fell to the Venetians, fifteen years earlier.

  “On taking Constantinople, Venice considered colonization would be too expensive and decided to impose commercial serfdom on little independent island dukedoms, granted or sold to adventurers and nobles, all distant relatives of the Venetian families at the top. I’ve heard it called the ‘Italian solution.’”

  Tofefloià took a sip of wine, a look of fondness in his eyes as he thought back to the coarseness of the Venetians. “These became, in effect, small tyrants surrounded by the sea.”

  “And the Greeks don’t rebel?” asked Galatea, surprised. “Didn’t they even defend their islands when the Venetians disembarked?”

  “Oh, oh!” chuckled Rav Tofefloià at the memory. “Was it funny to see those young scions of Venetian merchant families playing Vikings in the sunny Aegean! A nephew of Doge Dandolo assembled a fleet of galleys and took seventeen islands from the Angelois officials, without the Greeks raising a finger!”

  Galatea found the figs macerated in honey one of the most delicious things she’d ever tasted. She also found it delightful to hear the tales of military feats that in Venice made even galley prisoners proud—told by the victims of the bullying Venetian nobles. In short, the abbess was having a wonderful time.

  “One of them declared himself Duke of Naxos, with celebrations worthy of the pagans of a thousand years ago. From that moment on, the Venetian families who weren’t already present in Outremer lunged on the booty. Santorini went to a Barozzi, Anaphe to a Foscolo, Khitera to a Venier. And the ravenous Ghisi grabbed Tenos, Mykonos, Skyatos, and Skopelos!”

  “And then what happened, Rav Tofel . . . ehm, Rav Tofef. . . . Oh, forgive me, this wine is so strong! I’m not used to it,” stammered Galatea. Her host waved a hand to say it was nothing.

  “The ferment in the streets of Candia was so intense that three years ago the local Venetian despot, another Dandolo, had to flee the island in woman’s clothing to save his hide! Ah, how low the Greeks’ empire has fallen! But oh, how we laughed that summer!”

  Despite his wit, his guests perceived the sadness of the Cretan rabbi, a witness bitterly aware of the deathly blow that Venice dealt the Eastern Empire, now decayed to the point of being at the mercy even of nouveau riche Venetians.

  The servant filled their cups. Galatea declined gently but firmly. After a few more of Tofefloià’s anecdotes, Yehezkel managed to tell him of the beaching, the ransoming of the Spanish rabbi, and of his humble request: a wage for Rav Shlomo, homeless and close to hunger.

  “You should have come to me right away. A leaf doesn’t fall in Candia without my knowing it. I heard of the Templar cog that escaped the storm last month, but I had no idea there was a Jew on it!” Tofefloià paced the room, caressing his beard, and then said, “Rav Shlomo, you’re a lucky Jew. Our melamed died last week, so if you can survive on a school teacher’s wage, you can start Sunday!”

  A curtain was moved aside and a slim woman of about Galatea’s age stepped into the room, gently pushing the shoulders of a five-yearold child. Her simple silk dress was in the style of the damsels in the Polis. Behind her came a servant bearing a tray with a thin cake, like a wide, low biscuit. The woman’s eyes questioned Tofefloià. He gestured to come in, smiling proudly, and introduced her.

  “My wife, Miriam. The little one is Amos, my one-before-last. Today he turns five and starts to learn the aleph-bet. Come closer, countess, I want you to see how Jews instill the love of words in our children!”

  “In the spirit of the Bible’s words ‘and may the words of the Torah always be sweet on your lips,’” Rav Tofefloià dipped a finger in honey and wrote a phrase on the biscuit that contained all twenty-two letters of the aleph-bet. The child could lick the letters once he had correctly pronounced each one and did so as his mother looked on with tears in her eyes. Galatea, too, found the whole ceremony touchingly sweet.

  As they walked down to the harbor, Galatea and Rav Shlomo were in high spirits, possibly those of the malvasia. Yehezkel was silent; his friends guessed something vexed the Egyptian rabbi.

  “What’s eating you, Master Ezekiel? Don’t try to deny . . .”

  “The bishop called him elder brother of the Christians . . . Puah!!”

  It was like the opening of a cataract on the Nile.

  “Do you know what Tofefloià means? It means ‘God plays the tambourine for him!’ I wanted to shout in his face, ‘Tofefloià, you’re an ignoramus! Don’t you know that all through the Bible God always chooses the younger brother? Have you never read of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Aaron and Moses, Adonia and Solomon? Go on, Tofefloià, find me one firstborn who was God’s chosen! The bishop wasn’t complimenting Jews, he was proving that God chose the ‘younger brother,’ Christians! And while he was at it, he also showed everyone your ignorance of your own Scriptures!”

  Galatea and Rav Shlomo laughed, amused by the outburst and impressed by Yehezkel’s exposure of the bishop’s devious false compliment.

  Yehezkel recognized in Tofefloià one of those Jews who say “never attract the goyim’s attention.” After fifteen years in the West, he concluded there had always been two schools among Jews—in Babylon, under Rome or now—on the chosen people’s mission. One was the school of compromise, Jews who stop telling pagans that they are pagans because it unnecessarily infuriates them. These Jews, in every epoch, soon assimilate and vanish. The other school, to which kabbalists belonged, was for denying respect to those who claim that the earth is flat and that “the Son of God came back from the dead.”

  The compromisers said, “Yes, we see that Christians have a theological limp, but we don’t think it’s nice to shout out to a lame person, ‘Hey, you! Don’t you see you’re limping?’”

  “But such an argument,” retorted the kabbalists, “would apply to people incurably lame from birth, while Christians would walk perfectly well had they not been taught to limp as children by their priests.”

  He tried to explain to the abbess. “Madame, this man is a ‘rabbi’—may he choke on his beard!—who should lead his brothers along the ways of the Torah and instead betrays the spirit of the Holy Book!”

  Galatea reflected, eyeing the usual crowd forming to watch the nun and the two Jews, and then said, “I could tell you I understand your outrage, and it would be true, but don’t you see by yourself that you’re speaking in the exact tones of our clerics who burn Cathars, and who would gladly convert Jews at the tip of a sword?”

  Yehezkel was struck dumb.

  Rav Shlomo laughed. “Mother Galatea just gave you shakhmat,*32 Yehezkel.”

  Then the three parted ways. Rav Shlomo poured out his gratitude for everything they had done for him; then the rabbis accompanied the abbess to the hospital of the nuns of Saint Sergius, where she had stayed the previous time, and went back to Rav Tofefloià’s.

  The rendezvous with Spiridione was at sixth hour on Sunday, in the dockers’ tavern at the foot of the quay in Heraklion’s harbor. This was the sort of place the abbess of a convent would normally never set foot in. The cries of dockworkers, the smell of rotting fish, and the prostitutes, already leaning over tables at third hour, should have kept Galatea a safe distance from the inn, b
ut after the last month of adventures, she wouldn’t have missed the visit to the tavern for all the world and a peacock, as they said in Tuscia.

  At sixth hour on a Sunday, the place was close to what she’d always imagined a demonic Sabbath must look like. A sailor came toward them, protecting himself from the wine that literally splashed out of clients’ tankards. He led the odd couple to a room in the back where some of the most unanimously condemned business in Christendom was conducted each day.

  Spiridione Masarakis waited for them, sitting at a table crisscrossed with dagger marks, holding court with a smile that exposed the desolation of his surviving teeth. He was a solar Mediterranean male to whom weeping came as easily as rage. As lovable a scoundrel as only the men around that sea can be, in his life he’d been a pirate, a slave merchant, and a mercenary while seeding offspring from Gibraltar to Alexandretta. He was more or less excommunicated—not formally—but would never dare show his face in a church, at least not in the Aegean.

  He greeted everyone who went by the table, gloating over the fact that he knew more than anyone in the inn about the strange couple that had twice appeared in the city. The resinous wine of the island made him overconfident, and when he saw Galatea again, he sprung to his feet. “My lady, we’re made for each other! I’m ready to die for you!”

  “There is no need, sir,” answered the abbess icily. “Jesus Christ already did.”

  Seeing the way he looked at Galatea, Yehezkel asked him brusquely, “Well, have you found a vessel that will take us eastward?”

  “Yes, my own tareta.*33 I’ll take you to Cyprus myself! No, don’t thank me, I have to go there anyway.”

  Yehezkel turned his eyes skyward, calling himself a fool for not thinking that the rubies would be too strong a temptation for such a low-life. “Mmh . . . if he threatened me,” he thought, “I could always tell him I hid them on his tareta where he will never find them, so he would have to protect me. But what if he threatened to torture Aillil . . . or the nun?”