by Tuvia Fogel
The suggestion that he was too naive to appreciate the true role of the sea scalded Yehezkel’s pride. In a fit of calm rage, he took the old man’s arm, accompanied the teacher back to his chair, as if ready to finish the debate, and then said nonchalantly, as if expressing an afterthought, “I recognize the superiority of your approach, Rabbi, which is to subject all interpretations to the test of reason, though you allow yourself quite some leeway when you attribute an evil nature to the sea based, at the end of the day, on your rancor for the loss of your brother David.”
Rav Moshe suddenly looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He fell back into the chair and seemed on the point of tears.
Yehezkel, as with every time he lost control of his words, was bitten by remorse as sudden and sharp as the anger of a minute before. He fell on his knees before Rav Moshe. “Forgive me, Rabbi!” he sobbed. “I was more than disrespectful; I made light of your pain! I beg you, give me the punishment I so richly deserve!”
But Rav Moshe had already recovered and, like a cat that momentarily lost its balance, pretended that nothing much had happened. “No, Hezki, you deserve no punishment. You only used your brain to refute my interpretation, as our game requires. But you went beyond anything I expected.”
He caressed Yehezkel’s head, which now rested on his thighs. “You know, Hezki, the way you remind me of your grandfather at your age warms this old man’s weary heart. Your mind leaps like a fish, and you have the same impetuosity and love of truth at any cost that Yehezkel had.”
He lowered his voice, “When your grandfather and I studied together in Fez, we used to indulge in calculations of the date of the Messiah’s arrival. I have since forbidden such calculations in my writings, so that weaker souls won’t lose their faith by placing their hopes in arbitrary guesses.”
Yehezkel stood up, already excited. Rav Moshe looked into his eyes for a long moment and then said, “I want to tell you of a tradition that has been in our family for twenty generations, Hezki. An ancestor of mine once affirmed, in a state of grace, that the event the Almighty decreed should be at the center of all history, from creation to the coming of his Prince, was not the freeing of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, in the year 2444, it was instead the death of Moses, in 2486! No calculation could be simpler, really. At the end of another 2486 years from his death, that is, in 4972, the Messiah of David will manifest himself!”
Yehezkel, grandson of Yehezkel, stared at his teacher, mouth agape.
“Yes, young man, eight years from now. I know I won’t be there to see it, despite your grandfather on his deathbed wishing me just such a fate. What isn’t clear to me is whether the Almighty is punishing me for something, like another Egyptian Moshe—if small things can be compared to great ones,” he smiled, “or whether, in his boundless mercy, he is sparing me a burning disappointment.”
Maimonides knew he didn’t have much time to live and concluded in a whisper, “On one hand, Hezki, I urge you not to take this prophecy too seriously, but on the other I envy you the opportunity to be in Jerusalem in eight years’ time, when the Holy City will be in the grip of spiritual spasms, waiting for its Messiah!”
The buzz from below had grown louder, and Rav Moshe stood up, leaning on Yehezkel, putting an arm around his pupil’s shoulder, a foot higher than his own, and they walked to the door together.
“Victory in our debate on the second verse is yours, Hezki. You saw through to the deep, irrational motivations of my interpretation. I was not aware of them myself, but when you said it, I knew it was true.”
Maimonides stopped at the door, turned to face Yehezkel and put his hands on his shoulders. “Since I know how much it means to you, you should know that your studies in Provence will receive my blessing.” He paused and gave him a long look, his eyes not smiling as they usually did. “But know also that your life will always be in danger among Christians,” he said at last.
Then the two men went below to see out the Shabbat.
Yehezkel left his teacher’s house in the warm evening, astride an old donkey. The pungent smell of cloves and other spices used in the ceremony that ushers out Shabbat lingered in his nostrils, clashing now with the reek of manure that hung over the road between Fustat and al-Kahira. That pong competed in turn with the perfume of freshly harvested dates hanging from heaped branches at the foot of palm trees. A third, delicious layer crowding Yehezkel’s nose was the fragrance of honey-filled pancakes some women were cooking on iron plates laid on embers and selling to passersby.
An hour later, the young rabbi was in front of Bab-ez-Zuweyla, the gate in al-Kahira’s southern wall, usually swarming with humanity more than any place in the capital but now pleasantly quiet. As his donkey drank at the fountain, Yehezkel recognized the poignant nostalgia he’d felt at every stage of the ride. It was the state of mind, so often described by his teacher, of the Jew with one foot already in the next land where he will wait for his Messiah, but the other one still firmly planted in the land he is about to leave—usually against his will. Being uprooted, said Rav Moshe, produces a dizziness of the soul, caused by the absence of roots deeply planted in one place. But a Jew’s roots are sunk so deep in the Torah that nothing could ever pull them out, so he is mostly immune to this vertigo.
Surely influenced by his age, Yehezkel thought that in his case that malaise wasn’t even strong enough to blunt the exhilarating mood that precedes a departure. “But then, you’re not leaving against your will, like Rav Moshe left Cordoba, are you?” he chided himself with a smile. Two hours after sunset, Yehezkel reached the house of Halfon ben Yitzhak, the merchant hosting Rav Pinhas. He anticipated the secrets the French kabbalist would soon be revealing. They would switch letters and add up the values of dozens of Torah words deep into the night, and he would only go home in the morning, after grabbing a few hours’ sleep on the cushions in the takhtabush.
Calculating the numerical value of words, their gematria, proved a natural talent of Yehezkel’s. It soon became a compulsive habit, almost a private ritual. He instinctively added up the value of almost every Hebrew word he came across, be it in a prayer book or in a page of Talmud.
The doorman let him into the house, one of the richest in the haret.*36 Eight or nine people, Ishmaelites and Jews, sat around a eucalyptus tree in the middle of the courtyard, laughing and drinking. Seeing Yehezkel, Pinhas ben Meshullam took his leave from the merry group to sit in the takhtabush with his disciple.
After some harmless gossip, legs crossed in front of each other, Yehezkel told him of Maimonides’s virulent rhetorical attack on the waters below in his lesson of that afternoon—not mentioning his untalmudic refutation—and asked Rav Pinhas for his thoughts on Rav Moshe’s exegesis.
The kabbalist stroked his beard, so black it glinted with purple, smiling as if he and Maimonides shared an amusing secret about the primordial waters. Then, in precise Hebrew without gutturals, he said, “Do you remember when I told you that to know the sequence culminating in the creation of Adam is to know the path men must follow, in reverse, to arrive in the presence of the Creator?”
“Yes, Rabbi, I remember it well,” said Yehezkel, already feeling the tingling in the back of his neck.
“Well, there’s a passage in tractate Hagiga I’m surprised your teacher didn’t mention in speaking of the waters. It is about a journey that four sages took into the Pardes, the garden of revelations, the orchard of secrets. A dangerous visit, which ended in tragedy for most of them . . .” Rav Pinhas paused. Yehezkel knew the passage and was already searching his memory, eyes closed, for the link with the waters. He found it and nodded, smiling, as his new teacher looked on, pleased.
“Excellent, you remembered that Akiva warned the others not to call what they would see flowing down the columns in the Sixth Palace ‘water,’ since on the first day—with chaos and darkness over the abyss—the undivided waters were the only thing already in existence. Rabbi Akiva is saying that the Torah uses words men can grasp,
but here it is speaking of the formless matter before Creation. It is not the water we know, it is not the water in the seas, that Bereshit is speaking of. . . .”
Yehezkel opened his eyes wide, overwhelmed by the beauty of the gloss. He was as surprised as the kabbalist that Rav Moshe would leave that Talmud passage out of his exposition. Oh, how he would love to be able to make such an erudite objection to Rav Moshe’s exegesis! Excited, he said, “I think I understand. If in the Sixth Heaven God creates light, to accede to the Seventh one must cross the darkness and chaos that preceded everything.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Rav Yitzhak. “My teacher, may his candle burn for many years, proposed that the Ruah Elohim over the waters in the second verse—since ruah, as you know, means both spirit and wind—was a breeze that ruffled the surface of the water, rendering it opaque. Only after blowing on the water did God create light, for what could be seen when the water was smooth was no longer visible!”
The kabbalist lowered his voice. “Conversely, on reaching the Sixth Heaven, one has to stop the Divine Breath, because only when the waters are smooth again one will, as only happens when water is still and transparent, see the bottom. That is when one will be in His presence.” Rav Pinhas murmured, “I’m sure you understand that ‘stopping the Divine Breath’ is a concept not everyone may frequent.”
Yehezkel’s head was spinning as it would after two glasses of wine.
“Akiva was right to warn them,” concluded the rabbi. “Climbing back up the slope of creation is, in a sense, undoing the creation, and the slightest mistake can be fatal, as his three companions discovered.”
A gurgle of laughter came from the courtyard thirty paces from them, but to Yehezkel it sounded like the breaking of a primordial wave. He sat in front of his teacher, breathing slowly, eyes closed, mind lost in the birth pangs of the universe. In total darkness, the gale, meeting no obstacles, howled its infinite power while the waters curled in furious breakers with no coast on which to crash them.
He dragged himself back to the takhtabush and said euphorically, “Rabbi, I have exceptional news! Rav Moshe will bless my journey to Provence! With his blessing and your letter, who will stop me quenching my thirst at the holy founts in Lunel and Pokiére?”
“Posquière, Yehezkel, Posquière. Don’t be rash, young man; many things could still come between you and the Merkavah. You must pray God to grant you the wisdom you’re seeking.”
Yehezkel lowered his head humbly and then remembered the other thing he meant to ask Rav Pinhas. “Rabbi, what do you know of a calculation that puts the arrival of the Messiah eight years from now?”
A knowing, wistful smile spread on the French rabbi’s face; “2486 plus 2486?”
“They know of the prophecy in Provence, too?” cried Yehezkel, grabbing the kabbalist’s arm excitedly as if that would confirm that redemption really was imminent.
“Calm down. I could show you a dozen such calculations, and half of them would concern dates that sadly passed with no sign of the Messiah. But there is a verse in the ninetieth Psalm, In your eyes, a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is passed. The only calculation Rav Yitzhak the Blind—may God watch over him—finds reliable is this: a world cycle is six thousand years, and it is again as the six days of creation, the Seventh Millennium being the Cosmic Shabbat, the Reign of the Messiah!”
The kabbalist’s eyes shone with the beauty and simplicity of his teacher’s calculation. “Do you see, Yehezkel? We were freed from slavery at dawn on Tuesday and are now close to the end of Thursday. The Cosmic Friday begins on Thursday’s twelfth hour, the year 5000. Rav Yitzhak says God will not bring us back at the last minute, but in time to prepare for the Millennial Shabbat. He will gather us in Eretz Israel on Friday morning, seven hours before Shabbat. Can you work out the year?”
Yehezkel’s expression betrayed his preference for an end to the exile eight years away—since by the Lord’s counting he simply couldn’t wait around all day—but he quickly did the arithmetic. If a thousand years is twenty-four hours, then one hour is forty-one years and eight months. Midday on Friday would be the year 5750, so an hour before midday would be the spring of 5708. He announced the result.
“You really have a head for numbers, Yehezkel, God bless you. Alas, yes, the Children of Israel will only return to Eretz Israel in the spring of the year Christians will call 1948 and finally start preparing for Shabbat!”
The night was nearly finished, and the cool air entering the takhta-bush sharpened the feverish minds of the two rabbis. Outside, only two Ishmaelites still argued, deeply at loggerheads over something.
Rav Pinhas said, “Ezekiel’s book was nearly hidden because some sages found his description of the chariot dangerously explicit. I love him exactly because of his candor.” He smiled complicitly at Yehezkel. “You bear the name of the flamboyant prophet who saw the Merkavah—and names, as you know, are not given lightly. I imagine you know the gematria of your name?”
“Of course,” answered his pupil. “Ten, eight, seven, a hundred, one, and thirty. It makes 156. What can I infer from that?”
Rav Pinhas still wore a sly smile. “What other words do you know with that gematria?”
Yehezkel hesitated, finding it immodest to associate himself with the other names worth 156 that he knew. Then, a little embarrassed, he said, “Yoseph and Zion, Rabbi.”
“Interesting. Dreams and visions were prominent in the lives of both Yoseph and Ezekiel. I dare say they will be in yours, too.”
“And what of Zion?” asked Yehezkel, hoping to find a journey to Jerusalem ensconced in his name. Rav Pinhas was silent for a while, eyes closed. Then he said, “It may be coincidence, but both Yoseph and Ezekiel traveled to Zion transcendentally: Yoseph after his death—his body brought from Egypt, as he’d asked—and Ezekiel from Babylon in a vision, carried there by an angel of the Lord. After all, Yehezkel, in gematria your name might as well be Zion ben Zion!”
Rav Pinhas fell silent again. Yehezkel felt that his next words would, at least for him, have the force of prophecy, since he also considered Rav Pinhas an angel of the Lord sent to show him his way.
“You will indeed go to Jerusalem, Yehezkel, and your journey there will be associated with dreams and visions. In fact, I believe, may God protect us, my boy! I believe your journey, like that of the prophet, will take you all the way into the Temple’s courtyards!”
Part Three
Fourth and Fifth Day
CHAPTER 14
VEHAYU LE’OTOT
And They Will Be Signs
OFF THE WESTERN TIP OF RHODES, 17TH JUNE 1219
Spiridione’s tareta sailed lazily for three days, carried by a light northwesterly breeze that bore the perfume of the citrus fruit of the Dodecanese, an archipelago that reached down to those waters, but most of whose islands lay some hundred leagues north of them.
In theory, one could sail east from Candia to Cyprus in five days at most, but in recent decades those four hundred leagues had become the Mediterranean’s most pirate-ridden tract, and no vessel dared to be caught far from a shore toward which to flee on sighting a black pennant. This meant coasting Crete and then hopping northeast from island to island all the way to Rhodes. After sailing along Rhodes it was a twenty-league hop to the Anatolian coast, which one followed east until it was time to head south to Cyprus, this last twelve-hour stretch of open sea being the most dangerous one.
The gentle mistral was weaker than Spiro wished for in his hurry to get to Cyprus, but the absence of fresher breezes and bigger seas favored serenity behind the prow, where the company sheltered, and the mood was that of a pleasure trip on a Holy Day. The tall, upright timber stood out against the sky as if to provide protection for the seven pilgrims, who, after surviving the beaching of the Falcus, considered themselves, rightly or wrongly, seafaring folk.
Among the effects of the fair weather was that after three days at sea the abbess wasn’t in the least indisposed. Her mood was so cheerful sh
e didn’t even mind the howls of young Zaharias, a Cretan sailor and nephew of Spiridione, who constantly sang in a high-pitched voice Byzantine hymns the abbess called monstrous. The others tried to silence him, at times threatening to throw him overboard, but Zaharias feared nothing, and he raised his strident voice to heaven from dawn to sunset.
Spiridione’s advances to Galatea in the first two days had been embarrassing even for the crew. Yehezkel feared he would have to ask young de Rosson to defend the honor of the abbess from the Greek’s vulgar innuendos. At one point, Spiridione manifested the desire to “serve her in the way she would prefer.” Galatea replied that she would appreciate it if his crew would refrain from blaspheming the name of God, of our Mother Mary, and of a host of other saints.
Spiro smiled the condescending smile of someone who spent his life mocking clerics of all faiths. “Please judge people by their actions, milady, not by their words! Would you condemn someone who threatens in the heat of a dispute as you would he who actually commits murder? I threaten my wife with violent death at least once a week because she cooks the worst roast fish in all Crete. Would you see me hanged for it? No? Then let my men blaspheme in peace. It’s their way of speaking with God!”
Spiridione laughed till it seemed he would burst a blood vessel, but before the abbess could answer—and despite regretting not hearing the whiplash that would have struck him—Yehezkel interrupted to point out a shift in the wind’s direction. The breeze was still light but now blew from the southwest. If it wanted to keep making headway in an easterly direction, the tareta would have to jibe its mainsail.
Yehezkel figured with this breeze Rhodes was only a league downwind, and the best thing to do to keep away from it, as there were practically no waves, would be to drop the sail and row east, away from the island, to avoid drifting too close.
Spiridione climbed on the quarterdeck and after a minute, as Yehezkel expected, shouted to bring the tareta into the wind and lower the mainsail. The men took up their positions, one at the foot of the mast to lower the halyard and three along the sail’s base to gather it in and receive the yard. But after two minutes, the rabbi realized something wasn’t right. The sail wasn’t coming down, and the four men were swearing as only sailors and dockers know how. Soon Spiro joined the chorus, screaming to hurry up with that mainsail if they didn’t want to taste his whip. But the halyard had obviously tangled at the top of the mast, and the big, patched-up sail stayed aloft, its yard bouncing off the mast in frustration with every pitching motion of the tareta.