Yet I never gave up the habit of going off on my own to some deserted place as often as possible, and giving myself up to silence. My companions never understood how important these moments of solitude were to me. As much as I tried to persuade them to come with me, they never did. For me, their eternal inability to understand, which would soon increase twelvefold, has always been the most painful of my failures.
Not long afterwards, the opportunity I was waiting for arose. We were passing one of the customs posts where tax collectors demand extortionate sums from all the small tradesmen and itinerant pedlars who come through. On several previous occasions I had stopped not far from the booth where a Jewish clerk sat, one of the lackeys employed by the great publicans who collaborate with Herod’s administration and bleed their fellow countrymen dry – who in return revile them, regard them as unclean in the same way they do lepers. I had noticed then that as I was speaking the man kept looking up and listening to me, a faint glimmer in his eye. Prompted by one of the feelings that I have come to trust unquestioningly since my time in the wilderness, I walked over to him. I don’t remember our conversation, but that night he came to see me. He wanted to leave this occupation that filled him with shame, but before he did so, in order to celebrate his resignation as well as to honour the man whom he wished to be his rabbi, he invited me to his house.
Enter the home of a sinner of this kind! Be made unclean by his touch, share food that was tainted by the lure of profit! My disciples’ hackles rose, but I insisted. Just like every other sick person, this man had already been purified by the act of approaching me; he had been cleansed of the stain of sin as soon as he left his tax booth and came to me.
He wanted to invite his former fellow tax inspectors to the meal as well, which in a sense would put an official seal on his giving up his occupation. This was something I hadn’t been expecting, and my unease seemed to be felt by those around me. Would here be an incident between Zealot sympathizers and collaborators, between devout Jews and sinners sitting round the same table? A complication appeared to be unavoidable, when a delegation of Pharisees from the next village arrived at the door, and (so as not to contaminate themselves) asked some of my companions to come outside.
“Why,” they asked authoritatively, “do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Outside, voices were raised. I went out to the little group. Inside me at this very moment, the fire from the wilderness was about to burn down one of the most insurmountable inner boundaries that exist in Israel, the one that insulates a Jew from the world of sinners. In the same way as when I was confronted by the village idiot in Capernaum, the words came by themselves:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick! I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
Did they need reminding of what the prophets of Israel had taught – to bring the children back to their father, the lost sheep to the One God? Didn’t John the Baptist accept everyone who came to him, both righteous and sinners? He hadn’t gone out into the wilderness, any more than I had, simply to preach to men like these who were shut away inside their own notions of justice.
From then on I was happy to eat with people who were ostracized by Judaism. Ever since my time by the Jordan I had been working without a grand stratagem – simply following my instincts, I took each situation as it came. Only later was I able to use these events as the foundation of a teaching that would go beyond and fulfil that of John the Baptist.
My host’s name was Levi, although some people called him Matthew. With his arrival the number twelve was reached. So as not to mark them out publicly as my disciples, even less as apostles (a word not in common use in Judaism), from now on I would just refer to them as the Twelve – never imagining that eventually the Twelve would confuse the symbol that they represented with their dream, that of the government of a new Israel in which they would be important ministers.
I think it was at this point that the attitude of some of the Pharisees towards me changed into overt suspicion: a suspicion that would soon become malice, but which would never go as far as threats, at least not in Galilee. I was still one of them, the black sheep of the rabbinic tradition. Even if the most hostile of them regarded me as a poisonous snake that bit the hand that fed it, there were others who were friendly to me until the end. I was always welcome in the synagogues in Galilee, going from one to another.
The axe had fallen on the roots of the tree. It was about to cleave it in two, and everyone would have to take sides.
19
To show people that despite my nonconformity I was still devoted to the Judaism of our forbears, I decided to go to Jerusalem for a religious festival. But first I wanted to see my family – our route took us towards the lake.
There then followed two incidents that would, de facto, cause me to be excluded from the synagogue.
One Sabbath, so as not to transgress the Law, which forbids all but the shortest journeys, we were strolling through open fields near a village. The corn was ripe. As they made their way, my companions began to pluck heads of grain, rubbing them between the palms of their hands and eating them. The Pharisees from the village immediately came and confronted me.
“Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
Observing the Sabbath as a day of rest allows Israel to continue to exist in the midst of Gentiles. To do even the most minor work, such as picking corn and rubbing it in your hand, is to infringe the Law. So was the young rabbi intending to overturn one of the pillars of Jewish identity? No rabbi can interpret the Law in such a way that it is demolished. What subtle argument would I use to justify my companions’ act of sacrilege? I turned to my fellow rabbis:
“Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? It was when Abiathar was high priest.”
They nodded. I was quoting the classic texts, answering their question with another, so the debate was proceeding according to the rules. I went on:
“He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.”
I knew what they were going to say: firstly you are misinterpreting the text. Secondly, can any Jew liken himself to King David, or his companions to his own? Suddenly I was utterly weary of these discussions of theirs, which always followed the same predictable course and came to the same unvarying conclusions. It was never my intention to challenge the Law, simply to argue that in an emergency, human needs take priority. I was now able to see far beyond their narrow logic, I wanted to make humanity human again. To curtail any more exchanges, I added abruptly:
“The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”
They just stood there in amazement. So was what people said about him true? In Capernaum he had forgiven a paralytic his sins, and now here he was, no longer content just to query the Law, as was right and proper – no, he was claiming that mankind didn’t have to submit to God by obeying it, but that people could submit it to their every passing need!
Without replying, they turned on their heels and went back to the village.
When I arrived there shortly afterwards, the villagers (who knew nothing of what had happened) invited me to their synagogue. They wanted to hear what I had to say, ask me questions, have a debate: to do what every Jew does on the Sabbath – open the sluice gates of the living Law.
No sooner had they sat down than the Pharisees asked a man with a withered hand that was hanging limply by his side to join them. Then, smiling, they watched me: what was I going to do? A self-satisfied healer blinded by his own importance, thirsting for fame, would I fall into their trap?
This had to stop. I told the man to stand in the open in front of the dais where everyone could see him.
Unlike the people I had encountered before, this man hadn’t come to me, he wasn’t asking for anything, and hadn’t taken the outward,
visible step that was a sign of inner healing. Before he could even think of regaining the use of his hand, I had to make him want to be himself again.
All Jews are familiar with the interminable debates about the observance of the Sabbath. When a farmer’s only donkey, without which he can’t cultivate his land, falls into a ditch, is he allowed to pull it out using a hoist? The Essenes say no – using ropes or a ladder would contravene the Law. But if a human being falls down a well, do you let him or her drown in the muddy water without trying to help? Anyone would say no, naturally. The Essenes allow you to throw them a coat, so you avoid having to carry a ladder to the well. The strictest Pharisees side with this view, while others allow anything to be used, ladders or ropes, if it means a human life can be saved.
So, confronted with a man with a withered hand, which school of thought would he follow, this young rabbi who was becoming something of a liability? After all, no one’s life was in danger in this synagogue today, was it?
The Pharisees waited.
I spoke to them sharply:
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
Was the Law opposed to fighting the Evil One, who dances attendance on us throughout our whole lifetime? The Pharisees didn’t reply, refusing to continue a discussion based on these terms. Yet again I was attempting to circumvent the rules, to shift the interpretation of the Law onto unfamiliar territory. For them it wasn’t a question of Good versus Evil, a fine problem as old as the world itself and which even Job wasn’t able to solve. It was a matter of knowing precisely where interpretation of the Law ends and the realm of God begins. They wanted to establish reference points as if they were surveying a piece of land, whereas in the wilderness I had met Evil face to face, a decisive experience that bore no resemblance to solving mathematical equations. Faced with Evil I hadn’t tried to reason, I had wept. These jurists and I didn’t speak the same language – they were trying to lock me away inside their reasoned arguments, and this poor wretch in his paralysis, like a surveyor marking out boundaries with a chain.
Anger surged up in me like a tidal wave. I caught the man’s eye: he seemed to realize that his withered hand was just an excuse for a debate, and that the real issue was something quite different, something that was buried deep down inside him and all the other members of the congregation. Was he going to be the one to choose between the advocates of ropes and ladders and the partisans of the coat? Of course not. Did he see a connection between the power of the Enemy and his withered hand?
Quietly I said to him:
“Stretch out your hand.”
In full public view, he stretched it out and it was restored.
I had the answer to my question, and the Pharisees had the answer to theirs.
By once more giving a sick human being priority over the tenets of the Law, I had sided with the ordinary people and their sufferings against the hard line taken by the Essenes and some of the Pharisees. Cloaked in their dignity, they got up and went outside where they started conspiring bitterly among themselves.
There is no legal body that has the power to bar a Jew from the synagogue, thus excluding him from society as a whole. The Pharisees are not answerable to any central authority: each of them follows the dictates of his conscience, although always within the bounds of the tradition. So was I claiming to be a master in my own right, rejecting the culture of compromise that is the lifeblood of Judaism? Word spread quickly round the hills of Galilee: although nothing was said officially, it was made clear to me that I was no longer welcome at gatherings on the Sabbath, or at any others that were held within the walls of the Beth ha-sefer. People would still call me Rabbi, but from now on my synagogue would be the sky over Galilee, my teaching would be done in the houses of a few friends.
But I had other things on my mind: we had almost reached the lake and my family home.
Driven back by a succession of healings, the Evil One was working on his plan of campaign for future battles.
20
In Capernaum I stayed at the house of a sympathetic minor official. It wasn’t as convenient as the synagogue with its dais and benches – we were crushed into one room, and the crowd overflowed out of the door. I saw a few familiar faces, one or two Pharisees from the local area who were there to listen to their pupil, who dared challenge the rules of the Sabbath. But I saw no sign of my brothers or my mother.
There was such a crush that we couldn’t even eat. It was then that someone came and told me that my family had arrived en masse to take me away.
“Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”
I looked at the people sitting round me, their worried faces, the helpless expressions that bore witness to their despair. I had a duty to them, they were the family of my rebirth. Speaking loudly enough to be heard outside, I said:
“Who are my mother and my brothers?”
And I made a sweeping gesture round the crowd.
“Here are my mother and my brothers!”
Later, people would claim that I added, in a quiet voice: “Whoever hears the word of God and abides by it, whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
How could I have said such a thing? Rebuke my own family, who were devout Jews? Rebuke my mother, who had given me everything? Didn’t they realize that I wasn’t disowning my mother or my brothers, but that from this moment on I would be begotten with each new day by all these desperate people whose hopes and expectations broke down my inner barriers one after another? Those who attribute these words to me, words which no son, no Jew would ever think of saying, are probably the same ones who even then had taken the name of disciples, who wanted to keep me for themselves and use me as a pretext for living apart from everyone else.
My mother and brothers went away, the bonds of flesh between us sundered. A family that was wounded, yet which had the support of the villagers who couldn’t understand why the local carpenter, Mary’s son, now refused to speak to her or to his brothers, James, Joses, Judas and Simon – and preferred to create imaginary relatives from among the people who came to listen to him wherever he went.
That night, I was told how my mother and brothers had reacted.
“He has gone out of his mind.” When their neighbours asked, this was how they explained the behaviour of someone whom they had seen grow up into a respected local figure.
Out of my mind… In other words, mad. They were trying to put me into a category by using the only feasible explanation: mental illness. I wasn’t a bad son, just mentally disturbed.
But the next day I was confronted with another attempt to explain my behaviour, one for which I was quite unprepared.
Drawn by rumours of my healings, which were now arousing the interest of the authorities, some Scribes came down from Jerusalem. These weren’t minor intellectuals like those who live locally, but experienced theologians. They set up a form of temporary court of inquiry outside the synagogue and passed swift judgement:
“He has a demon!”
So they didn’t regard me as mad, but possessed by the Devil. This was a very serious accusation. I don’t know if they had ever been involved in hand-to-hand combat with the Evil One as I had, but they were apparently in a position to enact laws against him. In their directory of crimes this made me an outcast, even worse than a leper. Once they had passed sentence the demon would have to be cast out then and there, and if that didn’t succeed I would be sent into the wilderness to die. I decided to stand up to this tribunal of theirs.
They greeted me as a Pharisee come to present his case, and levelled the accusation:
“It is by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that you cast out demons!”
I saw that they were – quite rightly – treating my healings as part of the war against Satan, and replied with a question, as is customary:
“If a kingdom is divided against itself, how can that kingdom stand? If a town or a tribe is divided, w
ill it not fall?”
It was a telling blow. These shrewd lawyers immediately realized that they were in a weak position. But I still had to convince the local people, so I drove my point home:
“How can Satan cast out Satan? If he has risen up against himself, how can his kingdom stand?”
This time, all those present understood: these high and mighty scholars from the capital had underestimated the little country rabbi! They were looking down their noses at the mud-spattered Pharisees from Galilee as usual. Did they really think this crude trick would fool Joseph’s son, who was educated here in the village by our own learned men, who were just as good as they were – and here was proof! And I sensed I was in a position to give the death blow:
“If I cast out demons by Beelzebul… by whom do your own exorcists (who are so quick to do their work) cast them out? Therefore will they not be your judges?”
I had gone from accused to accuser. If they didn’t immediately answer my question with another, it meant that they admitted defeat. For a moment there was silence, and then they stood up, as rigid as their law, and made their way out of the village – past the ironic smiles of the villagers who watched them leave.
I had been granted a reprieve. The local Pharisees who had taken my side were seen to be vindicated, while the others champed at the bit. The ordinary people of Galilee, meanwhile, were overjoyed to see me stand up to the authorities from Jerusalem, and I knew I had won them over – even if it was unthinkable to show this in public.
The Silence of Gethsemane Page 7