On that sunny morning in the year 326 when Queen Helena knelt on the earth of Makor, preparing it for the spectacular growth of Christianity, the leadership of the Jews rested in a remarkable little man named Rabbi Asher ha-Garsi, known through the region as God’s Man. From the age of three he had dedicated himself to the service of YHWH and at nine had memorized the Torah; by fifteen he knew by heart the wisdom literature of his people. At sixteen, obedient to the wishes of his parents, he married a country girl whom they had selected, and although in conformance to Jewish tradition governing holy men he restricted himself to sexual intercourse on Friday nights, he quickly fathered a string of five daughters, for whose support he worked diligently. As his name ha-Garsi indicated, he made his living by the purchase of wheat which he boiled, dried and broke into small pieces, producing the cereal so much appreciated by the city residents of Ptolemais. Groats-making was hard work and involved financial risk, for the cost of raw grain could rise or fall suddenly while the price of finished groats might be moving in the opposite direction. Better than most men, Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker understood the pressures of life, and the disappointments too, for he had always wanted a son to project his name and help him in his business, but none came and his two oldest daughters had married men who would not have been helpful in any occupation other than resting; his succeeding daughters were showing no signs of doing much better.
So the little rabbi sweated in the groats mill, worried about his hungry family, and tried to appease the Byzantine tax collectors; but his principal occupation was serving Makor as its unpaid rabbi, for in these years the Jews of the district were not rich, and it was in his conduct of this office that Rabbi Asher had gained the name God’s Man, for when members of his congregation came asking him to adjudicate their problems he first smiled at them with his sad blue eyes, which seemed to say, “You don’t have to explain about trouble to me,” then tucked his hands under his black beard, and finally said, “Before we discuss this matter, let’s agree between ourselves as to what God’s will is. If we know what He wants, we will know what we want.” In his own life he accepted without question the law as laid down in Leviticus and Numbers—Deuteronomy he held in some suspicion as being both modern and revolutionary—and he wished that his community were willing to imitate him. “It would be better if all followed the Torah,” he told his people, “but men and women are weak, so some of us Jews must set the pattern for the rest.” His gentleness had won many to a closer observance of the law, and it was recognized in Makor that in any argument which disrupted the town, if Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker could be brought into the discussion the interests of God would be represented, for even among the Christians he was known as God’s Man.
Now, as Queen Helena prepared to leave Makor, Rabbi Asher at the groats mill wiped his hands and looked with compassion at a huge, dark-skinned man with beetling eyebrows and hulking shoulders who had come to consult him on a difficult matter. At first the little rabbi was irritated by the interruption, but he smothered these feelings and said to the big man, “We’d better talk at my house, Yohanan.”
He led the way to a mean building where his younger girls were playing noisily. As he appeared they withdrew, leaving him a small room crowded with parchment scrolls rolled in the ancient manner and others whose leaves had been cut and bound in the new style. Shooing the children’s rooster from his alcove he took his position behind a small table while the hulking visitor, his prognathous jaw jutting out belligerently, waited.
“Yohanan,” the groats maker said gently, “we must first try to find what God’s will is in this matter.”
“I want to get married,” the big man mumbled.
“My reply must be what it was last week. Tirza is a married woman. No man may ask her to marry until we have proof … proof.”
The big stonecutter growled, “Three years ago her husband ran off with the Greeks. He’s dead. What more proof do you want?”
Almost as if he understood the symbolism of his act the little rabbi took his hands from beneath his beard and placed them upon a scroll of law. “In cases where the husband’s death can neither be proved nor disproved, we require fifteen years to pass before the woman can be declared a widow.”
“He used to beat her. Must she wait fifteen years for him …”
“Until the fifteen years have passed, Tirza remains a married woman. The law says …”
“The law! The law! Fifteen years for a woman who’s done no wrong?”
“So far she’s done no wrong. But if she lives in sin … outside the law …”
“We don’t care,” the big man shouted, rising to his feet so that he towered over the little rabbi. “I’m going to marry Tirza today …”
“Yohanan, sit down.” Without touching the stonecutter Rabbi Asher forced him back onto the chair, saying quietly, “Remember Annaniel and Leah. He went to sea and the boat foundered. Six witnesses swore that he must have drowned, so against my counsel Leah was permitted to remarry, and five years later Annaniel wandered back. He was still her husband and because we had broken God’s law two families were destroyed.” The little scholar replaced his hands beneath his beard, lowered his voice and added ominously. “And Leah’s lovely children were declared bastards. You know what that meant.”
Silence lay upon the small room as the stubborn workman stared at the man who had brought God into the discussion, and Rabbi Asher, thinking that he had convinced the stonecutter, decided to offer consolation. “God is not selfish, Yohanan. He forbids you Tirza but He has placed here in Makor many fine Jewish women who would be happy to marry a man like you. Shoshana, Rebecca …”
“No,” the tormented giant pleaded.
“With any one of them you could build an honest family …”
“No!” the big man repeated, leaving his chair for the last time. “Today I shall marry Tirza.” And before the little rabbi could argue further, Yohanan had left the place of law, rushing into the larger, freer area of the town, where he ran through the streets until he came to the house where the deserted woman Tirza lived, and he swept her into the air, shouting, “We are married.” From the door of the house he cried into the street, “Three men of Israel, come to hear me!” And he collected a crowd before whom he held up a band of gold which he had bought from a Greek merchant, and in a proud voice announced, “Behold, the widow Tirza is consecrated unto me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel.” And they were married; but Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker, watching from the edge of the crowd, knew that they were not married.
As the rabbi returned home from the improvised street wedding, he grieved over the obstinacy of the big stonecutter and was about to enter his study when he was gripped by an irrational desire to leave the passions of the town and walk in the quieter countryside, so in a mood of perplexity he wandered toward the sloping hill that led from Makor down to the Damascus road, and he arrived there just as the procession of Queen Helena, the emperor’s mother, departed in grandeur for Ptolemais, and the little Jew stood aside as the horses, the donkeys, the palanquins, the soldiers and the bearded priests marched westward to the seaport, where their ship lay waiting. When they were gone Rabbi Asher started to return home, having forgotten in the excitement of their departure his intention to walk among the trees, but he had taken only a few steps when he was gripped by the shoulders, as it were, and turned back to his initial purpose.
He left the ragged town and wandered among the gnarled olive trees; his attention was arrested by one so ancient that its interior was rotted away, leaving an empty shell through which one could see; but somehow the remaining fragments held contact with the roots, and the old tree was still vital, sending forth branches that bore good fruit; and as he studied this patriarch of the grove Asher thought that it well summarized the state of the Jewish people: an old society much of whose interior had rotted away, but whose fragments still held vital connection with the roots of God, and it was through these roots of law that Jews c
ould ascertain the will of God and produce good fruit. He was distressed that the stonecutter had decided to ignore that law, for Asher was certain that disaster of some kind must follow.
His attention was distracted from these matters by a gaudy bee eater flashing through the olive branches, above whose gray-green tips he could see a stork drifting idly on upward currents as if on his way to speak with God in heaven. As the rabbi stood thus, contemplating the mystery, he became aware of a noise at his feet, and he looked down to see a hoopoe bird rustling about in search of worms, and he watched as the industrious digger came upon a colony of ants. The groats maker bent down to study these minute creatures, saying to himself: Whether man looks to the soaring storks or to the tiny ants, what he sees is God. And as he knelt there close to the olive press, vacant now, for the fruit was not yet ripe, his closeness to God brought forth what could be described only as a vision: in the clearing reserved for the press he saw floating in the air a scroll of Torah, and around it—also suspended in air—a golden fence shimmering in sunlight; outside the fence were hundreds of Jews, young and old, male and female, reaching out their hands to encompass or perhaps damage the Torah, but the incandescent fence prevented them from doing either. And while he watched, a woman who could only have been Queen Helena of Constantinople, whom he had seen a few minutes before, knelt and caused a new church to rise from the earth, and about her head shone a radiance which filled the orchard; she vanished and her church, too, but the Torah remained, still protected by its golden fence. With blinding light those two dreamlike realities hung in the air, imprinting themselves upon Asher ha-Garsi’s brain; then slowly even the Torah vanished and he was left alone.
To interpret this vision he did not require wisdom. He sat on the stones of the olive press and stared at the gnarled trees with that insight which comes to a man only once or twice in his lifetime, allowing him to see ahead into the structure of the years. His first impression was of the radiance that had surrounded Queen Helena, and the power of Byzantium whereby she had drawn from the earth of the Holy Land a new church, and he foresaw that the Galilee would never again be the same. A new force, represented by Helena and her son, had entered the world, and Rabbi Asher knew that it would never be turned back. The position of the Jew in relation to this new religion would remain undetermined for some centuries, perhaps forever, but a dominant power had arrived and to ignore it would be folly. If Queen Helena, kneeling in the public square of Makor, said there was to be a basilica on that spot, Rabbi Asher was willing to believe that one would rise, for in his vision the crown of this queen had been neither copper nor brass; it was pure, radiant gold, and he knew that gold carried with it the power to command.
But his more persistent vision was that of the Torah protected by its golden fence, and he recognized this as an imperative to him personally. In wondering what he must do he recalled certain events that had taken place not far from this spot when, two and a half centuries before, General Vespasian had finally crushed Makor, destroying its walls and killing or enslaving all Jews inside. In those fearful days the greatest Jew that Makor was to produce had escaped through the water tunnel at midnight and had gone on to rally the Jews after the traitor Josephus had aided the Romans in their destruction of Jerusalem. Rab Naaman of Makor, the old man was called, a white-bearded rabbi who had lived to be a hundred and three. In his ancient years, when he weighed less than ninety pounds and could scarcely be heard through his ashen beard, he had discovered a student much like himself, a peasant who till the age of forty could neither read nor write but who had developed into one of the leading scholars of Jewish history—the legalist Akiba—and these two self-made men conspired to save Judaism; for they assembled the law whereby Jews could live now that the external focus of their religion, the temple in Jerusalem, was no more. Once all Jews had lived either in Galilee or the south, but now only a small percentage did so, for the Romans had driven the majority to Spain, to Egypt, to Babylonia, to Arabia and to countries not yet named. How scattered they were, how powerless, yet always bound to Israel by the work that Rab Naaman and Akiba had performed.
In the stillness of the olive grove, where the original patriarch Zadok had once talked with God direct, Rabbi Asher listened to the voices of Naaman and Akiba as they were remembered in the Galilee.
“Rab Naaman of Makor said: Build a fence around the Torah, that it may be protected from thoughtless infraction.”
“Rabbi Akiba said: That simple man who gives delight to his fellow creatures gives delight also to God.”
“Rab Naaman of Makor said: To live within the law of Moses is to live within the arms of God.”
“Rabbi Akiba said: They came to me crying that since the Romans have destroyed the land, Israel is poor, but I said that poverty is as becoming to Israel as a red harness on the neck of a white horse.”
“Rab Naaman of Makor said: I complained, ‘There are two men and only one gives to the poor.’ God said, ‘You are wrong. There is only one man, because he who will not give to the poor is an animal.’ ”
“Rabbi Akiba said: Jews are born to hope, and in desolation they must hope even more strongly. For it is written that the temple shall be destroyed and then rebuilt. How could we possibly rebuild it unless the Romans had first destroyed Jerusalem?”
“Rab Naaman of Makor said: Like a twisted olive tree in its five-hundredth year, giving then its finest fruit, is man. How can he give forth wisdom until he has been crushed and turned in the hand of God?”
“Rabbi Akiba said: Israel must not be like the pagans, thanking their wooden gods when good happens and cursing them when evil comes. When good comes, the Jews thank God, and when evil comes, they thank Him too.”
“Rab Naaman of Makor said: There is the law, and before that there is the law.”
“But Rabbi Akiba said: He who glories merely in his knowledge of the law is like the carcass of a dead animal lying in the road. To be sure, the rotting beast attracts the attention of all, but whoever passes by holds his hand to his nose, for it stinks.”
For some time Rabbi Asher recalled the homilies of the dead sages, and in the afternoon he rose inspired and returned to town happily like a bridegroom, for he concluded that he understood God’s wishes: in the vision Queen Helena had been shown building a Christian church, and obviously God approved, for she had appeared in radiant light. To Rabbi Asher this meant that he, too, must erect a holy building, and he marched to the area south of that which Queen Helena had staked out for her Christians, and there he indicated where a small synagogue should be built. He then assembled his Jews and said, “For years we’ve been worshiping in my house, and it is no longer proper for us to do so. We shall build a synagogue like those in Kefar Nahum and Biri.” His suggestion met with approval until one cautious man asked, “And how shall we pay for it?”
Here Rabbi Asher was perplexed, for the Jews of Makor were an impoverished lot. Of the thousand people then living in the area—the smallest population it had known for centuries—more than eight hundred were Jews, but they controlled none of the major industries. “How shall we pay for it?” the man asked again, and there was silence.
Then, from the rear, a big hulking man rose to his feet, the stonecutter Yohanan, and he said through his jutting teeth, “Rabbi’s right. We ought to have a synagogue. You feed me and my wife, I’ll build one better than Kefar Nahum’s.”
The Jews were aware that only a few hours before this big man with beetling eyebrows and hairy hands had defied the rabbi, and they expected God’s Man to reject his offer, but to their surprise Rabbi Asher announced, “From Ptolemais to Tverya, Yohanan is the best stonecutter, and I will give his family their groats.” In a few moments he extracted other promises which would permit the synagogue to be started, and thus began that curious but fruitful partnership between the groats maker and the stonecutter which was to make Makor beautiful again.
Prior to this the synagogues of Galilee had usually been drab affairs in the Jewish traditi
on of a bleak exterior and a warm interior, but now the hulking, almost brutal, stonecutter displayed a knack for carving the white limestone his donkeys hauled in from the quarries, and before long the walls of the synagogue began to show stone birds and turtles and fish, so that during the second year of his work the Jews of Makor saw that Yohanan, using the poetry of stone, was building a masterpiece. It seemed that the uglier his outward life became, the more delicately he used his chisel, so that if he had not yet found a way to live within Judaism he at least knew how to create a home in which Judaism could prosper.
For his outward life remained ugly. After the synagogue was well begun Tirza gave birth to a son, which disturbed her, for she had to face the fact that since the boy was a bastard, he could never be a proper Jew; and she began to imagine that the women of Makor condemned her as she passed. One day she ran screaming to her husband, “Rabbi Asher follows me with accusing eyes wherever I go!” She became obsessed with the idea that he was damning her for having broken the law and began to whine complainingly to her common-law husband, “Yohanan, take me to Egypt or Antioch.” When he asked what good that would do, she could give no coherent explanation but offered the irrational suggestion that there they might find her first husband. The stonecutter tried to reason with her, but nothing he said consoled her, so in perplexity he went to the rabbi and said stupidly, “Tell me what to do.”
The anguish of Yohanan’s plea impelled God’s Man to take over and he said, “I’m sure that God holds Tirza to be your wife, even though illegally. I, too, must accept responsibility for her, and if she thinks that I have personally offended her, I must assure her otherwise.” And the little man left his study to apologize to Tirza; but when he reached her house she was gone. Rabbi Asher trailed her to Ptolemais, but she had already taken ship for Alexandria, and when he sent an appeal to the rabbis of that city they replied that she had wandered off to Spain.
The Source: A Novel Page 62