“Under Israeli law a Cohen is forbidden to marry a divorced woman. It just can’t be done.”
“But you and Vered are engaged.”
“That’s right. And if we want to get married we have to fly to Cyprus, get some English clergyman to marry us according to his law, then fly back to Israel and live in local sin.”
Cullinane started to laugh. “We’ve been trying to dig up ancient history and all the time we’ve been living in it.”
“You’re wrong,” Eliav protested. “You’ve been digging in Judaism but you haven’t tried to understand it. John, we’re a special people with special laws. Why do you suppose I asked you to read Deuteronomy five times? Damn it, you stupid Irishman! I’m not a Catholic. I’m not a Baptist. I’m a Jew, and I come from a most ancient people with most ancient laws.”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” Cullinane apologized. “But this Cohen business …”
“You saw Leviticus. The priests ‘shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband …’ There it is. And there’s no way we can get married in Israel.”
“Wait a minute! Vered’s a widow.”
“More important, she’s a divorcee.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I knew her husband well. We fought together at many places … a handsome, dashing young lady-killer. Vered was captivated by him and on the day we broke the siege of Jerusalem she married him. But when peace came he couldn’t seem to fit in. Never understood that things had changed, so they got divorced. Then, with the Sinai campaign in 1956, came his second chance. You wouldn’t believe what he accomplished with a column of armored cars, and I suppose God was gracious, for he died in battle.” He paused to remember a gallant, undisciplined friend. “Bar-El was one of the few heroes I’ve known. An authentic hero.”
“But if Vered’s a widow …”
“The critical thing is she was once divorced. If I intended staying on this dig, that would be one thing. We’d fly to Cyprus, get married there, and if later on the rabbis judged our kids to be bastards, when the time came for them to marry they’d fly to Cyprus too. But I can’t join the cabinet and flout Jewish law.”
“You’d give up Vered for a cabinet job?” Cullinane asked in astonishment. And the explosive form of his question satisfied Eliav that the romantic Irishman would face any problems to marry her. His uncle, who was a Catholic priest, his father, who still spouted nonsense, his sister, his friends could all go straight to hell if he wanted to marry Mrs. Bar-El, which he did.
The honest shock of Cullinane’s reaction forced Eliav to reply carefully. He said, “For an Irishman, with an Irishman’s secure history, the question is the way you phrased it. But I’m a Jew, and my history is much different. We were two thousand years without a country, John. I and a few … really, we were a handful … my wife … Vered’s husband … and a marvelous Sephardi named Bagdadi, whom I think of very much these days …” He stopped, and after a long moment said, “We built a state to which the Jews of the world can repair for the next thousand years. Today that state faces critical decisions concerning its basic structure, and Teddy Reich’s convinced me that I’m needed …”
“Where?”
“In the most critical areas. The question you just asked would make sense if you posed it to an Irishman. But the question to ask me as a Jew is this: Would you, in conformance to Jewish law, surrender Vered Bar-El to help preserve the concept of Israel?”
“Would you?”
Eliav evaded the question: “The night my wife was killed on this tell our detachment was on its way to Akko. Vered and her man took care of me, because I was pretty much out of my mind. We stormed into Akko, which Tabari held with his Arabs, and about thirty of us Jews went up against … well, God knows how many Arabs. And somehow I got far ahead of the line and I would surely have been killed, except that this little seventeen-year-old girl came blazing up with a submachine gun. She cleared the street and led me back as if I were her idiot child. I can feel her hand in mine now.”
“Why didn’t you marry her?”
“She’s a lot more primitive than you think. She was fascinated by the gallantry of Bar-El. When he was gone there was the Cohen business. Who wants to flee to Cyprus? And I was never the dashing buccaneer type.”
The two archaeologists stood silent for a moment, looking at the minarets of Akko, where Vered Bar-El had fought her way to save Eliav, and finally the Irishman said, “You’ve taught me a certain humility this afternoon. I withdraw my question.”
“Thanks.”
“But I pick up yours. Do you intend to marry Vered or to serve Israel?” There was no reply, and after a while Cullinane added, “Because I’m giving notice right now, Eliav. You marry that girl … before I leave for America … or I’m taking her with me. And so help me God, that’s it.”
“Vered fought for this country,” Eliav said quietly. “She’d never leave Israel. She’d never marry a non-Jew,” and by their separate paths the two men left the tell.
Next morning the first of two disruptive visitors arrived, Professor Thomas Brooks, traveling through the Holy Land on one of his regular photographic trips, and since he was an influential board member at the Biblical Museum, Cullinane was obligated to care for him while he was in the Galilee. This was not an unpleasant task, for Professor Brooks was an amiable man, teacher of church history in a small Protestant college in Davenport, Iowa, who made additional income by lecturing through the west on “Old Testament Times” and “Scenes from the Life of Christ.” He illustrated his lectures with color slides, which, accompanied by his careful explanations, served better than motion pictures. He was a good scholar, tried to keep au courant with the latest archaeological research, and imparted to his audiences a vivid sense of that tiny area of the world from which the great religions had sprung. He was not allowed, of course, to lecture in Catholic churches, but he suspected that when his screenings were held in public halls rather than Protestant churches many Catholics attended, and he took pains to include in his slides scenes that would have special interest for them.
He was in his late fifties, a fleshy man to whom life had been good, and he traveled with his wife, some years younger than himself, who managed the cameras and the checkbooks. They were a congenial pair, as beloved in the Holy Land as they were back home, and often they had helped rich widows write wills that bequeathed inheritances to the Biblical Museum for its excavations. They were honest people, the Brookses, and they believed in a simple, honest God; but as they finished their photographing tour in 1964 they were disturbed, and they conveyed their apprehension to Cullinane.
“John, I can’t approve what’s been going on here in Palestine,” Brooks said. As an older man, and as a member of the board that employed Cullinane, he always referred to the director as John, while as a fundamentalist he continued to refer to the new state of Israel as Palestine. “I don’t like it at all.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Who wants to see a great gaping ditch running smack down the middle of the Holy Land?”
“They’ve got to have water,” Cullinane said.
“Granted, but Grace and I reflected many times that all these factories … these macadamed roads. Really, they destroy the feeling we used to get from this land.”
“They do, John,” Mrs. Brooks agreed. “I remember when we first came here … the British administered it then, and it looked just as it must have in Bible times.”
“We took some of our greatest photographs in those happy days,” Brooks sighed. “I only wish Kodak had had a better color film in those years. The reds have faded from our best slides and we can’t use them any more.”
“But today,” Mrs. Brooks continued, “you can hardly take a photograph anywhere that tells an audience clearly that you’re in the Holy Land. Now it’s all towns and building developments.”
“I take it you’re rather strongly opposed to progress?” Culli
nane suggested.
“Oh, there ought to be some progress in the world,” Brooks conceded, “but it does seem a shame to ruin a land that is so much beloved by people everywhere. I can remember when we first came here, you could find in almost any village a water well which looked exactly as it must have in the time of Christ. We got some of the most extraordinary pictures of women walking to the well with great earthenware jars on their heads. You could have sworn it was Miriam or Rachel. Now it’s nothing but deep artesian wells.”
“Your home’s in Davenport, isn’t it?” Cullinane asked, leaning back in his chair.
“When we can find some time for ourselves,” Mrs. Brooks said. “Mostly we travel.”
“Hasn’t Davenport changed pretty much … in the last thirty years?”
“Davenport’s different. It’s not a holy land to anyone. But Palestine … I hate to say this, John, since you’re working on this side, but Mrs. Brooks and I felt much more at home on the other side of the border. In Jordan. They’ve kept their land pretty much as it used to be. One gets a much better sense of the Holy Land in Muslim Jordan than he does over here in the Jewish sector.” Cullinane noticed that Brooks clung to the old English terminology: the Jewish sector.
“What we mean,” Mrs. Brooks explained, “is that in Jordan today you can still find hundreds of scenes with people in Biblical costume … little donkeys … heavenly-faced children playing by the open wells. You can point your camera almost anywhere and catch a Bible picture. It makes your heart feel warm.”
“You don’t get that feeling in Israel?” Cullinane asked.
His use of the current name for the new nation seemed to offend the Brookses, and the professor quickly re-established the accurate terminology. “This part of Palestine is frankly disappointing. I might almost say irritating. You go to a historic spot like Tiberias, hoping to find something that will evoke for people in Iowa the romantic quality of the place, and what do you find? Housing developments … bus stations … a tourist hotel … and on the very edge of that sacred lake, what? A kibbutz, if you like.
“And if you do try to take a photo that will catch the essence of the place, you don’t find people dressed as they are on the other side. Those wonderful garments that make you think of Jesus or the disciples. No, you find men and women dressed just as they would be in Davenport. Carrying plastic bags back from the supermarket. I saw not a thing in Tiberias that reminded me of the Bible.”
“There were a lot of Jews,” Cullinane said.
“I don’t think that’s funny, John,” Brooks said. He tried to avoid using the word Jew; he had been instructed that the people of that religion preferred to be called Hebrews.
“Aren’t you saying,” Cullinane asked, “that the Muslims on the other side look more like Biblical Jews than the living descendants of the Biblical people do?”
“I’m not saying that at all,” Brooks protested. “But when a land has a special meaning for so many, it ought to be kept … well … rural.”
Cullinane bit his lip and tried to keep from smiling. “A good deal of Christ’s ministry must have been spent in cities,” he pointed out. “Jerusalem, Jericho and Caesarea Philippi. And when you get to St. Paul, he seems to have spent most of his time arguing Christianity in the great cities like Corinth, Antioch and Caesarea.”
“That’s true,” Brooks said, “but I believe that most Americans like to think of Bible figures as living in the countryside. It seems to make them more … well … reverential.”
Cullinane thought that that might be one of the reasons why Christianity was having such a difficult time with some of its urban adherents, that they could not visualize Christ as inhabiting cities, where more and more of the population chose to live. He said, “When Jesus was in Jerusalem or Paul in Athens those cities must have been much like New York. I know that when we dig here at Makor we have to remind ourselves all the time that this was an urban settlement, while Akko down the road was always a fairly substantial city. And I’m not at all sure that Jesus went around, or Paul either, looking like a modern-day Arab.”
“I’m fairly well satisfied that they did,” Brooks said. Then, to ease the tension a bit, for he felt that Cullinane was being obstinate in not understanding his basic argument, he said, “The trip wasn’t a failure. Grace and I caught some wonderful shots at Jericho. What a marvelous spot. You could almost feel Old Testament people moving among those ancient ruins.”
“I suppose you got some Arabs to pose for you,” Cullinane said.
“Two handsome fellows. When they took their shoes off they looked just like prophets from the Old Testament.”
“I still wonder if Jeremiah dressed like an Arab.”
“Our audiences think he did,” Mrs. Brooks retorted. “Now, I’m sure you’re doing some excellent work here, John, but we couldn’t photograph it. Not for our purposes. Because the young people I see out there look like ordinary Americans. It would kill the atmosphere.”
“I suppose in years to come,” Cullinane said, looking up at the ceiling, “you’ll take more and more of your photographs outside of Israel.”
“We’ll have to,” Professor Brooks said. “The Hebrews here simply don’t look right. And every new town or factory eliminates one more possible landscape. We’re forced to work in the other side.”
“But when Jordan succeeds in transforming itself into a modern nation, then what?”
“I’ve thought about that,” Brooks said. “As a matter of fact, right outside Jericho there’s some building going on that pretty much spoils that landscape. So next year we’re coming back with a great deal of film, and we’re going to shoot everything we can and keep it on file.”
“And after that?”
“We’ll probably find some backward area of Arabia,” Brooks suggested. “I think we’ll still be able to get some great shots of water wells and caravans down there.”
At the airport, when the Brookses were about to climb aboard the jet that would fly them home to Davenport in less than fourteen hours, Cullinane experienced an irrational urge that he knew at the time would get him into trouble. As his board member started toward the huge airplane, loaded down with cameras and color slides that would evoke the Holy Land for thousands, Cullinane asked, “Did you get a good shot of our airport?”
The humor of the question escaped the professor, who took it as a personal insult. He was about to say something but the sudden vision of a color slide of the large airport, with taxis delivering Jewish officials with briefcases and soldiers in Israeli uniform, overwhelmed him. He remembered when he had first seen the Holy Land, at the old port of Haifa, where his ship had docked and where a shrouded figure dressed much as Jesus must have dressed two thousand years before, had come ambling along the quay. In that pregnant moment Professor Brooks had sensed what his life mission was to be: to lecture throughout America with slides of the Holy Land showing people how the great religions had originated. And he was now convinced that this could not be done by showing slides of cities or modern developments. The Bible was something ancient. The men who composed it, or who participated in its adventures, were different, and he doubted that he would ever again bother to return to the Jewish portion of Palestine. This brash young digger, Cullinane, irritated him, too, and he thought: I’ll speak to the board about him when I get home. Is he really the man we want representing us in the Holy Land?
Cullinane, watching the bewildered man waddle onto the plane, thought: It would break his heart if he knew that when the disciples met in Tiberias, St. Peter probably said, “Look, James. We can’t possibly get to Jerusalem in three nights,” and James had probably replied, “We can if we scramble.” He thought of Makor, and reflected on how difficult it was to comprehend any past age: If a town of a thousand people exists for six thousand years, as Makor had, this means that nearly a quarter of a million different human beings must have lived inside our walls. How impossible it is to remember that they were ordinary people, who helped evolve and
diffuse Judaism and Christianity and Islam. They didn’t go through life posing in bedsheets, and many of their greatest decisions must have been made when they traveled to mighty cities like Antioch and Caesarea, or to significant ones like Jerusalem and Rome.
“God,” he cried, as he uttered the prayer of the archaeologist, “I wish I could see Makor for one day as it actually was.”
But the vast plane thundered in its chocks. Its jets reverberated. Men covered their ears and the great machine lumbered down the long runway, gaining speed until it rose from the Holy Land, turned gracefully toward the sea and headed for Davenport, Iowa.
As he drove back to the dig, brooding upon Professor Brooks’ image of religion, which would condemn an area and a people to ancient ways of life, he became aware that a car was following him and he looked back to see a red-painted jeep that was famous throughout the Holy Land. At the wheel, hunched up like a giant flying through space, sat a very tall blond man, hatless and wearing a dark brown sackcloth clerical habit. His hands grasped the steering wheel as if they were going to crush it and his jeep bounced along at a careless speed. Obviously it was headed for Makor, and Cullinane was pleased to see it coming. He sped ahead, parked his own jeep at the door and ran into the office, crying, “Father Vilspronck’s coming! Tell the architect to get the drawings ready.”
In a moment the door slammed open and the huge brown priest began greeting Eliav and Tabari in the comradeship established through years of working with them at one dig or another. He dropped into a chair, leaned across the desk and caught Cullinane’s two hands. “What contradictory things have you been digging out of my ground?” he demanded, and the question was not preposterous, for by dint of continued intellectual effort Father Vilspronck had made the Holy Land his own in a strange and meaningful way. Nineteen years before, as a young priest from Holland, to which he would return one day a cardinal, he had arrived in Palestine on the same boat that had brought Professor Brooks, and he had asked himself: Would it be possible to determine in a non-hysterical way what happened in the Holy Land during the first four hundred years of Christianity? He had started then to piece together all fragments of knowledge relating to the problem, and as the years progressed he became the world’s leading authority on this subject. During one period he had served as a parish priest in Germany, and this had kept him from his chosen work; other years he had spent in Rome close to the powerful cardinals, who had spotted him for preferment, and although he was able there to study the great Vatican documents on Christianity’s beginnings, he was unable to proceed with his digging. But always he had managed to find some wealthy Catholic layman who would provide him with the funds necessary to return to Palestine for his researches. Now he smiled at Cullinane, whom he had known years before in the Negev when they both had worked for Nelson Glueck, and he said in the manner of a bad little boy cajoling his father, “Well, John, you know what I want.”
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