Читать книгу Jesus and Menachem - Siegfried E. van Praag - Страница 8

The days undulated once and forever in their appointed time. The days galloped over time like the horses of mounted legions and never returned. Who sat on the days and rode through time? Only the living and in the midst of these, Yeshua and Menachem. And sometimes the riders met other legions on the backs of days, the events which tore past them. So Yeshua and Menachem rode on the backs of their days. And in the light of the visible days they frequently walked, it chanced, quietly without looking at each other, up the mountainous road to the village of Kefar-Nachum.2

Both were now already grown men who were no longer ashamed of their gravity. The times were hard. From Judea to Galilee the fate of Israel reeled from the blows and God’s interests suffered. From Judea, where Valerius Gratus oppressed the people and profaned the Invisible Name, came somber tidings. In Galilee men clinched the fist of revolt.

If as Jews they could not live as they wished, they could at least die in their own manner. For they were not afraid of death. The idolators had sucked out the last possession of the Israelites, they had taken away their last earthly joy, but they had also removed their last smoldering vestige of fear and terror.

Yeshua and Menachem brooded over the terrible idolators, while walking, each in his own fashion, and asked themselves fearfully whether a seed of the future still lay in the hard stony ground.

All at once they heard a swelling, buzzing clamor, and a troop of Roman horsemen thundered by. Romans? There were mercenaries there from all the unknown parts of the world—Gauls, Scythians, Germans.

The youths slipped down along the steep slope of the road, under which the valley lay waiting like a loving deathbed. Their fingers clung tightly to the edge of a rock. Their feet found a slight projection in the face of the precipice. If they had not chosen the spot overhanging the abyss, the horsemen would have ridden them underfoot, for the death of the enemy was their business, and the death of the innocent their diversion.

“I want to see what they are up to,” whispered Menachem. “They are taking the road to Nazareth. Let’s climb up the path and follow them.”

“Nay,” said Yeshua. “I have naught to do with idolators.”

Menachem pressed his feet against the precipice, braced his knees and elbows and stood up on the road again. He had a light step and great endurance. He ran after the troop of horsemen but by now the riders were hidden from view by a wagon and its driver. Menachem trotted still harder and shot over the road like a leopard. One jump and he grabbed the high back wall of the wagon firmly while letting his feet trail over the wheels.

“If the driver sees he has a traveler, I will grab him by the shoulders and strangle him. I will slay him like Moses slew the Egyptian.”

The soldiers were commanded by an officer with the high overbearing type of Roman face. They rode into the town of Nazareth where the command “Halt!” resounded. When the men sprang from their horses Menachem slid under the wagon. The commander assigned some soldiers to find shelter for the animals; three of them took the reins and immediately marched away.

Menachem crawled to the back of the wagon, stole to the edge of the road and slowly stood erect. He was just about to step out as an ordinary pedestrian when the captain espied him and ordered one of his men to bring him the young Jew.

“Galilean?”

“Nay, Judean.”

“Do you live here?”

“Aye.”

“Are there many strong youths in his place?”

“Nay, Nazareth is poor. The men have gone away. The authorities have taken away the farmers” ploughs and confiscated the tools of the tradesmen. They cannot earn a living here anymore. Therefore they have gone to Tiberias and Caesarea where money can be found.”

“We can use you, boy. We have need of men—for the slave mart. They ought to bring the money you have hidden from Caesar’s treasury. Show me and my men the way. If we catch ten of them we will set you free and your father will not need to redeem you from slavery. Now show us the way.”

At that instant Menachem uttered a piercing scream and struck the Roman commander’s chin with his skull. The soldiers set out in pursuit but Menachem had already disappeared in the running maze of streets which were traversed by small blind alleys where it was impossible to tell one house from another in the public road—unless the idolators set fire to the buildings.

In those days all the people of Nazareth knew the Jerusalemite and looked upon him as a familiar stranger in their midst. As a child he had been a dreamer, a refined son of the capital. Who knew what he had in his mind? As a young man he made it a point of honor to be a helper to the townspeople of Nazareth, a simple friend of everyone in the village, one who enters everywhere and to whom each one said: “Shalom Aleichem.”3

He helped the women carry water or thresh grain and an old man to chop wood. Why he did this he did not know. Probably out of compassion. Menachem was like a tree which must stretch its branches downward in order to protect something from rotting and falling asunder.

Despite his gauntness the Jerusalemite had developed into a handsome youth. Even in this land of black-haired people, the glint of his smooth, luxurious hair was striking. His swift gliding movements, his almost dancing gait had a certain charm. Precisely because Menachem loved the daily life of the earth was he noticed by all the young women and maidens of Nazareth. He was thinking of one of them, of Yocheved, the daughter of Abba ben Alexander when he fled from the Romans. Her house was a large one in front of the village and he knew of a hole in the ground there through which he could enter. The Romans, most likely, would not search for him there, for old Abba—who was somewhat domineering—possessed no sons.

Thus Menachem raced up the streets southwards from which Mount Tabor now appeared, now vanished in the panorama. Finally he reached a road of which only one side was occupied by houses. From this road a small footpath branched out. Menachem sped around the corner of the path and disappeared through a hole in the ground.

God would not permit His people to fall apart and be scattered individually. Life had to be communal for events affected the whole community. So once again there was public mourning, this time over the little town of Nazareth.

Only the week before the inhabitants had refused a tribute which the Tetrarch Antipas had proclaimed in the name of the Romans. There was nothing more to be found in Nazareth so they had sent word to the Idumean. Nothing but bitter pain. Cut us in two, you will find nothing!

And now Rome had arrived on a man-hunt for its money. Within three quarters of an hour the town changed its aspect three times. It was normal when Menachem’s shrieks gave a voice to one specific meaning. Then all life was sucked from the streets and it became a dead city. The strangers battered down the doors, windows and walls with axes, pickaxes, clubs and stones. The contents of the houses spilled onto the streets. They set fire to the rat holes and drove the rodents outside. These, however, were people. When would man understand that people were human beings, not animals. God had never said to mankind in the book of Genesis: “I give your fellow man into your hands. Use him. Enjoy him.”

That was the question on Yeshua’s mind as he beheld the acts of violence. He feared not for himself nor did he offer relief, as it was still for him to decide whether he would choose to feed on wormwood and bitter herbs.

In times of great anguish the holiest people and whatever they hold most sacred are sacrificed in the marketplace. Where others are present, and precisely because others are present, they give up their attachment to a child, a man, a sweetheart, to life itself, on the communal altar.

The soldiers searched the houses and hovels, dragging away men and youths to which the women clung tenaciously like dogs that refuse to release the meat which must nourish them.

“Nazareth is descending into Sheol!” wailed the man who dispensed wisdom at the city gate. It was a bright, clear day in the month of Sivan but grief and weeping filled the streets of Nazareth and screams rent the air like yellow lightning.

Yeshua wondered what he would do if the Romans dragged away his father, a man of fifty. Surely Miriam his mother would cling to him tightly and refuse to let him go. Perhaps a idolator would kick her in the stomach then.

At that moment Yehudith, wife of the tinsmith, clung frantically to her husband while two Romans dragged him away by chains around the wrist. They had probably found the chains in his workshop. The tinsmith was thirty years old and the father of three children.

Where would he die now? As an eunuch in Alexandria? Withered by the sun in the land of Kush? Had he begotten three children for this? Was it for this that his parents had looked at him gratefully when he was born? “Why must this be?” asked Yeshua. And still the events glided past him like time through space.

If they dragged away his father, Miriam would also cling tightly to Joseph. That too, Yeshua would have to witness in grief. He would have to sacrifice and give up so much before he could intervene.

How should a person intervene?

Close beside he heard an old man’s voice crying: “Yeshua, Yeshua, flee. They are coming. They are abducting young men!” But Yeshua did not flee. The old sandal maker Amitai who had warned him to flee was running to meet the Romans himself. Two huge blond men from the lands beyond the sea had seized his son. They kicked his son in the shins for he struggled to break free. Then did Amitai make a ridiculous jump for such an old man and flung his arms around the neck of his tall son. He pressed his shriveled body against him as though they were a lover and his mistress.

“My son, my only son!”

The foreign soldiers remained motionless for the boy was almost falling. A Roman centurion approached and said in broken Aramaic:

“Stop your yapping or we slay your son. Away, hop!”

They tore the old man away from his son. Amitai could not stand the shock and toppled lengthwise to the ground like a beast hurled through space. In an instant he realized what had happened. Two worlds had locked into one another like cogs. The old man raised his hands and murmured to the Romans in a language they did not understand:

“By what right do you take away my son, idolators? Even Israel has no right to drag him away for no one shall deprive an old father of his only child and breadwinner.”

“What is he mumbling?” demanded the commander. “Forward.”

Suddenly the soldiers who held Amitai’s son fast felt a stabbing pain behind their loins. Collapsing, they loosed the chains. Amitai’s son was free again.

“After him!” roared the commander. Side by side with another who had loomed up behind him, the son of the sandal maker raced up the road.

“Damned nuisance! Now cast the old man down the mountain.”

Three mercenaries trampled Amitai underfoot. They stuck the points of their sandals under his ribs. So they set him rolling until he reached the edge of the road where he tried to raise himself. A soldier hurled the half-raised figure back to the ground. He tried to grasp hold of a couple of stones with his brittle aged fingers, willing to pierce the palms of his hands with their sharp projections in order to remain hanging. The idolators diverted themselves with his despair. Six feet gave him a savage kick over the length of his cringing body. Inevitably the moment came. The force of gravity prevailed and his soul let go. Screaming, Amitai rolled ever faster down the steep slope into the crevice below where his body was shattered like a pitcher.

Numbed by the spectacle, Yeshua continued leaning against the wall.

“Is this man? Why do I not intervene and lay hands upon these Romans? I would gladly interfere even if the idolators kill me. How sweet is death when one has seen this. ‘How fair are thy tents, oh Jacob; how beautiful thy cities, oh Israel.’ Does that mean the dwellings of the dead, perhaps?”

But Yeshua might not die yet, therefore he went homewards. By some miraculous agency the Romans had not seen him. Menachem’s arrival too had escaped their notice. Menachem had loomed up abruptly behind Amitai’s son, had saved Barzilai and indirectly caused the death of Amitai.

“Maybe it means that I must count on Menachem,” mused Yeshua. “The one may pursue the path which he must follow because another has been sent out upon the road to balance the scale.”

Like a fox Menachem slipped through the hole under the wall of Abba Alexander’s house. He crept a short distance through a narrow underground tunnel. The tunnel turned lighter and a window appeared in the hollow opening. Having emerged, Menachem made haste across an empty patch of ground to a gate through which he entered an inner garden. Here one could stroll endlessly around a luxurious center fountain.

His friend Yocheved welcomed him. The young maiden thought often of Menachem. Whenever she heard noises upon the road she hoped it would be him. This time the noise had not deceived her.

“Is it you, Menachem?”

“I sought shelter, Yocheved. The idolators are all over Nazareth. They are taking away the men to sell them as slaves. Where is your mother?”

“Come into the house, I’ll hide you.”

“I shall not stay long, Yocheved.”

“Are you afraid for me? Do you wish to have nothing to thank me for?”

“Nay, it is not that! I do not wish to stray far from the street and the people.”

“Live more for yourself Menachem, so you can also live for another. You don’t understand the ways in which a person can be in need, Menachem.”

“Our whole village, our whole people are in dire need.”

“You have no compassion for the anguish that one soul can experience, Menachem. Have you ever held me in your thoughts?”

“Immerse your soul in the grief of your people, Yocheved. I hold not with a grief that differs from the grief of my neighbor.”

“I understand you not,” Menachem. “Are you glad that I am near you?”

“I am overjoyed to see you. Your beauty does me good and I take delight in your beautiful voice. Our maidens are like flowers withered by the dust of the roads. Only some of them receive water.”

“Come with me, I shall hide you.”

“And what if your father and mother perceive that you are concealing a young man?”

“My father and mother never perceive anything. Like me, they are too busy with themselves.”

Menachem followed Yocheved on tiptoe into the house. They entered a long, narrow side gallery and came to a halt before a closed door. Moans issued from the room beyond.

“That is my mother,” said Yocheved. “Listen to her lamentations.”

“Where is he? Where is he?” the mother’s voice called out. “Perhaps they have carried him off and I may never find him again!”

“She is speaking of her guilty love,” whispered Yocheved. “She has a lover!”

They walked further through the house of Abba Alexander until they reached a curtained door on the ground floor. Men’s voices resounded from the inside. They seemed to be having a debate.

“That is my father,” said Yocheved. “He is discussing a problem of Halacha4 with Chanan ben Yosai his friend.”

“He studies while the Romans hunt the men of Nazareth?” asked Menachem.

“He always studies, he studies perversely, straight through the grief of his daughter because no young man will take her away.”

“Because my road leads far astray.”

“I know it. But say no more. He studies straight through the adultery and grief of his wife; he studies in spite of God himself! He takes everything true upon the road and still he sees nothing. Father is a true Pharisee, Menachem.”

“I understand him. Without the Law he is cold but why does he study the Law precisely now while the Romans are removing our men? I cannot stay here, Yocheved. I will not hide anymore. I will return to the street.”

“Stay, Menachem, the Romans will carry you off.”

But he loosened his arm from her grip.

“Remain, Menachem, they will take you away from me . . . they will torture you, Menachem my only friend.”

But Menachem no longer heard her. He was back on the open terrain, returning to the road. He was protected by the same mysterious power which watched over Yeshua. He traversed the town of Nazareth by the outside roads which led inward to the heart of the marketplace. The streets were full of struggling people. Screaming women raised their naked arms to the sky. Some cursed the Romans, their mouths frozen in a right angular breach. The howls of the children, the song of helplessness testified to the violence of the strangers like a mournful choir.

Everywhere Menachem saw interlaced people. They struck and injured each other while their puny arms and hands clung frantically to those who were being dragged away. But hands cannot hold the souls of those who are being torn from each other nor reverse the events that tear them asunder.

Simple people in whose huts Menachem had stayed, with whom he had spoken at night in front of the door, became outlaws.

Menachem saw how the strong young smith was taken away; he heard the piercing scream of his wife Yehudith as she dragged her cluster of babies behind her. He saw how they led away Amitai’s son. A little old woman who screamed that her grandchild was lost received a blow on the head, fell down and was trampled by a rolling wave of struggling people.

Thou shalt not murder! said the Law. But there were exceptions in this miserable life. One might not kill unless he saw evil men slaying innocent people. Menachem firmly gripped the dagger which he wore in his girdle under his cloak. Old Amitai had leaped like a monkey to the warm breast of his son and the Roman dogs had torn him away from the youth.

Menachem sneaked behind the soldiers. He stabbed them in the back one after the other. Together with Amitai’s son Barzilai he hurried down the road to escape the Romans.

The two young men did not remain together for long. Menachem darted into the smelly alley of the tanners. Leaping like a goat, he was racing across the dirt of the steeply rising alley when he heard a woman’s voice screaming from a low roof.

“They used me! Better mud in my house than their seed. Be you from Israel, man? Then catch!” A woman flung down a bundle which he caught. As Menachem ran he noticed that he was bearing a child in his arms.

2. Capernaum.

3. “Peace be upon you”—a standard Israelite greeting.

4. Jewish law; the way of life according to the rabbinic commentaries.