AS SOON AS MY MOTHER SAID that I could, I bathed in the mikvah which was very cold now, with the water so high it went over my head, and I put on freshly washed clothes, and I went up the hill to the house of the great Rabbi, Berekhaiah. The servants told me he was at the synagogue so I went there, careful to wash my hands in the stream for the sake of anyone who didn’t know I had bathed before coming.
I went in and sat down on the edge of the assembly, surprised to see so many there on this day of the week, but I soon saw they were all listening not to the Rabbis but to a man who had come to tell of events in Jerusalem. He was a Pharisee and dressed in the finest clothes, with plenty of white hairs beneath his shawl.
My brother, James, was there, and so was Joseph, and Cleopas. My older cousins were there.
Rabbi Berekhaiah smiled when he saw me and gestured for me to sit still as the man went on talking.
The man was speaking in Greek, and from time to time he stopped and spoke in our tongue.
He was in the middle of his story:
“This Sabinus, this procurator of the Romans, he had his men surround the Temple, and the Jews took to the roofs of the colonnades. They threw stones at the Romans. The arrows went like that through the air. And the Roman arrows couldn’t reach the Jews because of their position. But this godless man, Sabinus, this man whose sole intent was, in everything he did, to find the treasure of the King in the King’s absence, this greedy man, he set fire in secret to the colonnades, the very colonnades of the Temple with their gold work in wax, and the Jews were caught by the flames. The fire exploded as if from a mountain. The pitch in the roof of the Temple caught fire; the columns themselves were burning. And the gold was destroyed in the flames. And the men on the roofs were destroyed. How can we count the number of the dead?”
I felt my fear come back. Though it was warm, I felt cold as he went on.
“… and the Romans, they went right through the flames to steal the treasures of the Lord before the eyes of those who watched helpless. They ran through the Great Courtyard right into the storehouses to steal in their greed, and they stole from the house of the Lord.”
I saw it as I’d seen it in my dream. I bowed my head and closed my eyes. As he went on speaking, I could see what he was telling us.
Battle after battle, and the Roman legions coming, and the crosses going up along the road.
“Two thousand crucified,” he said. “They went after those who had fled. They brought in those they suspected and executed them. Who knew if all these people were guilty? They can’t tell the good from the bad among us! They don’t know. And the Arabians, how many villages did they burn before General Varus finally sent them home, before he learned they couldn’t be trusted as peacekeepers.” Then came a string of names—places burnt, families who had lost their homes.…
I couldn’t open my eyes. I saw the flames against the night sky. I saw people running. Finally a hand came down on my shoulder and I heard Rabbi Berekhaiah whisper, “Pay heed.”
“Yes, Rabbi,” I whispered.
I looked at the man who walked back and forth before the assembly talking of the rebels—Simon, who burnt the palace of Jericho, had been chased by Gratus, the general of Herod who went over to the Romans. His rule was finished. But there were so many others.…
“They’re in those caves to the north!” He gestured. “They’ll never be wiped out.”
People whispered, nodded.
“They’re families, tribes of bandits. And now comes the word that Caesar has divided us amongst the children of Herod, and these princes, if that is what they are, are on the high seas bound for our ports.”
I saw the nighttime sea under the moon. I felt my dream.
The messenger stopped as if he had a lot more to say, but couldn’t say it.
“We await the ruler who is now put over us,” he said.
A man spoke up from the back of the assembly.
“The priests of the Temple will rule!” he said.
And another: “The priests know the Law and we live by the Law. Why do we not have priests from the House of Zadok as the Law says we should have? I tell you, you purge the Temple of its impurities and the priests will rule again.” Men stood up. Men shouted at each other. No one could be heard.
Rabbi Jacimus was on his feet.
Only when the old Rabbi Berekhaiah stood up did the men quiet down.
“Our embassy put its petitions before Caesar,” said Rabbi Berekhaiah. “Caesar has made his decision and we will soon know the full words of it. Until then we wait.” His eyes moved over the assembly. He turned this way and that as he looked into the faces of the men and the women gathered there.
“Who knows the lineage of the priest in the Temple at this hour?” he asked. “Who knows if there is even a High Priest?”
There was much nodding and approval of that. The men were taking their seats again.
The messenger went on to answer questions from the men.
But there was soon disputing and shouting all over again.
I got up and slipped out of the synagogue.
In the warm air I didn’t shiver anymore. I went through the village and out and up the hill.
Women were tending the vegetable gardens. The farmers worked with their helpers in the fields.
The sky was big, and the clouds were moving as if they were ships at sea.
Wildflowers bloomed in the grass, some tall, and others small. And the trees were full of green olives.
I lay down on the grass, and felt of the wildflowers with my open hand. And I looked up through the branches of the olive tree. I wanted it that way—the sky in bits and pieces. I was happy. I could hear far away the pigeons and the doves of the village. I thought I could even hear the bees in their hives. I could hear something that was like the grass growing, but it wasn’t that, I knew. It was all the sounds coming together, and being soft—so unlike the sounds of a city.
I thought of Alexandria. I thought of the great open Temple to Augustus Caesar by the port with all its gardens and its libraries. I had seen it many times as we passed it on our way to take supplies from the warehouses on the docks.
Yes, all that. And our procession, we, the Jews of Alexandria, the largest part of the population, celebrating the day the Scripture had been put into Greek. We had given the pagans something to look at, had we not? Or so the men said as we chanted the Psalms.
I saw the sea.
I did think of those things … but I loved this place. I knew love of it, love of the thick forests going up the slopes with the cypress and the sycamore, and the myrtle trees as Joseph taught me the names of them.
I prayed in my heart. “Father in Heaven, I thank you for this.”
It wouldn’t last, being alone here.
It was Cleopas who came to get me.
“Don’t be unhappy,” he said.
“I’m very happy,” I said as I climbed to my feet. “I am not unhappy at all. I am not unhappy with anything.”
“Oh, I see,” he said in his usual tone. “I thought the talk in the synagogue had made you cry.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This is a happy place, this,” I said, looking back to where I’d been. “I come here and I think and my thoughts turn to prayers.”
He liked this.
We walked down the slope together.
“Good,” he said. “You mustn’t worry about all those struggles, those defeats. The Romans will get every last one of those rebels in Judea. That fool, Simon, is just one of them. They’ll catch Athronges, the shepherd King, and they’ll catch his brothers. They’ll hunt down these thieves in Galilee too. They’re up there in the caves, at the Fountains of the Jordan. They’ll come out when they want something, and you’ll hear them roaring through the village. Oh, not here, no, nothing much ever happens in Nazareth except—. Whoever is King here or in Judea, Archelaus or Antipas, Caesar is the judge to whom we can appeal. I’ll tell you one thing about Caesar. He doesn’t want trouble out here. And these Herods will rule as long as there’s no trouble. We always have Caesar.”
I stopped. I looked up at him.
“You want it this way, that we always have Caesar?”
“Why not?” he asked. “Who else is to keep the peace?”
I felt the fear so sharp that it hurt my belly. I didn’t answer. “Will we never have another King for David’s throne?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time before he answered.
“I want peace,” he said. “I want to build, and plaster and paint, and feed my little ones, and be with my kindred. That’s what I want. And that’s all the Romans want. You know they’re not bad people, the Romans. They worship their gods. Their women are proper. They have their ways as we have ours. Here, you’d think that every pagan was a lawless fiend who burnt his children to Moloch and committed abominations every afternoon in his own house.”
I laughed.
“But this is Galilee,” he said. “Once one lives in a city like Alexandria, once one has been to Rome, you know these are illusions. Do you know what that word means?”
“Yes,” I said. “Fancies. Dreams.”
“Ah,” he said. “You are the one who understands me.”
I laughed and nodded.
“I’m your prophet,” he said.
“Will you be my prophet?” I said.
“What? What is it you want me to do?”
“Tell me the answers. Why did they stop me at the door of the synagogue? Why didn’t Joseph want to say that it was in—.”
“No,” he said. He shook his head. He put his hands up to his head. He looked down. “I can’t do it because Joseph doesn’t want me to do it.”
“Joseph has forbidden me to ask questions of him, even to ask questions.”
“You know why?” he asked.
“He doesn’t want to know,” I said. I shrugged. “What else could it be?”
He knelt down and took me by the shoulders. He looked into my eyes.
“He doesn’t understand things himself,” he said. “And when a man doesn’t understand, he can’t explain.”
“Joseph? Not understand?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I said it for your ears only.”
“You understand?” I asked.
“I try,” he said. He raised his eyebrows and he smiled. “You know me. You know that I try. But Joseph’s way is to wait, wait on the Lord himself. Joseph doesn’t have to understand, because Joseph trusts in the Lord completely. There’s something I can tell you and that you must remember. An angel has spoken to your mother. And angels have come to Joseph. But no angel has ever come to me.”
“And not to me, but …” I broke off. I wasn’t going to say it—about Eleazer in Egypt, and about the rain stopping, and least of all about Cleopas himself in the Jordan River, and my hand on his back. Or about that night on the banks of the Jordan when I’d thought there were others there, all around me in the darkness.
He was lost in his thoughts. He stood up and looked out over the fields at the mountains rising to the east and the west.
“Tell me what happened!” I said. I kept my voice low. I pleaded. “Tell me everything.”
“Let’s talk about the battles, and the rebellion, and these Kings of the House of Herod. It’s easier,” he said. He was still looking off.
Then he looked down at me.
“I cannot tell you what you want to know. I don’t know everything either. If I try to tell you things, your father will put me out of the house for it. You know he will. And I can’t bring that trouble to our house. You’re what, eight years old now?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But soon!”
He smiled. “Yes, a man!” he said. “I see that. How could I not know you were a man? Listen to me, someday before I die, I’ll tell you all I know. I promise you.…” He went into his thoughts again.
“What is it?”
His face was full of shadows.
“I will tell you this,” he said. “Keep it in your heart. The day will come—.” He shook his head. He looked away.
“Speak, go on, I’m listening to you.”
When he turned back to me, he had a sharp smile again.
“Now to Caesar Augustus,” he said. “What does it matter who is collecting the taxes or catching the thieves? What does it matter who stands at the city gates? You saw the Temple. How can the Temple be rebuilt and purified if the Romans don’t bring order to Jerusalem? Herod Archelaus gives the order for slaughter in the very Temple. The thieves and the rebels stand on the cloisters and shoot their arrows in the very Temple. I’d have a Roman peace, yes, a peace such as we had in Alexandria. I’ll tell you something about the Romans. Their cup is full, and it’s good to be ruled by one whose cup is full.”
I didn’t answer him but I heard every word and remembered every word afterwards.
“What did they do to Simon, the rebel whom they caught?”
“He was beheaded,” said Cleopas. “He was let off easy, if you ask me. But then I didn’t care that he burnt the two palaces of Herod. It’s not that … it’s all the rest of it, the lawlessness, the ruin.”
He looked at me.
“Oh, you’re too little to understand,” he said.
“How many times have you said that to me?” I asked.
He laughed.
“But I do understand,” I said. “We don’t have a Jewish King who can rule over all of us, not a Jewish King whom men love.”
He nodded. He looked around, at the sky, at the passing clouds.
“Nothing for us really changes,” he said.
“You’ll hear it again. Tomorrow, you’ll come with me to Sepphoris and help with the painting of the walls we’re finishing. It’s easy work. I’ve drawn the lines. I’ll mix the color. You just fill in. You’ll be working just as you did in Alexandria. That’s what we want. Isn’t it? That and to love the Lord with our whole hearts and minds, and to know his Law.”
We walked back home together.
I didn’t tell him what was in my heart. I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him about the strange dream I’d had but I couldn’t. And if I couldn’t tell my uncle Cleopas, then I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d dreamed. I’d never be able to ask the Old Rabbi about the man with wings, or the visions I saw, that I’d seen the colonnades of the Temple in flames.
And who would understand the night near the Jordan, the beings around me in the dark?
We were almost down the hill. There was a woman singing in her garden, and little ones playing.
I stopped.
“Was is it?” he asked. “Come,” he gestured with his hand.
I didn’t obey him.
“Uncle,” I said. “What was it, up there, that you were going to tell me? Tell me now.”
He looked at me and I looked at him.
In a small voice I said,
“I want to know.”
He was quiet, and a change came over him, a softening, and then he spoke in a low voice as he answered me.
“You keep what I say in your heart,” he said. “The day will come when you will have to give us the answers.”
We looked at each other, and I was the one to look away. I must give the answers!
There came over me the remembrance of the Jordan River in the sunset, the fire in the water that was a beautiful fire, and the feeling of those others, those countless others all around me.
And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!
It was gone as soon as it had come. And I knew that I had let it go, this feeling. Yes, I had let it go.
My uncle was still looking at me.
He bent down and brushed my hair back from my forehead. He kissed me there.
“You smiling at me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “You spoke the truth,” I said.
“What truth?”
“I’m too little to understand,” I said.
He laughed. “You don’t fool me,” he said and he stood up and we walked down the hill together.