All Things Christmas (20 page)

I sometimes saw children of the rich when we delivered lambs to the Temple. A rich man’s daughter had little in common with me. They wore the finest linen, gold bracelets an
d anklets and jeweled earrings.

Even girls my age colored their eyelids and cheeks and perfumed their hair. And they never sweat. Why should they? They had slaves to do all their work. In the summer, some of them even had a slave trailing b
ehind them carrying a sunshade.

I had lived with this prejudice all my life. When you are a shepherd, you get used to people not giving you any respect. The scribes and the Pharisees murmur we shepherds do not keep all the rules of the Law. Well, perhaps not
down to the last iota and dot.

We were shepherds, not Pharisees, after all. We did the best we could. When I was alone at night with the flock under the stars, I felt as close to God as any High Priest ever did in the Holy of Holies.

Yosef and Miryam were at the synagogue when we arrived. I squeezed in beside Miryam in the women’s section
, wishing her “Shabbat Shalom.”

I got to hold my little friend, Yeshua. He brought the toy sheep I made for him. I cut a scrap of fleece, sewed it and stuffed it
with barley husks.

He shoo
k it and said, “Baa, baa, baa.”

I pretended to be upset and tried to shush him, but I secretly enjoyed it.

A few weeks earlier I found a burl on a branch that Abba pruned from one of our olive trees. While Shemu’el worked on his bowls I whittled at my burl, squaring the sides and putting a point at the bottom. It would become a
dreidel
.

After I smoothed it, I planned to ask Shemu’el to carve the letters
nun,
gimmel
, hay
and
shin
on it.
One letter on each of its four sides.
They stand for
nes
gadol
hayah
sham―A great miracle happened here. When my
driedel
’s
finished, I’ll rub it with some of Shemu’el’s almond oil and beeswax finish. I plan to give it to
Y
e
shau
the next time we go to Bethlehem and teach him how to make it spin.

* * *

Abba made a special mark on the left ear of all the twin ewe lambs. When he decided which to sell and which to keep, he selected the keepers from among the twins. He believed that a twin, when bred, was mor
e likely to produce more twins.

At the synagogue I asked the Lord to bless our flock and let every ewe bring forth two lambs this spring so we would have enough money to pay our taxes. After our visit to Bethlehem life continued in a normal manner for a time, then strange things began happening.

~ 9 ~

“Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt
,...
”
―Matthew 2:13

A few weeks after we went to Bethlehem the first ewes began dropping their lambs. Perhaps the Lord answered my prayer. It felt like we were getting more twins than usual. Not all twins, though. Maybe I asked for more than we deserved.

It was the middle of
Shebat
,
the month of spring lambing and we spent our nights in the fields, looking after the sheep from a watchtower. Being up high gave us a bird’s eye view of the field. We could spot predators long before they threatened our flock.
Constructed of mortar and stones gathered from the surrounding fields, these round towers had a lot in common with our house. Both of them had an outside stairway leading to the top. It was flat, like our roof, and they each had a low wall around them so no one fell over the side.

I stretched to my full height and pointed north. “Look.”

Together Abba and I watched the far-off silhouette of a solitary wayfarer trudging toward us on the south road. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the dark image. A man led a donkey piled high with…
we
ll,
he was too far away to say.

It surprised me to see a lone traveler. Long strings of camels often slipped past in the moonlight while we tended our sheep. Merchant caravans preferred traveling at night when it was cool, but few others dared be on the road after sunset. Even pilgrims traveled during the day and in the company of friends or relatives. Bandits lurked in the Judean hills
ready to pounce on the unwary.

A full moon hung low in the heavens, shimmering across the surrounding fields. The sheep gathered in tight clusters along the grassy hillside below us. They shone white in the moonlight, reminding me of the limestone boulders stre
wn along the road to Jerusalem.

The high-pitched, cackling laughter of a hyen
a reverberated in the darkness.

Jerking up, I cocked my head and listened. An eerie stillness settled ov
er the valley, a tense waiting.

Abba tossed his cloak aside.

My heart thumped. I leaned forward and scanned the brush for movement. What else might be out there? Even after two years, I had not forgotten the day She
mu’el and I drove off the lion.

The sheep st
irred on the hillside below us.

Abba pulled his
shebet
from his sash. The knurled piece of ancient
grapewood
bore the stains of many a predator’s blood. He rocked it in his hand as he counted the shadowy shapes sc
attered across the dark meadow.

Everyone accounte
d for. He gave a relieved sigh.

Most ewes go off by themselves when the time comes to deliver their lambs. A missing
sheep often meant someone was giving birth. We had to track them down right away because she could be in distress and need our help. Jackals, wolves and hyenas became more aggressive during lambing season. They often stalked isolated ewes, waiting to steal their newborn lambs.

Abba left to soothe the sheep.

I rechecked the road. The man leading the donkey had gotten closer. What I imagined to be his pack of goods turned out to be a passenger, a woman. He took quick, measured steps, checking the moonlit road in front of him then casting fur
tive glances over his shoulder.

When Abba returned I pointed out the man’s odd behavior. “He looks like he is running away from something. Do you think he is being chased?”

The man led the donkey around a curve in the road and headed straight at us. He spent so much time checking the road behind that he failed to notice us watching from the tower. Moonlight flooded down on him. His distorted shadow, overly tall and stretched-out looking, moved along the grass with ea
ch step he and the donkey took.

My heart leaped in my chest. I recognized them! It was Miryam on the donkey and her husband, Yosef, leading it. They should be asleep in their bed behind his carpentry shop in Bethlehem. What were they doing out here all
by themselves so late at night?

“Look, Abba. It’s my friends, Miryam and Y
osef. Can I say hello to them?”

“I suppose it would be all right.”

I skipped down the stairway and bega
n pulling up handfuls of grass.

“What are you doing?” Abba asked.

I stooped for another handful.
“Gathering gra
ss for Isaias, Yosef’s donkey.”

“Yosef named his donkey, Isaias?”

“No. I did.” Why explain about the jokes I played on Yosef by giving his donkey a different name each time I visited? I ran toward the road waving my grass and hollering, “Miryam,
Yosef, stop. It is me, Rivkah.”

Yosef made an unpleasant face when he saw me. He pulled back on the donkey’s rope, bringing the little animal to a halt. Miryam whispered something to him and Yosef’s shoulders re
laxed.

“Hello, Isaias,” I said to the donkey. I still could not believe they were so far from home. “What
are you doing out this night?”

I scratched the donkey’s long nose and fed him clumps of fresh grass. He seemed happy to see me even if no one else was. Isaias raised his sad, brown eyes and stared at me as if to say, “It was not my idea to be out late at night. I was happy sleeping in my stall until Yosef roused me.”

In back, Yosef muttered to himself while he checked the baggage. He came around the side
of the donkey shaking his head.

“Why must you always call him names? The poor creature has a weak enough intellect without you changing his name every week or two. It confuses him. And calling an animal by the name of so great a prophet is disrespectful.”

I grinned up at him. “Maybe I will call him Caesar Augustus instead.” The donkey took another mouthful of grass.
“Or perhaps, King Herod.”

“You are a foolish little girl. If a soldier heard you say such a thing, he would knock you down and kick you across the street.”

It was no
t like him to be short with me.

“It was only a jest. I meant nothing by it.” Lowering my head, I offered the donkey the last of my grass. “Here, nameless donkey.” I dabbed at my eyes and scratched the
donkey’s nose while he chewed.

“She meant no disrespect,” Miryam whispered.

Yosef’s mouth formed a tight line. “I am sorry, Rivkah. I did not mean to upset you. We are in a great hurry and must not be delayed.”

The bundle on Miryam’s back began wiggling and making noises. She gave Yosef a loving look. “You have had little sleep today, husband, and you are tired. Rest here while I feed the baby. We
have a long night ahead of us.”

He gave a resigned nod. Giving the rope a sharp tug, Yosef led the donkey over to the side of road.

Abba appeared over the brow of the hill. His eyes went from me, to Miryam,
to the man leading the animal.

“
Shalom Aleichem
, Yosef.
You appear to be a man full of troubling thoughts. Is a
ll well with you this evening?”

Motioning Abba aside, Yosef stepped away from the donkey. They turned their backs to me and conversed in hushed whispers.
Whatever it was that upset Yosef, he did not want me to know about it.

I walked around to the side of the donkey, looked up
,
and smiled.
“
Shalom Aleichem
, Miryam.”

“
Aleichem Shalom
, Rivkah.
Ignore Yosef. He thinks of other things tonight.” She glanced back over her shoulder, studying the moon. “And how are you this night?”

“Abba and I are watching the sheep.
Lambing time again.”
I rested my hands on my hips and gave her a stern look. “Do you know how dangerous it is to travel alone at night?”

Miryam chuckled. “Sometimes, my young friend, a person must do what they must do. Fear not, God is with us. Yosef plans to join a caravan along the way. If not in Hebron, then surely by the time we reach Beersheba.”

“Beersheba? Why are you going to Beersheba?”

She nibbled at her lip. Miryam’s eyes flicked to Yosef, still in deep conversation with Abba, then back to me. She shook her head. Her expressi
on said she could tell no more.

“Did I wake Yeshua?”

“Oh, no.”
She loosened the strap and swung the cloth bundle on her back around to her lap. “He has been awake for a little while now making hungry noises.” She folded back his blanket. “Would you take him for a moment?”

She handed him down to me. At eighteen months, Yeshua was much heavier than the first time I held him. Miryam no longer worried because Yeshua and I played so often at their hom
e behind Yosef’s shop.

Miryam slipped off the
donkey’s
back and onto the grass. As she stretched, her eyes searched the moonlit road a second time. She made n
o attempt to mask her concerns.

The men squatted by the side of the road whispering and scratching lines in the dirt.

“We have h
eavy cloaks in the watchtower.”

At the sound of my voice, Yeshua blinked up at me with a toothy grin. I lifted him up to my shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. He hugged my neck and said, “
Rivvy
,” the way my
little cousin, Yohan, used to.

I sat on my cloak and offered Abba’s to Miryam. Yeshua and I played grab my finger while she loosened her clothing. I sat beside her, listening to her hum
Lailah
Tov
Motek
as he nursed.

“I wish I had a baby like Yeshua to feed and care fo
r.”

Miryam smiled. “I remember watching women nurse their babies when I was a girl and thinking the same thing. Your womanhood will come upon you before you know it. Then a young man will knock at the door asking your father if he can take you for his wife.”