Great Lion of God (6 page)

He shook his finger at David and leaned over the table toward him and his black eyes glittered. David flushed with humiliation.

“You are the betrayer of Israel,” said Reb Isaac. “But, are you a Greek, you man who is not a Jew? Or a Roman, an Egyptian, a Briton, a Gaul, a Scythian, a Vandal, a Syrian, or any other heathen? You will tell me that you are a Roman citizen. But that does not say what a man is, himself, in his heart and his soul. He is more than his house, or even his name. He is, surely, more than his wealth or his learning. But, David ben Shebua, can you tell me what you are?”

David had turned very pale. A thin shaft of brilliant sunshine illuminated the side of his face and for the first time Hillel saw that his profile was classic Greek in the short curled upper lip, the round full chin, the marble contour of cheek, and that his coloring enhanced the resemblance. He was suddenly ashamed, and for the first time, that his brother-in-law had been so insulted in his house.

David was gazing at the old man and deep in his blue eyes something like a spark was rising. But before he could speak Reb Isaac continued in his harsh and cawing voice: “My sorrow is with you, David ben Shebua, for the sin is on your father’s head and not on yours. When a man robs his son of his heritage, out of exigency or conceit or vanity or eagerness to be as others, he has done a fearful . He has taken certitude from his son, his identity in the nameless mob, the integrity of his soul, his joy in what he is and to what he has been born. He has taken pride from him, and without pride a man is less than a man. Do the Greeks accept you as a Greek, the Romans as a Roman? You cannot rejoice in the name of Israel, for you have spurned her, as your father taught you, for some vague citizenship you call the world. The Roman world! It belongs only to Romans, and not to you, not the Greeks or any of the other abundant races which inhabit this earth. This they know, and have their own identity, which you have not.”

True, thought Aristo. I was a slave, and am now only a freedman, but I am also a Greek with a glorious heritage behind me, and therefore I am a man above all other things.

Hillel said, circumventing the very pale David, “What a man chooses is his own, and because it is his own, however we may protest it, we must respect it also. There may be a deeper allegiance than nation, or even heritage, and it may be that David possesses it.”

“You speak nonsense in your beard, and you know it is nonsense!” cried Reb Isaac, turning the black glitter of his eyes on his host. He swung his heavy shoulders under their rough robes of brown linen to David. “Tell me,” he said in a loud and peremptory tone, “and I will listen and will weigh your words and not scorn them. Tell me, what is your allegiance?”

Then David said, “To peace.” He stopped, astonished at his own words, and then his face vividly quickened as if he had come upon some truth unknown even to himself, which he had believed and had not known he had believed. “I do not speak of supine submission, not even to the Roman, though we must recognize that he rules the world and resistance is death, or worse. We must remember Pompey, in our recent history, and our Herods. Is it not said in the Scriptures that when the storm breaks the unbending tree is broken, but the bending grass lives for another day and another storm? Let me think a moment! I am a man of peace, and peace is not to be despised. I do not speak of the peace of the slave, but of the peace a man experiences when he accepts the inevitable, which he cannot move. He must make his peace with reality. That does not bring a loss of pride. Once possessed of that tranquillity, a man can again live with dignity and even find worthiness in life. He can rediscover thought. It is civilization at its highest, and I hope I am a civilized man.”

Reb Isaac has listened with all the power of his mind and spirit. A strange expression began to move his blackly bearded face, and now there was comprehension on it, and pity as well as wrath. “It is a compromise,” he said. “There are men who will not compromise out of principle or love of God, and will die for their fortitude. And there are men of another nature who must compromise. They have my compassion.”

Hillel had been struck by David’s words, and he said, “There is nothing wrong with compromise, if the choice is between the evil of accepting reality and the evil of fantasy. Reality, however repulsive, is truth. It is far more dangerous to insist on what is not real or attainable, than to resign one’s self to what is.”

Then he stared at Reb Isaac with that quiet and daunting look he could use on occasion and even the old man became silent. “Let us speak of other things,” Hillel said, and there was that in his voice which rang like a hard command for all its mildness.

“Permit me,” said David, in a voice of pleading, “and let me have a final moment. I have not expressed my heart, I fear. What is my deepest belief is that all men are the same, and whyfore, then, should we separate ourselves into nations and tribes and cultures?”

“For the reason,” said Hillel ben Borush, “that men are not the same. God forbid! If that listless day ever arrives, then all richness shall disappear from the world and all variety. Men of like mind join together and create a culture, which adds to the color and the joy of life, and is a wonder and delight to others of different cultures. God has called to Israel to remain apart so that He will not be forgotten, blessed be His Name, and that His Laws shall have a pristine source to slacken the thirst of all men.”

Reb Isaac said in a rueful tone, “We need not fear the disappearance of Israel. God will forever keep her poor and afflicted, so that she will not decay and die in affluence, as other nations die.”

It was evident to Aristo that Hillel, the quiet and courtly, was now dominating the table, for even Deborah, so emptily staring at first one speaker and then the other, was impressed. However, the young Saul was eying his father with no favor. He was but a child, yet his intellect, as Aristo knew, was prodigious for his age, and he had unchildlike thoughts. Now his eyes, so metallic in tint and appearance, moved to Reb Isaac with respect. Aristo shook his head slightly.

Saul had caught the climate of the conversation tonight and many of its implications, for great was his intuition. He honored his father, for that was commanded, but even as a child he did not believe in his father’s intellect, for never did Hillel forcefully offer or defend his opinions. To Saul that appeared lack of courage or conviction.

Hillel was saying with a sigh, “God, blessed be His Name, speaks in centuries, but man, alas, speaks only in hours. How, then, can we be reconciled? Man is to be pitied and not always denounced. I understand Job.”

These Jews! thought Aristo. They cannot give their Deity a moment’s peace or let Him retreat from their voices! No wonder He smites them regularly, in exasperation, as they are always complaining. Yet gods deserve solitude, far from the exigencies of men, and some repose of mind in the blissful depths of nothingness, freed for a space from importunate prayers or even praise.

“We share, with God, blessed be His Name, our immortality,” said Reb Isaac, “so we, too, speak in centuries in our soul.”

Aristo wanted to laugh. He glanced at David, who was moving his spoons restlessly, for he, as well as Reb Isaac, was annoyed at this meal. David was not interested in immortality; as a Sadducee he had no belief in it. It was not even academic to him.

He said, smiling his courteous smile, “The resurrection of the body, Reb Isaac, if I may interpose in this conversation, is not unique with the Jews as a doctrine. The Egyptians have believed it from the ages, long before there was an Israel, and so have the Babylonians. It is deeply engraved in all the religions with, perhaps, the exception of the Greeks and the Romans, who, however, believe in ghosts.” He laughed softly.

“No one believes it as we believe it,” said Reb Isaac, in his contentious voice.

David shrugged. “No man believes as another man believes, contrary to the Pharisees and all the prophets, Reb Isaac.” Now he barely covered his yawn. “It is probable that Hillel is quite correct: If all men believed the same it would be disastrous.”

Reb Isaac, in his zeal and his intention not only to rescue Hillel from what seemed to be his lukewarmness but to prevent the contamination of a holy young mind—Saul’s—became urgent again. “You sophisticated men make simple things complex, out of your own elaborate confusions. God is lucent and of a boundless clarity. When He says, blessed be His Name, ‘I am the Lord your God,’ He has said all that there is to say, all wisdom, all that any man or angel can dream of knowing. But you invent philosophies.”

“Rabbi, we did not invent your endless and wearisome commentators,” said David. “They are always reinterpreting God, or revising what He has said, to suit the occasion or to make an obscure point.”

Excessively true, thought Hillel. Again, between the two grinding stones of Reb Isaac and David he thought he saw a flash of the incandescent flame of the truth, which neither of them knew in full. Nor did he, Hillel. He said, “God is simple. It is only man which is an obscure darkness.”

Reb Isaac threw him an approving glance. But David said, “I feel that nothing is simple, and nothing obscure. Only thought makes it so, and often I am weary of thinking.”

“And so lend yourself to Greek and Roman debauchery,” said Reb Isaac. “You Sadducees, who are one with the Roman, the greedy taxgatherer, the oppressor, who are destroying my people, forcing them into despair and ruin and poverty, defacing the Holy Ark, tearing the veil of the Temple, scrawling your graffiti on the walls!”

His black eyes filled with tears as he thought of the degradation and slavery and hopelessness of his people and his nation and his religion, within the sacred walls of Jerusalem. His emotion caught everyone’s attention, even Deborah’s. Young Saul’s eyes blazed with blue fire. “You laugh,” said Reb Isaac, to David who was not laughing at all. “But God will not be mocked. He will send us His Messias, blessed be His Name, and all the evil of the world will be swept away like a black fog on a swamp, and the new morning will dawn.” He spoke threateningly, waving a menacing finger at David.

“Amen,” murmured Hillel. Then the memory of what he had been told of the great and awesome star over Bethlehem flashed into his mind. He hesitated, but there was a powerful impulse in him to speak. He bent toward David, who was negligently smiling at Reb Isaac.

He said, “David, I have long wished to ask you a question, for you live in Jerusalem, which is near the holy city where King David was born. I have a relative in Jerusalem, who is married to a Roman, Aulus, a young centurion. He wrote me some years ago, or did his wife, that on one winter night he observed a magnificent and fearful moving star over Bethlehem—” He paused, for Reb Isaac was regarding him with an impatient eye, for it had been he who had mocked the story of Aulus.

“And the Roman thought it was an omen that his son, newly born that night, had evoked a manifestation from their heathen deities,” said Reb Isaac.

But Hillel was looking at David earnestly. He expected David to smile, to wave a graceful hand. But David appeared thoughtful.

“I saw it myself,” he said. “And many others also saw it.” He bent his handsome head and appeared to be considering. Then he shrugged. “But a burning meteor, as the astrologists reported, or a nova. It was a glorious sight. It lit up the far and winter hills of Bethlehem like a consuming moon. It shone steadfastly, for a few nights, and then it was gone. Like all nova, it had a brief light, a brief endurance. But while it remained it was beyond description, pure and white, fervent, turning, as if on a great axis. We gathered on the rooftops to watch it. Some of the superstitious thought it an enormous comet, about to destroy us. Some said the candles and torches in the Temple flared with a vaster illumination while the star hovered over Bethlehem. Some declared they heard celestial voices—” David shrugged again. “It was beautiful. But it was nothing.”

“And no one from Jerusalem went to Bethlehem—to see?” said Hillel. Reb Isaac was silently scoffing, leaning back in his chair, smiling in his beard and flapping his hand. “No one at all cared to investigate, to know?”

David considered again. “One did,” he replied, and gave his light shrug.

Hillel did not know why his heart rose again as if on wings, but he cried, “Who?”

His voice, unusually vibrant and intense, drew even young Saul’s eyes to him in wonderment. His face was full of passion, of hope even he could not fathom or understand, of breathlessness. David’s auburn eyebrows rose in astonishment at this unprecedented display of emotion in his brother-in-law, who was always so temperate.

“A young man, Joseph of Arimathaea, whom you do not know,” said David, in a soothing voice, as if fearful that all that inexplicable ardor might be dangerous. “He is my friend, of my age, an honorable councilor, who has,” David coughed, “admittedly been waiting for the Kingdom of God. He is also a member of the Sanhedrin, for all his youth, for he is esteemed for his wisdom, and the wisdom of his father. He is very pious, but also sophisticated, and a student. In many eyes he has a much greater virtue: He is extremely rich.” David paused and again studied Hillel with curiosity.

“And, he followed the star?” asked Hillel.

“There was no need to follow it. It was there, over Bethlehem. Joseph went with an entourage. But once in an inn—I must mention that the inn was crowded to the eaves, and even the stables, because Caesar Augustus had ordered a census and the people of Galilee were there to be counted—Joseph left his servants and proceeded a little space on foot. It was reported to one of my servants by one of Joseph’s, that Joseph carried a small golden casket in his hands, a precious object, and that when he returned at midnight the casket was no longer with him and never was it seen again.”

“That is all?” asked Hillel, when David remained silent.

“That is all. What more can there be? I recall that I asked Joseph what he had found in Bethlehem, but he only smiled. He is a man of few words.”

“A foolish story,” said Reb Isaac. “Your friend is very mysterious. Had the messenger from God been born that night, there would have been the sound of trumpets and the heavens would have blazed from zenith to zenith, calling all men to worship and to pray. The holy hill of Sion would have burned like the sun and the Roman would have been consumed instantly. Israel would have been raised up to the skies, a coronet of glory, all walls turned to gold, her battlements adorned with angels. The Messianic age of peace, joy, life and majesty would have arrived, and all men would have known it, would have known of the birth of the Holy One to a princess of Israel. Not a nation but would have heard the tidings. Not a sea but would have flamed in exultation. And He, blessed is His Name, would have been exalted and His Presence proclaimed from all the corners of the earth.”