Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (32 page)

“Yom Tov’s betrothal?” Rachel stared at her sister in bewilderment. What else had happened while she was gone?

“When we were in Paris last summer, several families approached us,” Miriam replied. “Judah’s brother, Azariel, did some investigating and then invited Yom Tov to spend Passover week with him, so he can meet potential brides.”

“Shmuel is going with him,” Joheved said. “They can accompany our wine casks and ensure their kosher status.” Her face fell slightly and she sighed. “It will be my first Passover without all the children.”

Rachel exchanged a furtive glance with Miriam, who had to be remembering that terrible Passover she’d spent without her children, sick with the pox in Paris. But Miriam was thinking of their mother.

“We have to expect our children to grow up and leave us eventually.” Miriam’s chin began to quiver. “It will be our first Passover without Mama.”

“It will be Papa’s first Passover without her since they were married,” Rachel said, overwhelmed that Mama had singled her out to care for him. Had Mama finally accepted Rachel’s special place in Papa’s heart? She couldn’t have worried that Joheved and Miriam would neglect him. Rachel sighed. Probably Mama wanted to guarantee that she wouldn’t return to Toledo after
sheloshim
but would stay in Troyes with Papa.

Joheved yawned. “If you don’t mind, Rachel, I need to go to sleep. Miriam and I were up all night, guarding Mama’s body.”

Rachel felt another stab of guilt and quickly let her sisters prepare for bed. Tired as she was, Rachel had to see how Papa was doing first. Downstairs, he seemed well comforted by Judah, Yom Tov, and Shmuel, while Meir was deep in conversation with Samuel and Simcha de Vitry. When she heard Talmud mentioned, she stopped to listen. Anything to delay going to bed and wondering what was behind Mama’s haunting last words.

“Did you know that the Justification of Judgment prayer comes from the Talmud?” Meir asked.

“Isn’t it from Deuteronomy?” his nephew responded.

“The beginning is, but the reason we recite it at funerals and during mourning comes from Tractate Avodah Zarah.”

After Salomon told him of Rabbi Meir and Beruria’s tragic fate, Meir had read a page earlier in the Gemara and learned how Beruria’s parents had suffered their deaths.

Simcha leaned forward. “Teach it to us . . . if it isn’t too long.”

“Of course,” Meir said.

“Not Beruria, Rabbi Meir’s wife, but Rabbi Hanina’s other daughter,” Meir quickly explained when he saw their shocked expressions.

Simcha and Samuel, both of whom had lost beloved wives in childbirth, sighed sadly at the inscrutability of the Holy One’s ways. Rachel trudged upstairs to try to acknowledge her own loses.

 

One week later, at the end of shiva, Rachel wasn’t at all sure that Papa needed to be taken care of. Rivka’s grandchildren lamented her loss more than he did, and if he shed any tears, she hadn’t seen them. His grief was clearly not great enough to stop him from teaching Talmud.

“Thirty days is too long for my students to remain idle,” he declared. “However, since this is a house of mourning we will refrain from whatever makes one rejoice, including the study of Torah, because the Nineteenth Psalm reads:

His students stared in confusion, and Salomon continued, “Thus our Sages allow a mourner to study the sorrowful sacred texts—the books of Job, Lamentations, and Jeremiah, or those passages of Talmud dealing with mourning in Tractate Moed Katan and the Temple’s destruction in Tractate Gittin.”

Salomon picked a nonmourner, the orphan Samson ben Joseph, to read a Mishnah from the third chapter of Moed Katan.

Salomon looked around the room. “Does this Mishnah give rise to any questions?” Several hands rose and Salomon called on his oldest student.

“Who precisely is a mourner?” Simcha de Vitry asked. “I recall that there was a question about Meir mourning his sister.”

Salomon nodded and addressed the room. “Will one of our younger students please recite from Leviticus what the Holy One said to Moses concerning the dead that priests may defile themselves for?”

Before a boy could speak, Hannah answered confidently,

Salomon may not have expected to hear a feminine voice, but he displayed no displeasure and nodded again. “These are the relatives we must mourn by refraining from the activities our Mishnah prohibits.”

Several of Salomon’s pupils looked questioningly at him, who was mourning his wife though Moses had not mentioned a spouse. So he addressed their concerns.

“The Sages interpret ‘his kin’ to denote his wife, and they also include a married sister if she has not moved to a distant location.”

When Salomon said no more, Meir added, “We also mourn for those whom our relatives are mourning. Thus because a man is required to mourn for his wife and she for her parents, he also mourns his in-laws.”

“The most severe restrictions apply to those who mourn a parent,” Salomon continued. “As we also learn in Moed Katan:

Everyone looked at Joheved, who would hopefully need to celebrate a brit milah in several months. She, along with Miriam and Rachel, had agreed to the stringency of not participating in the Talmud discussion, except as observers.

“The Sages disagree on whether this includes banquets accompanying a mitzvah like a marriage or circumcision,” Judah said. “Some permit mourners to attend and some prohibit this.”

“In my wife’s case . . .” Salomon paused, and Rachel saw tears glistening in his eyes. “She specifically requested that our daughters celebrate any such mitzvah that occurs in our family.”

Her father’s grief brought only a mist of sympathetic moisture to Rachel’s eyes. She was overwhelmed with contradictory feelings over Mama’s death: grief, guilt, resentment, relief. But uppermost in her thoughts was whether Mama meant to reward her or punish her by making Papa’s care her responsibility.

eighteen

Rachel couldn’t tell if the tapping noise that woke her was coming from her bedroom door or somewhere outside, so she lay still in bed, her senses poised to hear it again. Her daughter Rivka and niece Alvina, inseparable at night as well as by day, lay beside her, their chests rising and falling in gentle unison, and Rachel couldn’t resist the urge to drop a kiss on her child’s forehead.

Tap, tap—this time she knew it was her door. She was slipping on her chemise when Papa whispered from the hall, “Rachel, wake up.”

“What’s the matter, Papa?”

Mama had been dead almost three months, and Rachel had yet to see an indication that Papa had any special need of her. After spending Passover in Ramerupt, she decided to stay in her old room at Papa’s until Eliezer came home, which thank Heaven would be very soon.

“Nothing’s the matter . . . I think.” Salomon’s voice became more urgent. “Put on your mantle and come outside.”

Rachel couldn’t imagine what her father found so interesting outdoors on this moonless night, but she followed him downstairs and onto the porch. Baruch and Anna were already there, staring at the sky, and it seemed that others were standing outside Miriam’s house.

When Papa looked up, Rachel followed his gaze and gasped with wonder as a shooting star bolted across the sky. “
Baruch ata Adonai
. . . Whose strength and power fill the world,” she recited the Talmudic blessing said upon seeing
zikim
.

Immediately the meteor was followed by others, then the heavens remained stationary for a short while until another abruptly appeared and disappeared. She found that she could not count to five before a new shooting star burst into view, and sometimes there were several in the sky simultaneously.

She could barely tear herself away from the spectacle overhead when the bells chimed Matins, but the sky was more incredible the following night. By the third night, all the yeshiva students as well as her children were outside at midnight to gape in awe at the stars falling.

“What does it mean?” everyone was asking, for this was surely a sign portending the future.

Judah shrugged his shoulders. “In Berachot the sages ask:

“So if the great Babylonian astronomer Shmuel didn’t understand them, I don’t see how we can.”

“When Rabbi Hiyya died, fiery stones came down from the sky,” Salomon said. “So they may accompany the death of a scholar, an event we cannot ascertain in advance.”

“My father told me he saw such stars when Guillaume the Bastard invaded Angleterre,” a student from Normandy said.

“So was that a good omen for the Normans or an evil one for the English they defeated?” Miriam asked him.

“Perhaps it foretold the great battle.”

“We learn some omens from Tractate Sukkah,” Salomon said.

“But how can stars suddenly move like that?” Rachel asked. Knowing that Eliezer was studying astronomy, she’d searched the Talmud for the subject. “Surely they’re fixed in place, as it is taught in Pesachim:

“Perhaps it is as Rav Huna says,” Judah suggested.

No one watching the sky could imagine how the firmament might tear, but surely such a thing was more likely to bode evil than well.

Salomon tried to end their discussion with words of comfort. “Don’t worry. Our Sages also teach in Tractate Sukkah:

When Guy de Dampierre dined with Salomon that Thursday, the topic was scripture rather than shooting stars. Having mastered the simpler Hebrew texts, Guy and Étienne were eager to attempt the prophetic words of Isaiah.

Rachel exchanged a surreptitious look with her father, who subtly shook his head. “Isaiah is one of the most difficult Hebrew prophets,” Salomon told Guy. “Besides many obscure words, Isaiah is filled with allegory. I’d prefer that you studied it with Shmuel, once his Latin is equal to the task.”

Isaiah was the prophet whose words were often twisted by the Notzrim to justify their worship of the Hanged One, so Rachel was sure Papa wouldn’t want anyone but an expert discussing the subject with Guy or Étienne. Indeed, Papa excused himself to return to his students and left Guy in her hands.

“Perhaps I can help you learn Psalms,” Rachel offered as she headed toward the cellar to inventory the wine remaining after Passover. Heaven forbid that Guy or Étienne should be offended. “The poetic Hebrew in Psalms can be tricky, but no other text can match its beauty.”

Guy brightened immediately. “Then I shall be sure to bring my Psalter to our next lesson.”

“Learning Psalms while anticipating Isaiah should be worth the wait,” Rachel said. “My nephews are still in Paris and won’t return until the Mai Faire de Provins, when many merchants are on the road. In the meantime Shmuel has been studying with some of your scholars in Paris.”

“Then he’ll be learning Latin from the best.” Guy followed Rachel down the cellar stairs. “It’s wise to travel with a caravan these days: the roads around Paris are infested with highwaymen, those with noble blood among the worst.”

“Can nothing be done to enforce the pope’s truce?”

“Perhaps. Complaints at Piacenza have encouraged Pope Urban to call for another council in Clermont, in the fall.”

Rachel paused to mark an empty cask. “Another church council so soon?”