Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (47 page)

“But the Notzrim can’t even communicate with each other,” she protested. “How will they possibly negotiate with Saracens?” All Jews knew Hebrew, an enormous advantage in facilitating Jewish trade.

“If the profit is sufficient, they’ll manage.” Before she could find a new objection, he added another argument. “And if the Notzrim have a choice between buying from us or from other Notzrim, whom do you think they will favor?”

Rachel’s heart sank as she considered her children’s future. “Edomites won’t become merchants overnight; maybe the Saracens will unite and expel them first.”

From what Eliezer had seen of the Moors, this was unlikely. “It will be too late. Once enough Franks know the low cost of our goods, they will resent paying so much for them.”

“Even if you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, why should the children and I go with you now?” She knew he wouldn’t have a good answer this time. “Why not wait a few years until Rivka is married and Shemiah has finished his studies?”
And Papa is in Gan Eden.

“How I love to argue with you.” He leaned over and began kissing her neck. “You should come with me this year because I can’t live without you,” he whispered as he reached out to caress her breasts.

Her breath quickening, Rachel gave herself over to the pleasure his hands and lips were generating. She couldn’t refute his final reason—not that her
yetzer hara
wanted to.

 

A storm blew in the next day, causing Rachel to insist that it was too cold for Salomon to go out, and that she and Rivka would pray with him at home. While waiting for the men to return, Rachel helped Rivka with her spinning and told her about their plans. “You can’t imagine all the wonderful things you’ll see on the trip, Rivka.” She gave the girl a hug.

“But Alvina and I have just started to study Mishnah.” Rivka protested.

“I’ll teach you Mishnah.” Now Rachel would have someone to study with while Eliezer was out. She turned to Salomon. “You mustn’t overexert yourself while we’re gone, Papa.”

“Don’t worry,
ma fille
.” Salomon stretched out his good hand to pat hers. “With Shmuel’s help, I can revise my
kuntres
and resume my duties as rosh yeshiva. The only thing you need to fret over is what we’re going to feed everyone during Hanukkah.”

“Promise you won’t spend too much time in the vineyard, especially in bad weather.” Her voice rose with alarm. The demon had attacked him last year just after the Cold Fair.

“I won’t. I’ll let Baruch, Pesach, and Samuel do most of the pruning.”

She sighed and turned her attention to Rivka’s spindle, praising the quality of her daughter’s wool thread. There was no way to keep Papa out of the yeshiva or the vineyard.

“I will miss you,” he continued. “But a woman’s place is with her husband. You’ve been a tremendous help by showing me which psalms need my attention; now you can relax with Eliezer in Toledo while I revise them.”

“I won’t be relaxing in Toledo, Papa. Rivka and I will be studying together, and I’ll be writing more commentary on Nedarim.” While Eliezer spends all night at the observatory and half the day sleeping, she said to herself, having second thoughts about leaving. Did she want their children to see him devoting his time to secular studies instead of Torah?

Before she could decide whether to share her misgivings with her father, the door swung open, silhouetting Miriam and Joheved against the swirling snow. They had their arms around each other as if neither could stand without support. Tears streamed down Joheved’s cheeks and Miriam’s pinched face was white as the snowflakes on her veil.

Rachel hurried to close the door behind them. “
Mon Dieu!
What’s the matter?”

Miriam held out a letter as if it were a dead rat. “From Yom Tov.”

His hand shaking, Salomon scanned the parchment. Then he passed it to Rachel and opened his arms to comfort his distraught older daughters.

Rivka ran to her side, and with great trepidation, Rachel began to read. Yom Tov assured his mother that he was well before offering regrets for bearing such evil news, but he knew she would want to be warned.

Winter storms had brought the pox to Paris.

With all the travel to and from Troyes during the Cold Fair, it would only be a matter of days, weeks at the most, before the pox struck here as well. Observing her sisters’ terror, Rachel began to tremble. Shemiah and his older cousins had barely survived the previous outbreak, but children born since then would be vulnerable: Joheved’s Shlomo and Jacob Tam, Miriam’s Alvina and . . .

Rachel hugged Rivka tightly as potential tragedy loomed before her.
And my daughter.

twenty-six

As one child in Troyes after another was stricken, Rachel spent an anxious January watching her daughter for any sign of poor health. Once they’d learned of the pox in Paris, there was no further talk of Rachel going to Toledo. Rivka would have the best chance of surviving if she became ill at home, and of course her mother must be there to care for her. Only pruning the vineyard with Papa and Shmuel, where they discussed how to revise Papa’s commentary on Genesis, succeeded in diverting Rachel’s mind from the approaching plague.

Papa was adamant that his very first question would address the heretics. “Shmuel tells me that several of their scholars ask why scripture begins with an account of Creation, and indeed our own sage Rabbi Isaac says the Torah should have begun with the first commandment given to Israel.”

She smoothly cut off a shoot that grew toward the center of the plant. “How will you answer them?”

“Should the nations say to Israel, ‘You are robbers who took the land of Canaan by force,’ Israel may reply to them, ‘All the earth belongs to the Holy One, Who created it and gave it to whom He pleased.”

“But won’t the
minim
say that He has now given it to them?” Salomon dropped another trimmed branch on the pile behind him. “Just as when He willed, He gave the land to Canaan, so when He willed He took it from them and gave it to us.”

“But the plain sense of the text is not to show the order of Creation, that the Holy One created heaven and earth first,” Shmuel said. “It shows that at the beginning of Creation, the earth was without form and there was darkness.”

“All forces of nature were created on the first day and activated later at their destined time.” Salomon slid his palms across each other, as if washing his hands of the matter. “Those who wish to explore this further may refer to
Sefer Yetzira
.”

Rachel addressed both her father and nephew. “How else will you refute the
minim
?”

Shmuel answered her. “The second verse states:

Since
ruach
means ‘wind’ or ‘spirit,’ they say this demonstrates the Holy Spirit, part of their false Trinity. But
ruach
obviously refers to the wind, which gathered the water into two areas above and below, just as the Holy One caused a
ruach
to split the Red Sea so the Israelites could walk through on dry land.”

Salomon nodded. “Unfortunately, the
minim
also see reference to their Trinity when it is written:

“What can you say to them?” Rachel asked. “The text is clearly in the plural.”

“This demonstrates the Holy One’s humility. He consulted with the heavenly council before creating other beings in His likeness,” Salomon explained. “Though they did not assist Him in forming man, and though this use of the plural gives the heretics an opening to rebel, yet the verse does not refrain from teaching proper conduct—that the greater should take council from the lesser in issues that affect them.”

“As a refutation to the heretics,” Shmuel continued, “it is written immediately after this verse:

‘He,’ not
they
.” Shmuel smugly crossed his arms over his chest.

Rachel clapped her hands in approval. “What about the heavenly host, the angels?”

“Why is it written ‘day one’ [cardinal number], when all the other days are ‘a second, a third, a fourth day’ [ordinal numbers]?” Salomon asked. “Because on that day the Creator was the One, Sole Being in His world. The angels were not created until the second day.”

“But the sixth day isn’t called ‘a sixth day,’ like the others,” she pointed out. “It’s written ‘the sixth day.’ ”

Salomon smiled at her. “This teaches that all of Creation stood in waiting until Shavuot, the sixth day of Sivan, when Israel was to receive the Torah.”

Shmuel couldn’t resist adding, “In fact this entire section, concerning the six days of Creation, was written to anticipate the commandment:

“Speaking of the sixth day.” Rachel’s voice grew serious. “How will you counter the heresy of original sin?”

Salomon winced. “Shmuel, how do the heretics explain what happened to Adam and Eve?”

“In Paris they teach that Adam gave names to the beasts three hours after his creation, that the woman ate the forbidden fruit and offered it to him in the fifth hour, and that they were expelled from Gan Eden by the end of the eighth hour,” he replied. “Since the verse following their expulsion states that Adam knew Eve and she became pregnant, the
minim
consider their children, and all children born since, to be stained with original sin.”

Salomon turned to Rachel. “Tell us what Rabbi Yohanan bar Chanina teaches about that day in Tractate Sanhedrin.”

“You mean from the end of the fourth chapter?” When Salomon nodded, she stopped pruning to recall the text.

Rachel paused and then explained, “This means that the two, Adam and Eve, used the bed, after which she bore two children, Cain and his twin sister, making four altogether.”

“Correct.” Salomon removed a few small, weak branches from his vine. “Please continue.”

Rachel fell silent for a moment and then her face lit with understanding. “Adam and Eve had children before they sinned.”

“Exactly,” Salomon said. “My rebuttal will point out that in Genesis, ‘the man knew’ is written in the pluperfect, emphasizing that Adam had known Eve before the previous events; before they ate the forbidden fruit and were driven from Gan Eden. So also the conception and birth of their children came before.”

Shmuel slashed off a branch that had grown too tall. “This is a complete repudiation of the heretics. Adam’s progeny, born before his sin, are not stained by his action and do not require any atonement.”

 

Hoping the clean air in Ramerupt would help to stave off the pox’s effects, Rachel sent Rivka to Joheved’s at the end of January. This was followed by an apprehensive week when first Shlomo, then his little brother, started complaining that their heads and backs hurt.

Upon hearing that the boys had grown feverish, Rachel left the pruning unfinished and hurried to her sister’s. A few mornings later, just as Joheved noticed small red spots on Shlomo’s tongue, Rivka and Alvina announced that they were too tired to get out of bed and that their bellies hurt too much to eat breakfast. One look in her daughter’s listless eyes was enough to freeze the blood in Rachel’s veins, even as she falsely assured Rivka that she and her cousin would be feeling better soon.

Determined not to leave her daughter’s side, Rachel took Rivka into her bed. But her hopeful lie turned out to be the truth: the girls’ malaise disappeared the very day the telltale rash appeared in their mouths. Although Alvina’s fever rose alarmingly as the girls’ spots spread to the rest to their skin, Rivka got only slightly warm, and to Rachel’s surprised relief the girls felt so well that they spent the next two weeks giggling over which of the many sores on their body looked most like another belly button.

By then Shlomo’s pustules were scabbing over, and his appetite returned as his fever dropped. Jacob Tam recovered sooner; his scabs gone before his brother’s. Rivka’s were the last to fall off, and while none of the children escaped without some pitted scars, Rachel thanked Heaven that her daughter’s were predominantly out of sight on her feet and lower legs.

One month after Shlomo first became ill, parents in and around Troyes heaved a collective sigh of relief that the pox epidemic was clearly going to be a mild one. Every day when the Torah was read at services, more children, along with the parents of those too young to speak, stood and recited the
gomel
, the prayer of thanksgiving one says at the first synagogue visit after escaping from danger.

Finally it was Rivka’s turn to recite the words that, may the Holy One protect her, she would not say again until she’d survived childbirth. “
Baruch ata Adonai
. . . Who bestows good things on the unworthy, and has bestowed on me every goodness.”

Rachel joined the congregation in gladly responding, “Amen. He Who has bestowed on you every goodness, may He continue to bestow on you every goodness. Selah.”

As the Torah reading continued with Miriam translating for the women, Rachel recalled the times she’d recited
gomel
: after each of her children were born, after she’d recovered from the stillbirth, and after that terrible storm at sea when their ship had nearly sunk. Thinking of how tightly she and Eliezer had held each other on that heaving deck, preparing to die in each other’s arms, tears came to her eyes.