Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (61 page)

Rachel sat down as Papa repeated what he’d been explaining to Judah. “When the Torah commands a farmer to declare that he has not eaten tithed food in
tumah
, ‘impurity,’ it means two things: that he has neither eaten any while he was
tamei
and it was
tahor
, ‘pure,’ nor while it was
tamei
and he was
tahor
.”

Then Papa was silent. At first Rachel thought he was waiting for Judah to finish writing. But Papa’s jaw had dropped open and his eyes were unfocused. Something didn’t seem right, and she stood up to get a better look. But her father made no effort to follow her movement, and when Rachel came closer, she could see saliva trickling from his mouth.

“Papa,” she said nervously, and when there was no response she asked, “Papa. Are you all right?”

Judah put down his quill and parchment, an expression of alarm on his face. “Papa,” he said loudly.

Salomon remained silent, not looking at either of them. Judah waved his hand in front of Salomon’s face, and when this drew no reaction, he bent his head down on Salomon’s chest.

Only then did Rachel begin to suspect what was happening. Fear propelling her, she dashed to the kitchen and returned with a shiny steel knife, holding it under her father’s nose while Judah brought the lamp near. They waited in vain for the blade to cloud over from Salomon’s breath, until Rachel finally dropped the knife, let out a shriek, and burst into tears.

Judah frantically tried to find a pulse, first in Salomon’s wrist and then in his neck, but both efforts were futile. Tears streaming down his face, he closed Salomon’s eyes and mouth. “
Baruch Dayan Emet
,” he whispered: Blessed be the True Judge. Then he turned to Rachel. “Wait here while I wake the household.”

Her voice trembling, Rachel choked out the same blessing, one Jews make when first learning of a death. Yet her mind was protesting that Papa couldn’t possibly be dead; surely he was just sleeping and would wake like usual in the morning.

Judah opened the door to find Shmuel standing in front of him. “I heard a cry. Is anything the matter?” Shmuel peered into the dimly lit room.

Rachel’s weeping and Salomon’s closed eyes were all the answer he needed, and the next moment Shmuel was crying as well. They were soon joined by Joheved and Miriam, who encouraged her to recite psalms with them as they guarded their father’s body. But Rachel could only get out a few words at a time before grief stopped her speech.

It was also difficult to concentrate on her prayers with people stomping up and down the stairs, doors opening and slamming, and a continual hubbub outside in the salon. Anxious voices kept asking if all the water in the house had been poured out, while others inquired if Salomon had died smiling, looking up, or facing people, all of which were good omens for his ease in the World to Come.

At dawn the sisters’ prayers would cease and Papa’s male relatives would begin
tahara
, preparing his body for burial. Students would dismantle Papa’s study table for wood to construct his coffin, while others procured reed mats on which the mourners would sit for the next seven days. There were no tasks awaiting Salomon’s daughters, as it was the community’s responsibility to care for mourners. So the three went upstairs to rest before the funeral.

 

Rachel somehow dozed off, waking with surprise to Rivka’s announcement that it was almost time to leave. She dressed in a daze and headed for the courtyard, carefully stepping over the muddy puddle at the doorstep, where water had been dumped to prevent reentry of Papa’s ghost or any
ruchot
drawn to his corpse. Simcha, Samuel, and a large group of Papa’s students bravely joined Meir and Judah at the head of the coterie, their presence to protect Rachel and her sisters from demon attack as they accompanied the coffin. There were plenty of pallbearers, the six being assembled from the oldest of Salomon’s grandsons and grandsons-in-law. Rachel sighed with regret that neither Shemiah nor Eliezer were there to represent her family.

Outside in the street, an enormous crowd waited. Rachel blinked several times in the bright sunshine, but she could not see to the end of the long line of people. It seemed forever before the unwieldy mass reached the cemetery, and then there was confusion over who should be chosen as the seven pious men to recite Psalm 91 while Papa’s body was lowered into the grave. Clearly all of Salomon’s relatives qualified, so rather than offend anyone, seven foreign merchants who studied with him every year, each representing a different country, were honored.

In this nightmare that was Papa’s funeral, returning home from the burial took longer than getting there, for it was customary for the procession to pause seven times along the way. There the congregation prayed the anti-demonic Ninety-first Psalm through verse eleven, which consists of seven words. They added one word of that verse at each stop to ward off
ruchot
following from the cemetery, until, at the final stop, they concluded with the complete seven words of the eleventh verse:

Someone must have realized that all these guests would never fit in Salomon’s house and courtyard, for tables and benches were also set up on several adjacent blockaded streets. Rachel had no idea how many she greeted—hundreds wanted to pay their respects to her father. She sat alone and miserable on the floor, bereft of solace save an occasional hug by her daughter. Her isolation grew, threatening to choke her, as she watched Miriam consoled by Judah plus their sons’ families, all of whom summered in Troyes, and saw Joheved surrounded by Meir and their dozen-plus children and grandchildren.

The day after the funeral was Friday, the first of Av, and Rachel woke to a few precious moments before she realized that yesterday had not been some terrible dream. Papa was dead. She spent the day miserably sitting on the floor next to her sisters, in their hot, stuffy home, while the parade of pitying strangers and acquaintances offered condolences that served only to remind her how alone she was. Dreading four more days of the same, she gratefully attended Shabbat services.

Despite the Sabbath, the atmosphere at synagogue was subdued. Besides mourning the loss of their rosh yeshiva, the community was observing the final week of semi-mourning that preceded Tishah b’Av. No Jew in Troyes would be bathing, cutting their hair, drinking wine, or eating meat that week, not just Salomon’s family. Rachel found no solace in this, resenting that her special role in mourning her father should be so diluted.

As was customary for mourners, Rachel, Joheved, and Miriam could not walk to synagogue unaccompanied, and once inside, they took different seats than usual. Below, in the men’s section, Salomon’s mourners also made a point of not sitting in their regular places. None of them would return to their old seats until
sheloshim
, the first thirty days of mourning, was over.

 

During the rest of the shiva week, Rachel felt as though each day would never end; yet when Shabbat came again, it was too soon. Since the Ninth of Av fell on a Saturday, the fast day would be observed on Sunday, making for another joyless Shabbat experience. But when she arrived at services, the congregation was buzzing.

Salomon’s ghost had been seen at synagogue during the previous night.

Spirits of the recent dead took a while to leave their bodies behind, and the pious among them gathered in synagogue late Friday night for their own ghostly worship. That was why additions were made to the Friday evening liturgy, to ensure that no one remained in the synagogue alone to finish his obligatory prayers. That was why Shabbat hospitality was compulsory on the community. On other nights travelers might lodge in the synagogue, but not Friday. Heaven forbid that a man be alone in synagogue if the ghost congregation needed one more for a minyan.

Despite the danger, two yeshiva students—nobody said which ones—decided that both of them together might, in such a large city, visit the synagogue that night in relative safety. For further protection, they waited until the moon was high to sneak into the courtyard, and only viewed the spirit worshipers through the windows.

The rumor continued that the students had witnessed flickering lights and shadowy forms within, two of whom they recognized. One was a Flemish cloth merchant who had taken ill and died shortly after arriving at the fair, and the other was Rabbenu Salomon. Joheved rejected the account immediately, but Rachel wasn’t so dismissive. It lessened her despair to imagine Papa’s spirit nearby, watching over her.

When she got home, she entered Papa’s room for the first time since his death, hoping to sense his presence. His clothes were gone, for it was bad luck for anyone in his family to wear the dead man’s clothes. But Judah’s notes lay on the chest, and, curious, she picked them up. There, under Papa’s explanation of why the tithed foods must be eaten in purity, was written:

Rachel began to look forward to the next day, Tishah b’Av proper, when she could spend a peaceful afternoon at Papa’s grave. But everyone else in Troyes had the same idea, and his burial site was a mob of people, jostling each other and clamoring to be closest to his tomb. She refused to yield until sunset, her disgust and sadness mounting with each passing hour.

All these strangers cared about was losing their teacher; yet they would have new teachers tomorrow. She had lost her father, and nobody would ever love her as much as he had.

The next morning, too despondent to get out of bed, she instructed the servants that no one should disturb her. So when she heard the knock at her door after the bells chimed at midday, she called out irritably, “Go away. I don’t want any
disner
.”

But the door opened anyway, and in a moment she was sobbing wildly in Shemiah’s arms. She’d missed him and worried so much, but now her son was finally home.

 

“I’m so sorry I missed Grandpapa’s funeral.” Shemiah wiped his tears away as they walked to the cemetery.

“There’s no way you could have known to return earlier,” Rachel said, her grief more easily borne in his presence. “Your father needed you, and you did the right thing in staying until he recovered.”

“He is still very ill.”

Rachel halted and turned to face him. “What? You left Eliezer to die alone?”

“Never. I came back to send you to him.”

Rachel stared at her son in shock. “But he’s not my husband anymore. You know that.”

“Have you married anyone else?”

She thought of Dovid and sighed. “
Non
.”

Shemiah’s voice grew urgent. “You could resume relations with him and be married again.”

“How could we resume relations if he’s on his deathbed?”

“His sickness is a result of all the heartache he’s suffered. I’m sure he’d recover if you were there.”

“If Eliezer is so anguished over his concubine’s death, I don’t see how I can cure him.”
Or why I would want to
.

They arrived at the cemetery and Shemiah opened the gate. “Forgive me, Mama. I’m explaining this badly.”

She resolved to listen patiently. “Please start again.”

“Of course Papa was unhappy about Gazelle and the babies’ deaths. But he didn’t get sick until the other astronomers rejected his work.”

Rachel found Salomon’s grave and sat down on the grass. “How could they do that? Eliezer is a brilliant scholar.”

“I admit I don’t understand most of what Papa says when he talks about calculating how the stars and planets move in the heavens,” Shemiah said sadly. “But I always believed that he knew what he was talking about.”

Rachel sighed. “And the others didn’t believe him?”

Shemiah nodded. “At first he was so excited and proud of his discovery. He showed me pages and pages of calculations: proof, he said, that not only do the inner planets orbit the sun, but the outer ones as well.”

“His friend Abraham bar Hiyya believed that too; it was Abraham’s idea.”

“Abraham gave up that theory to prove that the Messiah is coming in 250 years.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped. “He’s calculated the exact date?”

“Abraham says the Messiah will arrive in the year 5118. But never mind that. Papa’s troubles began when he declared that the earth and the planets circle the sun.”

Rachel was stunned into silence.
Impossible—everyone knows the earth is the center of the universe, and that the sun and stars go around her.

“Every single one of his colleagues insisted that he was wrong, including Abraham. Nobody even wanted to see his proofs,” Shemiah said. “The harder Papa tried to interest the other astronomers in his work, the more they rejected him. Some called him a heretic.”

“Poor Eliezer. He must have been crushed.”

“But the final blow came when I arrived and told him that you’d accepted his
get
, and that you were going to marry the fuller.”

“What? I have no intention of marrying Dovid, or anyone else for that matter.” Rachel glared at him. “How could you say such a thing?”

“From what I saw at Passover, I assumed your marriage was imminent.” Shemiah’s tone softened to mollify her. “So I was wrong about Dovid. But I know Papa still loves you, and I thought if I told him about a rival it might spur him to come home.”

“Eliezer told you that he loves me?”
Could that be true?

Shemiah hesitated before replying, “Not in so many words. But he always asks about you when I arrive—are you well, what are you doing, do you have any plans to visit him—questions like that.”

“Perhaps he’s being polite,” she said skeptically.

“It’s not mere politeness,” he insisted. “I can tell by the way Papa talks about you, the expression on his face and his tone of voice, that he harbors a great affection for you. Please go to him, Mama. He’ll die without you.”