The Artifact (42 page)

For the next two days we traveled along the bank of the Jordan on a cobbled Roman road increasingly crowded with pilgrims such as ourselves, in colorful robes and shawls, shouting greetings, singing hymns and songs of jubilation, the odor of animals competing with the residual smells of food and sweating people slowing our progress, enabling us also to enjoy the acquaintance of strangers from other towns, my parents to renew old friendships, all of which raised our anticipation of the forthcoming festivities.

That journey led us to the flatlands of Samaria, through which we passed with some trepidation, as the inhabitants of that region were unfriendly toward Jews. The dark scowls of those citizens, however, were lightened by the glorious spring sunshine from a blue sky without clouds, and our long queue moved along without incident. On our last days en route, we cut north of the friendlier towns of Jericho and Bethany toward our final destination: Jerusalem.

Father woke us in darkness to ensure that our first glimpse of the City of King David came at dawn from a distant crest of the road, a sight that struck us immobile, mesmerized at the glimmering walls, the early light reflecting on compact cubes of white limestone houses nestled on angled slopes. The buildings within the enclosure were dominated by the sacred Temple Dome of gold rising above all, bathed in a brilliant, brighter sun of the new day rising above the dark, jagged horizon of the Moab mountains to the east. We heard the distant scrape and clang of creaking bronze as twenty Levites pushed open the huge double Nicanor Gates within, followed by the blare of trumpets for the first prayer, a thousand voices chanting the holy verses of
Shema Israel
. We stood in awe of the sight and sounds until urged forward by people clamoring behind us for their own views and anxious passage into the City.

As we approached the Shushan gate in the south wall, Father and James instructed us how to prepare for the ritual purification, without which any
tameh
³⁵
person could neither enter the Temple, nor eat of the
corban Pesach
³⁶
.
I was secretly glad of this, for I was unsure if my clandestine, occasional
mikvah
had made me totally pure again after being with Tanya as long ago as the previous summer and frequent nocturnal Onanism at her memory.

Designated priests took each family aside to sprinkle us with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer. Yehoshua and I erected a shelter for privacy, behind which first the men, then our women removed and washed the garments we wore, whence we could enter the Temple as our robes dried on our bodies while walking the streets of Jerusalem in the warm sunshine.

We followed James along the narrow footpaths and alleys of the Lower City to the rooms he had secured for our holiday visit, without which we would have been forced to camp in the countryside outside the walls, obliged to walk back to the city each day to participate in services and enjoy the festivities. Although the new Sepphoris was a splendid city, it had little to compare to the luscious gardens with flowers coming into bloom, palm fronds swaying on their tall stalks, trees and bushes strategically placed in grassy parks, the rectangular ponds of Solomon that held the city’s water from mountain springs, huge boulders scattered up the steep hillside, wide tiers of vegetable and grape plots imbedded in graduated terraces alternating with individual and clusters of rock walled, thatch or tile-roof farmer homes.

I was so absorbed in these splendid sights that I almost kept on walking past the double floored limestone building in which we would reside. The rooms were sparse and small. Worn cloths had been provided to hang over the square window and rear exit leading to a grassy area for Intak to graze, a running spring, cooking pit and latrine. All in all adequate for our weeklong purpose.

That first night in Jerusalem found us exhausted from our three-day march and the excitement of our arrival among the countless other pilgrims who seemed to fill every street and shop and room in the Temple area, the Court of Gentiles, Upper and Lower City. After James returned to his quarters in the Temple, Father led us in thanks and prayer, the women served a simple meal, and we were all on our mats when darkness fell, men on the first level, women above.

The next morning, I was struck dumb for the first occasion in memory upon passing through the gates into the Temple area. Never in my short time had I seen so many people crushed shoulder to shoulder, yelling, singing and shouting, wailing infants, tens of thousands of farmers, merchants, tradesmen, fishermen and Pharisees accompanied by their entourage of servants and slaves, priests and rabbis, merchants hawking their wares of every conceivable nature under brightly striped awnings of red and white and green and brown, displaying rugs, robes, sacrificial pigeons, urns, wine, cooking pots and chickens clucking in wooden cages. The ubiquitous odors of animals and their dung, cooking fires, food, spices and incense on the smoky air cut by the refreshing, astringent smell of
etrogim
³⁷
wafting throughout the spirited holiday atmosphere.

According to Rabbi Moshe, the first Temple, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar a half century before, had been rebuilt to this present splendor by Herod the Great, whose design required an average of fifteen thousand workers over a span of sixty years and was intended to exceed that ancient structure of King Solomon in magnificence. The outer buildings and courts were still under construction at the time of my first visit and ironically would not be complete until shortly before our revolt and its total devastation by the Roman General, Titus.

Prior to my initial pilgrimage, I had assumed the great Temple was primarily a place of worship, but soon learned that colossal edifice of 40,000
cubits
³⁸
also contained administrative buildings, several large courtyards, a public market, a national financial depository, offices, living quarters for functionaries and stables. This huge complex of bustling commerce was protected by a
cohort
of Roman soldiers garrisoned in Antonia’s Tower, an enclosure on the outer wall to the northwest of the Temple compound. The presence of these legionnaires, however, was to ensure the
pax Romana
³⁹
against any attempt by Jews to incite riot or disobedience to Roman law. The actual keeping of order within the Temple, the City and surrounding walls of Jerusalem was the task of a twenty-thousand-man Jewish police force.

I walked with my family through the gates into the Court of Gentiles, an open space of five hundred
cubits
where
goyim
⁴⁰
,
heretics, and Jews in the state of impurity were allowed, plus pilgrims of every disposition, all strolling about in serious talk or gossip. My family moved forward as I stood rooted inside the entrance in dazzled wonder, gaping at the throng of people in multi-hued robes at Solomon’s Porch with more than 250 columns 90
cubits
high stretching along the eastern colonnade, and elegant porticoes of myriad colors extending from every wall as shelter from sun and rain. Yehoshua came back with a knowing smile to prod me gently forward toward the Royal Porch to the south, along the center isle rising almost 30 yards on stark white Corinthian columns from which we could see the panorama of the Mount of Olives and Kidron Valley, our ears pummeled by the sounds of temple priests arguing Torah law, peddlers of cooing sacrificial doves and pigeons shouting their price for quality birds, money changers bellowing low rates for the exchange of unclean pagan tender for negotiable Jerusalem shekels, the bleating and lowing of sacrificial animals adding to the cacophony that enveloped us.

My family approached the Fifteen Steps within a throng of pilgrims shuffling slowly up the twenty yard incline above the lower courtyards, at the top of which was an inscription in Latin and Greek forbidding pagans to proceed farther under penalty of death. We continued up toward the magnificent bronze Nicanor Gate into the Court of the Israelites, a relatively narrow room where only Jewish men were admitted.

Father and James entered that ultimate ritual sanctuary with our ewe as the remainder of the family found a large area designed to segregate women and children from religious services, where we found benches and waited. Yehoshua and I squeezed through the tightly packed group of females and boys at the balcony overlooking the sacrificial enclosure, amazed at the sight and wafting odors from below.

Although James had described that sacred chamber where Father would present our lamb for sacrifice, we stared down in wonder at that somber place with a throng of bleating animals tethered to cedar posts, the high rough-cut sacrificial marble altar
⁴¹
on which blood-spattered high priests with dripping knives awaited crying reluctant beasts, offering them up to Yahweh, slashing their throats as soon as they were pushed up the ramp to that broad marble surface whose gutters ran with deep red fluid to catch-bowls below. The large room reeked of fresh blood, the stench of burning fat, disemboweled goat, frightened lamb and excrement that overpowered the subtle incense. Our dead ewe was cut apart on a stone table and its entrails thrown in a roaring fire. The meat was then returned to Father for family consumption that same evening to be cooked with bitter herbs and unleavened bread as a reminder of our succor by God from the Egyptians.

We spent the remainder of that Passover week in prayer in our rooms and at temple services, gathered with old and new friends, taking meals on the grassy slope behind our lodgings, wending our way through the crowded, noisy streets and merchant stalls, enjoying the warm sunshine in parks and gardens of the Holy City.

I had attained my maximum growth that spring and had begun to sprout a spotty red beard, whose snail-pace thickening I observed daily in our single plate of polished metal. My status as the youngest male in the family caused their reluctance to accept me as an adult, particularly in light of the constant chiding in fun by Sarah and Mary. Having completed my schooling, and contributing

to our family sustenance by working with Father, however, finally brought my parents to the realization that I would soon be of marriageable age and ready to take on more responsibility for myself--whether or not we could find a man who would wed his daughter to a boy of short stature with a crippled leg.

After the first few days in Jerusalem, I was allowed to wander through the city alone, thoroughly investigating the Temple and surrounding courts, the Lower City around our rooms, the Upper City to Herod’s Palace, and finally the courts and parks to the west of the Temple. As I approached the northern corner, I saw some legionnaires leaning over the parapet of Antonia’s Tower shouting and laughing at a group of boys below about my age who were throwing fruit and stones up at the soldiers, their aim falling short, hitting the wall below the Romans. I stood behind the boys for a while until a couple of them turned to me, speaking of their frustration at their failed intent to lob an orange against a Roman breastplate. I unwound my sling from my waist, pried a soft plum from one of their hands and whirled the fruit over my head as the other boys stood slack-jawed around me watching the fruit soar into the air, clear the parapet, and splatter into the face of one of the soldiers. We stood there laughing, pointing and yelling at the furious soldier in consort with his fellow legionnaires until the victim grabbed a spear without even wiping his face and flung it down quivering into the dirt a hands width from my stunted foot. The boys’ yells of victory turned to screams of terror as they scattered off across the courtyard behind us while I stood like a stone statue staring at the deadly pike, then up at its grim owner. I finally gained the sense to turn and bolt, immediately slamming headlong into the chest of my brother James.

James placed his arm around my shoulder and began walking us across the courtyard toward the Lower City. “Meet me after morning prayer at the Fish Gate in the north wall.” He was silent until we came to an arch in the Temple enclosure where he bid me farewell until the morrow.

I do not believe I ever took advantage of James’ good nature, especially his forbearance toward me for my youthful transgressions. Yet he was always a shelter under which I could retreat from exigencies.

On the following morning, which would be lodged in memory like a pressing thorn, his countenance was grim, nodding a somber greeting as he led the way out the gate, up a narrow, trammeled path bereft of sunlight in the long shadow of a high battlement of stone and mortar. I was forced to keep my eyes on my footing among the rocky ruts of the steep slope until almost to the crest. When I lifted my head, I stopped dead in the track at the sight of staggered lines of wooden crosses stretching out along the bleak hilltop almost beyond my vision.

James continued climbing, and I forged on behind him until I could see blood-streaked dead and dying men with arms flung wide, their wrists tied or forearms nailed to stout branches of trees across upright posts under circling buzzards, the more aggressive swooping down to peck the eyes and chunks of flesh from dead and gasping figures. Several corpses lay by empty crosses in the background, mutilated by bold rodents and other wild carnivores gnawing inert bodies in the bright of day among human bones scattered throughout the area. Roman soldiers wearing helmets and light armor patrolled the place below their victims, keeping bereaved families at bay, occasionally accepting coins from wives or parents, then walking to the crucified brethren whimpering in agony. The legionnaire would then break the legs of the hanging man with a mighty swing of his scabbard, so the weight of the upper torso would crush the breath from the dying man and end his suffering. I fell to the side of the path on hands and knees to spew my breakfast into the tall weeds as James stood by observing me with a grim expression.