The Source

by James A. Michener

  But in the spring of 67 even such phlegmatic Jews were worried. For nearly a year the nation had been in rebellion against Rome, for Judaea had determined to accept no more abuse from its rulers. In response to Roman provocation Jews had revolted in Jerusalem and slain the garrison and had ravaged other areas, and in retaliation the Romans had killed twenty thousand Jews in Caesarea and fifty thousand in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt. Even in a smaller city like Ptolemais two thousand had been slain and darkness hovered over the land. Through the valleys of the Galilee armed bands swept at will, first Jew, then Roman, then zealot, and finally mere brigands, killing and plundering most barbarously.

  Because of its effective wall Makor was spared the violence of this period and it was the hope of Rab Naaman that the little town would continue doing so until such time as Emperor Nero’s troops appeared bringing order to the district. Makor would then offer its allegiance to Rome, stupid governors would be withdrawn and conditions would be stabilized. In fact, it could be said that Rab Naaman was impatient for the coming of the legions.

  But in his plans he did not take into account his friend Yigal, for to Naaman’s surprise the olive grower said at a meeting in the synagogue, “Again we must withstand the might of Rome.” When hecklers asked what nonsense he was speaking, he explained, “You either protect God or you don’t.”

  Rab Naaman intervened and said, “We must not oppose Rome, for it is her duty to put down this Jerusalem revolt. I promise you that when she has done so we’ll have peace as before. Jews will live in religious liberty under kings assigned by Rome.”

  “There will be no liberty,” Yigal said. “Bit by bit they will consume us.”

  “What does this man know of public matters?” Naaman asked through his venerable beard. “Has he met with the Romans at Caesarea? Does he know the evil our side has done in Jerusalem?”

  “I know only that the fate of our land lies in the balance,” the stubborn little olive grower said. “I know that if we do not resist now we shall be hauled as slaves from Makor. We must resist Rome.”

  Throughout the debate, which encompassed many days in late March, Yigal refrained from alluding to the success he had known in opposing Roman power a quarter of a century before, for he recognized that the two conditions were different: then Rome had sought merely to import statues of a demented emperor and the armies could with honor retreat from such nonsense; but this time the legions had come to punish an armed rebellion, and once Vespasian marched out of Ptolemais it would not be easy to coax him back. Acknowledging the gravity of the situation Yigal engaged in no cheap demagoguery such as crying, “We turned them back twenty-five years ago and we can do it again.” Instead, he spoke as an honest farmer, beseeching his townsmen to face the situation before them.

  “If we can resist Vespasian here in Makor, we may force him to reconsider.”

  But Naaman countered, “I’ve been warned by a merchant from Ptolemais that Vespasian already has three legions there, the Fifth, Tenth and Fifteenth.”

  “Three Roman legions are a terrible force,” Yigal conceded, “but two hundred years ago in this town Jews like us finally had to defend themselves against Antiochus Epiphanes, and under the leadership of Judah the Maccabee they succeeded.”

  “Who will lead us this time?” Naaman asked contemptuously.

  “A leader is always found,” Yigal said.

  “Do you know what three Roman legions mean?” Naaman pressed. “They could crush Makor like an almond shell. Our only chance is to surrender and to trust in their compassion.”

  Stubbornly Yigal argued, “When evil thunders down upon a town there is only one thing to do. Resist. We have food. We have walls and we have water. I say resist.”

  The Jews of Makor, whose lives depended upon the outcome of this debate, wanted to know why a mild man like Yigal suddenly wanted to oppose the armed might of Rome, and in a quiet voice, fumbling for words and exact expressions, the farmer explained, “You know me as a man of peace. My desire has been to see my grandchildren marry so that I might live with four generations in this town. I don’t know enough to seek office, and Rab Naaman takes care of the synagogue. I don’t want to oppose Rome, but Rome insists upon opposing me.”

  “Rab Naaman says that once they punish the zealots in Jerusalem, they’ll go back home and leave us in peace. What about that?”

  “He may be right,” Yigal admitted. “But I think they’ll stay. And wipe out our faith.”

  “What do you want, Yigal?”

  “What do I want? To be a Jew. Why do I say, ‘Fight Rome’? Because if we don’t we’ll be forced into other faiths. Why am I so stubborn? Because if we can make Rome respect us, we have a chance to remain Jews.”

  “Then you think we should fight?”

  The perspiring farmer wiped his forehead, for it was no trivial question this man had asked: Should an unimportant town try to resist three Roman legions? Squaring himself he said, “Yes. We should fight.”

  Then Rab Naaman rose, speaking through his beard with the force of a wise old man, and he said deprecatingly to the citizens, “You and I know Yigal as an honest farmer. Where olive oil is concerned, we respect his judgment. But of Rome he knows nothing. He cannot imagine what a modern legion is like. Macedonia, which swept Europe. Fretensis, which humbled Asia. And he wants us to fight Apollinaris of Egypt as well.” The audience began to laugh as Rab Naaman marched three long fingers of his right hand through the air. Then, with a voice that breathed authority, he said, “We’ll surrender to Vespasian before he reaches the walls. And your children and mine will live in peace with the Romans.” And this was the procedure agreed upon.

  Ashamed of his neighbors Yigal followed old Naaman home, and when the two men sat together in a room filled with parchments the olive worker asked, “Rab Naaman? Why do you forget the valor we once showed?”

  “Because a quarter of a century has passed, and I have learned wisdom,” the old man said.

  “You’ve learned cowardice.”

  This was an insult which ordinarily the rab would have resented, but tonight the old scholar ignored it. “You’re thinking of Makor, but I’m thinking about the future of the Jews,” he explained, speaking slowly, for he wanted Yigal to grasp his reasoning. “We live in an age when Rome can eliminate us … erase us from Judaea forever. Yigal, do you know what that means?”

  “I only know that we are faced with the destruction of our religion. Worship graven images? Strange gods? These abominations I can’t accept.”

  The old man nodded. “You’re right. We are faced with the loss of our religion, but not if we stay here. But if the Romans move us from this land … There’ll be no synagogue in the land of our slavery. We’re in terrible peril, Yigal, and you want to fight over a little farm.”

  “God lives on a little farm,” Yigal said.

  Rab Naaman bowed. He supposed that if God were a farmer, a small olive grove would be most precious to Him, but he also knew that this was not the question under discussion. “Like Gomer, I am afraid that if we Jews are driven from Israel we’ll forget Jerusalem,” he said. “We’ll break into groups. In exile we’ll be Jews no more, and God will be alone with no people to adore Him. Our only responsibility now is to stay together … to keep our foothold in Eretz Israel.” Then he added in a low voice, “And to protect our foothold in Eretz Israel, the land of Abraham, I will accept any indignity from the Romans.”

  “Even Nero as a god?”

  Aware of the terrible thing he was about to utter, Rab Naaman lowered his voice and confessed, “To save the Jews I would accept even Nero … as a god … but not in my heart.”

  “I would accept him never,” Yigal said, and he left the rab.

  The gulf between the two men was now too great to be bridged. Throughout Makor, Yigal preached the necessity for resistance, but old Naaman moved persuasively from house to house, explaining the idiocy of the olive farmer’s position. “Macedonia, Fretensis, Apollinaris,” he recited, and t
he musical names struck terror into the hearts of the Jews.

  Rab Naaman would have prevailed and the conflict with Rome would have been avoided had not one of the most extraordinary Jews of all time stormed into Makor—hot and dusty from a long march and accompanied by a cadre of picked assistants willing to undertake any assignment. The newcomer was Josephus, appointed by Jerusalem to govern the Galilee, a man only twenty-nine years old, descended from those Maccabean patriots who had won Jewish freedom from Antiochus Epiphanes, and a priest of the highest order, a scholar trained in Greek, a habitué of the imperial court in Rome, and one of the finest writers the Jewish nation would ever produce. Striding like a young god into the middle of the Roman forum, he cried, “From this town we will hurl back the Romans.” He looked at the walls approvingly and shouted, “Men of Makor! You have been chosen!”

  Within a few hours he persuaded the citizens that Yigal’s plan to fight Rome was sound, and the mob swung from Naaman’s counsel of reasoned surrender to one of impulsive belligerency. “As general in charge of the north, I tell you that if we oppose Vespasian with all our power, the Roman legions can never dislodge us.” The crowd continued to cheer, and before the cautious warnings of Rab Naaman could be voiced, Josephus had divided the citizens into military units, had appointed his captains, had sent Yigal like a lackey to bring all available olive oil from the press, and was identifying new constructions that would strengthen the walls. Houses whose sides projected above the walls were given two severe tests by Josephus: Could their roofs support fighters? Could their sides resist Roman siege engines? If they failed either test he said simply, “Tear them down.”

  To the homeless ones from outside the walls Josephus said, “Sleep in the Roman temples. We are at war.” When these matters were settled late in the afternoon, he turned to Yigal and explained, “We’ve chosen to meet the Romans at Makor because we know you have hidden water. I’d like to see it.” So Yigal led the fiery young leader down the shaft, through the sloping David Tunnel and to the well, where to his surprise Josephus looked not at the sparkling water, clear even by the light of flares, but at the roof.

  What’s he interested in the roof for? Yigal asked himself.

  “Solid?” Josephus asked, tapping the ceiling with a piece of broken water jug.

  “Very thick.”

  “Good,” the young general said, and he led the way back to town. At the shaft he went up the exposed flight of stairs as swiftly as if he were an athlete, while Yigal trailed behind.

  Wherever Josephus moved in the next few days his energy was infectious. On the wall he convinced the workmen that they could build a little faster, a little higher, and he helped them do both. With the women who were passing stones from the dismantled houses he joked, and soon had them laughing. He inspected all water cisterns to see that they were filled and announced that each house must in addition keep jugs of fresh water available in case of fire or the Romans’ taking the well. He even went to the synagogue to persuade Rab Naaman and the old scholars that Makor was doing right in resisting the Romans, and although he had no success with Naaman, he was not surprised when he cajoled the other bearded leaders to support him. On the eve of battle there was hope in Makor, generated by this charismatic young general, and the town went to bed on the night of April 4 satisfied that it had a chance of withstanding the legions.

  Two citizens of Makor failed to be impressed. The first was Rab Naaman, who sat alone in the synagogue reflecting on the days ahead and praying: “Almighty God, Your children are about to launch a war which few understand and into which they have stumbled blindly. Destruction is upon us and the scattering of tribes. O God, protect us in the years ahead, and if the Romans are to be the new conquerors after the Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians, let us find some way to exist as prisoners within their camps.”

  And Yigal, in spite of the support which Josephus had given him, also viewed with suspicion the sweeping success of the adventurer, for he saw in the young general many things he did not like: the man’s energy was vulgar; his enthusiasm was of constant force, regardless of the subject; he acted as if he could persuade any man to his conviction, if only he could talk with him long enough; like a clever Greek he could marshal facts to support any position he had taken; and his desire to see the well and to inspect the roof was in some unspecified way suspicious. With apprehensons of disaster, where he had once had hope, Yigal walked through the evening twilight on this last day of peace and entered the small home where Beruriah, their three sons, their wives and the eleven grandchildren were waiting, and there he placed about his shoulders a white woolen shawl in which he conducted family prayers: “Almighty God, we are about to fight on Your behalf, but I am worried. When I tried to explain this war on Your simple terms nobody understood, but now everybody’s ready to follow the young general who gives them no reasons at all. They go to war not from faith but from arrogance, and without appreciating the consequences. Father and director of our destinies, guide us. Let every person in this room gird his courage for the days ahead.” He prayed in silence for some moments, and in the quiet room his wife imagined that she could hear the tramp of Roman feet. She, better even than her husband, realized that Yigal had sought to enlist his townspeople upon a holy mission, and they had refused to comprehend what he was talking about: the defense of their faith, no less. But under the influence of General Josephus they were willing to engage the Romans in an act of plotless warfare, the end of which could only be death. She bowed her head and echoed her husband’s prayer: “In the days ahead let us have courage.” And in the small room the nineteen members of this family prayed that as good Jews they might prove faithful to their God. When darkness came they did not light their lamps, nor did they put away the dishes, but they prayed as a unit, and when the babies fell asleep they were placed on the floor, and all remained in the room.

  Midnight came, and the furry owl that lived in the wadi hooted his signals, but the family prayed on. Under Yigal’s guidance during the preceding years this group of people had come to know God as their benefactor and friend. They had often speculated on why He permitted men like King Herod and Caligula to rule, and they had never found logical explanations. Now that Nero was imitating the earlier persecutors of the Jews, they were increasingly perplexed, and were forced to conclude that in these matters God was not entirely powerful. He had selected the Jews as His personal representatives on earth and He was well disposed toward them, but when raw evil was set loose against His people, as in the case of Nero and Vespasian, God seemed powerless to prevent the persecutions. Yigal knew, of course, that the prophets Elijah, Jeremiah and Gomer had explained that these recurring visitations of evil were called forth by the backsliding and stiff-neckedness of the Jews, and not by God’s impotence to combat evil; in fact, far from being unable to control the tyrants, the prophets had argued that God personally dispatched them to serve His own purposes, but this Yigal refused to believe.

  “God is like us,” he told his silent family as the night hours waned and roosters began to crow in the distance. “He loves good and He wills it to prevail, but the time comes when He requires our help to make it triumph. This day is such a time, and if others fail in their resolve, we must not.”

  “Are you afraid that General Josephus won’t know what to do?” one of his sons asked.

  “I wish that Josephus were more like Naaman—a man of God,” Yigal said, as dawn began to brighten. Then, seeing daylight on the wall outside his home, he was struck anew by the infinite relationship that exists between God and man, and he cried, “Let us dedicate ourselves this day,” and he caused even the babies to be awakened, and he moved from one person to the next, asking, “Do you this day dedicate yourself completely to the will of God?” And each member of his family was required to look into the gray-green eyes of this simple man as he posed the eternal question. When he came to the babies he allowed them to grasp at one finger of his hand as he smiled at them and consecrated them to the thu
ndering days ahead. He was at that moment a fifty-three-year-old Jew who, through years of speculation and ritual, had come to believe that God and the Jews were truly bound together in a covenant comprising deity, people and land, and when the press of terror was most acute, that covenant was most meaningful. In his white prayer shawl, marked with blue stripes and knotted fringes, he concluded the prayers: “Almighty God, we are with You now, and for as long as it is Your will that we shall live, till a hundred and twenty.” As he said these words cries rose in the street that from the walls the lookouts could see the Romans advancing, and the family of Yigal went out into the sunlight to see the latest persecution descending upon them.

  Down the road from the west came two troops of light-armed bowmen, soldiers with large muscles in their legs, ready to rush in the direction of any surprise attack that might endanger the following columns. These shock troops were composed of Gauls, Germans, Africans, Syrians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks and people from the Danube, the most disciplined conscript army the world had so far seen, and when these first units were satisfied that the road was free of ambushes, they did not rest before the town walls but started immediately to clear a large site for the Roman camp.

  Next came detachments of heavily armed Romans, mounted on German and Spanish horses, able to move with dreadful swiftness in support of the scouts, should they uncover stray units of the enemy. These were followed by experts bearing all the necessary instruments for marking out the camp site selected by the scouts, plus a huge detachment of engineers who would build any roads that the army might require. They were closely followed by foot soldiers protecting laborers who carried the luggage of the officers; to reach this essential gear an enemy would have to penetrate eighteen separate files of fighting men, surrounded by eight ranks of cavalry.