Mother's Eyes

by Woods, Karen

  “The son of Elohim?” Shimon echoed hallowly.

  “The voice from heaven did say, ’This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’, when Yehoshua was in the water with Yoni,” Yehuda pointed out. “We all heard that.”

  Miriam nodded, “It did, but that’s not the first time the issue was raised. When Gavriel, the angel, came to me before Yehoshua was, the angel told me these words, which I’ve never forgotten, ‘Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. You will call his name “Yehoshua”. He will be great and will be called the Son of El Elyon. Adonai will give him the throne of his father David and his kingdom will have no end.’ That’s what the angel told me. I could do nothing else except to say ‘yes’ to the will of Avinu Malkeinu. Your father had similar visitations from Gavriel concerning Yehoshua, Shimon.”

  Shimon drank some wine. He shook his head. “And if his kingdom will have no end, then why does he speak of being killed?”

  Yehoshua shook his head. “You aren’t ready for that answer, Shimon. You hardly believe what you have seen with your own eyes, and you disbelieve what you have heard of the miracles I work. You are too afraid to believe.”

  Shimon sighed. “Maybe you’re right, Brother. I think we’ve all had enough conversation tonight. Shall we sing the birkat ha-mazon and end this meal? My bed calls me.”

  “Bed calls all of us,” Miriam allowed, “and Shabbat is a day for rest. Perhaps it is time to sing our praises to Avinu Malkeinu?”

  An hour later, in her little house, the women settled in.

  “Miriam?” Yoanna asked, breaking the quiet of the single room. “Tell us about your son? You said something about his birth being announced by an angel.”

  “For years, the only people who knew that tale were myself, Yosef, my late husband, and his brother and sister-in-law, Halphai and Miriam. It wasn’t until after Yosef died, that we told Yosef’s children any of this. We didn’t want them to treat Yehoshua any differently than they would have treated any other child when he was growing up. Our goal, Yosef’s and mine, was always to give Yehoshua as normal of a life as we could,” Miriam replied.

  “So,” Miriamne, the one called Magdala, asked, as she pushed herself up on her elbow and looked at Miriam, across the room, “tell us about this?”

  Miriam sighed. She sat up on her mat. Wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging herself, letting her nighttime braid fall down over her left shoulder, she said, “I am not a skilled storyteller. But, yes, I will tell you. I suppose that the story begins with me. My parents, Yoachim and Anna, were both of great age, my mother well past the age of childbearing. My mother had spent her entire married life in the great sorrow of wanting a child, and never having one…”

  She continued telling them simply and without gloss the tale: of her having been placed in service in the Temple as a very young child; of the priesthood, particularly of Zechariah, looking out for her; of the prophetess Anna who had befriended her; of old Simeon; of her childhood in the temple; of her marriage to Yosef; of the announcement of Gavriel; of the trip to see Elisheva; of the trip to Bethlehem; of Yehoshua’s birth into the hands of the angels; of the Shepherds; of Yehoshua’s pidyon ha-ben; of the coming of the Magi; of their flight into Egypt; and their return to Galilee. She spoke of Yehoshua’s childhood, of his studies, of their finding him in the Temple when he was a boy, of his becoming a good carpenter, of Yosef’s death and how Yehoshua missed his Abba, of the years between then and now, of encountering Yoni, of the wedding in Cana. She sighed and shook her head, “And then he went out to teach. You all have been with him and have seen this part of his life.”

  The women had listened without comment.

  Miramne, Magdala, shook her head. “Never deny your ability to tell a tale, Miriam. This all is amazing. Thank you for telling us.”

  “You must have been beside yourself when he stayed behind in the Temple,” Yoanna offered. “If one of my children had done something like that, I don’t think that child would have sat comfortably for a month.”

  “It was punishment enough for him to have had everyone in the village go out of their way, for several years, to remind him to return home with the men,” Miriam said. “He was never a discipline problem for us. His staying behind was a matter of his losing track of time and becoming engrossed in talking about halakhah. Have you not seen how intense he can be when talking of ‘the way one walks’? Is there anything else you want to know?”

  “You are an amazing woman, Miriam bat Yoachim,” Yoanna said.

  “Not so much, really. All I’ve ever done is to walk on that narrow way my son speaks of, on the way that leads to salvation. Avinu Malkeinu wants all people to walk in His narrow way, to love Him, and serve people, loving them as we love ourselves. Now, shall we say our bedtime prayers?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Miriam arose well before the other women, lowly said her morning prayers, and prepared herself for the day to come. She sat quietly, at her table, with a scroll of the prophet Yisayahu, reading while the other women readied themselves for the day.

  “Is that one of Zechariah’s scrolls?” Miriamne, Magdala, asked, as she sat down across the table from Miriam.

  “It is.”

  “Read to us, please,” Miriamne asked.

  Miriam read to them in Hebrew the prophesy of the Man of Sorrows, Isaiah’s third song of the Suffering Servant, then stopped and retold it in Aramaic.

  “This is a prophecy about my son,” she said. “Written seven hundred years ago, more or less.”

  “You honestly believe that this is about the Master?” Miriamne, Magdala, stated in awe, more than asked.

  “I honestly believe this, yes. Zechariah showed me these prophesies many years ago.”

  “I wish I could read Hebrew,” Yoanna said, her voice wistful. “My father thought it was improper for a girl to learn Hebrew, so I was taught to read and write in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Tutors taught me all I needed to equip me to be the wife of an important man. But all the Hebrew I know is what prayers I’ve learned by hearing them said.”

  Miriam sighed. “That is the opinion of many men; that Hebrew instruction is for boys and men only, since women cannot publicly teach Torah. I think that is wrong. If a woman can read, then she can teach her children.”

  Miriamne, Magdala, nodded. “I see our Master gets his forthrightness from his mother.”

  “If everyone is ready, we should go. They’ll be starting soon,” Miriam dismissed.

  The women’s section of the synagogue was full, for a change. That seldom happened. But everyone in the village had heard Yehoshua was to teach this morning. People were curious about what he was to say.

  The liturgy flowed as it always did, the same prayers in the same sequence, lead by the chazzan, cantor, appointed for the day. Then Yehoshua was called to the reader’s platform at the front of the room. He was handed a scroll of the prophet Yisayahu.

  He read the passage in Hebrew. At the end of the Hebrew reading, he spoke the passage in Aramaic, so that all could understand it. He relayed the words of the prophet, “The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the captive, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

  Rerolling the scroll, he gave it back to the attendant, who replaced the scroll in the cabinet where the scrolls were normally kept.

  Miriam looked around to see everyone waiting eagerly for her son to speak, to teach about this passage that everyone knew was about the Moshiach.

  He sat down in Moshe’s seat, and began to teach them, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

  The rest of what her son was saying was lost in the hubbub of people speaking to one another. Miriam heard men asking one another various things.

  “Who does he think he is?” “Where did he get this wisdom such that he doe
s miracles?” “Is this not the son of Yosef, the carpenter?” “Is his mother not Miriam, the weaver?” “Aren’t his brothers and sisters with us?” “Where did he learn these things?” “Just who does he think he is, anyway?”

  Yehoshua got their attention. “Some of you will quote the mashal, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ You will want to see miracles such as you heard I have done. But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. There were many widows in Yisra’el during the time of Eliyahu, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and a great famine was in the land. Yet, Eliyahu was not sent to any of those, but only to a widow in Zarephath in Sidon. In the time of Elisha the prophet, there were many lepers in Yisra’el, yet only Naaman the Syrian was healed. A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own people.”

  The men grew upset at this. A crowd ushered Yehoshua from the building and escorted him out of town and up the cliff. Miriam and the women went along at the back of the crowd. She heard several people say they intended to throw Yehoshua down the cliff and kill him.

  “Stop! Oh stop!” Miriamne, Magdala, cried out, tears streaming down her face.

  Miriam took the other woman’s hand in hers. “Calm, Miriamne. He is in the hands of Adonai.”

  The other woman blinked. “They’re going to kill him!”

  “I do not believe Avinu Malkeinu will allow any harm to come to him, here,” Miriam said. “Be calm.”

  “Are you blind, Woman? They’re planning to throw him off the cliff!” Miriamne, Magdala, cried out.

  “Men plan many things, Miriamne. What comes to pass depends on the will of Avinu Malkeinu. I do not believe it is His will for my son to die in Natsarat. Calm yourself.”

  Just then, Yehoshua walked through the crowd, toward them. No man laid a hand on him. The crowd seemed utterly befuddled.

  “Emma, I go to K’far Nahum. Join me there. I will not ask you to travel on Shabbat. But I must go now,” Yehoshua said.

  “Of course, you must. Pikuash nefesh,” to save a life, “is your obligation here and for that you can properly break Shabbat,” Miriam replied. “Go quickly, my son. I will join you in K’far Nahum, midday tomorrow.”

  He took her hands in his and smiled. “Good.”

  Then he walked away.

  She followed him down the hill that overlooked the town and went just behind him as far as her little house. There she stood, watching her son and his men walk away until she could no longer see any of them.

  Shimon came to stand beside her. “I told you there would be trouble. They would have killed him.”

  “They did not harm him. ‘A wise man is more powerful than a strong man,’ Shimon,” Miriam said quoting the mashal, the proverb, to her stepson. “There is no sense in worrying about this. He will not return to Natsarat.”

  “I am sorry, Miriam. So sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, Shimon. This is the way his life is. Those who speak the words of Avinu Malkeinu always become unwelcome to many. The hearts of men long for Our Father, but are largely unwilling to repent and they take as offense any call to repentance because all of their ways seem right to them.”

  Shoshonah and Yehuda walked up to them.

  Miriam smiled, “Everyone has to be hungry. Come to my house for a meal?”

  “No, thank you, Miriam. We have things to do at home,” Yehuda said. “I just wanted you to know Shoshonah and I will be joining Yehoshua tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Miriam had been with her son and his band for some time. They had travelled widely over the countryside as Yehoshua taught all who came to him, healed all those who had wished to be healed, and created great controversy with the parushim who had come challenging him.

  Those controversies had become so heated that it was no longer safe for Yehoshua to venture into Yudea, because the parushim wanted to stone him. So, largely, he traveled about in the area beyond the Yordan controlled by Philip and in Galilee where Herod Antipas ruled. As required by halakhah, he went up to Yerushalayim three times a year for the pilgrim festivals. With so many people around during those festivals, the parushim did not dare move against him out of fear of the people turning against them. The last thing they wanted was great civil unrest.

  One day, they were not far from where the prophet Eliyahu was taken up to heaven, when word came to them that Yehoshua’s friend, Eleazaros of Bethany, was gravely ill. Yet, they remained there, teaching the people gathered there, for another two days before Yehoshua announced that they would go to Eleazaros and his sisters.

  “But Master, the parushim sought to stone you, and you are going back into Yudea, now?” one of the disciples, Teom, the twin, asked in great disbelief.

  Miriam watched her son smile. “Are there not twelve hours in a day,” Yehoshua answered. “If a man walks in the day, he doesn’t stumble because he sees the light. But if he walks at night, he stumbles because he does not have light.”

  Then she heard him add, “Our friend, Eleazaros, sleeps. I will go to him to awake him.”

  Simon, the one called Cephas, said, “But Master, if he sleeps, he will be well.”

  Yehoshua looked at them and sighed. “Eleazaros is dead. I am glad for your sakes that I was not with him, so that you may believe. But now, let us go to him.”

  Miriam watched as Yehoshua’s men looked about one to another.

  Teom, the twin, said, his voice dry, “Then, let us all go, that we may die with him.”

  And the whole group set off walking to Bethany.

  On the second day of that walk, they neared Bethany.

  They met a peddler just about an hour out of town.

  “What is the news from the village?” Simon, the one called Cephas, asked.

  “It’s much the same as it always was. Babies born. People die. They buried Eleazaros bar Akim four days ago. Other than that, things are much the same,” the man said and walked on.

  “Four days ago!” Yaacov said. “That would have been the day word came that he was ill.”

  “Teom, run ahead and tell Martha and Miriam I am coming to them,” Yehoshua instructed. “I’ll stay here until you return.”

  It wasn’t long until Martha came to them.

  “Master,” she said, “if you had been here my brother would not have died. But I know that whatever you ask of Elohim, He will give to you.”

  “Your brother will rise again,” Yehoshua told her.

  She shook her head and sighed, “I know that he will rise again, in the resurrection at the last day.”

  Miriam watched her son. The compassion on his face tore at her heart.

  “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he is dead, shall live. And every one who believes in me and lives shall not die forever. Do you believe this?”

  “Yes, Master. I believe you are the Moshiach, the son of Eloyhim Chayim,” the living God, “who is come into the world.”

  Then Martha excused herself to go fetch her sister.

  Several people from Yerushalayim who had come to pay condolence calls on Eleazaros’ sisters now followed the sisters, to Yehoshua.

  Miriam, Eleazaros’ sister, fell on her knees before Yehoshua and said through her tears, “Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

  The tears that began to fall down Yehoshua’s cheeks greatly disturbed his mother. She hadn’t seen him cry since Yosef’s death. She found herself crying as well, for his pain more than anything else. She had met Eleazaros, but didn’t know him well. His sisters, she had come to know them better than she knew their brother.

  “Where have you laid him?” Yehoshua asked, his voice thick.

  “Come and see,” Martha answered.

  They walked to the tomb.

  As they walked, Miriam heard several of the people from Yerushalayim talking among themselves. One man said, “Oh, how this teacher loved Eleazaros.” Another man said, “This man opened the eyes of a man born blind. Co
uld he not have caused Eleazaros not to die?”

  Even though Miriam was tempted to come to her son’s defense, to give these men a piece of her mind on the impossibility of Yehoshua’s being here when he had only received the word of Eleazaros’ illness on the day of that man’s death and Yehoshua having been days away. But she bit her tongue and walked on. Her son had said he was coming here to awaken Eleazaros. The man’s resurrection would be reproof enough for these men.

  Reaching the tomb, which was a cave with a stone rolled in the front of the opening as a door, Yehoshua commanded, “Take away the stone.”

  “But Master!” Martha protested. “He’s been in there four days. By now, he reeks with decay.”

  Miriam watched her son turn to Martha and smile. “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of Elohim?”

  Martha looked at the men of the company. “Take away the stone.”

  Once the stone was out of the way, Miriam watched her son raise his eyes and hands to heaven. “Father,” he said, “thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me, but I’ve said this because of the people standing here that they may believe you have sent me.”

  Tingles danced along Miriam’s skin and scalp as her son spoke.

  After a moment, he called out in a very loud voice, “Eleazaros, come out!”

  Out of the tomb came a shrouded form, his feet and hands bound with winding bands, a shroud headwrap tied tightly around his chin and top of his head.