My Glorious Brothers

by Howard Fast

  We got as far as the outer entrance to the Temple before we were stopped, though we had to stable our beasts a hundred yards below.

  Courteously, but firmly, two white-robed Temple servants, who are called Levites and pride themselves on being descended from the ancient tribe of Levi, barred our path and, ignoring me, informed my guide that the stranger could go no further.

  “Naturally,” Aaron ben Levi agreed, with that disgusting note of muted contempt, “since he is a Roman. Yet he comes as an ambassador to speak with the Maccabee—and where shall he go if the Maccabee will not see him here?”

  They took us then to the palace of Simon, which would hardly be called a palace in our land, a clean, spacious stone house, newly built on the hillside near the Temple, overlooking a deep ravine which separated it from the Temple. The few furnishings in the house were simple affairs of cedarwood, and the hangings were of heavy, brightly dyed wool, and there I was greeted by a middle-aged, rather handsome woman, the wife of the Ethnarch. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, reserved always in my presence, she was hardly typical of Jewish women—and it was only later, through the reading of a manuscript which I shall enclose with this report, that I was able to surmise her relationship to her husband; for though there was deep respect, there appeared to be little enough of love between them. The Ethnarch has four sons, tall, well-formed boys, and the life they live is so simple as to be almost rigorous. His daughter had married some years before.

  One of the sons, Judas by name, took me to my chambers, and shortly thereafter a slave brought a bath of hot, salty water, I removed the dirt of my journey and lay down gratefully to rest, and while I lay there, wine and fresh fruit was brought and set down on a low table beside me. Then for about an hour, I was left to myself, a rest for which I was very grateful.

  These matters I detail to point out again how curiously virtue mixed with evil in these incredible people. It is hardly possible that any stranger in Rome—or Alexandria or Antioch—could so easily reach the first citizen, nor would the welcome be so forthright or pleasant. No one questioned what I did there, what I wanted of the Maccabee or even what my name was. No one asked to see my documents, passes, or warrants. They simply accepted me as a tired stranger, and treated me with that codified formality which entitles all strangers to certain things.

  When the hour was passed, the Maccabee or Ethnarch himself appeared. This was my first sight of that almost legendary man, who is the sole surviving one of the five Maccabean brothers, Simon the son of Mattathias, and since I do not doubt but that any action the Senate decides to pursue will be through him, I shall attempt to describe both his appearance and his personality in full.

  He is a very tall man, at least six feet three inches in height, and built proportionately—of immense physical strength and bearing. His age is somewhere less than sixty years. Almost bald, his hair and beard retain a trace of that red which is a family characteristic, and also characteristic of many of those who call themselves Kohanim, a gen of the tribe of Levi. His features are large and strong, his nose high-bridged, reminding one of a hawk’s beak. Under shaggy, overhanging brows are a pair of keen and pale blue eyes, and his mouth is full and strong, almost heavy-lipped. His beard is quite gray, and unlike most of the people, who clip their beards to within an inch or two of the skin, he wears his in its natural growth across his breast, a massive, fanlike thing that strangely enough only adds to his majesty and dignity. His hands also draw the eye, for they are well-formed and large, and he has a breadth of shoulder that is overwhelming. Altogether, he is one of the most striking and impressive men I have ever encountered—and just to see him is to understand the incredible devotion and respect in which the Jews hold him.

  When I saw him first that evening, he wore a simple white robe and sandals and a small blue cap upon his head. He had drawn aside the woolen drape that closed off my chamber from the rest of the house; unannounced, unescorted, he stepped into the room hesitantly and apologetically—as if to disturb me in my rest were a mortally deplorable act upon his part. In that moment, seeing him, taking in both the political circumstances of this man and his physical appearance, I had to decide immediately upon a course of action that would best fulfill my mission and advance the interests of Rome. By and large, these people have very little knowledge of Rome. Among them one cannot, as one would in Syria or Egypt, simply mention the name of the august Senate and obtain in response both respect and obedience. Also, I had come alone, without servants or defenders; this of course was my choice, and I adhere to the belief that nothing so advances the prestige of Rome among the cities as the manner in which her legates go from place to place, surrounding themselves not with soldiers and spears but with the long, mighty and inexorable arm of the Senate. Nevertheless, I had to establish this fact with one who most likely was unaware of it—and acting upon an understanding of that necessity, I bearded this mighty man, challenging him coldly and dryly.

  I informed him that the Senate had dispatched me to Judea to meet the Maccabee and to extend to him my hand—which became the hand of Rome, and of the Senate too—if he so desired. I was not pleasant, but rather let a hard note of power creep into my voice, and I pointed out to him that Carthage and Greece and certain other nations had come to realize that peace with Rome is preferable to war.

  Without question, this was the proper attitude to take toward him, yet I must report, in all honesty, that he did not seem particularly disturbed. If anything, he showed more interest in how I had been treated during my time in Judea than he did in relations between our two countries, and when I went into the insolence of my camel guide, he smiled and nodded.

  “I know that man, that Aaron ben Levi,” he said, “and he has a long tongue. I trust you will forgive him, for he is an old man, and his past is more glorious than his present. He was a great bowman in his time.”

  “And yet you reward him with poverty and obscurity?” I inquired.

  The Maccabee raised his brows, as if I had said something totally unintelligible and he was too good-mannered to let me see that I was speaking gibberish.

  “Reward him? Why should I reward him?”

  “Because he was a great soldier.”

  “But why should I reward him? He didn’t fight for me. He fought for the covenant, for Judea, as all Jews fought. What is to set him apart?”

  By now I was used to the dead end of unreason that one came to always in any matter of dispute or discussion with these people. Also, I was very tired, and noticing this, the Maccabee bade me good night, inviting me to come the next day to his public chamber and witness his judging of the people, since in that fashion I would learn more quickly the customs and problems of the land.

  At this point, I think it would prove valuable to say a word or two concerning the title and position of this Simon ben Mattathias, since that will make more understandable an incident that took place the following day in the judgment chamber. Full clarity I cannot provide, for there is something in both the political and personal relations these people practice with each other that is totally alien to our way of thought and life; but I can present certain aspects of the matter.

  Simon is the Maccabee, that is, he is heir to a strange and curious title that was first bestowed on his younger brother, Judas, and which today has somehow fallen upon the whole family, so that the father, Mattathias, and all of the five brothers are known familiarly as “the Maccabeans.” Precisely what this title means is most obscure, though Simon himself contends that it is a title given to a leader who comes out of the people and remains faithful to them; that is, faithful from a Jewish point of view, from the point of view of a people who abhor order and despise authority. However, other Jews I have discussed this with disagree. And thus the word itself is allied to so many explanations that it is near meaningless. That is not to say it doesn’t command respect; there is only one Maccabee, and he is Simon the Ethnarch, but the lowliest be
ggar in the street can halt him, dispute with him and talk to him as an equal. This I have seen with my own eyes, so I can attest to it. In this land, where all men read, prate, and philosophize, there can be no emergence of a cultured and superior strata of human beings, such a group as is the wealth and glory of Rome; yet so persistent and diabolical is this strange and flagrant Jewish democracy that one must look upon it as a disease from which no land is immune.

  As to the government which Simon heads, it is so loose as to be almost nonexistent. He appears to be the highest authority, since cases in dispute, both large and small, are brought before him, that he may judge them. Yet he is humbly and abjectly responsible to a body of old men, Adons and Rabbis as they are called, who constitute the Great Assembly. Unlike your own august personages, this Assembly cannot legislate, since the Law is considered a contract between men and Yahvah, and neither can it declare war; indeed, war is made by gathering together thousands of the people and placing the question directly before them. As unreasonable as this procedure sounds, it is nevertheless frequently used.

  It was the next day that Simon sat in judgment, and I observed, sitting at one side of the room, keeping my peace, but carefully noting what befell. This I consider the duty of a legate, for a picture of any people valuable enough for the Senate to act upon must be composed in detail out of many contradictory factors—and the more so when one deals with a race so sly and complicated as these Jews. During his day’s judgment, one incident occurred that was of such interest that I feel I should repeat it. A tanner came before the Maccabee, and he had with him a frightened Bedouin boy, a waif of one of the many barbarian tribes that roam the desert to the South. Five times this boy had run away, and each time the tanner had regained possession of his lawful property, several times at considerable expense. Quite naturally, he was aggrieved; yet the law forbade him what would have been a normal act in the public weal in Rome—that is, to flay the boy and hang his skin in a public place as a lesson and a warning to other property.

  Instead, the tanner came before the Ethnarch asking permission to brand the boy, so that even when his term of servitude was over, he would carry the sign of a slave with him through life. To me, this appeared both a mild and just request, and I expected Simon to grant it out of hand. But the Maccabee appeared unable to make so simple a decision, and he demeaned himself by entering into conversation with the slave, asking him why he had run away.

  “To be free,” the boy answered.

  The Maccabee was silent for quite a while then, as if those obvious words contained some deep and mysterious significance. When he finally spoke, rendering his decision, his deep voice was filled with the most awful melancholy I had ever heard. These words he spoke, which I noted down:

  “He will go free in two years, even as the law says. Don’t brand him.”

  Whereupon the tanner demanded indignantly, in that insolent tone any Jew feels free to use to any other, regardless of birth or station, “And the money I paid the caravan?”

  “Charge it to your own freedom, tanner,” the Maccabee said coldly.

  The tanner began to protest, addressing the Maccabee by his own name, Simon ben Mattathias; but Simon suddenly leaped to his feet, one great hand out, breaking in on the other, shouting at him:

  “I’ve judged you, tanner! How long ago was it that you slept in a lousy goatskin tent? How short is your memory? Is freedom a thing you can put on or take off, as you would a coat?”

  That was the only time I saw the Ethnarch angry—the only time I saw the deep and corroding bitterness within him emerge, yet it gave me the best clue to what the real Simon ben Mattathias is.

  We dined together that evening, and at the table I couldn’t help smiling at the curious and primitive scene I had witnessed earlier.

  “Did you find it amusing?” the Maccabee asked me. There was something burning within him, and I chatted easily for a while, to take the edge away, asking him various questions about slavery and concerning their curious religion. When his mood had become a little more amiable, when only we two sat together, the sons having gone to their beds and his wife to take the air on the balcony for a while, complaining that her head ached, I said to him:

  “What did you mean, Simon the Maccabee, when you asked that tanner whether freedom is a thing you can put on or take off, as you would a coat?”

  The old man was handling a bunch of the wonderful, sweet Judean grapes; now he put them down and stared at me for a moment or two as if I had awakened him from sleep.

  “Why do you ask?” he finally said.

  “My function is to ask, to know, to understand, Simon ben Mattathias. Otherwise, I fail Rome and I fail myself.”

  “And what is freedom to you, Roman?” the Maccabee wondered.

  “How is it that you cannot ask a Jew a question without him questioning you in turn?”

  “Perhaps because a Jew’s doubts match your own, Roman,” he answered, smiling rather sadly.

  “Jews have no doubts. You told me yourself that they were the chosen people.”

  “Chosen? Yes—but for what? In our holy scrolls, which I am certain you despise, Roman, it says, And I will give thee for a light unto the Gentiles—”

  I couldn’t help saying, “What amazing, incredible egotism!”

  “Perhaps. You asked me about freedom, Roman, and with us, that is somehow different than with others, for once we were slaves in Egypt.”

  “You said that before,” I reminded him, “like a spell. Is it a spell—or an incantation?”

  “We don’t deal in spells or incantations,” the old man said contemptuously. “What I said I meant. We were slaves in Egypt once, a long time ago, a long, long time ago in terms of the nokri, but with us the past lives; we don’t destroy it. Then we were slaves and we labored morning, noon and night under the lash of the overseer—and we were given bricks to make without straw, and our young were torn from us and man was separated from his wife, so the whole people wept and cried out to the Lord God in our agony. Thus it was burned into us that freedom is a good thing and deeply connected with life itself. All things have their price, but only in the blood of brave men can freedom be measured.”

  “That is very moving,” I answered, rather dryly, I am afraid, “yet it doesn’t reply to what I asked you. Is freedom your god?” Simon shook his head resignedly, and now indeed he was the Jew, completely the Jew and one with my dry and despicable camel guide; for this rude highland chieftain was pitying me even while his patience extended itself. “All things are our god,” he mused, “for God is all and one and indivisible—and I do not see how I can explain it better, Roman.”

  “And other gods?” I smiled.

  “Are there other gods, Roman?”

  “What is your opinion, Jew?” I asked him, forging the insult and allowing it to penetrate, for I was sick to death of his humility-ridden insolence.

  “I know only the God of Israel—the God of my fathers,” the Maccabee said imperturbably.

  “Whom you have spoken to?”

  “I never spoke to Him,” the old man answered patiently.

  “Or seen?”

  “No.”

  “Or had witness of?”

  “Only in the hills and fields of my native land.”

  “Where he walks?”

  “Where, among other places, He abides,” the old man smiled.

  “Yet you know there are no other gods?”

  “That I know,” the Maccabee said.

  “I would think,” I said, “that a decent respect for the gods of others, would prevent such a bland and broad elimination—or at least for the feelings of others.”

  “The truth is the truth,” he replied, genuinely puzzled.

  “And do you know the truth so well, Jew? Can you answer all things, all questions, all doubts, all hesitations, al
l bewilderment? Did God give you the truth when he chose you, a handful of mountain peasants, out of the whole great and boundless and civilized world?”

  I expected him to be angry, but there was no sign of anger in his pale and puzzled eyes. For a long while, he looked at me, searched my face, as if he were seeking to find something there that would quiet his own bewilderment. Then he rose and said: “You will excuse me, for I am weary,” and he left me alone.

  After he had gone, I sat for a time by myself, and then I went out onto the balcony, the finest feature of this house of his, a wide and spacious veranda, fitted with couches and overlooking a deep and narrow gorge. Below it are the city and the tumbled Judean hills, and in situation it makes up for what it lacks in architecture.

  There, on this terrace, his wife still sat. I would have retired when I noticed her, but she called, “Don’t go, Roman, unless talking with the Ethnarch has tired you too much to talk further.”

  “I was admiring this place. Yet I shouldn’t be here with you alone.”

  “Why? Would it be wrong in Rome?”

  “Quite wrong.”

  “But we do things differently in Judea. My name is Esther, and in any case, I am an old woman, so sit yourself down here, Lentulus Silanus, and no one will think the worse of it. And you can tell me something of Rome—if it will not bore you to entertain an old woman—or perhaps I will tell you something of Judea.”

  “Or—”

  “Or of Simon the Maccabee?”

  I nodded.

  “Simon Maccabeus—yet it may be that I know less of him than you do, Roman, for as you may have gathered, he is a strange and willful man, and unless it was his brother Judas, I do not know that there was ever a man like him before in all this world. Simon of the iron hand, they call him, but underneath there is little enough iron in him.”