“Almighty God, what did I do wrong?” he pleaded, knocking his head in the dust. The only answer was the shimmering vision of the Torah and the fence; but from his prostrate position the groats maker saw something that he had overlooked the first time: the fence guarding the Torah was incomplete. God’s divine law was not fully protected, and now the intention of the vision was made manifest. Rabbi Asher was being summoned to dedicate the rest of his life not to the building of an earthly synagogue but to the completion of the divine law.
“O God!” the humble little man whispered. “Am I worthy to go to Tverya?” And as soon as he pronounced that name the golden fence completed itself and he bowed his head to accept the heavenly commission. “I shall place my feet upon the road to Tverya,” he said.
In the middle years of the fourth century there was in the Roman city of Tiberias, called Tverya by the Jews, a lively community of thirteen synagogues, a large library and an assembly of elderly rabbis who met in continuous session to discuss the Torah and its later commentaries, seeking thus to uncover the laws which would govern all subsequent Judaism. For hours and even months they debated each phrase until its meaning was made clear, and it was to this body of men that Rabbi Asher directed himself in the spring of 329. He had no need to hurry, for the assembly had been in session, off and on, for a hundred years and would continue for another century and a half, if not in Tverya then in Babylonia across the desert.
On his white mule Rabbi Asher rode eastward over the beautiful hills of Galilee and looked out upon the broad plains across which Egyptians and Assyrians had battled. He rode into the cliff-perched town of Sephet, which General Josephus had fortified against the Romans of Vespasian, and it was from that high point that he caught his first sight of Tverya, its white marble buildings scintillant against the blue waters of the lake. “If men can find truth anywhere,” he said to his mule, “they ought to find it down there.”
From a distance Tverya was an enchanting city, for the spacious buildings of Herod Antipas had made it a rival of Caesarea, with marble steps leading down to the lake and luxurious baths for visitors, but when Asher rode inside the walls he saw that it breathed an atmosphere of death, as if its future were abandoned. Few new buildings had been added in recent centuries and those which survived had fallen into disrepair behind their marble façades. Thus Rome was dying in its farther provinces. In Tverya there would be no miracles, but there could be the work of honest men, and it was to this work that he now directed himself.
Stopping strangers he asked where the scholars met, and the first four citizens did not even know that the group had been convening in their city for more than a century, but each volunteered to tell him how he might find the hot baths. Finally he met an old Jew who led him to an insignificant building in which the great work was being done; and, tying his mule to a tree, Asher approached the low mud-brick house. He knocked softly on the door, but was left to stand in silence. He knocked again and was admitted by a grumbling old woman who had come from the kitchen. She led him through the house to an extensive courtyard in which stood two pomegranate trees and a large grape arbor, beneath which huddled a circle of old men who did not bother to look up at his approach. At their feet, literally, crouched groups of students, following their words affectionately, while at a table under one of the pomegranate trees sat two scribes making notes of how the argument progressed. When decisions were reached, these scribes would compress into a few pithy lines the debate of months, and that would be the law. This day they wrote little as four rabbis engaged in energetic debate on a minor point.
FIRST RABBI: We are concerned with one question alone. Protecting Shabbat. I say that the man may not wear it.
SECOND RABBI: Speak out. On what authority do you make this claim?
THIRD RABBI: Then listen. Rabbi Meir had it from Rabbi Akiba that if a woman goes out of her house on Shabbat with a bottle of perfume so that she may smell nice, she is guilty of vanity and has broken Shabbat. This case is the same.
FOURTH RABBI: More to the point. The law of the sages prevents a man on Shabbat from carrying in his pocket a nail from a gallows. Why? He carries it only for good luck and it is forbidden.
SECOND RABBI: What nonsense. The man we are talking about does not seek good luck.
FIRST RABBI: Listen to the sages. A woman must not leave her house with braids of cloth. Why not? It makes her hair more attractive, and is forbidden. This is what we’re talking about.
FOURTH RABBI: Nor shall she go into the street wearing a hair net. The same case, surely.
SECOND RABBI: But remember this. A woman may go abroad on Shabbat sucking a peppercorn to keep her breath sweet.
FIRST RABBI: Only if she placed it in her mouth before Shabbat began.
THIRD RABBI: Also, the sages always held that if she happened to drop the peppercorn from her mouth during Shabbat, she could not put it back until Shabbat had ended.
SECOND RABBI: To all of that I agree. But our man is not going to drop it from his mouth. And he placed it there before nightfall on Friday.
FIRST RABBI: On those requirements we agree. It must be in his mouth before Shabbat begins.
THIRD RABBI: The real question. Has he any right to have it there at all on Shabbat? No, because it is an act of vanity. Like a woman wearing a gold ornament. Which is obviously forbidden.
SECOND RABBI: Agreed. If it is merely an ornamentation, the man must not have it in his mouth on Shabbat.
FOURTH RABBI: And I insist that it is merely an ornament.
SECOND RABBI: Hold now! He wears his false tooth in order to eat better.
FOURTH RABBI: But he could eat just as easily if he didn’t have it. A false tooth for a man is no more, no less, than a gold headdress for a woman.
SECOND RABBI: That cannot be the case. The headdress is ornamentation. The tooth is a necessity.
THIRD RABBI: False. A gold tooth is just as attractive to a man as a gold …
SECOND RABBI: Who said a gold tooth? I said a tooth. A false tooth added to the mouth for the purpose of chewing better.
THIRD RABBI: Is there a difference between a false tooth and a gold false tooth?
FIRST RABBI: Indeed! The gold tooth is worn for decoration only.
SECOND RABBI: Not true! A man buys a gold tooth because it fits better than stone and wears longer than wood. He acts from prudence, not vanity.
FOURTH RABBI: Error! Error!
THIRD RABBI: Is not a false tooth placed in the mouth the same as a woman’s curls added to her forehead? And do not the sages say that she may not wear such curls unless they are sewed on permanently?
FOURTH RABBI: Why permanently?
THIRD RABBI: Lest she inadvertently add them to her head on Shabbat.
FIRST RABBI: Sewing she can be trusted not to do because three acts are involved. Needle, thread and sewing. She knows that each is forbidden. But pinning a curl to the head is not a usual act and this she may forget, so it is forbidden.
THIRD RABBI: And a false tooth is not added to the mouth permanently, but must be put in each day, and is therefore exactly like the false curl of the woman, which may not be worn.
During the first four days that Rabbi Asher spent among the learned men of Tverya he was kept standing by the wall, a small, tentative figure, listening as his elders hammered away at the false tooth. As they inspected the problem from all philosophical and material angles, Asher learned that they had been on the subject for two months, hoping to establish from it a broad principle governing the use on Shabbat of objects that were both useful and ornamental, and at several points in the argument he felt that he had ideas to contribute, but the expositors ignored him and modesty prevented him from trying to attract their attention. On the evening of the fourth day, bewildered, he left the convocation. Did the rabbis intend to ignore him permanently? Or had he through vanity misread God’s command that he join them?
He sought guidance on these matters at the one logical place in Tverya, a small hill nort
hwest of town, which he climbed at sunset until he came to a cave that was already holy but which would become more so as the centuries advanced: the grave of Akiba, greatest of the rabbis and savior of the law. Here Asher sat humbly, hands folded and hoping to receive from the long-dead rabbi instructions concerning his present plight, but none came. Now, whether this cave actually held the bones of the Jewish saint could not be determined, for just as Queen Helena had gone through the Holy Land arbitrarily deciding where the cherished relics of Christianity were, so devout Jews had established categorically where the saintly scenes of their religion had occurred. At Sephet certain of the great men were said to be buried, but Tverya was allotted Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Akiba, and pilgrimages to their supposed graves would continue as long as there was a Judaism.
But if Rabbi Asher was unable to communicate with the great rabbi he did find something equally important: sitting before the cave he watched the sun depart from the lake and the city of Tverya; and the play of sunset colors upon the eastern hills, the panoply of gray and purple and gold upon the grassy cliffs was so ghostlike that he felt the presence of God even more strongly than he had in the olive grove, and he submitted himself to whatever wishes God might have regarding his stay in Tverya. In this state of euphoria, while light diminished and the marble city began to fade, a wind passed down the deep valley, coming from the north, and it rippled the surface of the water as if a figure were moving across the waves. Entranced, Asher watched the progress of the giant steps, and they came directly to Tverya, where they seemed to mount the spacious marble wharf that faced the waterfront, and whatever it was that had agitated the surface of the lake took residence in the city. Reassured and exhilarated, Rabbi Asher climbed down from the tomb and returned to Tverya, satisfied to remain there until the rabbis took notice of him.
On the fifth day there was no change. He resumed his silent position against the wall and listened as the great men continued their discussion of the golden tooth, and for the entire two weeks that he was kept waiting this tooth remained the only concern; but his observation of how the rabbis worked had one salutary effect: he learned that the exposition of the law was a serious matter requiring both subtlety of mind and mastery of learning, and he understood that in settling the exaggerated problem of the tooth they were automatically deciding all lesser conflicts between utility and vanity. As he stood in the shadows he remembered the old description of a true rabbi, “that basketful of books,” and he pledged that if the time came when the men of Tverya finally consulted him, he would respond with subtlety and wisdom.
On the nineteenth day, when the guardians of the law had pretty well agreed that if a man wore a gold tooth on Shabbat he was transgressing, and when they were about to formulate a law permitting a stone or a wooden tooth, a rabbi who was trying to make a point about the inherent vanity of man, turned abruptly to Rabbi Asher and snapped, “You, from Makor. What did Rab Naaman say?”
Softly, without moving from his shadows, the groats maker explained, “Rab Naaman of blessed memory said, ‘Why did God create man only on the sixth day? To warn him. If ever he becomes swollen with pride it can be pointed out to him that in God’s creation of the world even a flea came ahead of him.’” He paused. “Rab Naaman also said, “The camel was so vain he desired horns, so his ears were taken from him.’” Without out comment the rabbis listened, and Asher concluded, “Rab Naaman said, ‘Man is born with his hands clenched, but he dies with them wide open and empty. The vanities he clings to elude him in the end, so he should not bother himself with them during his life.’” The rabbis listened approvingly, and without speaking one old man made a place for Asher to sit, and in this way God’s Man became one of the great expositors, laboring to construct the basic framework of Judaism.
To the four great planks which God possessed for the preservation of the Jews—monotheism, Torah, personal lyricism, prophecy—He would now add two more: the Talmud, and rabbis to interpret it, after which He would have a complete structure within which His Jews would henceforth live. God’s concept of the rabbi was easy to understand, for he was not much different from the ancient priest of El-Shaddai or the newer ones who were being called forth by the Christian church of Byzantium. The rabbi was apt to be more learned than the former and more personally committed to daily life than the latter, for he was required to have a wife and his congregation was always happier if he had five or six children, for then he would appreciate the burdens of the common man. The rabbi would also work for his living—of the sages meeting at Tverya during Rabbi Asher’s apprenticeship one was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, one a woodchopper, one a ritual butcher and one a scribe who made copies of the Torah—and no Jewish rabbi would ever accept discipline by a hierarchy of any kind: his contract was a personal one with the community that invited him to guide them. Often, as in the case of the greatest rabbi, Akiba, he would be a brilliant scholar with a memory that would be difficult to match in any other profession. He would serve as conscience, arbiter, monitor and judge of life and death. Rabbi Akiba had warned: “When you sit on a court which condemns a man to death, do not eat all day, because you have killed part of yourself.” Of every segment of his community the rabbi was a part, and when it suffered its periodic agonies, he suffered more than all, and it was this basic relationship that Asher ha-Garsi exemplified, for in the long discussions held under the grape arbor of Tverya, he quickly established himself as God’s Man, for he spoke with but one concern, to ascertain the will of God, and he always spoke humbly, as if he were only a little man incapable of knowing God’s wishes directly but able somehow to detect them by lowering his face and catching the passing whisper. Being closer to God than most men he suffered more deeply when ordinary men acted contrary to God’s law, and he was always willing to humble himself in trying to bring God and man together.
But even if a devout rabbi like Asher ha-Garsi was in essence the same as a Christian or a Buddhist priest, God’s final plank, the Talmud, bore no resemblance to anything else in the world’s religions. It was a remarkable achievement, the heart of Judaism, and it consisted of two parts: the Mishna and the Gemara. The first had been assembled by Rabbi Akiba and his followers some eighty years before Rabbi Asher was born; it was the second component upon which the expositors of Tverya and Babylonia were now working. When the two were joined together, some time around the year 500, the Talmud would be in existence.
What was the Mishna? An adroit solution to a difficult religious problem. The wise men of Judaism had evolved the principle that at Sinai, God had handed Moses two sets of laws, one written on the tablets of stone and later transcribed word for word into the Torah, and a second of equal importance which had been whispered to Moses alone, the oral law, which provided specific elaboration of the Torah. For example, in the written book of Exodus, God said distinctly, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” but He did not stipulate in writing what one must do to observe this commandment. It became the task of the rabbis, depending upon the oral law which God had given Moses, to clarify the commandment and make it specific.
Who knew what this oral law was? Only the rabbis. How did they know? Because it had been handed along from man to man in a solemn unbroken chain: “Moses received the Torah from God Himself at Sinai, and passed it along to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and they to the Prophets, and they to the Men of the Great Assembly and they to Antigonus of Soko … Hillel and Shammai took over from them … Johanan ben Zakkai … Rab Naaman of Makor … the great Akiba … Rabbi Meir …” and in days to come the rubric would be added, “From him Rabbi Asher ha-Garsi took over,” and it would pass to Rashi, the marvelous Frenchman, then to the greatest mind of all, Maimonides, and to the Vilna Gaon of Lithuania, and on to the merest rabbi working in Akron, Ohio. These men were custodians of the oral law.
For the first fifteen hundred years this oral law had been carried only in the heads of scholars, but after the two Roman destructions of Judaea—first by Vespasian and later by H
adrian, who erased even the name of Jerusalem and changed Judaea to Palestine—a group of scholars had met in a small Galilean village not far from Makor to codify this inherited law. Thus they constructed what became known as the Mishna, which men like Rabbi Asher were required to know by heart. For example, in extension of the crisp Torah injunction not to work on Shabbat, the Mishna identified forty-less-one principal kinds of labor which were forbidden: “Sowing, reaping … baking … spinning … tying or untying knots … sewing two stitches … hunting a gazelle … writing two letters … lighting a fire … carrying anything from one domain into another …”
One does not sit down before the barber, close to the time of the Shabbat prayer. A tailor should not take his needle on Shabbat eve just before nightfall; he may forget and go out with it. Nor the scribe take his pen. One should not begin to clean his clothes, and one does not read at the lamplight, because he may tilt it. The schoolmaster may supervise the reading of his children, but he himself must not read. Similarly, a man that is in heat should not eat together with a woman that is in heat, because it may lead them to sin …
One must not put bread in the oven on Shabbat eve before darkness, nor may the cakes be put on the coal unless there is time for the crust to form before Shabbat arrives. Rabbi Eliezer says: In time for the crust to form on the bottom …
What may one use for lighting on the Shabbat, and what must one not use? One must not use cedar fiber, nor oakum, nor silk, nor a bast wick, nor a desert wick, nor seaweed, nor pitch, nor wax, nor castor oil, nor burnt oil, nor tail fat, nor tallow. Nahum the Mede says: One may use boiled tallow, but the Sages say: Whether boiled or not, one may not light with it.
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