We set off again in awkward silence. As soon as we stopped to rest, the people who were still there came over to me, led by my disciples. So what was this imagery supposed to mean?
As if mutilating a flower by plucking off its petals one by one, I had to explain the parable to them in minute detail. With a heavy heart, dragging my feet over every word, I reduced the mystery of their lives to its moral aspect, the only one that seemed to have penetrated their skulls. The Twelve were the most dull-witted of all: perhaps they were already beginning to suspect that by offering them a choice that only affected them individually, I had no intention of ever seizing power in Israel.
I burst out:
“Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?”
At this moment I was confronted by my isolation in all its enormity. I thought I had left everything behind – village, family, home; all that remained was a single vision, that of sharing the fire that had been kindled in me in the wilderness. I couldn’t hold it back any longer, so who was I to pass it on to?
The Twelve, these self-appointed disciples who were proud to be among the entourage of a rabbi whom they apparently believed could fulfil their every expectation, had proved themselves incapable of following the path that had been opened up by my first parable. It was then I realized that their failure to understand would go on sapping my inner strength until the end.
Until tonight, when they lie sleeping a stone’s throw away, leaving me alone in the dark night of the soul that is now my lot.
24
And yet I didn’t seem isolated, quite the reverse. Rabbis in Israel have always led a sedentary life; those such as Hillel, who never left Jerusalem in all his forty years of teaching. The pupils they choose come to them, gather at their feet. But no one had ever seen a wandering rabbi, one who went from farm to village, wearing out his feet on the winding roads and paths of Galilee. The poor farmers were overjoyed – perhaps even flattered – when a young doctor of the Law took the time to stop and have a conversation with them beside their fields, or in the yards of their humble dwellings. Thanks to them a good reputation went before us, and we were made welcome everywhere. We were fed, sometimes allowed to sleep in a barn.
Yet wherever you go in this country of ours, the wilderness is never far away, even in the area around the lake. Among the vast expanses of dry grass roamed by a few scattered herds of goats, the bare hillsides that soon give way to rocky plains stretching into the distance, we couldn’t always find somewhere to stay. And when we broke our journey in a small town, there was always the problem of logistics – because as well as the Twelve, our numbers were often temporarily swelled by a contingent of total strangers who also had to be fed and housed. It surprised me when wealthy landowners, dignitaries and occasionally even tax collectors invited us to eat with them and stay in their homes. Their wives were most solicitous, and dispatched servants with baskets of bread, figs and dried fish after us as we travelled on. Some of them sometimes came with us as far as the next overnight stop.
I never turned them away. Among the simple folk, and even my disciples, my openness to them sometimes created a slight awkwardness. I took no notice, refusing to treat these women as if they were of no significance. In return they showed extraordinary nobility of spirit, and by being with us in public they sometimes broke very strong taboos.
I think it was this maternal presence that caused me to gradually renounce my Nazirite vows. Whenever they smilingly offered me wine from one of the wineskins that had been brought from their storeroom for me, I let them fill my cup and savoured the precious liquid. Thus I relinquished what had been passed down to me by my parents, as well as my final link with the sternness of John the Baptist.
As time went by, a whole crowd of people began to revolve around me as if in concentric circles. The inner circle represented by the Twelve – who knew that without the circle of my friends and benefactors I would never have been able to carry out my mission – took shameless advantage of this life of ease and material security that far exceeded anything that the drudgery of their everyday existences could have offered. The third and outer circle of occasional listeners helped widen my audience beyond the reach of my voice; this group of hostile or sympathetic critics soon formed my most reliable source of protection against the hatred of the authorities.
People also made generous donations of money, so we needed someone to look after our savings. From the Twelve I chose Judas to keep the common purse and hand out the customary alms on our behalf. He was a good choice, for his honesty has always been above reproach.
Although constantly surrounded by supporters, opportunists and listeners, I still felt as isolated as I had been in the wilderness – except perhaps during a brief springtime in Galilee, whose memory remains with me as a moment of great hope that was followed by bitter disappointment.
Outstanding teachers that they are, the Pharisees have always tried to summarize their teaching in a single word, like a rudder that leaves a trail in the wake of the mighty ship of the commandments. So had my first parable failed? I tried to think of a unique and powerful expression that would best sum up the fire that had been burning in me since I was in the wilderness. After the encounter with the Evil One from which I emerged the victor, I had been filled with a secret sense of joy. It was this that should form the basis of my reform of the Law. I couldn’t just be the herald of a long list of laws and obligations that would be an unbearable and painful burden, I had to admit people into the mystery, the great festival of reconciliation with God and themselves, offer them rules that were not oppressive but light as air, the joy of living, the key to a flourishing life that was within everyone’s reach, particularly those marginalized by society.
When I was in the wilderness I had had an intuition, which told me that there was a specific way of approaching things, people and situations. I now felt able to express this in a single word: joy, a joy that was attainable.
This word had to encapsulate all the others by which my teaching would finally set me apart from John the Baptist, whose doom-mongering only caused fear and trembling.
So I could at last be myself, openly and for all to see.
There were many people there that day, spread like a cloak around a small knoll perched above the lake. I sat on a blue-grey rock and looked round at the Twelve, gathered at their master’s feet, and at the other faces on the slope, some of which I knew, some that were unknown to me. It was as if all Galilee had come together on this little hilltop. And there in the silence, emboldened by all the expectant faces, I began:
“Joyful…”
25
Joyful, or toubayon in our melodious Aramaic tongue, refers to simple, everyday happiness. Joyful… I had to turn this word, which was so familiar from the Psalms and the words of the wise men of Israel, but which had become unfamiliar to Jews living under tyranny, into a chant, a threnody. This is how I would begin:
“Joyful are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!”
I felt all eyes converge on me. In Israel, wealth is at once the symbol and proof of divine blessing, whereas poverty shows that this has been withdrawn. So the poor – my audience – were now the beneficiaries of God’s goodwill! This was exactly what I wanted to set in motion – a reversal of the existing order. As was customary, I hadn’t used the holy and unpronounceable name, but one of the many circumlocutions with which a Jew speaks of God without referring to him: Power or Kingdom of Heaven, the On-High, the shamayim that were the focus of the hopes and desires of an entire nation. I went on:
“Joyful are those who hunger and thirst, for they will be filled, joyful are those who mourn, for they will be comforted and will laugh!”
I could feel the small crowd beginning to rise up like dough. In this land that was a stranger to famine, what they most hungered for was God’s Justice, a loss they constantly mourned. Ever since Rachel had wept for her sons, a mother inconsolable because they were gone for
ever, every Jew had been weeping, yet here I was, opening the gates of laughter for them!
I noticed that the Zealots among my disciples had gathered round to listen. They were outraged that a land registry had been set up in Israel, where an inventory of land cannot be taken because it belongs to God alone. So it was for the benefit of these former advocates of violence that I added:
“Joyful are the meek, for they will inherit the earth!”
This land had been given to Abraham long ago, a gift that was later reaffirmed to Moses, yet neither of these Patriarchs ever benefited from it; the second of them died at the moment he caught sight of it in the distance. When would they realize that the Promised Land wasn’t the one they wanted to purge of its Roman occupiers, that it didn’t exist anywhere except within them – that they themselves were God’s land?
Joyful, joyful… lulled by the music of the word, I spoke to them of mercy granted and mercy received, of love that is shared, reconciliation as the wellspring of life. Of the purity of a heart scorched by the flame (as mine had been in the wilderness), and which is thus able to discern something of the One who remains invisible to the naked eye. I serenaded them with images of the world to come, where the dreams of the prophets would finally come true.
By allowing it to burst forth in front of all these people, I suddenly appreciated the sheer magnitude of the joy I had discovered in the wilderness, through utter destitution and a violent and agonizing encounter with the Evil One. I realized that the tears I had shed there helped me to empathize with the pain and suffering that I found along the way, but also that they had cleansed me inwardly. A happiness that was not of this world – one that had always been absent from my life and for which I had longed for many years – a happiness beyond compare now manifested itself to me. I sensed that it was strong and yet fragile, that the Enemy would do everything within his power to destroy it, that it might not endure. It was of this that I had to speak, in these early days when everything seemed simple, I had to open up the way for them, clear the obstacles from their path.
Like John the Baptist I was foretelling the end of a world, but also the birth of a new one.
The local Pharisees in the crowd said nothing. The prophets have always spoken of the ebionim, the legendary “remnant” of the poor of Israel. Meekness, mercy and justice lay at the heart of the prophets’ teaching, but I was going much further. For one thing, my law of happiness had nothing in common with the Jewish Law, because it didn’t seek to establish rules for human behaviour. Happiness is not a law, at most it is an aim, an aspiration shared by the whole human race. It was all too easy to replace the strictness of the commandments with a hazy, utopian ideal of happiness – so to them I was just another fashionable preacher.
Yet the most important question was this: who were my words intended for? The poor, the hungry, the afflicted… Did I want to start a popular uprising of these people, whom the ruling class kept in a tenuous state of peace by the use of force? Or was this happiness I promised just a way of tempering the Zealots’ perpetual dissatisfaction, so they would renounce violence and take a “meek” approach, which would just be another form of subservience? For the first time abandoning the sacredness of the land of Israel to the greedy collaborators who prostrated themselves before the ungodly occupier?
So where did I stand on the complex political chessboard of this little country ruled by Rome?
Scattered among and standing out from all the approving smiles, were puzzled eyes that looked daggers at me, pursed lips, stony expressions – all weighing my every word, assessing its political or social implications. But I was elsewhere… Joyful, joyful!… Like a flag floating in the breeze, my words were enfolded with joy. Swept away by the tide of lava that had been held back for so long, almost against my better judgement I risked my all:
“It was said to you in ancient times: ‘you shall not murder’, and ‘whoever murders (even in rightful revenge) shall be liable to judgement’. But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgement, and if you insult a brother or sister you will be liable to the council of the Sanhedrin, and if you accuse a brother or sister of rebelling against God you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
But I say to you! With this one phrase I had just committed an act of schism. No longer satisfied by commenting on the Law, I was now making it. My fellow Pharisees would have happily agreed to an abstruse debate on the penal code of the Law, the legitimacy of the various jurisdictions in Israel, the quantum of sentences in proportion to the crime committed. There was no longer any doubt: by rebelling openly against the ancient tradition I myself had become a criminal, liable to judgement by the Sanhedrin.
Lost in a crowd of people to whom I had just promised happiness, they didn’t respond, but from now on they would seek the slightest opportunity to make me talk about the Law.
And they would be lying in wait, following my every word.
26
Roused by this proclamation of a law of happiness, the crowd bore us along from village to village, from hillside to valley. They were intoxicated by the word I had used, “joyful”, which was on everyone’s lips; I just let them carry on. For such a long time they had thought that joy had ceased to exist! Having sensed the Pharisees’ reticence, I was aware that happiness too makes demands, and that these go way beyond any commandments; that it isn’t the ultimate aim and even less so the means to it, but a revolution in society’s values. Whenever I tried to turn this promise into a reality I would come up against the different forces that compete for power in this country of ours. But at this early stage I just abandoned myself to the collective euphoria that was everywhere around us. I probably needed it, as did my disciples.
There followed a wonderful few weeks and months that I still remember as springtime in Galilee. The healings continued, sometimes several in swift succession. To get away from the crowds, my disciples suggested that we go across to the other side of the lake and spend a few days in the Decapolis. It would be my second trip into Gentile territory – but this time we wouldn’t stay out of sight.
We had barely arrived when we came across one of those mentally deranged people who has been forced to leave his village because of his violent behaviour, and lives in caves or cemeteries. He threw himself at me – rarely had the Evil One, who was speaking with the voice of this man even more clearly than in the synagogue in Capernaum, manifested himself to me so overtly. Yet I knew that all I had to do was expose him, drive him out of the dark and dreadful recess where he lurks inside each and every one of us. The man was begging to be released from the jaws of the ravening beast; I simply had to bear witness to his wishes. He was healed immediately, but because they were terrified by what they saw as powerful magic, the Gentiles who lived there asked us to leave.
What I learnt from this was that only Jews have knowledge of the teaching of the prophets, the Psalms and the Book of Job, that they alone are aware that the Enemy exists. Misled by an array of different gods, convinced that all the misery in the world is simply a result of the indiscriminate workings of fate, Gentiles have too much faith in themselves. Unlike Jews, they don’t have the inborn disquiet that is necessary in order to be reborn. I wouldn’t speak to them in future, only to members of my own race.
When we got back to the Galilean side of the lake we were immediately surrounded by a large and boisterous crowd, which moved aside to allow a dignitary through. A Hellenized Jew, Jairus was a leader of the synagogue – so was he also about to tell me to move along? To my surprise he fell at my feet and begged me repeatedly:
“My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live!”
Tears in the wilderness… Suddenly, among the bustle of the crowd all I could see was this despairing father. I took him by the hand, and he got up and cleared a path through the mass of people who were crowding in from all sides. But in the midst of the uproar I suddenly stopped
.
“Who touched my clothes?”
One of my disciples, I can’t remember now which one, scoffed:
“You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
But I knew. A woman had come up behind me in the crowd and touched the hem of my coat. I turned round. Quite forgetting Jairus, again there was only one person among all the jostling, this trembling woman covered in dust. I bent down to her as if we were suddenly all alone in the world, and she told me she had been suffering from haemorrhages for many years. And so she had said to herself, “The rabbi whom everyone is talking about, perhaps…” I helped her to her feet.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Even today I am still amazed by the razor-sharp acuity that I acquired during my struggle in the wilderness, which allows me instantly to discern another person’s suffering. If I have ever had any kind of strength or power, then this is surely what it is. Rendered hypersensitive by my encounter with Evil, there is something deep inside me that is highly receptive, easily moved. Without realizing it, people who were sick in body and soul undoubtedly sensed this. What to me has always seemed miraculous is not the healing itself, but the convergence of the suffering that they are undergoing and the suffering I take upon myself, which Greek-speaking Jews refer to as sympatheia, or compassion.
The Silence of Gethsemane Page 9
