“And I want to take you there,” Tarphon answered. “But in Ptolemais I heard bad news to go with the good.”
Menelaus stopped smiling. “What was it?” he asked, and again Tarphon was impressed with his sober willingness to face reality. He’s an authentic Greek, Tarphon thought.
Slowly Tarphon tried to explain the ugly facts: “For a Jew to win at Antioch would be extremely popular. I know the emperor would like to see one of your people capture a major trophy. It would … I mean it would prove that in the empire we do not discriminate against any man … that we can all become good Greeks if we try. Now I’ll grant there have been minor differences between Antiochus and the Jews … take even your own father …”
“What are you trying to say?”
Tarphon brushed the sweat from his forehead and continued, “I’m saying that we all want you to go to Antioch … and to win.”
“I also,” Menelaus replied, preparing himself for bad news.
“But Antiochus has decreed that no contestant may stand naked before him who is circumcised. It would be offensive to the spirit of the games.”
In the steamy room there was silence, and the two athletes were forced to look down at the visible proof of Menelaus’ covenant with YHWH. In his first days in the gymnasium Menelaus had been conspicuous because of this sign, and other boys had taunted him, for he was the only Jew who came to the place, and he had fought alone; but with his later victories had come self-respect, and the other athletes now looked upon his circumcision with the impersonal interest they might have directed toward a boy who had lost a toe. To them Menelaus was three things: a Greek, a champion, a circumcised Jew—and the first two outweighed the last. But the Seleucid capital of Antioch had seen no Jewish athletes, and there the fact of circumcision would be scandalous as a profanation of the human temple. Menelaus understood all this even more clearly than Tarphon and it was he who suggested the solution: “In Ptolemais isn’t there a doctor who can cover the sign?”
“There is, but it’s terribly painful.”
“If I were able to bear the pain?”
“Then it could be done.”
Cautiously Menelaus weighed the choices growing out of what the governor had just said, and he could not decide between them. Tarphon, appreciating the boy’s perplexities—for who would reject the essence of his inherited religion?—did not press him to speak at that moment. Instead, he found Menelaus a strigil and the two athletes sat on benches and scraped themselves, after which they went to the baths, where slaves immersed them in tepid water, then massaged them with scented oil and dipped them into very hot water, from which they came out exhausted and relaxed. This was the finest moment of the day, when the fruits of vigorous exercise were found in cleanliness and the expulsion of irrelevant worries. It might almost have been called “the Greek moment,” for it so perfectly epitomized the Greek ideal; and in this period of unusual mental clarity before he fell asleep on the padded benches, Menelaus faced up to the full implication of what he had been discussing with the gymnasiarch.
“Speak honestly to me, sir. Have I a chance to win at Antioch?”
“I tested all the strangers from Tyre, and none could damage you.”
“And if I win at Antioch, will Athens follow?”
“As day follows night,” Tarphon said. He liked the pragmatic sequence in which this young Jew faced problems. The operation which the doctor in Ptolemais had developed in order to erase the sign of circumcision was bitterly painful and must not be undertaken lightly. One misguided Jew from Jaffa had committed suicide because of the agony, which proved so much greater than he had anticipated. But if there was a chance for some great prize, that might justify pain. So Tarphon considered it honorable to give his young friend that straw’s weight of encouragement which men often require in order to reach a decision: “Menelaus, when a young man wrestles he is striving not only for the immediate laurel. When I was your age I fought like a warrior, but I also studied and the time came when the empire needed a governor, and I was chosen. But I had won the office long before. Some day I’ll be promoted, and this governorship will be vacant. Now, I know that Antiochus wants to appoint a Jew to some important position. To reconcile your people to his rule. That Jew could be you.”
Menelaus was sleepy. The exercise and the warm bath and the penetrating smell of the oil combined to overcome him, but before he lost consciousness he said, “When you race to Ptolemais next week I should like to be among your challengers.”
“You shall be,” Tarphon said.
On the morning of the annual race trumpeters summoned spectators to the main gate of Makor, where Governor Tarphon stood in military uniform, sword at his side, helmet on his head. About him clustered the seven athletes in their special uniforms, looking like gods, and beyond them stood four or five younger competitors who had not yet proved themselves sufficiently to have earned costumes but who hoped that in this eight-mile race to Ptolemais they might take the first steps toward such recognition. Beyond them stood the townspeople, including Canaanites and Jews, Phoenicians and Egyptians, all with their wives and daughters.
The runners now sat on doorsteps to unlace their formal shoes, replacing them with sandals that they tested by running a few steps, which made them look even more like gods as their blue capes moved in the morning breeze. When they were satisfied that their sandals fitted, trumpets blew and the men took off their head coverings, handing them to friends, who were thus honored. Each man tied a small white cloth about his forehead, after which the trumpets again sounded, whereupon the contestants took off all their clothing to stand naked in the sunlight. They were a handsome group, bronzed, muscular and marred by no disfiguring fat. They were probably as fine a body of men as the Greek empires could have provided that morning, and none excelled the figure of the gymnasiarch as he stood naked before his people—a man extremely well controlled and capable, somewhat past the age of competition but able to defeat most of the young fellows amongst whom he stood. As if they intended the general public to marvel at them, the athletes moved about for some moments, during which all could see that of the contestants only Menelaus was a Jew.
Then Governor Tarphon casually took a breechclout and wrapped it about his middle. The others followed suit, and soon all were ready for the race. The gymnasiarch signaled for the trumpets to sound once more, after which he addressed the runners in tones loud enough for the citizens to hear: “Any of you who fail to beat me into Ptolemais will get no wine in that city and no sweet oil for your baths when you return to Makor.” The runners laughed, and he moved among them, punching them on their strong shoulders and testing their firm belly muscles with his fist.
Melissa came forward, kissed her husband, then kissed Menelaus and another young man who lived at her house. To the rest she said, “If you do not defeat Tarphon this day he will prove unbearable. For my sake, please, do not let him win.” Everyone laughed, and she gave the signal which started the race. Down the ramp the athletes went and onto the Damascus road, heading west toward Ptolemais, and as they ran it was easy to see from the long, rhythmic stride of the red-haired gymnasiarch that he would not be easily defeated this day.
Among the spectators who watched the beginning of the race was Jehubabel, who had to stand in shame among his silent Jews as they followed the abhorrent spectacle of a Jewish boy parading naked before the wide-eyed young women of the town as they stared with fascination at the peculiarity which marked him from the others. The more naked Menelaus had seemed, the more closely the other Jews had drawn their robes about them, as if to compensate for the young man’s defection. And all felt sorry for Jehubabel.
In the days following the departure of the runners, the town soldiers, obedient to a plan laid down by Tarphon before he left, launched another search of Jewish homes to see if any were disobeying the laws of Antiochus Ephiphanes, and without warning they descended on a group of widely scattered families, including the home of Paltiel the farmer, and there they
discovered that his infant son had been circumcised. Grabbing both the child and his parents they hauled them to jail and sent a runner—an official messenger who ran alone bearing an ebony wand of authority—to Ptolemais with news for Governor Tarphon: “The Jew Paltiel has been caught flagrantly disobeying the law. In accordance with plans approved by you, he and his wife should be executed within two days. But do you wish the executions delayed until your return?” That afternoon the same messenger returned with the expected reply: “It is impossible for me to leave Ptolemais. Proceed as planned.” The soldiers had accurately guessed that their governor, who had initiated the search, would want to be absent when the executions took place, and it was for this precise reason that the search had been carried out while he was away.
It was one of those days of incredible beauty that come to the Galilee toward the end of autumn, when the summer heat has ended and the winter rain has not yet started. The earth stands refreshed with heavy dew and the olive trees rest from their burden of fruit. The vines are empty and the oxen are idle. In the sky not a cloud appears, not even haze from the sea, but cool breezes move casually across the landscape, bespeaking the cold weather that lies ahead. In all seasons of the year the Galilee is a masterpiece of nature, an area to make the heart glad that man is an animal who can love the earth as a deer loves the cool highlands or as the bee eater loves the fields over which he skims; but in autumn, when the seasons are about to change, it has a special beauty, and if great thoughts have sometimes come from this small region it is partly because this magnificence of the land—the magnificence that lies in familiar things rather than in great waterfalls or towering mountains—has always impressed itself upon the people who lived in the area. Never was the Galilee so lovely as in this fateful year when the empire of the Seleucids seemed so securely entrenched not only in the Galilee but in all of Israel, even to Jerusalem. It was as if nature herself were holding her breath to see what would happen in the conflict between the imperial might of Antiochus Epiphanes and the unarmed resolution of a few Jews.
That autumn, in Makor at least, it seemed obvious that Antiochus must win, for when the Jews of the town were assembled before the temple of Zeus they were a terrified lot. There the guards had erected two pillars and had provided two lashes fitted with lead-tipped thongs. In the hush of an exquisitely beautiful morning, the family of Paltiel was led forth: the little farmer with protruding eyes, his wife who could have moved unnoticed in any crowd, and their infant child. The swaddling clothes of the latter were ripped away and the child was held aloft by his feet to demonstrate that it had been circumcised in defiance of the law.
With hideous swiftness a sword flashed and the child was split in two.
Before the parents could express their anguish, they were stripped and tied to the poles, where they were lashed fifty times. The effect of a lead-tipped thong upon a man’s body was terrible, striking fear into the hearts of all, but upon a woman’s body the effect was overwhelming. Those required to watch lowered their heads.
The mutilated bodies were thrown to the ground, where knives cut away any remaining skin, and then the torsos were hacked apart and thrown on a heap of rubbish outside the town where dogs and jackals came to feed. But in the late afternoon of that perfect day, a solitary soldier, who had broken some minor rule, appeared with a bucket and a broom to wash away any stains that might remain before the temple of Zeus, for the Greeks were a meticulous people to whom cleanliness and beauty were imperative.
That night the crushed Jews of Makor sent a few of their men to the synagogue, where they met in silence, merely to pray. Jehubabel, who should at that moment have stood forth as the spiritual leader of the community, was mute, caught in the grip of self-condemnation. He had permitted Paltiel to circumcise his son. Indeed, he had himself wielded the knife that completed the covenant, and it should have been he who stood at the lashing post, not Paltiel. He had allowed his own son to go over to the Greeks and had permitted him to stand naked in the sunlight like a young pagan who knew not YHWH. It had been Jehubabel’s counsel that had persuaded the Jews to allow pigs to be sacrificed in this synagogue, defiling it forever, and the words he had spoken with Governor Tarphon, his friend, had come back to crush him. But even now, in this hour of humiliation, he was unable to call forth any vigorous statement that would enlist his Jews in a rebellion against their oppressors. When at last younger men asked what must be done, Jehubabel answered sententiously, “We must be prudent, for he that is slow to anger is stronger than the mighty, and he who controls his temper is more powerful than he who rules a city.”
But his commonplaces received a bold challenge when toward midnight the next voluntary martyrs stepped forth: the baker Zattu and his wife Anat appeared with their infant son to repeat the terrible words: “Our son is eight days old.”
“You were at the execution,” Jehubabel mumbled.
“We were,” they said.
“And you’re willing to take this risk?”
“If we are not faithful to Adonai, we are nothing,” the couple recited in a phrase they had memorized together.
Jehubabel looked about the synagogue. “Is there a spy among us?” he asked apprehensively, and each man knew that the life of the community lay in his hands, so the baker Zattu went to each and asked, “Have I your permission to circumcise my son?” and each man was required to acknowledge his own complicity in what the Jews were about to do.
Against his own better judgment Jehubabel went home to procure the small knife; and again his wife asked what was afoot and he brought her back to the synagogue with him, that she, too, might be a part of that solemn covenant; and finally all commonplace words were driven from his mouth and he announced simply, “What we are doing tonight puts us at war with the kingdoms of the Gentiles. There can be no turning back. We shall have to flee Makor, to live among the swamps like the beasts of the field. Do you wish me to proceed?”
There was a murmur of assent, but after his brave start Jehubabel lost courage. Turning to Zattu and Anat he asked pitifully, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Together they repeated their formula: “If we are not faithful to Adonai, we are nothing.”
And then a transformation came over Jehubabel, and one not of his directing: At the first circumcision he had been forced by the martyr Paltiel to perform and had he been left alone he would have avoided that confrontation. But the moment had come when he must stand by himself before YHWH, without the protection of aphorisms or evasions. The leader of the Jews must now lead, and as he faced the congregation, not knowing what to say, he remembered those solemn words which YHWH himself had spoken to Abraham and he began to recite the oath which bound the Jews to their special destiny:
“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee …
This is my covenant, which ye shall keep … Every man child among you shall be circumcised …
And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations …
And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant …
And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin … And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.”
So in a kind of martyr’s defiance, ennobled by a force he did not understand, Jehubabel threw off his fear and performed the circumcision. The Jews had taken the step from which there could be no retreat.
… THE TELL
One cool sunny day in October, while John Cullinane watched the hoopoe birds make believe they were archaeologists, Eliav and Tabari stood behind him on the mound with a pair of field glasses inspecting the sea off Akko, where white specks were appearing, and the Arab asked, “You ever see this, John?”
&nbs
p; Cullinane took the glasses and focused them on the lovely minarets of Akko, then shifted them downward to the Mediterranean, where against the blue sea a cluster of white specks appeared, dancing upon the water like uncertain birds. “Are they sails?” he asked.
“The annual race from Akko,” Tabari said, and the men passed the glasses back and forth to follow the distant competitors.
“It must have been quite a shock to the Canaanites and the Jews when the Greeks introduced games on a large scale over there in Akko,” Cullinane suggested.
“We Jews watched their exhibitionism with disgust,” Eliav said. “The Old Testament looks with a fairly cynical eye at games.”
“But not the New,” Tabari said as he followed the white dots spreading out across the sea, the abler to the fore and those less skillfully handled already behind. “I remember at school in England our headmaster used to recite with tears in his voice the statement of St. Paul commending games.” Mimicking a toothy Church of England dignitary, he recalled the motto of his school: “ ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day …’ ”
“The Greeks and the English,” Eliav reflected. “They’re the ones who took games seriously. Gave us an ideal of sportsmanship. And not only in games. You fight with an Englishman in war or politics, fight him fairly, and when the war’s over you shake hands. I wish we Jews and Arabs had learned that kind of discipline.”
The Source: A Novel Page 49
