He had behaved in this way when excavating in Egypt, where he had been a faithful worshiper in the Friday mosques, and when digging in Arizona, rising before dawn to participate in the evangelical rites practiced by the Mesa people. If in the future he were called to dig in India he would there become a sympathetic Hindu, and in Japan a Buddhist. His instinct in this matter was good: a man who would later presume to write about the successive layers of life in Makor required to know as much as possible about all aspects of that life, and he had already spent a dozen years studying the languages, ceramics, metal ware and numismatics of the Holy Land, none of which was so instructive as the religion.
So as the summer passed, John Cullinane became less a Catholic and more a Jew, immersing himself in the weekly ritual that had kept the Jews together through dispersions that would have destroyed a lesser people. In fact, he grew to love the coming of Friday sunset, when Jewish men, freshly washed and dressed, walked like kings to their synagogues to go through the rites of welcoming Queen Shabbat. More sacred than any other day of the Hebrew calendar was this Shabbat, when the creation of the world and God’s compact with the Jews were remembered, and it occurred once each week, more sacred perhaps than Easter to a Christian or Ramadan to a Muslim. Inside the synagogue Cullinane waited with a kind of joy for the arrival of that moment in the ceremony when the Jews began to sing the powerful hymn composed many centuries ago in Zefat. The cantor would be chanting some quite ordinary passage whose words Cullinane could not understand, and then of a sudden the man would throw back his head and utter the joyous cry:
“Come, my Beloved, let us meet the Bride.
The presence of Shabbat let us receive.”
Nine long verses followed, but after each the cry of joy would be repeated, with all the congregation joining, and Cullinane memorized the words of both the cry and the verses, singing them under his breath as the cantor intoned the mystical words which reported the love of the Jews for this sacred day:
“Come, let us go to greet Shabbat,
For it is a wellspring of blessing.
From the beginning it was ordained,
Last in production, first in thought.
And they that spoil thee shall be a spoil,
And all that would swallow thee shall be far away.
Thy God shall rejoice over thee
As a bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride.”
One aspect of the Shabbat hymn Cullinane could not get into focus. At the beginning of his stay he rarely went to the same synagogue twice, for he wanted to savor the full range of Jewish custom, and just as Protestants assumed that there was only one Catholic church, forgetting the rich variation that marked the east where the religion was born, so he as a Catholic had supposed that there was but one Judaism; yet here in the land where that religion was also born he had an opportunity to see the great diversity, for in six different synagogues the great Shabbat hymn would be sung in six wildly different ways: as a German march, a desert wail, a Polish burial lament, a Russian huzza, a modern syncopated melody and an ancient oriental chant. Part of the pleasure of the Shabbat service, Cullinane found, lay in trying to guess what tune would be used for the central song.
He asked Eliav about this, and the tall scholar put down his pipe to say, “They tell us that the Lecha Dodi has been fitted to more varied tunes than any other song in the world. I think a man could go to Shabbat services for a year and hear a new melody every time. Each cantor has his own version, which is right, because this is a most personal cry of joy.”
“Am I free to come up with my rendition?” Cullinane asked. “Heavy on the Irish lilt?”
“I’m sure the Jews of Ireland must have their own Lecha Dodi,” Eliav said.
It was disappointing to Cullinane that he could not get any of his staff to attend synagogue services with him: Eliav refused; Vered excused herself, “As I said before, the synagogue’s for men”; Tabari said, “I find that if I enter a local synagogue dressed in full Arab robes, bow toward Mecca and cry, ‘Allah is Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet,’ I am apt to cause resentment. You go.” And of course none of the local kibbutzniks ever attended worship, having outlawed even the building of a synagogue on their property. So Cullinane was forced to go alone.
Toward the end of the digging season, after he had visited perhaps two dozen different synagogues, he settled upon three that exemplified for him the essential spirit of Judaism, and to these he returned. Along the ridge of Mount Carmel stood an ugly, corrugated-iron building served by a cantor, a small fastidious man with a handsome silver beard, who could sing like an opera star, and worship here was especially pleasing when the cantor brought with him a choir of seven little boys, all with side curls, to sing the Lecha Dodi in piercing falsetto while he underscored them with his baritone. Often, as they sang, a cool breeze would come up the wadi from the sea and it took no effort for Cullinane to imagine that God was present at that moment. But whether the Irishman visited this synagogue for that sense of a very ancient Judaism which the mean building conveyed or for the music, he would not have wished to say.
He also enjoyed going back to Zefat to the tiny synagogue he had visited with Paul Zodman, that jumbled, noise-crammed room where the Vodzher Rebbe huddled in the corner while his handful of fur-capped Russian Jews worshiped in the undisciplined manner of the past. It was indeed—as Cullinane had once said—“like seventeen orchestras and no conductor,” but it was also a fundamental, haunting experience of the reality of God. In this synagogue, when the time came for men to chant the Lecha Dodi, they did so in seven or eight different tempos, melodies and accents, and one evening when the strange fury of the place caught him unexpectedly, Cullinane found himself bellowing at the top of his voice, to an Irish tune that he had composed while working on the dig:
“Come, my Beloved, let us meet the Bride.
The presence of Shabbat let us receive.”
And the Vodzher Rebbe, so old that he seemed immortal, looked up from his corner approvingly.
But the synagogue which in the end enlisted Cullinane’s steady patronage was the small Sephardi one in Akko, into which he had stumbled that day when he joined the procession to Elijah’s Cave. It was neither spacious like the one in Haifa, nor emotionally intense like the Vodzher Rebbe’s in Zefat, but it was a warm, congenial place of worship. The Sephardi ritual, more lyric than the Ashkenazi, was to Cullinane’s liking and its tune for the Lecha Dodi became his favorite, for it moved along with a spirit that seemed the essence of Judaism: these Sephardim were actually welcoming God’s holy day, and when at the height of the song all in the congregation turned to face the entrance, as if Shabbat herself were about to join the singing, it was a moment of transcendent joy that Cullinane had not experienced in other religions.
Once, sitting in the Akko synagogue on Friday evening, he thought: As a place of worship this is really a dump. The other day I drove to the top of Mount Tabor to attend mass at the Franciscan basilica. It must be one of the most exquisite churches in the world. And now this. I wonder why synagogues are physically so unattractive? Judaism must be the only major religion that doesn’t stress beautiful temples. Perhaps it has something more important … a sense of participating brotherhood, of unity in diversity. On this Friday, as the sun moves across the earth from Fiji where the day begins, to Hawaii where it ends, when sunset comes Jews everywhere will be chanting this same song of welcome … each to his own preferred tune.
The next day as he sat worshiping with the Sephardim in this small synagogue, Cullinane received a strong rebuke which he would not forget during the remaining years at the dig. Jewish congregations did not take public collections the way Christians did; they clung to the very old custom of gathering money to run their synagogues by selling off certain ritual functions: in most synagogues of the mid-twentieth century these contributions were arranged in private, but the Sephardim of Akko—following an ancient tradition—actually conducted a Shabbat auction during holy worship, and it d
isturbed Cullinane to find the synagogue taken over by a brazen-voiced auctioneer who shouted, “Come now, who will pay fifteen lira for the honor of reading Torah?” And by such public bidding he sold off seven or eight of the holy functions, with the congregation aware of how much each man was willing to pay for his privileges. By some movement of his face Cullinane must have betrayed his disapproval of this profanation of a religious rite, for at the end of the worship the big woman, Shulamit, who had taken him to Elijah’s Cave, came up and asked in English, “Disgusting, wasn’t it?”
“What?” Cullinane asked, trying to appear innocent.
“That auction … in a house of God.”
“Well …”
“It’s almost as bad as the bingo games I used to attend in your churches … in Chicago.” And she threw her big arm about him and they went to an Arab restaurant by the sea, where they got drunk on arrack.
• • •
The first person in Makor whom Father Eusebius met officially was the military commander of the Byzantine garrison, under whose jurisdiction he placed the workmen he had brought with him; in Makor the relationship between church and army would be intimate and Eusebius was determined that it start correctly. He then proceeded to the existing Christian church, a sorry affair at the east of town, where he greeted the uneducated Syrian priest with gentle condescension; he intended no familiarity with this schismatic. And then, because he knew that a large portion of Makor’s population was Jewish, he picked his way carefully through the narrow streets to the groats mill, where he drew his black silk robes about him and stared down at Rabbi Asher, bare-armed and white-bearded as he sweated over sacks of cereal.
The tall Spaniard nodded graciously, half-smiled and said, “I’m told that you’re a scholar, honored by your people.”
Rabbi Asher wiped his forehead and tried to find a seat for his visitor, but the mill was disordered and he could locate nothing suitable. The austere visage of the Spaniard relaxed as he said, “On the boat I sat for many days.”
“Fetch a chair from the synagogue,” Asher directed his foreman, and for the second time the slim visitor noticed Menahem.
“Your son?” he asked as the young man disappeared.
“I wish he were,” Asher said, feeling an instinctive liking for the Spaniard.
“As you know,” Father Eusebius began, “I’ve come to build a basilica.” He hesitated. “A large basilica.”
The acceptance that Rabbi Asher had begun to feel vanished. Why did he have to say a big church? he thought. But Father Eusebius continued, assuring the rabbi that it was his hope not to disrupt Makor but to bring it prosperity. “We shall build rapidly,” he explained, “and will import no more soldiers than we already have.” He paused. “I shall hope that you will instruct your Jews …” He left the sentence unfinished, Nodding graciously he left just as Menahem ran up with the chair. “We shall save that for another day,” he said charmingly as he went off to inspect the town which would occupy him in the years ahead.
The Makor to which Father Eusebius had come to build his basilica looked far different from the way it had in its days of beauty under King Herod, and almost nothing that the meticulous Spaniard saw could have reminded him of the Greek charm that had once invested this place. The walls were down, so that the settlement lacked any external unity houses now perched precariously on the steep slopes and were propped up by timbers that gave the impression of a village hanging out its wooden washing. The lovely forum was gone; not a temple stood nor even the walls of a temple. The residential palace had long since been torn apart for building stone, and here and there throughout the town one could find the base upon which the statue of an emperor had once stood, now perched on end to form part of a kitchen wall. The gymnasium was gone: where were the statues of naked Epiphanes posing as a discus thrower or of fleet Hermes the runner?
Even the two components that had best characterized Makor were vanished: the well was forgotten and the David Tunnel was no longer used. Its deep shaft was almost completely filled in, for during the past three hundred years it had served as the town dump. Now women of the town walked down a steep flight of wooden stairs that descended into the wadi, where a completely new well had been dug; Makor did not even remember the sweet source from which the town had taken its name.
Father Eusebius, accustomed to the grandeur of Rome and Constantinople, did however find one structure with a kind of peasant charm, a building he could respect. It was the synagogue standing near the middle of town, and as he came upon it this first day he stopped at the southern end to study the heavy, stately façade shaped like that of a Greek temple but lacking the perfection that marked all true Greek architecture. The portico was supported on six rather ugly stone columns, and Eusebius remarked to his architect: “Whoever carved those pillars was no Greek.” But he had to grant that the effect was strong. Under the portico stood three doors topped by carved lintels, and the excellence of the western one showing grape clusters, date palms and a small wagon, intended no doubt to represent the holy ark, impressed the Spaniard and he stepped reverently upon the porch to peer inside; and there for the first time he caught a sense of Palestinian grandeur equal in its rough way to the fine things being built in Constantinople, for the interior ceiling was supported by eight columns of perfect proportion, differing in color and obviously stolen from some Greek or Roman building, for no Jew could have carved such pillars. They gave the synagogue a poetic beauty, but what impressed Eusebius more was the mosaic floor, in which he saw before him composed in cubes of local rock the design of Galilee: birds resting on an olive tree, sly foxes waiting in the rushes, and formalized little streams running down from purple mountains, a gathering of diverse elements into an artistic unity.
“Demetrius!” he called. “Look at this.”
A Byzantine assistant came to inspect the mosaic and was impressed, for it was finer than his workmen were able to produce. “Who did it?” Demetrius asked.
“They must have imported someone from Byzantium,” a workman in mosaic suggested.
Eusebius went back onto the portico and asked in Greek of a passing Jew, “Who built your floor?” The man did not understand, but Menahem, returning the chair to the synagogue, moved forward to say, “My father made it.”
The priest and the Jew regarded each other in silence, then Menahem added, “He’s working inside,” and he led the tall Spaniard back into the synagogue, where in a corner Yohanan was mending a clay pipe. “This is my father,” Menahem said.
“Did you make the floor?” Eusebius asked.
“Yes.”
“You learn in Constantinople?” Demetrius inquired.
“Antioch,” Yohanan replied, and for the first time since he had begun working on this floor he experienced the satisfaction of watching experts who understood what he had accomplished accept his design as a work of art.
“Exquisite,” Father Eusebius said with controlled enthusiasm, and he could visualize such a pavement gracing his basilica, so on the spur of the moment he turned to Yohanan, saying, “Your work here seems done. In our basilica we have need for your skills.”
“That glass costs money,” Yohanan warned.
From a bag carried by an assistant Father Eusebius handed him more gold coins than he had ever seen before. “Buy the glass … now. We shall need a floor three times this big.” He turned to consult his experts, and they referred to their forthcoming basilica in such specific terms that Yohanan realized that in their minds it already existed. “Could we fit a floor this size into the space before the altar?” Eusebius asked, and his architect replied, “If we moved two of the pillars …”
“The pillars we won’t touch,” the Spaniard said abruptly, “but between them … Wouldn’t there be room?”
“Ample,” the architect agreed, but Demetrius pointed out, “In that case we couldn’t use a square design like here.” With his hands he indicated the dimensions available, and Eusebius nodded.
The Spania
rd turned to Yohanan and asked cautiously, “Could you produce just as fine a work? In these dimensions?” and he moved his hands in the air as Demetrius had done.
Yohanan thought: These determined men have come to build, and I would like to work with them. Quietly he said, “I’m a Jew.”
Father Eusebius gave the dry, ascetic laugh of a Spaniard descended from a long-established family and said, “There may be sections of our church hostile to Jews, but not here in Makor. Have no worry. This one,” and with a slight nod he indicated his architect, “is from Moldavia and still worships trees. There’s a Persian who prays to fire. Our German troops are followers of Arius, who hold that the substance of God …” He stopped, reflecting that Yohanan did not require to know these matters, but as a man secure in his own strength he added gravely, “As a Jew both you and your skill will be welcome.” And he took Yohanan by the arm, leading him persuasively from the synagogue.
The next days were exciting. Father Eusebius relaxed his aloofness long enough to allow the local Syrian priest to identify the traditional spot where Queen Helena had knelt and this determined the altar area of the new basilica. Yohanan then watched as the Christians stepped back and forth across the area north of the synagogue, seeking the best position for their building, and since these were the days before the church insisted upon altars oriented to the east, many different locations were tested, but in the end Eusebius summoned Yohanan and asked him what he thought of a solution that would place the basilica at an angle to the synagogue, reaching toward the northeast. “Is the earth strong there?” the architect inquired.
The Source: A Novel Page 68
