“Will you forswear your religion and join us?”
Ben Hadad laughed at the question and his head rolled one way while his body tumbled another.
That day seven hundred and ninety-nine Jews rejected Muhammad; only one saved his life by converting, and when the tragedy had ended, two facts were clear: Jews were not going to join the new religion, but it was impossible to execute them all. They were good farmers and they were needed on the land, so a grudging truce was arranged: if they behaved themselves they could cling to their Book, but they would have to pay higher taxes and would no longer be free to move about.
To demonstrate his own willingness to forgive, Muhammad took recourse to a dramatic gesture. When the sickening massacre was over and repentance was in the air he moved among the five or six hundred Jewish women who had been made widows that day and selected a beautiful girl whom Abd Umar had known well, Rihana, a merchant’s wife, and the Prophet married her. In the next year, when he was forced to execute another rebellious Jewish leader, he married that man’s widow as well, the gracious Safia, and with his two Jewish widows he had lived amicably, depending upon them to mitigate the opposition of the Arabian Jews.
As Abd Umar’s soldiers were riding through the Galilee forest their captain reviewed these gloomy memories, and the trees, to which the Arabs were not accustomed, depressed both him and the troops and he recalled that mournful day when he had returned from Damascus to find that Ben Hadad had been slain. He had run to the long grave to honor the good Jew who had taught him so much and there he had reflected: Of every ten boys I played with as a child, nine are buried in that grave. The weight of ugliness he had experienced that day would never leave him; it moved with him through the Galilee.
His attention was taken from these matters, however, when the road through the forest opened to display a view of the surrounding hills, and on one, where Safat hung like a star in the sky, the Arabs could see fires burning. They watched with strange emotions: their brothers had reached the town, but they were destroying it in the manner that was to be forbidden in the future. A soldier said matter-of-factly, “Abu Zeid got there.”
Abd Umar turned brusquely in his saddle and snapped, “The days of fire have vanished.” After staring again at the rising smoke he added, “We’ll take Makor with none of that.” As he urged his camel back into the gloomy forest, rain began to fall and he knew that the transit of the swamp would be difficult, but he thought not of these immediate matters; his mind remained focused on that afternoon when he had first seen the long grave of the Jews. It was there, at the place of death, that he had become the kind of man he was now: willing to fight and a courageous leader, but a man who would never condone vengeful killing.
Within the mean and narrow streets of Makor, Jews awaited the ominous coming of Islam. They knew of the fall of Damascus and the capture of Tverya, their once-sacred city on the lake, and they shivered, for this was the season of storms, when rabbis added to their prayers a phrase giving thanks to God for having sent the rain: “You, O Lord, are mighty forever. You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall.” Once more a third of Makor’s population was Jewish, and in the surrounding valleys were many additional families working their farms, for the Jews still preferred rural life to the business ventures in town, where money matters remained in Greek hands. But these Jews were allowed to play no significant role in the Christian town, for Constantinople had laid down the rule that no new Jewish buildings could be started nor improvements added to those already standing. Furthermore, even if a synagogue were in existence, it must not compete in either height or appointments with Christian churches in the same community, and since the Nestorian minority in Makor could afford little, the synagogue was truly a hovel.
Nor was the Jewish deficiency expressed only in externals; the bewildered rabbi who led the community was as bedraggled spiritually as his synagogue was physically. He was neither an old man wise in the traditions of Palestinian life, nor a young scholar imbued with the inner potential of the Talmud; he was merely a forty-year-old man subservient to the Byzantine majority and a blind adherent of the legalistic formulations of the Talmud. He was a kind of moralizing bookkeeper who considered it his job to keep his Jews obedient to the civil law of Constantinople and the religious dictates of the Talmud. In the long history of Judaism there would be many such rabbis, and in spite of them the religion would survive, but a real rabbi, like Akiba, who faced with Rome the same problems that the Makor rabbi faced with Byzantium, and who in the process enlarged the whole scope of Judaism, making it nobler than it had been when he received it, would have been appalled at the pettiness of mind that characterized the local rabbi. Only one favorable comment could be made of the man: he was no worse than the Christian priests who served this little town during the death throes of the Byzantine empire in Palestine.
Where had they come from, these Jews of Makor? Following the general expulsion of 351, when Tverya was laid waste and the compilation of the Palestinian Talmud brought to an end, in each remote valley a few rural families had survived, and when the fury was over, these remnants began to assemble in towns like Makor, where they formed ineffective groups lacking both funds and leadership. Once or twice every decade some Jew of Ptolemais or Caesarea, where the communities were strong, would make the long trip to Babylonia, where the center of Judaism now lay, to refresh himself as to what was happening among the leaders, and he would return to explain to neighboring villages the decisions that Babylon had recently handed down. And occasionally a ship from Spain would bring some wandering scholar on a visit to the holy places of Judaism, and he would report to the gape-mouthed Jews of Makor on the wonders of Europe.
In this year of crisis, when Islam was on the march and when only a unified land could hope to withstand the assault, their foolish rabbi had sorely split his community over an incident so timeless that it could have sprung from the scroll of Genesis. Like most of the classic tragedies of the Torah it began simply: There were two brothers. One married a beautiful wife. The other did not.
Throughout Palestine, for the last two thousand years and regardless of who controlled the country, there had always been one occupation monopolized by Jews, the dyeing industry, and in Makor the dye vats that lay west of the basilica were owned by two brothers, Judah and Aaron, the older of whom had some years before married Shimrith, a stately, beautiful young woman whose father had traded by donkey with the markets of Ptolemais, while the younger brother had married a local farm girl, stodgy and hard-working. The marriage of Judah and Shimrith had been a productive one, for although they had no children they had established a loving, observant Jewish home from which they radiated what little enlightenment Makor knew in those bleak years. In fact, when Jews compared their fumbling rabbi with Judah, they often observed among themselves: “How much better off this town would be if Judah were our rabbi.”
But this year his attention had to be focused elsewhere. With the fall of Damascus to the Arabs, stragglers began arriving in Makor with tales of Arab invincibility, and fear settled over the town. Trade with Damascus halted and a worrisome surplus of dyed goods began to accumulate, so that the brothers were faced with a difficult choice: close down the vats and throw their Jewish workers into starvation, or visit Ptolemais to see if more lengths of cloth could be pressed upon the merchants coming there from Venice and Genoa. Accordingly, in early November, Judah did what thousands of men from his little town had done in centuries past: he dressed in his best clothes, found himself a staff and set forth upon the journey to Ptolemais, which still seemed the most exciting and romantic settlement in the world; and it was while he was gone that his wife Shimrith became vaguely aware that her brother-in-law Aaron had begun to look upon her with unaccustomed interest, even though he had a wife of his own.
The brothers had always lived together in a cluster of cramped buildings at the western edge of town: the dye vats stood in the middle, with the mean synagogue to the north and a home for two fami
lies to the south. Aaron and his large family kept to one half of the house, while Judah and Shimrith held the other. Often the two households ate together, so that Aaron had many opportunities to know Shimrith, who respected him as the gruff, powerful man he was, beardless and slope-shouldered from the heavy work at the dye vats. His big hands were usually stained with the signs of his occupation and he was careless of his general appearance, so that he was not the kind of person Shimrith would normally seek out, and now in her husband’s absence she began to fear him, for it was obvious that he had become obsessed with her.
Whenever she was in sight he stared at her, lasciviously. Ignoring his own wife he tried to place himself so that Shimrith would have to pass close, and at each opportunity his red-stained hands reached for her legs. She avoided him when possible, but the proximity in which they lived made contact inescapable, and she grew to loathe his sudden, grabbing appearances from behind doors. One day he cornered her when his own wife was absent and was so disgusting in his behavior that Shimrith cried, “I shall tell Judah when he returns.”
“Do so and I’ll kill him,” Aaron threatened, but Shimrith beat him about the face until he had to let her run panic-stricken to her own portion of the house.
While she huddled there alone she heard the rising of the wind as a storm came in from the sea, bringing the reality of winter to the Galilee. That night there would be frost and on the higher mountains snow; farmers would hurry with their winter plowing and citizens of the town would don their warm clothes and cluster together about small fires, listening to the winds howling down the wadis. Makor, on its exposed height, was especially susceptible to these wintry storms, and pilgrims from Europe who had always imagined Jesus and Moses as living in the sweltering heat of the desert were often bewildered when they found the Galilee as cold as their homelands.
For Shimrith it was a miserable, lonely period. During the bleak winters she had always loved being with her husband, in the warmth of his arms and safe in his protection, Now, alone, she felt afraid to leave her own cold rooms lest her brother-in-law molest her, and even when she heard the children playing and calling for her she kept to herself, praying for the swift return of her husband from Ptolemais. But the storms kept him in the port city, and the day came when Aaron felt free to make a direct attack upon her.
He was impelled to do so by a curious logic with which he had convinced himself that she was hungry for his advances: Look at her! That big, wonderful woman with wide hips and me the only man in Makor strong enough to satisfy her. She’s alone and she must want me to come to her. One look at her smooth olive face tells me she wants to be loved, and her hands twitch nervously when I’m nearby. He honestly believed that he would be doing his sister-in-law a favor by approaching her, and this led to the conviction that she had, by sly glances, invited him to do so.
Consequently, in the middle of a morning, when he should have been at the dye vats, he slipped out the rear of the workshop, scurried along the edge of town and darted into the back door of his home. Assuring himself that his wife was occupied with her children in the open area between their house and the basilica, he burst into Shimrith’s house, appearing before her suddenly, grabbing her and kissing her with much vigor.
She tried to push him away, but with a skill that he must have practiced in imagination he pinioned her arms with his body, used one hand to cover her mouth and another to throw aside his loose-fitting robe, so that he stood naked and furious before her. He then proceeded to tear away her clothes, while she kicked and struggled vainly against his superior force. When he had her nearly nude he forced her to the floor, still keeping his hand over her mouth, and in a violent scene of tearing and brutality tried to force his massive way into her body.
When the struggle reached its final stage she was afraid that she must faint, for she was barely able to breathe, but when she felt his body stabbing at her and his animal-like breath enveloping her she made a supreme effort to protect herself, kicking at him with her knees and scratching her nails across his face. This unexpected pain enraged the dyer, and with an uncontrollable blow of his fist he bruised her face and knocked her nearly unconscious. Unable to resist any further she fell back exhausted and in a kind of wintry haze felt him ravage her.
When he was gone she whispered to herself, “God of Moses, what must I do?” and like many women who face this ultimate indignity she made a fatally wrong decision. Alone and bleeding on the floor she was so mortified by what had happened that she did not immediately cry out. During the rape she had tried to do so; she had done all that a woman could possibly do to defend herself, but her mouth had been smothered so that the cries she did utter were not heard. Now, when others were within hearing distance, she remained mute in terror and shame, and the hours passed, confirming her silence. A cold rain fell on the Galilee and winter was at hand.
That night Aaron reported to the evening meal with scratches across his face, but glowing with an animal contentment. Satisfied that the silence of his sister-in-law proved her enjoyment of the morning tussle he smiled at her with open longing, and she was distraught when she realized the interpretation he was placing on her muted behavior. His daughter asked what had scratched his face, and he replied, leering at Shimrith, “A kitten with an olive face.”
The next two days were marked with terror. Outside, the storm continued, with dark clouds riding in from the sea so that Ptolemais was hidden in darkness, while inside the house of the brothers Aaron stalked his sister-in-law as primitive hunters in this region had once stalked the lioness. Finally he trapped her near the kitchen, where with a grandiose gesture he opened his robe, revealing himself naked and hungry for her, confident that she too had been plotting for this moment, and he had so convinced himself that Shimrith loved him that he ignored her anguished retreat. Moving toward her he offered to repeat the game, but this time she was prepared. Producing from her dress a brass knife she stood ready to stab him if he touched her, and for a moment he was halted by this surprising development.
Then, with bewildering speed, he threw aside his robe completely, and with a deft feint toward her head caught her off guard, and with one hand wrested away the knife and with the other silenced her mouth before she could scream. It could have been a game, Aaron thought. It could have been that she had grabbed the weapon only so that she could be disarmed and overpowered, as if that were her pleasure, heightening her wild responses to the sexual act. Responding to her strange sense of play he struck her across the chin, and before she fainted undressed her and threw her upon the floor.
Too late, too late she ran sobbing from her violated home to seek refuge with the rabbi, but when she entered his disheveled room and found him nesting behind a clutter of scrolls she had a premonition that she had come to the wrong man for help. Sitting with his pale hands folded beneath his beard he listened as she gave her account of Aaron’s behavior, and before he was willing to comment either yea or nay he rummaged among his scrolls until he found one to his liking, and after having consulted it, asked simply, “So Aaron raped you?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Twice.”
“The first time?”
“Two days ago.”
“And you didn’t cry out?”
“I couldn’t.”
“And later you told no one?”
“I was too ashamed.”
The rabbi tugged at his beard and asked a most significant question. “Where did the attack take place?”
“At our house?”
“By the synagogue?”
“Yes.”
The rabbi sat back and studied the distraught woman with what he thought was understanding. It was an old story, familiar to all judges, of the woman who had half eagerly, half hesitantly encouraged her lover, only to react with shame and humiliation some days after the experience. The Torah was filled with accounts of wild sexual behavior, for the patriarchs were men of lust and their women were worse, trick
ing and seducing and procuring. It had taken nearly a score of centuries to subdue the wilder impulses of the Jews, and rabbis had spent much effort trying to formulate logical codes, but of one thing they were certain: even the most circumspect woman could trap herself into seducing a man one day and charging him with rape the next. The essential test had always been, even in the Torah: “Had she cried out to protect herself at the first opportunity?” The Jewish moralists knew that when a woman did not make this normal and primitive response any subsequent behavior must be viewed with suspicion. The present case of Shimrith, wife of Judah, merely presented new proof of this old truism.
“An evil thing has been committed,” the fumbling rabbi granted, “but it is not the evil that you charge against your brother-in-law. It is the evil you did in luring a man and then charging him with rape.”
“Rabbi!” The stunned woman let her shoulders slump as if she had been clubbed across the back.
“Yes,” the legalistic man continued, fumbling among his scrolls for a passage to fortify his judgment. “I have the words right here some place,” and finally he found what he wanted, the determinative passage in Deuteronomy: if “a man find her in the city and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city …” Putting aside the scroll he said gravely, “The Torah continues that if the supposed rape took place in the country, the woman shall not be stoned to death, for there perhaps she cried and no one heard. By your own confession, Shimrith, I could condemn you to death. For you enticed your brother’s husband in the city, and had you cried out even I could have heard you in the synagogue next door. You seduced your brother-in-law twice and now come complaining. This time I shall let you go, but keep away from Aaron, for whom you have conceived this lustful desire. And when your husband Judah returns from Ptolemais try to be a good wife to him.”
The Source: A Novel Page 75
