“That it’s the Christians who kill Jews, not Catholics or Protestants.”
“Yes,” Eliav said. “The tremendously personal religion that evolved around the figure of Christ was all that He and Paul had envisaged. It was brilliant, penetrating and a path to personal salvation. It was able to construct soaring cathedrals and even more vaulted processes of thought. But it was totally incapable of teaching men to live together.”
There was a stirring in the other bed and Tabari came over to Eliav’s cot. “Don’t believe a word of what he’s saying,” the Arab said. “The only reason the Jews haven’t behaved like the Christians is that for the last two thousand years they haven’t had anyone they can kick around. That’s primarily because whenever they form a kingdom it quickly comes apart at the seams. How long did the empire of Saul and David last? A little over one hundred years. In an area as small as Palestine they broke up into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern. John, you’ve heard what they say about Jews? Two Jews get together, they build three synagogues. ‘You go to yours, I’ll go to mine, and we’ll both boycott that son of a bitch on the hill.’ ”
Eliav laughed. “You may have something there, Jemail. Historically, we’ve found it just about as difficult to get together as you Arabs have.”
“About the same,” Jemail agreed. “But as I listened to you two fellows argue I thought: Why should I lie here silent, when I have the solution?”
“What is it?” Cullinane asked.
“Simple. Judaism had its day, and if the Jews had been smart, when Christianity came along they’d have joined up. Christianity has had its day, and if you were intelligent you’d both join the newest religion. Islam!” He bowed low and said, “Soon all Africa will be Islamic. And all Black America. I see India giving up Hinduism while Burma and Thailand surrender Buddhism. Gentlemen, I represent the religion of the future. I offer you salvation.”
The easy nonsense of his statement pleased the men and they began to laugh, while from the other tent the photographer called, “Coffee,” and a day began, little different from the fifteen million days which had dawned over Makor since the first organized community had been established in its cave.
4
• • •
In the early years of the 1500s Safed was an undistinguished village of one thousand people who lived in a collection of mud-walled houses perched along narrow alleys that climbed up and down the southwestern flank of a hill in the Galilee. At the crest of this hill, wasting in sunlight and inhabited only by eagles and crawling things, stood the gaunt remains of a Crusader fort, its once-soaring turrets fallen and its walls collapsed.
Winds from the north had deposited upon the humbled fortress a freight of blowing silt in which trees had taken root, so that the once-proud castle was now merely a mound of earth with only here and there a rock projecting, sometimes with a bit of carving, to indicate how majestic that hilltop had once been. Of the thousand residents some two hundred were Jews, a few were Christians and the rest were Muslim, with only one or two men who remembered hearing from their grandfathers that their hill had once been a bastion of the Crusaders.
The town, which nestled on the hillside well below the ruins, contained two mosques, a synagogue, a small church, some dark covered souks and a nest of small Jewish shops. The Turkish governor, ruling on edict from Constantinople, maintained peace among the various communities and allowed qadis to judge the Muslims, rabbis to rule the Jews and priests to govern the Christians. Once each year a small caravan straggled in from Damascus, bringing a few bales of shoddy goods in sad memory of the silks and spices of former times, and Turkey collected few taxes, for there was no substantial trade. In fact, if one had looked dispassionately at Safed in those early years he would surely have predicted, “This little village will continue sleeping forever. The only good thing here is the mountain air.”
Then in 1525 several events, apparently unrelated, conspired to change the history of Safed, transforming it for some ninety years into one of the most significant communities in the world: a manufacturing city of sixty thousand, a trading center known through Europe and the spiritual capital of the Jewish people. The drowsy little town was about to enter an age of gold so luminous that its memory would be cherished by nations then not even in existence. The revolution was achieved by three unlikely conspirators: the camel, the spinning wheel and the book.
The miracle of Safed began with the camel. As the wealth and power of the Turkish empire grew, with Constantinople replacing Genoa and Venice in control of merchandise passing from Asia to Europe, the new prosperity affected centers like the manufacturing city of Damascus and the ruined port of Akka. Since the highway between these two communities had always passed through Safed, the latter town became a post from which to protect caravans and a stopping point for merchants. Each body of travelers left behind in Safed some of its wealth and occasionally a few of its personnel, for the enchanting location of the town, perpetually cool with snow in winter, appealed to men tired of the desert. Most who reached Safed by this means were Arabs, and they occupied the southern and eastern sections of town, building new mosques and additional lines of covered souks.
But without the spinning wheel the camels could have accomplished little, and it reached Safed in an ironic way. When Jews were expelled from Spain and later from Portugal, many of the best and most courageous were drawn not to new refuges like Amsterdam but back to Eretz Israel, the land of their longing. Disembarking at Akka they were told by sailors in the one inn still existing along the waterfront, “Jerusalem is a hovel and Tubariyeh is no more. The real Holy Land exists only in Safed.” By foot and by donkey these strong-minded Jews made the overland trip to Safed, where they began to swell the western quarter of the town, building small stone houses on the beautiful slopes which overlooked both a wadi and a mountain. Seldom have the victims of a religious persecution found a refuge so gentle as did those Jews of Avaro and other Spanish cities who escaped to Safed.
They brought with them the spinning wheel, which they had used in Spain to spin merino wool, and with it they initiated in their new home what was to become the foremost weaving center in Asia. Huge caravans began to assemble in the ruins of Akka, waiting for ships bringing the raw wool of Spain and France, and in Safed the Jews produced from this wool an excellent cloth, dyeing it by ancient processes and shipping it back through Akka to the markets of Europe. Unexpectedly the income of Safed rose from ten thousand florins a year to two hundred thousand and then to six hundred thousand, and its Jewish population from two hundred Jews to well over twenty thousand. It had become what the sailors of Akka had said, “The leading town in Palestine.”
But caravans of camels have come to many towns, and riches have multiplied for a while, leaving no world-memories. And the same would have happened in Safed had not the Jews who carried the spinning wheel also brought a book, one of the most extraordinary in history, and it was the impact of this book that spread the name of Safed to the remotest Jewish community in the world, luring to the hillside center scholars from a dozen nations as different as Egypt and Poland, England and Persia.
But again, many towns have received books and done little with them. It was the glory of Safed that it received in addition to its book three rabbis prepared to give that book significance: Rabbi Zaki from Italy, Rabbi Eliezer of Germany, and the charismatic Rabbi Abulafia from Spain.
The first of the three rabbis to reach Safed was Zaki the Shoemaker, who, after seven years of painful struggle through Africa and the shores of Greece, landed with his wife and three daughters at the ruined, rock-strewn port of Akka. A caravan set forth intended for Damascus, and camped the first night at the uninhabited mound of Makor, from which the ancestors of Zaki had fled more than a thousand years before; but the houses his people had lived in lay beneath a Crusader fort, and it lay beneath a heap of sand and flowers.
On the next day, at about four in the afternoon, the caravan reached the pass separating the plains fr
om the hills of Safed, and for the first time Zaki and his family saw the lovely town that was to be their home. On the summit a few great blocks of stone from the Crusaders’ fort reflected back the bright sunlight, while below them, spreading out across steep slopes, flowed a collection of little houses, like petals falling from a flower.
Zaki, his heart bursting with the wonder of what he saw, uttered those singing words which God had used in urging Lot forward: “ ‘Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.’ ” He had been in the plains and now the mountain beckoned.
“It looks as if it would be cold,” Rachel warned.
“In Salonica they assured us,” he reminded her. “Life is good here.”
“It looks as if the people would fall out of their houses and roll down the mountainside,” she complained.
“It only looks that way,” he said convincingly.
The road entering Safed led to a public square which spread out from the foot of the ruined castle, and this area served as the commercial center of the town. Here the camels were unloaded and their cargoes sorted for delivery to merchants. Turkish officials clustered about the muleteers, asking of news from Akka, and Rabbi Zaki was left alone, staring down at the heart of Safed; and whispering a prayer for his deliverance he looked beyond the limits of the town and saw between the hills to the south the sunset-colored waters of the Sea of Galilee.
His arm was grabbed by a strong hand, and he heard a rough, peremptory voice asking, “Are you intended for Safed?” He turned to find himself facing a burly, good-looking man with a stout black beard and workman’s clothes.
“I am sent here by Rabbi Jemuel of Constantinople,” Zaki replied.
“Blessed be his memory,” came the brusque reply. “That your family?”
“My wife Rachel and my daughters.”
“You’ll need a big house,” the Safed man said. “Right now we have none.”
“I told you not to come to Safed,” Rachel began to lament. “We were happy in Salonica.”
“But until we find one,” the bearded man added, ignoring the complaints, “you shall live with me. All the newcomers do at first. My name is Yom Tov ben Gaddiel.” And he led the family—they had scarcely any luggage—down a steep path and through alleys only a few feet wide until Rachel was dizzy, and she reminded Zaki: “I told you people would fall off this hillside.”
They came to a square, not a European plaza but a halting place on the hillside, perhaps twenty feet across, and here the little group rested, hemmed in by houses, and Rabbi Zaki was able to study Safed: a warm, tightly knit town where Jews were at ease. They then proceeded down the hill until they reached Yom Tov’s home, and from his door they could see the western hills and the pass they had negotiated, and extensive fields reaching to the horizon. Zaki covered his face and thought: It’s this we’ve been searching for; but his wife thought of Podi and Salonica and Izmir and all the other good places they had known, and she was disconsolate.
Next day, when the Jews of Safed learned that a rabbi from Italy was among them, they crowded Yom Tov’s house to question him, and many wanted to know why a Jew who had lived in Podi would have left such a well-regarded haven—and Rachel echoed the question: “Yes, why?” Zaki explained what his fears had been and told of how for seven years he had longed to get to Safed. He said that the fame of the hilltop town had spread throughout Jewry and that he had wished to make himself a part of the brotherhood.
His simple explanation was received in silence, as if the men of Safed knew that they did not merit such praise, and in the long moment of hesitation Zaki had a chance to inspect the faces about him: they were bearded faces, marked by deep-set eyes which seemed to express the quiet exaltation of the town. The men wore oriental-style gowns and some wore turbans as well; and there was a stateliness about them, as if they had spent many years learning to control both their emotions and their fugitive thoughts. They were men, Zaki thought, with an intellectual power far surpassing his own, and he wondered if he could hold a place amongst them.
This fear was increased when Yom Tov said, “Shall we explore the alleys?” And leaving the women behind, Zaki set out to see his new home. First he was led back to the square at which the family had stopped the evening before, and from there he moved along a narrow lane to the south, where to his surprise he was brought to a yeshiva where a man in his late fifties was expounding the Talmud to a class of nearly a hundred devotees. It was the great rabbi of Safed, Joseph Caro, who spoke in a cold, deliberate manner, interpreting the law of Judaism. Never before in his life had Zaki seen so big a yeshiva, nor had he been aware that so many Jews were interested in philosophical discussion.
Yom Tov then led him down to a lower level and back to the west, where in a large house he was introduced to an even more persuasive teacher, the learned Moses of Cordova, the man of Safed who knew most about the mysteries of the Kabbala, and he, too, had a student body of nearly a hundred, listening to intricate speculations which Zaki knew he would not be able to comprehend.
Yom Tov then led his fat guest to another level of the town, where he found in close proximity four different synagogues, each with its teacher and sixty or seventy scholars. “It’s a town of wisdom!” he cried in the Ladino which he had picked up in Izmir and which served as a lingua franca in all except the German quarters of Safed.
“It’s also a town of work,” Yom Tov reminded him, leading the way to a large building through which a mountain stream tumbled, causing devices of various kinds to operate, and here Zaki became aware that his guide was both a respected rabbi, Yom Tov ben Gaddiel, and the leading cloth manufacturer of Safed. His plant employed three hundred men who were engaged in combing, fulling, washing and dyeing processes.
“In Safed we say, ‘Without work there is no Torah,’ ” the rabbi explained. He spoke of one famous rabbi who kept a shop, of another who was a barber. “I’ll find jobs for your women.”
“Doing what?” Zaki asked, for in the factory he saw only men.
Yom Tov led him back to the center of town, where they stopped at several homes, and in each, women were spinning wool imported from Turkey or weaving it into the stout cloth which accounted for Safed’s fame throughout the Mediterranean. Yom Tov explained that he owned the mill, another dyeing establishment at the edge of town and the warehouses.
“You must be very rich,” Zaki observed without envy.
“No,” the local rabbi corrected. “The money we make on cloth goes into the yeshivas and the synagogues.” Zaki stared at the black-bearded man in laborer’s clothes and said nothing, for the words he had just heard were difficult to believe.
When they returned to Yom Tov’s home Zaki was perspiring, and Rachel observed, “At last! You’ll climb up and down these hills so much you’ll lose some of that fat.” And she proceeded to describe in much detail how embarrassed she had been when her husband had lost his pants in the spring races at Podi, but none of the listeners felt embarrassment, because most of them, during their lives among the Christians, had suffered equal indignities.
“I shall give you four spinning wheels,” Rabbi Yom Tov explained to the women of Zaki’s family.
“What for?” Rachel asked suspiciously.
“To work,” Yom Tov answered sharply, and before Rachel could reply that she had not come to Safed to learn spinning, he added, “Here we all work. I’ll find you a house where the women can spin in the back and the rabbi can be a shoemaker in front.” And such a house was found.
As the family settled into its new life Rabbi Zaki confided to no one the principal reason for his joy in having reached Safed, but to himself he often thought: It’s wonderful! So many young men here without wives. If I don’t get the girls their husbands here, where in the world could I?
So wherever he went, whenever men gathered together to talk religion, Rabbi Zaki could be depended upon to cite either the Torah or the Talmud regarding the
desirability of marriage. “As the Talmud says,” he used to quote in his shoemaker’s shop, “ ‘The unmarried person lives without joy, without blessing and without good. He cannot be called a man in the full sense of the term.’ ” And always in the course of talking with his customers he would remind them of the pregnant words of Genesis: “male and female created he them.”
It would have been difficult to find a poorer propagandist for marriage than Rabbi Zaki; Safed required very little time to classify him as uxorious and his wife as a shrew. As for the three girls whom the fat rabbi offered as God’s blessing to unmarried men, they were ill-tempered, petulant and bad-complexioned. It seemed unlikely that the older girl, Sarah, would ever marry, for she had a sharp tongue and a drawn face, while the two younger girls, Athaliah and Tamar, though prettier in feature were equally acid in nature.
And then one day a muleteer from Damascus, a stolid Jewish lad who had never read the Talmud or heard of the yeshivas of Safed, climbed down the many levels of the town to sit with Zaki at the shoemaker’s bench: “On the trip from Akka I watched your daughter, Rabbi.”
The Source: A Novel Page 100
