by Shlomo Kalo
Naimel
His father was of priestly lineage on his mother’s side, and a man of Judah through his father. A family with roots stretching back to the son of Jesse on the one hand and the sons of Aaron on the other. His grandfather and his grandfather’s father were counted among the senior advisers of the kings of Judah, as was his father too. A skilled archer was his father, and an accomplished swordsman, and a javelin thrown by his hand never missed its mark. Moreover he was a scholar and played on the lyre, and the anthems of King David were forever on his lips. No man dared compete with his father in horsemanship; while mounted on his horse he could shoot five arrows one after the other, and with each of them strike a target marked out for him on the trunk of a tree.
Before the coming of the Chaldeans, the king summoned his courtiers and urged them to compete among themselves in the arts of archery and horsemanship; shooting arrows and bringing down doves in flight, while riding a charger. The minister Naimel refused to take part in the contest, with the polite determination that was so typical of him. He saw no point in shooting arrows at blameless doves, he declared.
This was a reasonable argument to which the king had no answer, but there could be no doubt he was enraged by the refusal of his senior minister and adviser. Because he was not yet ready to dispense with his services, he allowed him to remain in his post. However, the king bore a grudge against him, and this grudge turned to open hatred when his father, the minister Naimel, supported Jeremiah, declaring him a true prophet through whom God was speaking, and saying it was a sacred duty to heed the voice of God and do His will, and not, Heaven forfend, be numbered among His enemies. Nevertheless, the minister Naimel allowed no one to speak ill of the king or revile him in his presence.
In a bitter moment during the siege, the king issued a stern edict according to which his senior minister and adviser Naimel was to be arrested, chained and imprisoned. And if the Chaldeans breached the wall – he was to be hanged on the nearest available tree. But all the ministers and advisers, and seasoned warriors, rose as one man in opposition to the king, even those who were the king’s most avid supporters and the most implacable foes of Jeremiah the Prophet, spurning his prophecies out of hand. The edict was cancelled and never put into effect.
Thus, his father was reprieved, and not put in shackles, or thrown into a dungeon. And the king did not regret his clemency, for when the time came and the wall was breached, and the king fled for his life, Naimel stayed behind at his command in the abandoned palace, to defend its empty chambers and delay the Chaldeans for as long as possible in their pursuit of the fugitive king. Alongside the minister were a handful of the king’s slaves and eunuchs, who had no training in warfare, and barely knew one end of a spear from the other. They quickly dispersed and left him to his fate, when the mighty Chaldean army smashed down the gates of the royal palace.
Melancholic memories come to mind: here is his father, teaching him to ride. In a few, short sentences, he explains what requires explanation, and demands, without a flicker of an eyebrow, that he perform for himself what has just been explained to him and demonstrated to him.
His father followed with an attentive eye every one of his movements, and every slightest twitch on the part of the horse, at that time a pampered mare, the best in their stable, and the most intelligent. His father had a thin and tranquil smile, a smile of composure blended with sincerity. His forehead was fair, gleaming, pure, testifying to wisdom and to a personality ignorant of the meaning of fear. The lines of his face symmetrical, carefully crafted, such as are found in those born to be kings, whose beauty bears the supreme stamp of the spiritual.
His father spoke little, and only of urgent matters. He met him but rarely, and every such meeting left a deep impression on his soul.
He loved his father, admired him painfully, revered him secretly, and did everything in his power to gain his approval and to be like him. And when he succeeded in this, as for instance in those riding lessons, and later when he was instructed in the arts of archery and of sword-play, and knew that his father was pleased with his progress, he was filled with elation such as he did not know existed.
His father never expressed his satisfaction or his dissatisfaction in words. Even the lines of his face showed no hint of what was happening inside him. But he knew for sure, without needing any hint, when his father was satisfied with him and when not. Instances of dissatisfaction he could hardly remember. And all this against the background of their rare meetings, in which they barely needed the spoken word in order to communicate with one another.
“Speech is superfluous,” his father answered him once with that typical smile of his, redolent of charm and assurance together, and in spite of this, saying everything that needed saying.
“The more words are needed,” his father explained, “the more foolish men are. The less they are needed – the wiser.”
“And what about the Scriptures?” he asked.
“They are concise. Every word, every syllable, every letter, every dot – is in its place!”
His father never went out hunting, despite being a marksman. Nor did he eat meat, and in their family they never slaughtered a lamb or an ox or a goat. His father insisted on this, and so it was. And it aroused his curiosity to the point where, seizing one of those rare opportunities afforded by riding lessons, he asked what was the reason for this. In his typically succinct yet persuasive manner, which never failed to captivate and warm his heart, his father answered him:
“Read the Genesis Scroll, first chapter, verses twenty-nine and thirty.”
As soon as the lesson was finished he ran home, found the Genesis Scroll and read: And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed and they shall be yours for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air and to everything that creeps upon the earth, in which is life, I give all herbs for food, and it was so.
And the reading of this passage left him deeply confused. Did the Blessed and the Holy One really command man and beast to eat only vegetables and fruit? And yet, in the Scriptures there is also talk of sacrifices, and feasts, and the ritual of Passover… He had to muster all his patience and wait for the next riding lesson, which was, as it transpired, also the last, to put his questions to his father and mentor, making prodigious efforts not to reveal his inner turmoil.
And he obtained his answer:
“This is the law that is prior to sin. A true law. Man does not prey on beast, and beast does not prey on any living creature, and there is no sin.”
“This could hardly be described as a law!” – he commented, tentatively.
“Without sin there is no need for law. The man who has not sinned is law personified.”
“And at the end of days?” he asked.
“He will again be as he was before he sinned. Remember what the Prophet said: The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, and the lion shall eat hay like the ox.”
And then, and this is a moment he will never forget, his father turned to him and gave him a long look, different from any look he had experienced until that day and declared:
“I do not delight in the blood of bullocks or of sheep” – and these words too were unfamiliar to him, and in his efforts to grasp what it was that made this occasion special, something about his father’s look and his voice, one word sprang into his mind and embedded itself there: warmth.
“And yet in spite of all this – there were feasts and sacrifices and the Passover ritual!” he exclaimed reluctantly, for he would have preferred not to have spoken at all, preserving at all costs the wonder of that moment. Nor was he expecting a response, but there was one.
“Grace I desire rather than a feast, and knowledge of God rather than sacrifice” – again his father quoted a verse from the Scriptures, this time from the Prophet Hosea.
“So what does it mean, when people still need meat?”
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“It testifies to the sin that still prevails over them.”
He remembered seeing his father one more time, the day before the wall was breached and the Chaldeans took Jerusalem.
At a late hour of the night his father came into his chamber, a little oil-lamp in his hand, and finding him awake, asked him if he understood that the soul is immortal, and death cannot come between those whose hearts are pure, who cleave to God and love Him with all their heart and might.
He nodded, assenting.
And without saying another word his father withdrew to the corridor and for some time he could make out the flashes of his lamp, until the light faded and was utterly absorbed by the darkness.
The following day the wall was breached, and the king commanded his father to stay in the palace, to repel the attacks of the Chaldeans and delay them for as long as was possible, to cover his own escape.
Three Burning Arrows
The convoy climbed up to a broad plateau, the dusty road stretching across it straight as a ruler and with no obstacles to impede progress. Men and beasts quickened their pace and breathed more easily as less effort was required of them, and the jolting of the wagons subsided.
The young men were assailed by hunger.
He took from his knapsack a lump of sheep’s cheese and a loaf of stale bread, cut off slices and distributed them to all the occupants of the wagon in equal shares. And they accepted their rations with gratitude and thanked him. Azariah passed around a small water-skin, Jerusalem water, which is not agreeable to the palate but refreshes like no other. And they pronounced the standard blessing over food. Most of them paid no attention to the words of blessing and thanksgiving addressed to their father in Heaven whereas a few, those accustomed to praying for a purpose, intoned the words one after the other, closely following their literal meaning.
“Is there is no meat?” asked one of the young men, not of their group.
“None,” he answered him with a smile. Perhaps – the smile of his father, good-natured and yet at the same time warning against excessive closeness, and revealing a degree of firmness and resolution which never failed to elicit respectful acceptance.
Once he surprised his father when he was praying at home, found him kneeling, facing towards the Sanctuary, with hands joined. A most unusual posture indeed, the joining of the hands especially. He could not resist asking: “Why is this?” His father finished his prayer, rose from his strange kneeling position, a look in his eyes of distant serenity and without waiting for another question, he explained:
“This kneeling is the posture of an Egyptian slave who is devoted to his master with heart and soul, to the extent of utter self-abasement.”
“And in this case,” he construed – “it is our Father in Heaven who is our Lord.” He intentionally used the plural forms, in the desire, repressed indeed but strong and emphatic, to be numbered, he too, among the beloved servants of God, and to abase himself before Him, like that Egyptian slave before his master.
In his accustomed way the minister Naimel confirmed his son’s statement with a slight nod of the head which did nothing to conceal his satisfaction.
“And yet,” the son saw fit to add – “this God to whom we cleave with heart and soul, will punish us for our sins against Him, however trivial they may be.”
“This master,” his father declared, his face turning suddenly grave – “will never punish, for the one and only name of this master is Love!”
Seeing his son’s puzzled look, Naimel continued:
“God is love. Anger, offence, wrath and the like – have no place in God. Where these things are, God is not. Anyone who rejects God by behaving deceitfully, with hypocrisy and malice, brings upon himself a state of absence-of-God which some people have mistakenly defined as ‘wrath of God’.”
Here, in this jolting wagon, he would willingly have fallen to his knees and joined his hands in prayer to his Father in Heaven who is love, and thank Him for the joy that He has bestowed upon Him by the very knowledge of His existence, this knowledge being his inalienable property.
The jolting of the wagon went on. One of the youths, whose name was Adoniah, turned to him and asked:
“They say the minister Naimel abstained from eating meat… is that the truth, or merely a rumour?”
“It is the truth,” he answered him calmly.
Adoniah asked another question, but he was no longer listening. Could this Adoniah ever comprehend the profundity of the truth, expose its hidden light and rejoice in it? Words are only dead weight. They are superfluous, and if silence is to no avail, then all the tongues of the world could not take its place and shed light on the tiniest particle of the divine, of the God whose name is Love.
The road was growing wider, and smoother, and the convoy proceeding at a satisfactory pace.
The sun inclined westward, and the far horizon, kissing the summits of a range of silent mountains, was ignited all at once into blazing fire, a sea of fire the colour of blood. The sight aroused the heart and left its impression upon those who witnessed it, but lasted only a few moments. The sea of fire began to pale, red-purple turning to orange, shading gently into yellow in the hallowed silence.
The commander of the convoy ordered his equerry to shoot three burning arrows into the clear skies of evening, the evening poised to descend on the world at any moment.
Slowly the convoy drew to a halt. Beasts, wagons and people stood silently, waiting. It emerged that the high plateau was crossed by a river, and the commander gave the order to water the animals and fill gourds with fresh water, take a hasty wash and eat some of the food that all were supposed to have brought with them.
The Chaldean soldiers clustered around their field-kitchen, heating up their rations on the brazier that they had brought along, on the spur of the moment.
The youths went down to the river, bathed in the refreshing water and disported themselves cheerfully, in the manner of the young. They dressed again, in clothing which, despite energetic brushing, were still ingrained with dust. In high spirits, they were about to sit down and resume their meal, when the order was given to harness and saddle the horses and start moving again. It seemed that the convoy commander was not satisfied with the distance travelled in the course of that sweltering day, and he meant to make up the deficit.
The cool, blue-tinged air of the evening was refreshing, and the commander’s order aroused no resentment, overt or repressed. Oil lamps were prepared, fitted with brass shields, in case the journey continued into the night, and these were hung on the wagons and on the harness of the horses. Some of the walkers wore them suspended from their belts, while horsemen carried torches.
The youths raced one another back to their wagon, laughing and joking, and still laughing they climbed the high sides of the wagon and took their places inside.
Meanwhile the Chaldeans had brought back the draught-horses that had been watered and bathed in the river, and were harnessing them to their shafts with brisk and practised movement. The horses whinnied contentedly, thin vapour rising from their powerful bodies.
The convoy was about to move, when the deep silence of the evening was torn apart by a piercing cry. The young men froze in their seats. He was the first to recover his wits, and he jumped down from the wagon and ran towards the river, the source of the cry.
Between the river and the road, by which the convoy was to travel, he saw a man, a grown man, lying on the ground as a Chaldean soldier lashed him with his whip, lashed him repeatedly. Approaching the Chaldean, he cried in his language: “Stop!”
For a brief instant the latter froze where he stood. The voice was authoritative and untainted by fear or hesitation. The voice of a born leader and commander.
He seized the moment, hastened to the stricken man and bending over him, at once grasped the state of affairs: the man had fallen lame and could march no further. This, evidently, had aroused the wrath of the Chaldean.
The soldier recovered from his shock, a
nd staring at the Jewish youth who had presumed to give him an order, he was incandescent with rage. He hissed a curse between pursed lips, raised his whip and was about to bring it down – this time on the back of the youth. At that moment, heard from above was the calm, deep-guttural voice of the convoy commander, also curious to discover the source of the commotion:
“Dismiss!”
The flustered soldier quickly disappeared in the blue-tinged shadows of the evening, dragging his long whip behind him.
The convoy commander, mounted on his piebald horse, turned to look at the young man, not saying a word.
“What is to be the fate of this man, who is unfit to travel further, who needs to rest for two days at least?” asked the youth, bent over the injured man.
“His head shall be struck off,” declared the Chaldean.
“We shall care for him!” he cried with fervour, retaining such an air of firm resolution that the Chaldean officer could not but be impressed.
“That will not help!” he insisted.
“Let us try!” replied the youth.
The convoy commander pondered his decision. Clearly the youth was not to be easily swayed, and the orders given him had been most explicit: the “children” were to be delivered whole and healthy, unharmed, and in an equable state of mind, to the palace of the king. This being the case, petty disputes were to be avoided.
“Take him in your wagon!” he said, and rode back to the head of the column.
The other youths, who had followed and arrived on the scene after him, heard the conversation between him and the commander, and without a word said, approached the wounded and beaten exile, took him in their arms and quickly carried him to their wagon. They just had time to lay him down before the wagon lurched forward and was once more in motion, creaking stridently.
