The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  “Yahweh was much closer to our holy prophets and ancestors than he is to their unholy descendants of today,” James said. “He inspired them to write the Torah, guided their actions, punished disobedience and favored their reverence. Can you imagine Yahweh speaking to Caiaphas32?”

  “Our dietary laws do not make much sense to me.” I could not help thinking of those delicious midday repasts with Vespasian. “Or killing poor little ewes in sacrifice. Why would God want us to do that? Is there not some other means of showing our devotion?"

  Yehoshua said, “You slay pretty birds and harmless game without any ritual excuse.”

  James smiled at my discomfiture. “What would you have us do in their stead?”

  “Obeying all these dietary laws,” I answered, “keeping the Sabbath, the rituals of Seder. This long trip and the expensive sacrifices Father will make. It doesn’t seem to impress Yahweh on our behalf, does it?”

  “With the help of God, Father has improved the circumstances of our family considerably,” James said. “We were very poor when I was a babe.”

  “The decision of Herod to rebuild Sepphoris was surely inspired by God,” Yehoshua said, “that has created employment for many.”

  While we were on these topics, I wanted to get their reaction to the laws regarding fornication and the consequence of the impracticality of performing mikvah33 to remove the

  impurity of entering a bleeding woman, but feared that topic could lead me to danger.

  “We seem to spend most of our time talking about religion or performing some ritual for it. ‘Don’t eat pork or cheese with chicken.’ God told us that? None of it seems to do us good. Or the Romans would go home and we’d all be rich.”

  James looked down at me with a tolerant smile. “How can you know that, Shimon? We struggle, but we are better off than many.”

  “Comparing our lot to less fortunate people does not raise my spirits about our own circumstances. Father working himself to an early death, as Yehoshua and I probably will. Every other shekel we make garnered in Roman taxes, gouged by greedy publicans.” I knew we were all thinking of the inequity of my twisted leg. “I would rather aspire to become a successful Pharisee with a fine home and food and servants, a stable full of horses.”

  James laughed at that. “I doubt that is His plan.”

  “Then what is? I asked him, pointing along the road at the burdened poor plodding ahead of us. “That? Forty, fifty years of struggle, then death?”

  Yehoshua pretended to be angry at my criticism, striding forth aggressively on his powerful legs. “What do you want God to do, Shimon, appear out of a cloud in the sky to explain His private plan to you?”

  James reached over my head to tap his brother on the arm, indicating that Yehoshua was walking too fast for me and should slow down.

  “If He has a plan,” I answered, “I surely cannot figure it out.”

  James shook his head from side to side. “Not with your finite human brain.”

  “But that is all God gave me to work with,” I argued. “All these rules and laws and rituals. Who made them up, God? Who invented religion? Who is to say we are traveling the right path? Maybe we are not and that is why our lives are so tough.”

  Yehoshua slapped me on the top of my unruly red curls. “You are pretty feisty for a little guy.”

  I batted his hand away. “Do not patronize me, Yehos’a. I am not stupid. I hear everyone talking religion, old men haranguing each other about minute interpretations of the Talmud, letting a deep gash bleed a child to death on the Sabbath. While we remain poor, trod down and unhappy.”

  The voice of James was kind as he spoke against my indignation. “The reason you think you are unhappy, Shimon, is that life is not the way you think it should be. That is God’s job, little brother, not ours.”

  “That is exactly what I mean! Where is He? All I can figure out is a bunch of old geezers claimed to have visions over the past 5,000 years, made up a lot of stories, laid down a whole set of demanding rules, none of which God had anything to do with.”

  “You had better not let your mother hear you rant like this,” Yehoshua warned me.

  James said, “Our holy ancestors were inspired by God to inscribe laws to make us deeply cognizant of His commandments in everything we do throughout every day of our lives. To help us please God, to show us how to achieve an afterlife with Him for all eternity.”

  I was not winning this debate. “I think fewer rituals would allow us more time to prosper.”

  “Our daily immersion in our religion helps to keep the difference between right and wrong firmly in our thoughts, James argued. “Without that constant awareness there would be little to prevent good men from succumbing to evil temptation.”

  “Do you think that is our goal in life?” Yehoshua asked me. “To become rich, to wear splendid garments, live in a fine mansion with slaves and servants?”

  “I do not believe God meant His chosen people to be the most downtrodden race on earth; poor, distressed and subservient to a strong, depraved Empire.”

  “The Sanhedrin could stone you for these wild speculations,” Yehoshua chided me.

  James tried to look stern. “Or me, the holy rabbi of the family.”

  “That’s a good point, James. Why? You’re smarter than all of us. Don’t you question some of these things?”

  “Take them all away,” James said, “our laws, our restrictions that you wish to dissolve--what would you replace them with? The Ten Commandments, for example?”

  I leapt at the idea. “Where are those precious tablets handed down from God? Dashed to smithereens by Moses because the Israelites were misbehaving? The only tangible handiwork of Yahweh? Supposedly recreated, hidden in some misplaced ark?”

  “Can you think of a better set of rules for men to live by?” Yehoshua asked me.

  “No,” I admitted. “The man who wrote them should have his name carved in stone, too.” Both of them laughed long and loud, until James was able to speak.

  “You are a tenacious devil, little brother. Whatever endeavor you espouse as your life’s work, I would not wish to compete with you at it.”

  Yehoshua finally ceased his laughter. “Be careful, James; if Shimon chooses to contest Judaism demanding change with Socratic logic, you could very well be out of work.”

  It was many years later that I recalled this exchange and wondered at that misplaced prophecy.

  We stopped for the night in a broad field where several other households had set up camp, my brothers and I desisting the contrary discussion I had begun out of inherent perversity. The three of us joined in the carefree tasks of erecting shelters, tending to the animals, gathering wood and making fire. The women established an area for the preparation of our food, to which I brought the pheasant I had shot along the way, which James had cleaned and blessed.

  The family of my mother’s sister Elizabeth set up camp a short distance from us, and she, my Uncle Aecheticus, their son John and three sisters brought their food to eat with us around our fire. Cousin John was the age of James, but completely different in his religious fervor, disheveled robe, scraggly beard and long unruly hair through which he ran his soiled fingers almost constantly.

  Both aunt and uncle repeated their appreciation for Yehoshua’s intervention with the publican and reiterated their concern regarding retaliation by the Romans. John interrupted his parent’s apprehension with a long diatribe regarding the foolishness of Yehoshua’s assault that brought notoriety to our family. He seemed to advocate a confused mixture of prayer and action to hasten the advent of the Messiah and Kingdom of God. John sat brooding through our meal after that invective and wandered off alone before it was over.

  The supper conversation that ensued was mostly concerned with our coming worship and weeklong activities in Jerusalem. Father and James explained the various ritual sacrifices that had evolved over the past two thousand years of our history: his trial of faith when God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son
, Isaac; the adversity and reconciliation of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau; the selling of Joseph by his brothers, his imprisonment, appointment as deputy ruler in Egypt and subsequent forgiveness of his brothers; Moses leading his people out of bondage in Egypt; the Philistines driven from Israel by David; the golden age of King Solomon; the protection of captive Jews in Babylon by Daniel; and Esther’s defense of those exiled to Persia.

  “A boy I met from Tyre,” I pointed to an encampment on a near hillside, “is a descendant of David.”

  Father smiled at me. “You will be hard-pressed to find a man in all Palestine who does not claim to be a descendant of King David.”

  “Am I?”

  “According to my father’s father. But the lineage stretches back some thousand years, remember, so it may be a bit diluted.”

  James nodded his agreement. “Or played out some hundreds of years ago.”

  “Then what of the boy from Tyre?”

  “Some families will hold that connection for another thousand years,” James said. “According to my teachers, it has become everyone’s attempt to exalt their status with as much meaning now as it had in ages past and preserve it for future generations.”

  Yehoshua and Rebekah sat side by side during the meal, touching innocently as they passed a dish, their glances full of secret meaning, almost wordless among our garrulous clan that plied questions about the Passover festivities to our parents and James, our excitement at the coming holiday, posing yet another query before the last explanation was complete.

  We retired early to our separate shelters with lamps and candles, my sisters shrieking and giggling long after withdrawal over some boys encountered when our family merged temporarily with that of an acquaintance of Father.

  I shared a tent with James next to the fire, who lingered by the dying embers with Yehoshua, while he anxiously awaited Rebekah’s preparation for sleep in their own shelter beyond the ring of light under the black sky resplendent with a million diamonds spilled from a jeweler’s velvet pouch.

  I heard their talk clearly in the still night. Yehoshua was upset about the ideas I uttered on our trek south that day and my impertinent questions regarding our religion. James answered that I was young with an unusually curious mind and a handicap that surely gave me anger, certainly laboring under the perpetual question, “Why me?” that was not only frustrating, but unanswerable. It could also account for my contrary attitude and predilection for contesting authority. “If we argue with him he will become more defensive and entrenched,” James said. “If we let him voice his opinions he may hear their faults and outgrow them.”

  Yehoshua seemed unsure. “What if he does not?”

  “Then he will find his own way to The Kingdom. Or not.”

  They were silent for a time until James said, “He is right about one thing—no one has absolute proof of what we believe.”

  “But that is the strength of ....”

  I heard James easy laughter. “Don’t lecture me on our religion, Yehos’a. Despite all the efforts to teach and train our people to the proper worship of our one true God, I think those who resist should be left to their own beliefs. How would you feel if the Romans forced us to worship their pagan gods as the Babylonians and Antiochus did hundreds of years ago?”

  Yehoshua uttered an noncommittal grunt.

  “What does it really matter to you or me what others believe here on earth? We should make an effort to help them achieve the afterlife with Yahweh for all eternity. Which is one reason I have chosen my own path. But each man is ultimately responsible for preparing his own soul for the Kingdom of God34, not coerced into doing so. That is what matters. Only then will we know if we have been fortunate in being born to our religion and observing its rules or have wasted a great deal of time on meaningless rituals.”

  “I have concern for Shimon.”

  “As do I. Mixed, however. With confidence in his ability to find the right path.”

  “Ultimately.”

  “Ultimately.”

  For the next two days we traveled along the bank of the Jordan on a cobbled Roman road increasingly crowded with pilgrims such as ourselves, in colorful robes and shawls, shouting greetings, singing hymns and songs of jubilation, the odor of animals competing with the residual smells of food and sweating people slowing our progress, enabling us also to enjoy the acquaintance of strangers from other towns, my parents to renew old friendships, all of which raised our anticipation of the forthcoming festivities.

  That journey led us to the flatlands of Samaria, through which we passed with some trepidation, as the inhabitants of that region were unfriendly toward Jews. The dark scowls of those citizens, however, were lightened by the glorious spring sunshine from a blue sky without clouds, and our long queue moved along without incident. On our last days en route, we cut north of the friendlier towns of Jericho and Bethany toward our final destination: Jerusalem.

  Father woke us in darkness to ensure that our first glimpse of the City of King David came at dawn from a distant crest of the road, a sight that struck us immobile, mesmerized at the glimmering walls, the early light reflecting on compact cubes of white limestone houses nestled on angled slopes. The buildings within the enclosure were dominated by the sacred Temple Dome of gold rising above all, bathed in a brilliant, brighter sun of the new day rising above the dark, jagged horizon of the Moab mountains to the east. We heard the distant scrape and clang of creaking bronze as twenty Levites pushed open the huge double Nicanor Gates within, followed by the blare of trumpets for the first prayer, a thousand voices chanting the holy verses of Shema Israel. We stood in awe of the sight and sounds until urged forward by people clamoring behind us for their own views and anxious passage into the City.

  As we approached the Shushan gate in the south wall, Father and James instructed us how to prepare for the ritual purification, without which any tameh35 person could neither enter the Temple, nor eat of the corban Pesach36. I was secretly glad of this, for I was unsure if my clandestine, occasional mikvah had made me totally pure again after being with Tanya as long ago as the previous summer and frequent nocturnal Onanism at her memory.

  Designated priests took each family aside to sprinkle us with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer. Yehoshua and I erected a shelter for privacy, behind which first the men, then our women removed and washed the garments we wore, whence we could enter the Temple as our robes dried on our bodies while walking the streets of Jerusalem in the warm sunshine.

  We followed James along the narrow footpaths and alleys of the Lower City to the rooms he had secured for our holiday visit, without which we would have been forced to camp in the countryside outside the walls, obliged to walk back to the city each day to participate in services and enjoy the festivities. Although the new Sepphoris was a splendid city, it had little to compare to the luscious gardens with flowers coming into bloom, palm fronds swaying on their tall stalks, trees and bushes strategically placed in grassy parks, the rectangular ponds of Solomon that held the city’s water from mountain springs, huge boulders scattered up the steep hillside, wide tiers of vegetable and grape plots imbedded in graduated terraces alternating with individual and clusters of rock walled, thatch or tile-roof farmer homes.

  I was so absorbed in these splendid sights that I almost kept on walking past the double floored limestone building in which we would reside. The rooms were sparse and small. Worn cloths had been provided to hang over the square window and rear exit leading to a grassy area for Intak to graze, a running spring, cooking pit and latrine. All in all adequate for our weeklong purpose.

  That first night in Jerusalem found us exhausted from our three-day march and the excitement of our arrival among the countless other pilgrims who seemed to fill every street and shop and room in the Temple area, the Court of Gentiles, Upper and Lower City. After James returned to his quarters in the Temple, Father led us in thanks and prayer, the women served a simple meal, and we were all on our mats when darkness fell
, men on the first level, women above.

  The next morning, I was struck dumb for the first occasion in memory upon passing through the gates into the Temple area. Never in my short time had I seen so many people crushed shoulder to shoulder, yelling, singing and shouting, wailing infants, tens of thousands of farmers, merchants, tradesmen, fishermen and Pharisees accompanied by their entourage of servants and slaves, priests and rabbis, merchants hawking their wares of every conceivable nature under brightly striped awnings of red and white and green and brown, displaying rugs, robes, sacrificial pigeons, urns, wine, cooking pots and chickens clucking in wooden cages. The ubiquitous odors of animals and their dung, cooking fires, food, spices and incense on the smoky air cut by the refreshing, astringent smell of etrogim37 wafting throughout the spirited holiday atmosphere.

  According to Rabbi Moshe, the first Temple, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar a half century before, had been rebuilt to this present splendor by Herod the Great, whose design required an average of fifteen thousand workers over a span of sixty years and was intended to exceed that ancient structure of King Solomon in magnificence. The outer buildings and courts were still under construction at the time of my first visit and ironically would not be complete until shortly before our revolt and its total devastation by the Roman General, Titus.

  Prior to my initial pilgrimage, I had assumed the great Temple was primarily a place of worship, but soon learned that colossal edifice of 40,000 cubits38 also contained administrative buildings, several large courtyards, a public market, a national financial depository, offices, living quarters for functionaries and stables. This huge complex of bustling commerce was protected by a cohort of Roman soldiers garrisoned in Antonia’s Tower, an enclosure on the outer wall to the northwest of the Temple compound. The presence of these legionnaires, however, was to ensure the pax Romana39 against any attempt by Jews to incite riot or disobedience to Roman law. The actual keeping of order within the Temple, the City and surrounding walls of Jerusalem was the task of a twenty-thousand-man Jewish police force.