Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved

by Maggie Anton

  He started again, this time chanting the questions in the traditional singsong melody.

  Why is this night different from all other nights? On other nights we eat leavened or unleavened bread, but on this night, only unleavened? On other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables, but on this night maror (the bitter herb)? On other nights we eat meat roasted, boiled or cooked, but on this night only roasted?

  He stumbled a bit on the question about roasted meat, since it wasn’t in his family’s Seder, but picked up his rhythm again with the next, more familiar, query.

  On other nights we dip our food once, on this night we dip two times?

  By the time Ephraim had reached the last of the four questions, the other boys had joined him in chanting the well-known verses. The atmosphere in the salle was exultant. Except for Menachem, all the boys had recited them at one time or another, and a few, like Ephraim and Benjamin, had chanted them less than a month before. Even Joheved and Miriam had chanted them. Now many hands were raised with questions.

  Hoping for just such a reaction, Salomon couldn’t wait to start teaching. “Before any of you fall off your benches, I’ll tell you that the full answer as to why we don’t ask about roasted meat is in the Gemara.”

  Several of the students groaned with disappointment, sure that they would have to wait years for the explanation, but their teacher smiled and continued, “Suffice to say that after the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, this question was replaced with one about why we recline at the Seder table.”

  In the sunny spring days that followed, Miriam and Joheved tried to be wherever their father was teaching, which often turned out to be the vineyard. There Salomon’s pupils learned simple vineyard skills along with the last chapter of Tractate Pesachim. While the girls and Benjamin secured the branches to their supports, he instructed the others to remove all leaves from the old branches. Only new shoots were fertile, so leaves left on the old wood consumed needed sap and decreased the plant’s vigor.

  Once Salomon was confident of Benjamin’s skills in the vineyard, he allowed the youth to work there without supervision. And it wasn’t long before Miriam was trying to cajole her older sister into joining him there. Joheved suspected that Miriam was more interested in Benjamin’s company than in improving her vineyard techniques, but she kept those thoughts to herself. She hadn’t liked being teased about Meir and resolved not to turn the tables on her sister. At least not without extreme provocation.

  But after spending hours with Benjamin and Miriam in the vineyard, Joheved wasn’t sure about her sister’s intentions. Mama had been so adamant that no potential suitor would be interested in such learned girls that Joheved never mentioned her studies in her letters to Meir, and she tried not to let Salomon’s students catch her studying either.

  Yet it was clear that her sister didn’t care what Benjamin thought, because when he stumbled and improperly chanted some of Pesachim, Miriam jumped right in to correct him. To Joheved’s amazement, he didn’t appear offended at all, not even surprised, and they were soon reciting the week’s lesson together in the vineyard. But Joheved couldn’t bring herself to join them, though she knew the Mishnah perfectly.

  It never occurred to Benjamin that Miriam wouldn’t know the Mishnah. After all, she attended her father’s classes nearly as often as the male students. Benjamin was the first in his family to attend yeshiva, so he hadn’t been taught who could study Talmud and who couldn’t. His father and his two brothers had started working when they reached their majority, but they were now sufficiently prosperous to delay his own entry into the workforce.

  When Benjamin returned home for Shavuot in the middle of May, he proudly recited Mishnah Pesachim and explained how much of what they did during the Passover Seder originated in this very Mishnah. His parents were pleased to hear how wise and patient his teacher was, and how he studied in the maître’s vineyard. For Benjamin to learn both Talmud and viticulture at the Troyes yeshiva was an unexpected bonus. When he innocently mentioned that he worked closely with Salomon’s daughter in the vineyard, his parents decided to delay their search for his bride until he’d spent more time at his studies.

  After the festival, Benjamin took solace in knowing that, with more students beginning their studies during the Hot Fair, he would no longer be the newest one. To celebrate, he decided to lead them on a beehive hunt when the vines flowered. The blossoms attracted thousands of bees from the surrounding countryside, and if a fellow were lucky, he could follow one of them back to its hive and plunder their supply of honey.

  Soon the weather warmed, and morning found the vineyard shrouded in a soft haze. Salomon and his students were in the vineyard every day, tying up the branches and keeping the tendrils from entangling each other. There was a sense of urgency in their efforts; all work on the vines would halt when the buds flowered. During the delicate time of flowering and pollination, nobody was allowed in the vineyard.

  When the first yellowish blossoms began to open at the base of the vine, the children’s eagerness to search for beehives reached a fever pitch. Salomon wasn’t optimistic about them finding a beehive, but as long as they stayed out of the vineyard, he had no objection. The days were long, and there was time enough for both lessons and games. He even agreed to let Joheved and Miriam join the hunt.

  Salomon would put his extra time to good use by answering some legal questions that had arrived with the good traveling weather. Asking him to decide their difficult judicial issues was a sign that local communities recognized his scholarship. This question-and-answer process was called responsa, and the more renowned a rabbi became, the more time he spent on it.

  The questions sent to Salomon were simple, and he spent more time writing a proper introduction than pondering the legal difficulties. He sighed as he quickly answered a query pertaining to Passover, probably sent after the fact by an inquirer hoping to have his decision upheld. “A Jew accustomed to receiving daily loaves of bread from a special (non-Jewish) client may not receive them during the week of Passover, but may receive them all after Passover for that missed week.” Undoubtedly the more complex issues went to Worms or Mayence.

  Salomon also spent hours conversing with Robert of Montier-la-Celle, both using their forced rest from vineyard duties to study scripture. Some of the students were surprised to find a monk calling on their teacher, but Joheved and Miriam were used to Robert’s visits and didn’t give the two men a second glance. They couldn’t wait to start looking for beehives.

  The first afternoon, the children alternated between enjoying the grape blossoms’ perfume as they waited to sight a bee and running around helter-skelter chasing the bees they saw. Soon they became familiar enough with the location of the peasants’ hives that they could quit following a bee as soon as it veered in that direction. After a few days, they were consistently ending up in the forest, but it was harder to follow a bee among the trees.

  On Shabbat of the second week of flowering, they knew there wasn’t much time left. The blossoms at the very end of the branches had opened, and soon pollination would be complete. They ran from the vineyard into the forest, through the trees, and then, once the bee was lost, back to the vineyard again, getting more discouraged as the afternoon wore on. Perhaps the beehive was farther into the woods than they could go on Shabbat.

  When Benjamin and Miriam managed to follow a bee so closely that they were sure the hive couldn’t be far away, only to lose sight of it among the fluttering branches, they sat down on the ground in dismay instead of running back to the vineyard to start over. That’s when Miriam heard it, or rather, them.

  “Listen,” she whispered with an urgency that grabbed her companion’s attention. “I hear buzzing.”

  They focused all their attention on their powers of hearing. “You’re right,” Benjamin whispered back. “I hear it too.”

  They silently made their way towards what was obviously going to be the hive. The humming was getting so loud that the number of bees
involved must be enormous, but they couldn’t see any.

  Finally, when it seemed like they must be right on top of the hive, Benjamin looked up and pointed. Miriam gazed skyward, and there were more bees than she had ever seen, flying in and out of the top of a tall, dead tree. They stood and stared in awe.

  They had actually found the hive.

  By the time Joheved and the other students reached the dead tree, their enthusiasm had faded. They couldn’t reach the honey without cutting down the tree, and that meant adults would have to be consulted. But when they returned to the yeshiva, Salomon didn’t want to plan any work on this day of rest.

  “We’ll discuss it later, after Shabbat has ended, after we make Havdalah,” he said.

  In June the Sabbath ends late, and by the time three stars appeared in the sky, Rachel and Grandmama Leah had already gone to bed. Everyone involved in the frantic beehive hunt was nearing exhaustion as they gathered in Salomon’s courtyard for Havdalah, the ceremony that marks the close of Shabbat. Even if she had been awake, Rachel was too little to hold the ritual braided candle, so the honor fell to Miriam, the next youngest daughter.

  “Hold the candle high,” Rivka urged her. “So you’ll have a tall husband.”

  But Miriam kept it close to her, refusing to lift it above her own head. She kept her eyes on the candle’s flame, which flared brightly with its three wicks, while Joheved surveyed the circle of students. Did anyone else find it significant that Benjamin was the shortest boy in the group?

  Any woman who drank from the Havdalah cup would grow a beard, so Joheved passed the wine on for the boys to bless and taste. Rivka handed around the container of fragrant spices, a reminder of the Sabbath’s sweetness to fortify their spirits as they reentered the regular workweek. Joheved recognized cinnamon and cloves, but there were more.

  In the Talmud, the rabbis taught that wine and spices restored one’s learning, so the scholars’ Havdalah ceremony came to include the incantation against Potach, Demon Prince of Forgetfulness. Salomon made his students recite the incantation together with him, to protect them from forgetting their Torah learning during the coming week. Miriam said it out loud as well, but Joheved murmured it under her breath.

  Finally, with many in the group stifling yawns, it was time to chant the final blessing. The candlelight cast strange shadows behind the circle of students, their faces distorted as the flame grew and danced about. There was a liminal moment of sadness as the candle was poised about the wine cup and then a soft communal sigh along with the hiss of the extinguishing flame. Everyone wished each other, “A good week, shavua tov.” The moon had risen, allowing Salomon to watch as the boys climbed up to the attic. Downstairs, Joheved and Miriam were waiting for him.

  “Papa.” Miriam had a worried look on her face. “What will happen to the poor bees when their tree is chopped down? Where will they go? How can they live if we take away their honey?”

  “Don’t worry, ma fille; the bees will be fine.” He smiled down at her. Sarah was right; she would make a good midwife; she was even concerned about hurting insects. “Robert told me that the monks of Montier-la-Celle would send someone to move our bees into a new hive at the abbey. So we can’t go for the honey until Monday; we have to wait until their sabbath is over.”

  “You and Robert planned all this before you even knew that we’d found the beehive.” Joheved was more convinced than ever that her father was the wisest man in France.

  As the three of them climbed the stairs, Salomon seemed to be thinking out loud. “It’s interesting…I’ve read about honey so often in Torah, but I’ve never seen the inside of a beehive.”

  Once in bed, Miriam stayed awake only long enough for the implication of her father’s words to reach her. “Joheved.” She nudged her drowsy sister. “Maybe Papa will let us come too.”

  “That would be nice,” Joheved mumbled, and she drifted off to sleep wondering how they could possibly arrange it.

  As it turned out, Aunt Sarah made all the arrangements they needed by announcing that as long as everyone was spending an afternoon in the forest, she could use help gathering her special midwife’s herbs. Now was the perfect time for Miriam to begin her education on the subject, and it wouldn’t hurt for Joheved to become familiar with these things as well. They could even watch Rachel at the same time.

  Monday morning at dawn, Miriam was collecting eggs and wondering why Benjamin hadn’t joined her the last two days. Surely he wasn’t ill. Suddenly the courtyard gate opened and he came in from the street, carrying several loaves of fresh bread.

  “There you are, Benjamin.” She ran over and closed the gate behind him. “It’s thoughtful of you to get us fresh bread so early.”

  “It’s more thoughtful than you think.” He smiled at her slyly. “Can you keep a secret?”

  Intrigued, Miriam nodded.

  “I’ve been worried about somebody else getting our honey, so the last two nights, I slept in the forest, next to our tree.”

  “Benjamin, were you out of your mind? Don’t you know how dangerous it is to be out in the forest alone at night?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “But I was perfectly safe. There aren’t any highwaymen so close to the town walls. And I wouldn’t have gotten lost; there was a moon out.”

  “But what about demons, what about Agrat bat Machlat and her eighteen myriads? You know there’s nothing they’d like better than to find you, all by yourself, in the forest, in the middle of the night.” Miriam paused for emphasis after each danger. “I can’t believe you’d be so reckless.”

  “I’m sorry, but I just had to be sure that our honey was all right.” He stared at the ground, unwilling to face her. She sounded just like his mother did when she caught him doing something risky. “I thought you only have to worry about Agrat bat Machlat on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Besides, I had my tefillin with me, so I was protected.” Not that all the tefillin and holy books in Salomon’s house kept Lillit from finding him in the attic.

  “That was clever of you to buy the bread, just in case somebody else saw you coming home at dawn,” Miriam admitted. There was no point in scolding Benjamin now. They were going after the honey that day, so he wouldn’t be spending any more nights in the forest.

  The sun was high in the sky as Sarah and her three nieces accompanied Salomon and his students, Joseph and two strong servants, plus the beekeeper and a couple of novices from the abbey. When they reached the forest, the groups divided according to gender, the males swiftly heading for the bee tree, their eyes fixed skyward, while the females meandered slowly in no particular direction, their concentration focused on the ground.

  Aunt Sarah directed most of her instruction at Miriam, pointing out the various herbs and explaining how each was used. “See these columbines’ large downward-hanging violet flowers? An infusion of ragwort and columbine seeds helps speed the birth, so we’ll come back in the fall to collect them.”

  They walked a bit farther and came to a small bush whose felt-like leaves were green on top and white underneath. “This plant has two names, artemisia and wormwood. Tea made from its leaves helps the anxious mother relax, while its seeds bring on a woman’s menses when it’s delayed.”

  Sarah talked on, explaining the properties of each herb as they came upon it. “Sage tea is good for a woman likely to miscarry, due to slipperiness of her womb, but it’s best collected later in the season. Nettle juice and powdered bark of black alder help stop excessive bleeding. I mix mugwort with cowslip and pepper to help the mother sneeze her baby out.”

  “Sneeze her baby out?” Miriam asked in surprise.

  “Oui,” her aunt replied with a smile. “After a long labor, when the baby is close to being born, the mother may lack strength for the final effort. When she sneezes, though, she cannot help but push the child through the birth passage at the same time.”

  Miriam was fascinated with Aunt Sarah’s lessons, but Joheved grew bored and directed her attention towards enterta
ining Rachel. Together they chased dragonflies and butterflies, stopping occasionally to help Sarah dig up a special root or pick some unusual leaves. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of men wielding axes.

  Suddenly Joheved thought of something she’d never considered before. Sarah was Mama’s older sister, which meant she ought to know about Mama’s youth. They knew she’d grown up in Allemagne and that her parents were dead, but no matter how nicely she and Miriam asked, Rivka would not talk about her childhood. But now Mama wasn’t here and Aunt Sarah was.

  “Aunt Sarah.” Joheved made her move. “What was it like when you and Mama were little? She won’t tell us very much about it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” her aunt said, picking some artemisia leaves and adding them to her basket. “Our mother—may her memory be for blessing—died in childbirth along with the next baby.”

  Miriam impulsively joined the questioning. “Is that why you became a midwife, Aunt Sarah?”

  “You may be right.” She was lost in thought for a moment, and then continued. “Of course, Judah, our papa—may his merit protect us—married again.”

  The girls waited silently for her to proceed. “His new wife was young and soon had babies of her own. She wasn’t mean to Rivka, or anything like that, but she preferred her own children. She wasn’t an educated woman either, not like your grandmama.”

  Sarah frowned in disapproval. “She filled your mother’s head with tales of mazikim, evil spirits and demons, until Rivka was afraid to leave the house without our mother’s protective amulet in her sleeve. Our father had to make a silver case so she could wear it around her neck instead.”

  “Mama still wears that amulet,” Joheved said, helping her aunt strip the leaves off a mugwort bush. “Aunt Sarah, you go out at night all the time. Aren’t you scared of demons?”