Jesus and Menachem. Siegfried E. van Praag
God would not permit His people to fall apart and be scattered individually. Life had to be communal for events affected the whole community. So once again there was public mourning, this time over the little town of Nazareth.
Only the week before the inhabitants had refused a tribute which the Tetrarch Antipas had proclaimed in the name of the Romans. There was nothing more to be found in Nazareth so they had sent word to the Idumean. Nothing but bitter pain. Cut us in two, you will find nothing!
And now Rome had arrived on a man-hunt for its money. Within three quarters of an hour the town changed its aspect three times. It was normal when Menachem’s shrieks gave a voice to one specific meaning. Then all life was sucked from the streets and it became a dead city. The strangers battered down the doors, windows and walls with axes, pickaxes, clubs and stones. The contents of the houses spilled onto the streets. They set fire to the rat holes and drove the rodents outside. These, however, were people. When would man understand that people were human beings, not animals. God had never said to mankind in the book of Genesis: “I give your fellow man into your hands. Use him. Enjoy him.”
That was the question on Yeshua’s mind as he beheld the acts of violence. He feared not for himself nor did he offer relief, as it was still for him to decide whether he would choose to feed on wormwood and bitter herbs.
In times of great anguish the holiest people and whatever they hold most sacred are sacrificed in the marketplace. Where others are present, and precisely because others are present, they give up their attachment to a child, a man, a sweetheart, to life itself, on the communal altar.
The soldiers searched the houses and hovels, dragging away men and youths to which the women clung tenaciously like dogs that refuse to release the meat which must nourish them.
“Nazareth is descending into Sheol!” wailed the man who dispensed wisdom at the city gate. It was a bright, clear day in the month of Sivan but grief and weeping filled the streets of Nazareth and screams rent the air like yellow lightning.
Yeshua wondered what he would do if the Romans dragged away his father, a man of fifty. Surely Miriam his mother would cling to him tightly and refuse to let him go. Perhaps a idolator would kick her in the stomach then.
At that moment Yehudith, wife of the tinsmith, clung frantically to her husband while two Romans dragged him away by chains around the wrist. They had probably found the chains in his workshop. The tinsmith was thirty years old and the father of three children.
Where would he die now? As an eunuch in Alexandria? Withered by the sun in the land of Kush? Had he begotten three children for this? Was it for this that his parents had looked at him gratefully when he was born? “Why must this be?” asked Yeshua. And still the events glided past him like time through space.
If they dragged away his father, Miriam would also cling tightly to Joseph. That too, Yeshua would have to witness in grief. He would have to sacrifice and give up so much before he could intervene.
How should a person intervene?
Close beside he heard an old man’s voice crying: “Yeshua, Yeshua, flee. They are coming. They are abducting young men!” But Yeshua did not flee. The old sandal maker Amitai who had warned him to flee was running to meet the Romans himself. Two huge blond men from the lands beyond the sea had seized his son. They kicked his son in the shins for he struggled to break free. Then did Amitai make a ridiculous jump for such an old man and flung his arms around the neck of his tall son. He pressed his shriveled body against him as though they were a lover and his mistress.
“My son, my only son!”
The foreign soldiers remained motionless for the boy was almost falling. A Roman centurion approached and said in broken Aramaic:
“Stop your yapping or we slay your son. Away, hop!”
They tore the old man away from his son. Amitai could not stand the shock and toppled lengthwise to the ground like a beast hurled through space. In an instant he realized what had happened. Two worlds had locked into one another like cogs. The old man raised his hands and murmured to the Romans in a language they did not understand:
“By what right do you take away my son, idolators? Even Israel has no right to drag him away for no one shall deprive an old father of his only child and breadwinner.”
“What is he mumbling?” demanded the commander. “Forward.”
Suddenly the soldiers who held Amitai’s son fast felt a stabbing pain behind their loins. Collapsing, they loosed the chains. Amitai’s son was free again.
“After him!” roared the commander. Side by side with another who had loomed up behind him, the son of the sandal maker raced up the road.
“Damned nuisance! Now cast the old man down the mountain.”
Three mercenaries trampled Amitai underfoot. They stuck the points of their sandals under his ribs. So they set him rolling until he reached the edge of the road where he tried to raise himself. A soldier hurled the half-raised figure back to the ground. He tried to grasp hold of a couple of stones with his brittle aged fingers, willing to pierce the palms of his hands with their sharp projections in order to remain hanging. The idolators diverted themselves with his despair. Six feet gave him a savage kick over the length of his cringing body. Inevitably the moment came. The force of gravity prevailed and his soul let go. Screaming, Amitai rolled ever faster down the steep slope into the crevice below where his body was shattered like a pitcher.
Numbed by the spectacle, Yeshua continued leaning against the wall.
“Is this man? Why do I not intervene and lay hands upon these Romans? I would gladly interfere even if the idolators kill me. How sweet is death when one has seen this. ‘How fair are thy tents, oh Jacob; how beautiful thy cities, oh Israel.’ Does that mean the dwellings of the dead, perhaps?”
But Yeshua might not die yet, therefore he went homewards. By some miraculous agency the Romans had not seen him. Menachem’s arrival too had escaped their notice. Menachem had loomed up abruptly behind Amitai’s son, had saved Barzilai and indirectly caused the death of Amitai.
“Maybe it means that I must count on Menachem,” mused Yeshua. “The one may pursue the path which he must follow because another has been sent out upon the road to balance the scale.”
Like a fox Menachem slipped through the hole under the wall of Abba Alexander’s house. He crept a short distance through a narrow underground tunnel. The tunnel turned lighter and a window appeared in the hollow opening. Having emerged, Menachem made haste across an empty patch of ground to a gate through which he entered an inner garden. Here one could stroll endlessly around a luxurious center fountain.
His friend Yocheved welcomed him. The young maiden thought often of Menachem. Whenever she heard noises upon the road she hoped it would be him. This time the noise had not deceived her.
“Is it you, Menachem?”
“I sought shelter, Yocheved. The idolators are all over Nazareth. They are taking away the men to sell them as slaves. Where is your mother?”
“Come into the house, I’ll hide you.”
“I shall not stay long, Yocheved.”
“Are you afraid for me? Do you wish to have nothing to thank me for?”
“Nay, it is not that! I do not wish to stray far from the street and the people.”
“Live more for yourself Menachem, so you can also live for another. You don’t understand the ways in which a person can be in need, Menachem.”
“Our whole village, our whole people are in dire need.”
“You have no compassion for the anguish that one soul can experience, Menachem. Have you ever held me in your thoughts?”
“Immerse your soul in the grief of your people, Yocheved. I hold not with a grief that differs from the grief of my neighbor.”
“I understand