Jesus and Menachem. Siegfried E. van Praag
does me good and I take delight in your beautiful voice. Our maidens are like flowers withered by the dust of the roads. Only some of them receive water.”
“Come with me, I shall hide you.”
“And what if your father and mother perceive that you are concealing a young man?”
“My father and mother never perceive anything. Like me, they are too busy with themselves.”
Menachem followed Yocheved on tiptoe into the house. They entered a long, narrow side gallery and came to a halt before a closed door. Moans issued from the room beyond.
“That is my mother,” said Yocheved. “Listen to her lamentations.”
“Where is he? Where is he?” the mother’s voice called out. “Perhaps they have carried him off and I may never find him again!”
“She is speaking of her guilty love,” whispered Yocheved. “She has a lover!”
They walked further through the house of Abba Alexander until they reached a curtained door on the ground floor. Men’s voices resounded from the inside. They seemed to be having a debate.
“That is my father,” said Yocheved. “He is discussing a problem of Halacha4 with Chanan ben Yosai his friend.”
“He studies while the Romans hunt the men of Nazareth?” asked Menachem.
“He always studies, he studies perversely, straight through the grief of his daughter because no young man will take her away.”
“Because my road leads far astray.”
“I know it. But say no more. He studies straight through the adultery and grief of his wife; he studies in spite of God himself! He takes everything true upon the road and still he sees nothing. Father is a true Pharisee, Menachem.”
“I understand him. Without the Law he is cold but why does he study the Law precisely now while the Romans are removing our men? I cannot stay here, Yocheved. I will not hide anymore. I will return to the street.”
“Stay, Menachem, the Romans will carry you off.”
But he loosened his arm from her grip.
“Remain, Menachem, they will take you away from me . . . they will torture you, Menachem my only friend.”
But Menachem no longer heard her. He was back on the open terrain, returning to the road. He was protected by the same mysterious power which watched over Yeshua. He traversed the town of Nazareth by the outside roads which led inward to the heart of the marketplace. The streets were full of struggling people. Screaming women raised their naked arms to the sky. Some cursed the Romans, their mouths frozen in a right angular breach. The howls of the children, the song of helplessness testified to the violence of the strangers like a mournful choir.
Everywhere Menachem saw interlaced people. They struck and injured each other while their puny arms and hands clung frantically to those who were being dragged away. But hands cannot hold the souls of those who are being torn from each other nor reverse the events that tear them asunder.
Simple people in whose huts Menachem had stayed, with whom he had spoken at night in front of the door, became outlaws.
Menachem saw how the strong young smith was taken away; he heard the piercing scream of his wife Yehudith as she dragged her cluster of babies behind her. He saw how they led away Amitai’s son. A little old woman who screamed that her grandchild was lost received a blow on the head, fell down and was trampled by a rolling wave of struggling people.
Thou shalt not murder! said the Law. But there were exceptions in this miserable life. One might not kill unless he saw evil men slaying innocent people. Menachem firmly gripped the dagger which he wore in his girdle under his cloak. Old Amitai had leaped like a monkey to the warm breast of his son and the Roman dogs had torn him away from the youth.
Menachem sneaked behind the soldiers. He stabbed them in the back one after the other. Together with Amitai’s son Barzilai he hurried down the road to escape the Romans.
The two young men did not remain together for long. Menachem darted into the smelly alley of the tanners. Leaping like a goat, he was racing across the dirt of the steeply rising alley when he heard a woman’s voice screaming from a low roof.
“They used me! Better mud in my house than their seed. Be you from Israel, man? Then catch!” A woman flung down a bundle which he caught. As Menachem ran he noticed that he was bearing a child in his arms.
2. Capernaum.
3. “Peace be upon you”—a standard Israelite greeting.
4. Jewish law; the way of life according to the rabbinic commentaries.
3
It was night over Nazareth. Where the highway curved into the Great Sea, the men that escaped the Roman marauders had called a rendezvous.
“Judgment has been cast,” said a man who expected a stark descent into Sheol. “God has sent His tempest. We must bow to its waves and billows. We find ourselves on board the shipwreck of the Lord.” Others gnashed their teeth with rage and despair as the prophets had foretold.
A full moon shone peacefully and solemnly over the men. The night wind moaned through the mountains. At the head of the large assembly stood the fully grown Yeshua, his eyes filled with compassion. His squarely trimmed beard was chestnut brown and black like his hair. The great smith Shammai towered over them like a giant, his hand gripping the handle of his hammer with its head on the ground. Among them were the young shepherd Pinchas with his curly black hair around a bronzed scalp and the itinerant merchant Andreas Philippos. Shirach the potter who had succumbed to despair strolled about aimlessly, hoping that others would give them clear instructions on what to do.
“We cannot stay and look on,” shouted the smith. “We are here because we have hidden ourselves like fugitive slaves. Slaves we were in Egypt but free men in our own land. Must we also become slaves in our own country? We are going away, men, we choose the mountains. There can be no more rest for the men of Israel. In Judea they are fighting already. Yehuda the Galilean has assembled thousands of men. They lie in wait for the idolators. Every act of resistance is a spade of earth for the place where God digs Rome’s grave. It is written: blood for blood. I have seen enough blood since the time my father showed me the first idolator.”
“Tonight I bade my wife goodbye and made her understand that from now on she must consider herself a widow. My children are orphans. Will any among you go with me? Early tomorrow morning parents will look in vain for their children and women will grope for a shadow. Otherwise are we all guilty!”
“And what say you, Yeshua?” asked Pinchas the shepherd.
Yeshua looked at him long and piercingly. Then he answered:
“The time is not yet come.”
Shammai the smith raised the hammer block gently from the ground and let it fall again.
“The time has come.”
“For you but not for me,” replied Yeshua tautly.
“And what is your counsel, Menachem? You are young but you share what stirs in us,” said Andreas Philippos.
They did not know whether Menachem had just joined the group from the darkness or whether he had been standing there a long time already. He was slimmer than ever, the young Judean, but tenacious and wiry.
“I know that Yeshua speaks with God. But each one is free and may switch his path at any moment. Woe be to man and woe be to people that each hour of their life is marked upon