Jesus and Menachem. Siegfried E. van Praag
Menachem’s words for the first time.
“For us there is no choice!” cried Shammai the smith. “Today we saw our children dragged away as slaves. I have seen my son for the last time. There is no choice.”
“If there is no choice for you, then go,” said Menachem. “Then has your hour come.”
Yeshua stood motionless at the edge of the group. Looking at him, the others did not know whether he was sunk in thought or whether his mind was, in truth, somewhere else.
A night wind rustled softly behind the group of hopeless men.
“We give everything up, we are going,” called the shepherd, the merchant, the young wood chopper, the pottery bakers, the sons of the donkey driver. “We follow the smith.”
Menachem looked at them with compassion. But Yeshua continued to stand there as before with impassive eyes—as though this event was not of this world.
Led by the smith, the men moved off to the south towards the wild hills of Judea.
“Where to, Yeshua?” asked Menachem.
“Where my Father wills there will I go,” replied Menachem, abruptly taking over the words of his friend. For he understood that Yeshua meant God.
“Does a Father wish then that one son should go here and another one yonder?” asked Yeshua.
“Aye, Yeshua, for the sake of their Mother’s house.”
Yeshua gazed at Menachem under the still moon which hung over the mountain like a glass bell and although their eyes were compassionate and earnest too, they could not subdue one another.
Silently Yeshua turned around to take the road to Nazareth while Menachem cautiously descended the mountain slope towards a forest which rose up from the stony ground like the plume of some subterranean creature. There he lay down in order to reflect on what to do the following day.
Menachem fell into a heavy sleep in which he did not dream but when dawn approached it seemed that he saw sunlight and wished to get up but could not as he lay under a lump of rock. He tried to roll over in order to dislodge the stone. He bent his arm to the elbow, exerting all his strength to heave the boulder; it was no use.
Then he opened his eyes, sighed deeply and realized that the dream was part of this world. For a man pressed his knee on Menachem’s chest and his hands pushed Menachem’s shoulders to the ground.
“Who are you?” asked the man.
“A witness of my people!”
“Are you also a witness of your people?”
“Aye!”
“Who are your people?”
“I am a Hebrew!”
“So—you know the prophets! Do you serve God or the idolators?”
“I know not whom I serve. I wish to serve my own people but not against God.”
“Your name?”
“Oppressed people have no name!”
“You are right.” With a spring the man leaped up and Menachem recovered the freedom of his chest and arms.
“Now—your name?”
“Menachem, son of Gedalia who calls himself Marcus Mercator. Now what is your name?”
“They call me Ben Nesher.”
“What, the son of the eagle? I have heard of you. You belong to the partisans of Yehuda the Galilean.”
“That is so. The idolators follow closely on my heel. I seek shelter for a day or two. Hide me. But you are free. If you will not hide me I will not slay you. If you betray me, however, then it is all over with the house of Marcus Mercator.”
“Let us go,” said Menachem.
So the two young men walked together in the direction of Nazareth, not along the main road but through a path formed by nature which crossed the slope irregularly, at intervals broken or hidden by palm groves. Now and then their steps flushed out some mountain badgers that despite their plumpness scattered swiftly before their feet. Perhaps they had prepared the path that Menachem and Ben Nesher followed.
This Ben Nesher was a great and fearful name in Israel. He was an avenger of God who had sworn never to rest until the Romans were driven from the holy soil. Woe to the Israelite who was unwilling to place his goods, chattel and livestock in the service of God and Israel. Ben Nesher was tall of stature, broad and gaunt, flat like an iron slab on which houses might be built. People who were as broad-shouldered as Ben Nesher were seldom so lean. His hair was black, unruly and bent in curls like claws upon his skull. His face was regular, his nose hooked and his chin protruding and hard like a buffer block. Justly was a man with such outward appearance called Son of the Eagle.
“Life in Judea is hard, is it not?” said Menachem.
“One rests softer on the hills there than in the beds of Jerusalem,” answered Ben Nesher, measuring Menachem with his eye.
“You belong to the runners. You have long strong fingers! Do you still sleep in your bed, do you wait at home each morning for the arrival of the tax collector? Do you wish to pay the great idolator in Rome so that you may live, and give him what you owe to God? Are you a Galilean?”
“Nay, I live in Nazareth but I am from Judea.”
“The men of Judea live best in the hills of Judea.”
“Do you believe it will last long, Ben Nesher?”
“What? The rule of the idolators? I know not. I am no prophet and no Essene. I have no future to predict. Today I must fight the idolators. The book of Daniel says that the end of the fourth kingdom of the fourth enemy of God will surely come. We shall not live so far. He who does not shun death, serves God. To him nothing can happen and he does his duty.”
“Is there a future for Israel, Ben Nesher?”
“That is for God to decide but we must change the present.”
“Should we not husband our strength then for the age to come?”
“He who spares himself commits treason. People who should have died and who perish not in battle are false coins; they have been usurers in their duty!”
Menachem remained silent a long time and Ben Nesher did not feel compelled to speak. Life among the stones had made him taciturn.
Does this man see nothing but his own vision? wondered Menachem. The field in which it grew was once tilled and irrigated. He does not yet know from which feeling his idea was born? In his head he has a nut with a hard shell but he cannot find the soil, the roots and the tree again. He turns the nut around and around. Perhaps it must be so. Perhaps one should be cut off from one’s feelings as soon as the feeling has given birth. Ben Nesher walked another way than Yeshua. Surely, the people stood at a crossroads.
And God Himself? Did he like to stand at a crossroads too? Or had God intended this for His chosen people? It hurts to stand at a crossroads forever but if that is Israel’s destiny, may a child of Israel desire a better fate than the people?
Then Menachem said: “I have thought this over, Ben Nesher. I shall conceal you and accompany you for a while afterwards.”
The dawn began to glow, caressing the distant valley and mountains of Hermon that dominated the northern horizon. A flock of cranes flew over the plain of Esdrelon. Other large birds, the pelicans from the Sea of Kinnereth, also crossed the sky.
“I know a place where you will be safe, Ben Nesher! The Romans will not seek you there!”
They reached a spot on the slope where a stair had been carved. Ascending the crude steps, they arrived at a steeply rising path protected by rocky walls on both sides. The path led to a narrow alley, a miserable little street where dogs sniffed the heaps of garbage outside the houses.