Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Page 25

But my mother loved weaving. Her days of weaving the temple veils with the eighty-four young girls chosen for this, housed in Jerusalem, had given her great speed and skill, and she turned out cloth that was of the quality of the best in the marketplace, and she knew how to dye cloth as well, even to work in purple.
Now it was explained to us that those girls had been chosen to make the Temple veils because all things for the Temple had to be made by those in a state of purity. And only girls beneath the age of twelve were certain to be pure, and those chosen had a tradition, and my mother's family was part of it. But my mother didn't talk much of those days in Jerusalem. Only to say the veil had been very big and very elaborate, and two a year had to be made.
It was this veil that covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies: the place where the Lord himself was present.
No woman ever went to the Holy of Holies: only the High Priest. And so my mother had loved her work on the veil, and that the work of her hands had gone there.
Many women of the village came to talk to my mother and watch her with this loom. It was different after she began weaving in the open courtyard. She had more friends. Our kindred who had not come to talk were now coming often.
And ever after that summer they would call on her, and some of the young girls who did not have little ones underfoot would come to hold the babies on their knees. This was good for my mother because she was fearful.
In a village like Nazareth, all the women know everything. How cannot really be explained. But that is the way it is, and the way it was. And she almost surely knew of the hard questions put to Joseph when I was taken into the school. And it hurt her.
I knew this because I knew every little move of her face, of her eyes and her lips, and I could see it. I could see her fearfulness of other women.
Of men, she had no fear, because no good man was going to look at her or talk to her or in any way disturb her. That was the way of the village. A man did not talk to a married woman unless he was her very near kin and even then, he never sought her out alone, unless he was her brother. So she had no real fear of men. But of women? She had been afraid, until the days of the loom, and the women coming to learn from her.
All this about my mother's fearfulness I hadn't really put together in my mind until it changed. My mother's fearfulness was her manner. But now as it changed, I was happy.
And another thought came to me, a secret thought, one of the many I couldn't tell anyone: my mother was innocent. She had to be. If she wasn't innocent, then she would have been afraid of men, wouldn't she? But she had no fear of men. No, and no fear of going to the stream for water, and no fear of going into Sepphoris now and then to sell the linen she had woven. Her eyes were more innocent than those of Little Salome. Yes, a secret thought.
Old Sarah was far too old to do any fancy work with a needle, or anything with a needle for that matter, or a loom, but she taught the young girls how to make embroidery, and they gathered around her often, talking and laughing and telling stories with my mother very nearby.
Now with all the hammering and polishing and fitting and sewing and weaving, the courtyard was a busy place. Add to that children screaming and crying and laughing, babies crawling on the stones, and the open stable where the men tended to the donkeys who carried our loads to Sepphoris, and the older boys going in and going out with loads of hay, and a pair of us rubbing the gold into a new banquet couch, one of eight for the same man, and the cooking over the fire in the brazier, and then the mats spread out on the stones for us to eat, and all of us gathered in prayer, trying to make the little ones be quiet for just a little while as we thanked the Lord for all our blessings; add all this, and you have a picture of our lives that first year in Nazareth which engraved itself upon my mind and which stayed with me over all the many years I was to live there.
"Hidden," Joseph had said. I was "hidden." And from what he wouldn't say. And I couldn't ask. But I was happily hidden. And when I thought of that, and of Cleopas' strange words to me, that someday I must answer the questions, I felt like I was someone else. I'd feel my skin all over and then I'd stop thinking about it.
My schooling went very well.
I learnt new words, words I'd always heard and said, but I came to know what they meant, and they were from the Psalms mostly. Let the fields be joyful, yes, joyful, and all the trees of the wood rejoice. Make a joyful song to the Lord; sing praise.
The darkness was gone; death was gone; fire was gone. And though people did talk of the boys who had run off to fight with the rebellion, and there was now and then a woman howling in her sorrow when she had news of her lost son, our life was full of sweet things.
In the long late light, I ran through groves of trees up and down the slopes until I couldn't see Nazareth. I found flowers so sweet that I wanted to pick them and make them grow at home. And at home, there was the sweetness of the wood shavings, and the nice smell of the oil that we rubbed into the wood. There was the smell of baking bread always, and we knew when the best sauce was there for dinner as soon as we came home.
We had good wine from the market of Sepphoris. We had delicious melons and cucumbers from our own soil.
In the synagogue, we clapped our hands and danced and sang as we learned our Scripture. It was a little harder in school, with the teachers making us write out our letters on our wax tablets, and making us repeat what we didn't do well. But even this was good and the time went fast.
Soon the men were harvesting the olives, batting the branches of the groves with their long sticks and gathering the berries. The olive press was busy, and I liked to pass there when I could and see the men at work, and the sweet-smelling oil pouring out.
The women of our house crushed olives in a small press for the purest oil at home.
The grapes in our gardens were ready for picking, and the figs, we had had all the figs we could want to be dried, to be made into cakes, to be eaten as they were. The later figs were so many from our courtyard and the garden that some were taken to the village market at the bottom of the hill.
The grapes we didn't eat were put out to dry as raisins; no wine was made from them as the land around Nazareth had no vineyards, but was for wheat and barley and sheep and the forests I loved.
As the air grew cooler, the early rains came with great force. Thunder roared over the rooftop, and everyone offered prayers of thanks. The cisterns of the house filled, and the freshwater poured into the mikvah.
In the synagogue, Rabbi Jacimus, who was our strictest Pharisee, told us that now the water from the gutters flowing into the mikvah was "living water," and that when we purified ourselves in "living water," this is what the Lord wanted of us. We must pray that the rains were enough not only for the fields and for the streams but to keep our cisterns full and our mikvah living as well.
Rabbi Sherebiah didn't completely agree with Rabbi Jacimus and they began to quote the sages on these points and to "dispute" in general, and finally the Old Rabbi called for us to offer our prayers of thanksgiving that the Windows of Heaven had been opened, and the fields would soon be ready for the planting to begin.
At night, over supper, as the rain came down on the roof high above, we talked about Rabbi Jacimus and this matter of "living water." It was troubling to James and to me too.
We'd come to Nazareth after the rains. And the mikvah was empty when we came. We'd replastered it, and then filled it from the cistern in which the water had been resting a long time. But this was rainwater, was it not? Had it been living water when we filled the mikvah?
"Wasn't this living water?" I asked.
"If it's not living water," said James, "then we were unclean after the mikvah."
"We bathe often in the stream, don't we?" Cleopas asked. "And as for the mikvah, it has a tiny hole in the very bottom, so the water continues to move always. And when the rain filled the cistern, it was living water. It's living water. So be it."
"But Rabbi Jacimus says that's not good enough," said James. "Why does he say this?"
"It is good enough," said Joseph, "but he's a Pharisee and Pharisees are careful. You have to understand: they think that if they take great care with each part of life, they'll be safer from transgressing the Law."
"But they can't say that our mikvah is not pure," said my uncle Alphaeus. "The women use the mikvah - ."
"Look," said Joseph. "See two paths on a mountain ridge. One is close to the edge, the other is farther away. The one farther away is safer. That is the path of the Pharisee - to be farther from the edge of the cliff, farther from falling off the cliff and into sin, and so Rabbi Jacimus believes in his customs."
"But they aren't Laws," said my uncle Alphaeus. "Pharisees say all these things are Laws."
"The Rabbi Sherebiah said that it was the Law," said James timidly. "That Moses was given Laws that weren't written down, and these were passed down through the sages."
Joseph shrugged. "We do the best we can do. And now the rains have come. And the mikvah? It's full of freshwater!"
He threw up his hands as he said this and he smiled, and we all laughed at it, but we weren't laughing at the Rabbi. We were laughing as we always laughed at things we talked about for which there seemed no one answer.
Rabbi Jacimus was hard in his ways, but he was a gentle man, a wise man, and he told wonderful stories. Stories were our history, and who we were, and there were times when I liked nothing better than stories.
Yet I was coming to understand something of the greatest importance: all stories were part of one great story, the story of who we were. I hadn't seen it so clearly before, but now it was so clear that it thrilled me.
Often in the school and sometimes in the synagogue, Rabbi Berekhaiah stood up, though he was shaking on his bent legs and he raised his arms and with his head bent and his eyes cast upward he would cry out: "But who are we, children, tell me?"
And then we would sing it out after him:
We are the people of Abraham and Isaac. We went down into Egypt in the time of Joseph. We became slaves there. Egypt became the smelting forge and we suffered. But the Lord had redeemed us, the Lord raised up Moses to lead us, and the Lord brought us forth parting the waters of the Sea of Reeds, and into the Promised Land.
The Lord gave the Law to Moses on Sinai. And we are a holy people, a people of priests, a people of the Law. We are a people of great Kings - Saul, and David, and Solomon, and Josiah.
But Israel sinned in the eyes of the Lord. And the Lord sent Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon to lay waste to Jerusalem, even to the House of the Lord.
Yet Our Lord is a Lord slow to anger, and steadfast in his love, and full of mercy, and he sent a redeemer to end our captivity in Babylon, yea, this was Cyrus the Persian, and we returned to the Promised Land and rebuilt the Temple. Turn and look towards the Temple, for there every day the High Priest offers a sacrifice for the people of Israel to the Lord on High. All over the world there are Jews, a holy people, faithful to the Law and to the Lord, who look towards the Temple, and know no other gods but the Lord.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One.
And you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength.
And these words, that I command you this day, will be in your heart:
And you will teach them diligently to your children, and you will talk of them when you sit in your houses, and you walk by the roads and when you lie down and when you get up.
We did not have to be at the Temple to keep the sacred Feasts. Jews all over the world kept the sacred Feasts.
It was not safe yet to travel to the Temple. But the news came to us that the fighting had stopped in Jerusalem, and that the Temple had been purified. The fire signals coming from Jerusalem told us all was well.
And we went out at dawn before the Day of Atonement to watch for the first light because we knew that the High Priest was rising with that first light to begin his ceremonies in the Temple, his bathing which he would do again and again that day.
We hoped and prayed there would be no rebellion, no trouble.
Because on this day the High Priest would seek to atone for all the sins of the people of Israel. He would put on his finest vestments. The Rabbi Jacimus, the anointed priest himself, had described to us these holy garments, and we had learned how they were to be from the Scripture:
The long tunic of the High Priest was blue, and tied with a sash at the waist, and its hem was trimmed with tassels and small golden bells. One could hear these bells when the High Priest walked. Over this tunic the High Priest wore a second garment called the ephod which had much fine gold and fancy work on it, and a breastplate of twelve shining gems, one each for the tribes of Israel, so that when the High Priest went in before the Lord, he would have there the Twelve Tribes. And on the head of the High Priest was a great turban with a golden crown. It was a "glorious thing to behold."
But before the High Priest put on these beautiful vestments, these vestments as fine as those of any pagan priest in any Temple anywhere, he would dress in simple linen, pure and white, to perform the sacrifices.
On this day, the High Priest laid hands upon the bullock to be sacrificed for Israel. And he would lay hands upon the two goats.
Now one of these goats would be sacrificed, but the other, the other would carry all the sins of the people of Israel out into the wilderness. It was the goat for Azazel.
And what was Azazel? We little boys wanted to know. But we already knew. Azazel was evil; it was the demons; it was the world "out there," without the Law, in the wilderness. And everyone knew what the word "wilderness" meant because all the people of Israel had once roamed through the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land. And the goat would carry the sins back to Azazel to show that the sins of Israel had been forgiven by the Lord, and evil could take back what was evil as we would have no more of it.