Bloodline (28 page)

Abiel, of the tribe of Benjamin, interrupted, and asked, “Reuven, why are you telling us what we know?”

He looked at him and smiled, asking, “Then if you know this, tell me who we are. Tell me what we are, Abiel.”

“We're Hebrews. We're returning to our land and—”

“And who leads a people?” asked Reuven simply. “Do we have a king to lead us? No! Our last king died when we were exiled. So, without a king, who leads us?”

Each of the men looked at the one next to him. Nathan, of the tribe of Judah, said, “Zerubbabel leads us, and his uncle Sheshbazzar with him. They are descendants of the royal family of David through the line of King Solomon. Sheshbazzar carries with him all the things that Nebuchadnezzar stole from our temple. He will return them, and then . . .”

Nathan stopped talking because neither he nor the others gathered nor anybody among the Israelites really knew who would rule in Israel on their return. Reuven nodded and couldn't suppress a knowing smile. “Precisely! We're following Joshua because he is our chief rabbi and Zerubbabel because he is descended from a line of kings who lived five hundred years ago; but are these men leaders? One knows the Lord God Adonai, and the other is an old man who has to be carried from place to place on a litter.

“And when we arrive in Israel, who will direct the building? Who will marshal the farmers to begin clearing the land and planting crops so that we don't starve in the coming months? Who will ensure we're strong enough to defend ourselves from the Egyptians or the Phoenicians, or from being robbed by desert nomads?” asked Reuven.

The group fell into silence, not because these questions hadn't
occurred to them since leaving Babylon, but because nobody had raised them aloud.

Daniel, of the tribe of Judah, asked quietly, “Are you proposing yourself as our king, Reuven?”

The others looked at him in surprise. “No,” Reuven said immediately. “I am a merchant. I have the ear of King Cyrus, and through my relationships in distant lands, I'm known to many rulers and the rich men in their cities. But I have no wish to become a king. No, what I'm saying is this: that today and tomorrow we have no leadership. We therefore must create a leadership that the people will follow, will respect, and will venerate. Wound a camel and it will limp on; cut the head off a camel and it dies immediately. Without a head, a people will not survive in a hard and challenging world.”

“We have leaders,” said Abiel. “We have our chief rabbi, Joshua; we have Zerubbabel; we have—”

“And you would be led by men who know how the Lord thinks but who know nothing about administration, the laws of our land, how to create and run an army? Shall I go on?” asked Reuven.

“So you
do
want to be king!”

“No, I want all of us to be kings! I want a ruling council made up of men with different skills. Some of you will be important to the future running of the nation, and we will find others with great skills who will join us. But you are here to listen to my idea and to take it further. Do you all agree?”

“A council? Such as the king of a nation uses to advise him on what to do? But it is still the king who makes the decisions. That is the nature of our lives. If we have a council to run the affairs of the nation, then which of us will make the decisions?” asked Daniel.

“I knew that this would be uppermost in your minds,” Reuven answered. “The council will have an uneven number of members at all times. If more than half agree, then that decision will be
binding on the rest. We will sign a pledge that we will abide by the rule of the majority. Is it agreed?”

They sat in silence, contemplating a form of government that none had heard of before. They looked at him in both surprise and confusion.

“What I'm proposing is that the rule of the land, now that we no longer have a king, should be determined by those of the people who are able to govern. Just as all kings have ministers and advisers, so we will be ministers and advisers, and—”

“And we won't have a king to make the decisions,” said Daniel. “In Babylon we were governed by our chief rabbi Joshua, and by Zerubbabel, of the line of King David, with his uncle Sheshbazzar. It was always to be that when we returned to Israel and reestablished Jerusalem as our capital—that Zerubbabel would be our king. So why are we sitting here, talking about a council of governors, when we already have a king in line for the throne?”

Reuven had anticipated the question and was ready with the answer. But knowing the value of creating tension in a negotiation, he sighed, shook his head slightly, and took a sip of his pomegranate water. Softly, as though explaining something simple to a child, he said, “For five hundred years we've been governed by kings who have progressively weakened the Jewish people by their incompetence and avarice. For the same amount of time we've also been governed by rabbis who tell us that all of our problems are caused by our failings, our lack of faith, and so Adonai is punishing us. So, because of inept kings and because we weren't faithful enough, ten of our twelve tribes have disappeared, our land has been ruined, our capital, Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble, our temple was destroyed, and our people were made slaves of the Babylonians.

“Well, I've had enough of kings and certainly enough of rabbis. It's time that we, the Jewish people, took responsibility for our own government. We will gather the best men of the land, and it is we who will govern—”

Infuriated, Daniel interrupted. “We Jews are a people because our kings are from the line of David; we are one people because we have one God, Who brought us out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage, where we were slaves. How dare you sit there and denounce our kings and our rabbis and suggest that we are more capable of being rulers? God will strike you dead for this, Reuven the merchant.”

Theatrically, Reuven stood, stretched out his arms, and shouted up to the sky, “For my blasphemy, Lord God Almighty, strike me dead. Send a bolt of lightning through my heart . . .”

Everybody looked up at him in shock. Reuven stood there for a long, long moment and slowly turned to Daniel. He shook his head. “I'm not sure that God is listening.”

T
HEY MET IN A SHOP
selling spices in Damascus's eastern market. They smiled at each other and kissed as sisters. Rabbi Joshua's wife, Shoshanna, was buying leeks and onions for their evening meal. Naomi, Reuven's wife, was searching for a gold clasp to decorate a new robe she'd bought, now that the baby was growing so big that her clothes were starting to be too tight.

“Sister,” said Shoshanna, “you look so pale. Is the pregnancy difficult for you?”

Naomi nodded. “Girls half my age seem to have no problem growing a baby in their womb. I'm suffering because of my years and because I am slight of body.”

“Come, let's go and find an inn and drink a cup of spiced water to refresh us,” said Shoshanna, leading her by the hand to a place she'd found the previous day where the owner used fresh and not dried herbs in his water. They sat and sipped the hot liquid, and it immediately refreshed both of them.

“Soon we'll be in Jerusalem,” Shoshanna said. “Joshua says that we'll be leaving here in a matter of days, and then it's only
a two-month walk until we return to our homeland. Isn't that marvelous?”

Naomi nodded. “It coincides with the time of the birth of my son. The Lord God has been kind to me. I hope it pleases Him to continue to be kind and to allow me to finish my journey in good health so that Reuven and I can enjoy many years of pleasure with our son.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Shoshanna. “Don't you think that you'll finish the journey?”

“Only God Almighty knows whether I'll survive. I've been feeling so exhausted these last few days that I don't know whether I can continue on to Jerusalem. Perhaps I should stay here until the birth.”

“No! No, you can't do that. Your son must be born in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem. He will be the first of a new generation of Israelites.”

Naomi nodded. “But if my body is too weak, I may be forced to stay here, in Damascus.”

“But that means that Reuven will remain with you, should that be your decision. My husband was counting on Reuven to assist him in rebuilding the nation.”

“Joshua? Is he on the council of governors?”

“What council?”

Naomi flushed. “Oh, nothing. I must be confused.” And she hurriedly looked down at her cup of herb water.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
Rabbi Joshua climbed the hill in the north of the city of Damascus with grave fears on his mind. When he was sitting in Reuven's home, he began immediately. “I am told by Daniel, of the tribe of Judah, that you convened a meeting of some citizens and proposed a council of governors to rule Israel on our return. It is to replace me as the chief rabbi
and Zerubbabel, the grandson of our last king, Jehoiachin, and a descendant of King David. Is that correct?”

Reuven had anticipated that Daniel would go immediately to Joshua and tell him of the nature of the meeting. “Yes!” he said tersely. “And no! You will always be the chief rabbi, but the days of Israel having kings is over, Joshua.”

“Then who will lead our country? What will this council do when we get to Israel?”

“Govern.”

“It is the role of kings to govern, and above them the Lord God Almighty. It is not for you or any other to decide who shall govern.”

“And who is our king? Who determined that he would be king? What say do the people have in who should lead them in the perilous times ahead?”

“The people are under the rule of God, through their king. As it was in the days of David and Solomon; as it will be again when we rebuild Jerusalem.”

“And after David and Solomon's rule . . . let me think . . . who did we have as kings? Who did Almighty God decide would reign and protect the Israelite people? Oh, yes, we had Rehoboam, who lost us ten of our twelve tribes; then we had Abijah, who tried to reunite the kingdoms of north and south Israel, but lost; after him, we had Asa, another failure, and then Jehoshaphat . . . Need I go on, Rabbi Joshua? One more useless than the other.”

“You lie,” said Joshua. “These were good men who tried but failed to reunite our kingdoms. But they were of the line of King David, and so God decreed that—”

“God? Forgive me, Joshua, but I get as much grace and favor from worshipping the wooden and stone idols of Marduk and Ea and Apsu as I do from lifting my face to heaven and asking the clouds to come down and help me. God will not lift stone upon stone and rebuild Jerusalem. Only we can do that, with or without the help of a god or gods.

“And it was for this reason that I called the council together. Men of trade, merchants, builders, metalworkers and woodworkers, farmers and scribes. Each brings a skill to the governance of the land. Each will contribute and make decisions. And in that way—”

“Then you want to be the king of Israel!”

“Fool! I want no kings of Israel. I want no priests to rule over us. I want our land to be ruled by those best able to rule it, not men who climb onto the throne from birth because their fathers had ruled.”

“Blasphemy, Reuven. For this I could have you stoned,” Joshua said, barely able to contain his fury.

Reuven smiled. “Stoned? But there are no stones in the desert, Rabbi—only sand, and that slips through your fingers.”

T
HE VILLAGE
was as she remembered it. Perhaps it had grown marginally on the outskirts, but she could see that little had changed in the older parts as she drove her car through the precariously narrow, steep streets until she came to the middle of the village.

She parked the car in a lane and walked into the town. She breathed in the midday air of cooking, an aroma of olive oil, hummus,
t'china
, and roasted meats. It was as though nothing had moved forward or developed since she'd been here last. Indeed, in these villages, little had changed in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Yael looked up toward the roofs of the houses. Apart from the occasional television aerial and electrical wires connecting homes to poles, she could have been looking at a biblical or medieval village.

Four streets away, a much older and dustier car pulled into
a side street and parked. Its driver, Hassan from the Palestinian village of Bayt al Gizah, close to Jerusalem, had followed Yael from where she lived and tracked her on the long journey, often finding it hard to keep sight of her sports car as she accelerated up hills and down into valleys on her way north. But luck had been on his side, and she was unaware that anybody was tailing her.

Dressed in jeans and a frayed T-shirt, Hassan walked in the shadows of the buildings toward the center of the village. There he stood beside a wall of a house, peering at the small reservoir of water that came from the spring in the village square, the single café with its primitive awning, and the houses clustered around; and he looked carefully at the raven-haired woman who'd left her car and was walking into the village. She was the reason he was here.

Yael sat at the café and slowly sipped a freshly squeezed orange juice. She was the sole customer. Indeed, there were very few people in the center of Peki'in. Occasionally an elderly man or woman would walk out of one of the narrow lanes that led to the village square, look at her, scowl, and then walk away down one of the other lanes. One of the men wore very baggy trousers, the middle of which reached down to his knees. Hassan had never seen a Druze man wearing his distinctive clothing.

Yael, having been here before, admired the Druze, who now controlled the village. They were a peaceable and loving people despite the recent assaults against the few Jews who lived in the village. She smiled as she watched them passing in the streets. The women usually wore blue or black dresses with their heads covered by a
mandil
and shuffled along in red slippers. But the initiated men, the
uqqal
, wore baggy pants that were tied at the ankles. In their tradition, they believed that a man, not a woman, would give birth to the Messiah, and his body would drop suddenly from the body of the man. So, in order to prevent the Messiah from hitting the ground, all initiated men dressed in baggy
trousers. Yael thought that the strange pants seemed perfectly in keeping with the huge mustaches with hand-waxed tips the men sported.