Apprentice (74 page)

Then I beckoned to Rava. “I'd like my
get
now, while we have proper witnesses.”

Rava gulped in surprise and then produced the document, but Father wanted to see it first.

“It looks in order,” Father said. “Witnessed by Rabbi Avahu of Caesarea himself, very impressive.”

He handed the
get
back to Rava, who, as Jewish Law prescribed, placed it directly into my hand. Gazing at the small piece of parchment that freed me, relief flooded through me. But instead of triumph, there was sadness that Rava and I were no longer tied to each other.

“You two must be hungry.” Mother broke the silence.

“I need to use the privy,” Rava said. “And wash my hands.”

“As do I.” I followed him to the outer courtyard.

When we were finished, he turned to me, his eyes full of pain. “Hisdadukh, can I speak with you, in private?”

Our meal would have to wait.

We walked to the garden, all the way to the far wall. The roses were faded, but a faint scent lingered as we stopped at the exact spot where we'd had our acrimonious discussion four years earlier. This time he was sad, not angry.

“I thought things were different between us now,” he said, his eyes beseeching me. “Especially after what happened in our tent that Shabbat.”

“True, compared to the last time we spoke in this place, almost everything has changed between us,” I said sadly. “Only one thing is the same as before, unfortunately the most important thing.” I forced my voice to remain firm. “You are still married to Choran, and I will not be a second wife, not even yours.”

He sighed deeply. “And I still do not have the money to pay her
ketuba
.”

“But in little over a year, she will have been barren for ten years. You will have to divorce her then.”

He shrugged. “Who knows what can happen in a year?”

I gasped and stared at him in horror. Rava had admitted that he'd given the
kashafa
the Evil Eye that killed her, and confessed that he might have been responsible for Rami's death too. He was studying the
Sepher ha-Razim
and who knows what other secret texts. Now that he knew I cared for him, did he intend that Choran should die before he was forced to divorce her?

I immediately berated myself for having such evil thoughts, but it was too late.

Rava had seen my revulsion, and abruptly he was ablaze with fury. “You think I would do such an evil thing? You can't deny it—it's written all over your face.” He was so angry he was shaking. “After all we've been through, you not only don't trust me, you believe me capable of murder. I wanted us to marry, and I thought you did too.”

Before I could assure him that I did, he stalked off, leaving me standing there in shock and tears. By the time I'd composed myself sufficiently to go looking for him, he was gone. I was leaning limply against the courtyard gate, gazing futilely down the road, when Mother put her arm around me.

“I am greatly pleased to hear that you are going to study with Em,” she said. “And since Rava will also be in Pumbedita, I am sure you will find a way to make peace with him.”

I thought back to when his tzitzit had barely prevented us from sinning, how the desire had burned in his eyes. If we had lain together then, I would have become his wife. I also thought of Rabbis Yohanan and Reish Lakish, who had loved each other so dearly yet allowed a trivial argument to escalate until they both died brokenhearted. My eyes narrowed with determination. I would not let that happen to Rava and me.

Over fifteen years ago, when I'd replied that I wanted to marry both him and Rami, he'd said that he wanted to be my last husband. I intended to see that he got what he wanted.

“He won't be rid of me as easily as today, not when we'll be lodging together at Em's,” I said confidently. Resolving to stop running away from my problems was not enough; I also needed to run toward what I sought. Fortunately, both were in Pumbedita.

Mother smiled and took my arm. “Come inside and greet someone who is very eager to see you again.”

I let her lead me to the doorway, where a vaguely familiar male figure stood silhouetted by the light. He took a hesitant step toward me and I could see his face, lit by a smile more dazzling than Rami's.

“Chama,” I cried, running toward him with open arms.

“Mother.” The word was sweet as honey, as he let me embrace him. “Mother, I'm so glad you didn't die.”

D
istinguishing fact from fiction was easy in
Rashi's Daughters
, but the matter is more complicated in
Rav Hisda's Daughter
. True, there are a few historical figures like King Bahram and Emperor Diocletian whose exploits are well documented, and some obviously invented characters such as townspeople and slaves. However, the majority of people who populate this novel are known to us from the Talmud alone.

The Talmud is clearly not a historical text; some might go so far as to call it historical fiction. Rabbis of different generations appear to argue with one another, some of their statements are contradictory or highly exaggerated, and there are few descriptions of actual events to anchor their discussions in time. Because the Talmud took centuries to redact, it is difficult to know whether it is describing Babylonia in the third century or seventh. According to some modern scholars, we must be suspicious of depictions of rabbis advising kings or teaching thousands of students, since the redactors had an agenda to make it appear as though rabbis always had the influence they only acquired later.

Despite all this, and though there is no other evidence for their existence, I chose to write about Talmudic figures, and Rav Hisda's daughter in particular. That she was both daughter and wife of illustrious rabbis would have been reason enough, but the passage where she answered “both of them” when asked which of her father's students she wanted to marry made telling her story irresistible. Still, writing a novel set in this milieu meant I had to suspend disbelief and mostly accept the Sages' world as presented. That didn't mean I could ignore empirical evidence, however. So many months were spent researching what modern scholars
have learned about Jewish life in third-century Babylonia and Roman Palestina.

In addition, I pored through the thirty-seven Talmud tractates to unearth as many mentions as I could of Rav Hisda's daughter, her husband Rami bar Chama, and their family members. The lives of Rav Hisda and his rabbinic colleagues were detailed in Jewish encyclopedias and in several “biographies” of the Sages, from which I amassed some basic “facts” as well as where in the Talmud that data could be found. Of course these men are mentioned hundreds of times, far too many to find every instance, but I tried to study those passages that described their lives rather than merely quote their legal opinions.

No, the Talmud doesn't have an index, and no, I didn't search all 2,711 double-sided pages—it just seemed that way.

Soon I had the “facts” I needed about Rav Hisda's daughter. Upon learning that many Persian women, including Jews, were named “xxx-dukh” after their fathers, I concluded that her name actually was Hisdadukh, “Hisda's Daughter” in Persian. She had two husbands in her lifetime, both brilliant scholars—which was the reason I chose to make her my heroine. Her father came from a priestly family, and was both a judge and head of a Torah school in the city of Sura. Her mother, whose name was unknown, was the daughter of Rav Hanan (who lived with them) and granddaughter of Rav. Hisdadukh's parents were wealthy beer brewers, both of whom lived to be well past eighty. She had seven brothers named in the Talmud, and an unnamed sister who married her first husband's brother.

Making my way through the Talmud, I came across some information that would be difficult to call factual. Hisdadukh knew ways to protect her second husband from demons, while he was so versed in these esoteric arts that he created a “man” of out nothing. Her father, Rav Hisda, cast magic spells, as did other rabbis and the many sorceresses in their community, including her mother-in-law.

For despite the Torah mandate that a
kashafa
is not permitted to live, the Talmudic sages permitted all sorts of magic if its purpose was healing, protection from demons, or merely furthering a rabbi's education. One sage even consults the “head sorceress” for advice, showing that the sorceresses—everyone agreed that sorcery was the province of women—had a leadership hierarchy not unlike the Rabbis. Indeed, I found pages and pages in the Talmud dealing with occult topics such as magic spells, demons, amulets, the Evil Eye, and something called a sorcery bowl.

Amazingly, this was where the Talmud and empirical evidence coincided. For in recent years, archaeologists have literally unearthed thousands of Jewish amulets and incantation bowls produced in Late Antiquity, the former predominantly in Israel and the latter in Babylonia. In addition, a large number of documents from the Cairo Geniza contain either magic spells or instructions on how to cast them. The incantation texts I used in this novel were all lifted from such actual sources. In fact, all magical and supernatural scenes in my novel are either based on these or taken directly from the Talmud itself.

The more I read about magic in the ancient Jewish world, the more convinced I became that Hisdadukh herself must have been a
charasheta
, an enchantress—which meant I had to show how she trained to become one. Here I was able to give free reign to my imagination as I created names for Hisdadukh's mother, sister, and seven sisters-in-law, as well as areas of expertise for them. I made one of them, Rahel, the
charasheta
who becomes Hisdadukh's mentor. I invented Kimchit and Ezra, amulet scribes in Babylonia and Eretz Israel.

On the subject of Israel, while the Talmud records that Rav Hisda escorted Rav Huna's body to be buried there, there is no indication that his daughter or anyone else accompanied him, as unlikely as that might be considering his advanced age at the time. Thus Hisdadukh's experiences in the West were a product of my imagination, although the rabbis who lived there were exactly as the Talmud describes them. Reish Lakish did have a daughter, whom I took the liberty of naming after his beloved brother-in-law, Yohanan. The mosaics of Sepphoris are justifiably famous, including the woman known as “Mona Lisa of the Galilee,” for which I made Hisdadukh the model.

So while her rebound romance with Salaman is a fantasy on my part, Hisdadukh's relationships with Rami bar Chama and Abba bar Joseph are straight from the Talmud, especially the intense rivalry between the two men as displayed in Rav Hisda's classroom. The scenes I portrayed are only a few of the vehement arguments between them.

Slavery in Jewish history is a touchy subject, but there is no question that prosperous Jews owned slaves in both the Roman and the Persian Empires, as did their gentile neighbors. Scholars estimate that slaves made up 25 percent of the Roman Empire's population in Late Antiquity. Modern versions of Jewish texts tend to translate the Hebrew word for slave as “servant,” but this is misguided, as servants who work for wages
are a more modern innovation. While the Talmud shows Rav Hisda to be a decent slave owner in comparison to other rabbis, the text never condemns the practice. As distasteful as modern readers may find it, I took pains to make my characters' views appropriate for their time.

Determining the status of free women was more problematic, as women's situations varied from poor wives who were little more than their husbands' slaves to privileged noblewomen like Yalta who enjoyed lives of luxury and independence. Hisdadukh, an educated woman from a wealthy family, clearly would not have suffered the deprivations of most females in her community. Still, there is no getting around the misogynist sages whose words appear throughout rabbinic texts.

Since Talmud infuses this entire novel, I will not detail here which passage is the basis for each scene; that you'll find on my Web site,
www.ravhisdasdaughter.com
. But for those who want to check, the major debates are from Bava Batra 21a in
chapter 1
, Pesachim 49a in
chapter 5
, Shabbat 61ab in
chapter 7
, Bava Batra 60a in
chapter 10
, Bava Metzia 96b in
chapter 12
, Sotah 21a and Shabbat 32a in
chapter 17
, Bava Kama 20ab in
chapter 19
, and Yevamot 115a in
chapter 34
. The
yetzer hara
discussion in
chapter 10
comes from Sukkah 52b, Yoma 69b, and Berachot 61a, while that on Torah study comes from Shabbat 127a, Kiddushin 40ab, and the sixth chapter of Pirke Avot.

I hope that many of my readers will be intrigued and inspired to learn more about the Talmud from the text itself.