My Glorious Brothers (25 page)

Their table of organization consists of tens and twenties and hundreds and thousands, but there seems to be no perceptible difference in leadership since the captain of any group, whatever its size, is always known as the
shalish.
Also, there is no military discipline that would be understandable in Roman terms. Every action is discussed with all the men, and they make no move either offensive or defensive without unanimous consent of all the troops; anyone who disagrees with any particular tactic is permitted to leave the ranks and go home, and it seems that there is no particular onus upon him for so doing. Under these conditions, it seems incredible that any sort of military action could be maintained; yet it is a matter of record that they only recently emerged from twenty-seven years of continuous and bitter warfare.

The fact that all their methods appear so unwarlike and that they are a people who literally worship peace should not lead the Senate to underestimate them; for it will emerge from this report that in all the world there is no people so dangerous and so deceitful as these same Jews. The patrol halted us and questioned us. There was no hostility whatsoever in their actions, yet my guide, Aaron ben Levi, took the very act of halting us to be a personal affront. When they asked where we were bound, he replied:

“And am I a slave that I cannot walk where I will?”

“With one of the
nokri?”
a word they use for all who are not Jews.

“With ten of the
nokri,
you young fool who was sucking his mother's pap when I already fought alongside the Maccabee.”

And so it went with that peculiar insolence that Jews cannot refrain from using even against each other. Finally, it was ironed out and the patrol escorted us to the border of Judea, and all that distance they never ceased to ply me with questions about Rome, all of the questions subtly barbed and so construed to evoke points of their own superiority.

Of Judea, of the land itself, I cannot speak too highly. To come on it out of the Phoenician lowlands is like coming from a desert into a garden. You enter the hills and on every hand the terraces rise, like enchanted hanging wonderlands. Even in the North, which is the least cultivated part, the country has the aspect of a carefully tended garden. In the whole land, there is only one city, Jerusalem. The mass of the population live in small villages, which cluster in the bottom lands or cling to the hillsides, and the population of the villages varies from twenty to one hundred families. The houses, which are usually set in two lines on either side a single street, are made of sun-baked mud bricks, coated with lime on the front, and in this temperate and gentle climate, the brick endures for generations. Very often, there is one stone building in the village, a sort of meetinghouse, which is called the “synagogue” and serves both as a school and as a place of prayer. Almost above all other things, these people esteem literacy, and I have never met a Jew who could not read and write. In all probabilities, this serves to increase their arrogance, and without question it feeds their contempt for the outside world where so few are scholars.

Olive groves abound, and here and there on the mountains are carefully tended forests of cedar and hemlock. The terraces have been constructed over a period of a thousand years, and they are filled with soil carried by basket from the rich bottoms, where the humus lies thirty and forty feet deep. Everywhere on the hills are cisterns, with stone aprons to catch the rainfall, and one is constantly amazed by the prodigious amount of human labor that has gone into the making of this land—the more so when one learns this, of all places on earth, is the one with the least slaves. Whereas, in our last census, we numbered twenty-three slaves to each free citizen, here in Judea it would be the reverse, with perhaps one slave to twenty or thirty citizens. This in itself is a danger that must not be ignored, for these people free all slaves by law after a period, and among them it is a crime to strike a slave or to keep a slave in ignorance. And when one considers that free slaveholding is the very basis of Western civilization, the firm rock upon which the Roman republic so securely rests, one can see that the question of the Jew is not merely a local annoyance.

We proceeded inland by way of a poor road—none of their roads are of any worth compared to ours—that paralleled a pleasant little stream, which dashed and tumbled through the hills until we came to the town of Modin. I was particularly interested in this village, for it is the ancestral home of the Maccabeans, and throughout their rebellion it was used as a rallying point for their forces. For this place, the Jews have a peculiar veneration; my guide spoke of it with awe; and any man who was born in Modin—few are left, so many having perished in the wars—is entitled to the honors of an
Adon
, their name for local people of dignity and respect. When we came to Modin, he went into the synagogue to pray and I wandered through the town by myself for over an hour. Aside from the fact that it was an unusually pretty and well-kept village, ideally situated in the rolling foothills, I could not see that it was too different from countless other Judean villages. The people there seemed healthy and well-formed, and they were very pleasant. All of Judea is wine country, but this village lies in the center of their best vineyards; and I was constantly offered goblets of the local wine, of which they are very proud. Though never, during all of my stay in Judea, have I seen a case of drunkenness, these people drink wine as readily as water; they have endless variety of white and red wine, and they are all well versed in a peculiar lore of the grape. Wine drinking, as other things, they surround with endless ceremony and prayer, and they expressed great pleasure when I spoke highly of their brew.

From Modin, we continued along the road to Jerusalem, going through the thickly populated heart of their land. In the day's journey between Modin and Jerusalem, I counted twenty-one villages. Every inch of the land was terraced and planted. The cribs were filled with corn; sheep and goats nibbled on the reaped fields; cheese hung over every doorway, and cisterns filled with olive oil abounded. Baking is done in common, and in many villages, we were greeted by the fragrant odor of mountains of newly baked bread. Chickens, a basic food and the standard meat dish of the land, were at home everywhere, in the roads, the fields, and in and out of the houses too, for these are a people who rarely close their doors, and that curse of Rome, thievery, is practically absent here. The children, who appear to be numberless in Judea, are round-cheeked and happy; the whole aspect of this land under Simon the Ethnarch is one of such health, richness, and satisfaction that though I have traveled in three continents and seen at least a hundred great cities, I have never encountered elsewhere the same fruitful life. Nor is this land plagued, as we are, with the scum of free men who do no work and have no means, but bleed their betters, the plebeian curse. As a matter of fact, differences in wealth and station, which were great at the outbreak of the war, disappeared almost entirely as the whole people suffered. The very rich sided with the invaders, and were either slain or exiled, and so many died during the wars that in the end there was a shortage of men rather than land.

I enumerate these virtues that the picture may be fulfilled; yet I must add that you cannot like a Jew for what you would admire in others, for they are too conscious of their achievement. They take nothing for granted, not courtesy, not good manners, not virtue, but must always underline and underline again that these things are the result of their being Jews. They worship peace, yet never allow you to forget at what cost they achieved it; their family is like a stone arch over their heads, but this they know, and always they despise the
nokri
for his lack of the same virtue. Power and those who wield it, they hate; all other Gods than theirs they malign; and all other culture than theirs is offensive to them. So that even while you admire so much that which they have, you build a seething hatred for them. This combines with the fact that they possess so little of the grace and delicate knowledge that makes for noble human beings.

It was toward evening that we reached Jerusalem, a noble and beautiful city, crowned with the holy building of all the Jews, their Temple. Half of the city is given to the Temple, its many buildings, its courts and walks and the massive walls that surround it—as massive as the walls that surround the city itself. It is not size or architectural splendor that gives the city its beauty, but rather its location and style, so that it almost breathes the fanatical love which their people bestow upon it. With my guide, I approached it toward sunset, when all the walls and buildings and the Temple too were bathed in the rosy glow of twilight. We passed through the gates, and even as we did, we could hear the deep, sonorous chanting of the priests and Levites from the Temple courts. In spite of myself, in spite of the resistance to the people that had already rooted itself within me, I could not but be moved and impressed by the beauty of the music and the strange gentleness that overcame the people while it was in progress. So childlike and simple was their air toward each other, and toward me as well, that I was moved to ask Aaron ben Levi the reason. He answered enigmatically:

“We were slaves once, in the land of Egypt.”

It was the first time I heard that phrase, which is never far from the thoughts of these people, and afterwards I discussed it in some detail with Simon the Maccabee.

As we entered the city, a handful of the soldiers who kept a rather loose and easy guard at the gates went with us, nor did they interfere with us as we climbed through the city toward the Temple. It was fairly dark now; the singing died away; and through the open doors of the houses, we could see families sitting down to their evening meal. The streets were clean and new, as were most of the houses built either of stone or mud brick and always painted or lime-coated white. Compared to one of our Western cities, Jerusalem is amazingly clean, but except for the Temple, it is more like a group of villages than what we know as a city. The inhabitants live in an easy and free companionship; their doors are never closed; and both their laughter and their tears are common property.

We got as far as the outer entrance to the Temple before we were stopped, though we had to stable our beasts a hundred yards below.

Courteously, but firmly, two white-robed Temple servants, who are called Levites and pride themselves on being descended from the ancient tribe of Levi, barred our path and, ignoring me, informed my guide that the stranger could go no further.

“Naturally,” Aaron ben Levi agreed, with that disgusting note of muted contempt, “since he is a Roman. Yet he comes as an ambassador to speak with the Maccabee—and where shall he go if the Maccabee will not see him here?”

They took us then to the palace of Simon, which would hardly be called a palace in our land, a clean, spacious stone house, newly built on the hillside near the Temple, overlooking a deep ravine which separated it from the Temple. The few furnishings in the house were simple affairs of cedarwood, and the hangings were of heavy, brightly dyed wool, and there I was greeted by a middle-aged, rather handsome woman, the wife of the Ethnarch. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, reserved always in my presence, she was hardly typical of Jewish women—and it was only later, through the reading of a manuscript which I shall enclose with this report, that I was able to surmise her relationship to her husband; for though there was deep respect, there appeared to be little enough of love between them. The Ethnarch has four sons, tall, well-formed boys, and the life they live is so simple as to be almost rigorous. His daughter had married some years before.

One of the sons, Judas by name, took me to my chambers, and shortly thereafter a slave brought a bath of hot, salty water, I removed the dirt of my journey and lay down gratefully to rest, and while I lay there, wine and fresh fruit was brought and set down on a low table beside me. Then for about an hour, I was left to myself, a rest for which I was very grateful.

These matters I detail to point out again how curiously virtue mixed with evil in these incredible people. It is hardly possible that any stranger in Rome—or Alexandria or Antioch—could so easily reach the first citizen, nor would the welcome be so forthright or pleasant. No one questioned what I did there, what I wanted of the Maccabee or even what my name was. No one asked to see my documents, passes, or warrants. They simply accepted me as a tired stranger, and treated me with that codified formality which entitles all strangers to certain things.

When the hour was passed, the Maccabee or Ethnarch himself appeared. This was my first sight of that almost legendary man, who is the sole surviving one of the five Maccabean brothers, Simon the son of Mattathias, and since I do not doubt but that any action the Senate decides to pursue will be through him, I shall attempt to describe both his appearance and his personality in full.

He is a very tall man, at least six feet three inches in height, and built proportionately—of immense physical strength and bearing. His age is somewhere less than sixty years. Almost bald, his hair and beard retain a trace of that red which is a family characteristic, and also characteristic of many of those who call themselves Kohanim, a
gen
of the tribe of Levi. His features are large and strong, his nose high-bridged, reminding one of a hawk's beak. Under shaggy, overhanging brows are a pair of keen and pale blue eyes, and his mouth is full and strong, almost heavy-lipped. His beard is quite gray, and unlike most of the people, who clip their beards to within an inch or two of the skin, he wears his in its natural growth across his breast, a massive, fanlike thing that strangely enough only adds to his majesty and dignity. His hands also draw the eye, for they are well-formed and large, and he has a breadth of shoulder that is overwhelming. Altogether, he is one of the most striking and impressive men I have ever encountered—and just to see him is to understand the incredible devotion and respect in which the Jews hold him.