He grinned from ear to ear. It was the first spontaneous smile Abby had seen on his face.
“Because only boys were allowed to study at the synagogue schools,” he said. “Most first-century women—especially poor Jewish women—couldn’t read or write.”
“Yet in spite of all the odds,” Hannah said, “all the prejudice against women, all the hidebound traditions of the Pharisees, a woman named Leah learned how to carve her name into her weaver’s shuttle.”
Abby gazed at the pile of rocks that had once been Leah’s house, the flagstone floor that both she and Leah had swept clean, and wondered what life had been like for her, separated from Abby by so many centuries and traditions. She couldn’t imagine how Leah had learned to write her name, but she felt a small shiver of triumph for her ancient friend. “Bravo, Leah!” she whispered.
THE VILLAGE OF DEGANIA—
A.D
. 46
“Leah . . . Leah!” Her mother’s voice finally penetrated Leah’s daydream. “Watch out! You’re burning the bread!” Leah yanked the loaf of flatbread from the hearthstones before it turned from brown to black.
“It isn’t burned,” she said as she discreetly scraped off a dark spot. “It’s just . . . well done.” Leah found it hard not to let her imagination drift when faced with the boring tasks of grinding grain and baking flatbread. The late-winter day had dawned cloudy and cold, forcing Leah and her mother to prepare the midmorning meal indoors. With only a hole in the roof for a chimney and no oil to spare for the lamps, the dingy one-room house was smoky and dim.
“It’s time you stopped living in a world of dreams,” Mama said, shaking her head in reproof. “Any sensible man will choose a hardworking girl for his wife—not a dreamer.”
Leah opened her mouth to protest that she was only thirteen years old and too young to be chosen for a wife, then remembered the terrible event that had happened to her recently. She was indeed a woman now—as her budding figure also attested. “I don’t want a husband and babies,” she mumbled to herself. But whether she wanted them or not, marriage and motherhood were galloping steadily toward her like a Roman war-horse into battle.
“The Scriptures say that too much dreaming is meaningless,” Mama said. She pushed open the wooden door to the courtyard with her hip and tossed a basin of waste water outside. The sudden gust of damp air made Leah shiver. “And it is also written that the shiftless man goes hungry,” Mama added. “Come, help me make room for the food.”
Leah worked quickly, clearing away all the storage vessels and mixing bowls from the low plastered platform that extended along the length of one wall, then she laid out the woven mats for their meal. Her father and three brothers would be home for lunch very soon. She piled the fresh loaves of flatbread she had baked onto one of the mats, then quickly covered them with a cloth, dismayed to see how dry and over-baked the loaves really were.
“May I go and fetch Matthew from his lessons?” she asked after setting out small bowls of seasoned olive oil and wine vinegar to go with the bread. Mama didn’t look up from where she bent over the hearth, stirring the lentil porridge. The aromas of cumin and garlic drifted from the pot.
“Your brother knows the way home.”
“I know, but I’m all jittery from being cooped up all morning.” Leah danced in place, shaking her thin arms and legs as a dog shakes off water. Mama turned in time to see her gyrations and smiled wearily.
“All right . . . go on, then.” Leah grabbed her shawl from its peg by the door and wrapped it around her shoulders, hurrying in case Mama changed her mind. “Get all the jitters out of your system,” her mother called as Leah fled through the door. “We have things to do this afternoon.”
The ground felt cold beneath Leah’s bare feet as she ran up the path from her house on the outskirts of Degania and through the narrow village streets to the synagogue. Her long dark hair, frizzy from the humidity, whipped into her eyes as she ran. She hoped she wasn’t too late—not to meet her five-year-old brother, but to sit beneath the open window and listen to part of his lessons.
Leah longed to know the God who had created birdsong and the silvery green olive leaves and the peaceful waters of the Sea of Galilee, visible from the hill outside her village. The God whom King David described in his psalms seemed so different from the God the synagogue leaders portrayed. A God who didn’t treat us as our sins deserved seemed a far cry from the Pharisees’ God of endless rules and consequences. David’s God was a shepherd who led him to green pastures and still waters, not a nit-picking master who scrutinized his every move. Whenever Leah hiked up into the pasturelands to take food to her brother Saul and saw the tender care that he bestowed on Abba’s small flock of sheep, she longed to know the Shepherd-God whom David knew.
As Leah had hoped, the synagogue school was still in session, and the droning voice of the rabbi drifted from the window in unison with the voices of his young students.
“Once again,” he prompted. “All together . . .‘“No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”’ Very good. And again . . .”
By the third repetition, Leah was whispering the beautiful words along with him, wondering what they meant.
They will all know me, from the least . . . to the greatest
. . . Would that include women like her, who were among the very least in society?
“That’s all for this morning,” the rabbi suddenly said. “You are dismissed.”
Disappointed, Leah hurried to the front of the building, watching for Matthew as the boys streamed through the three huge doors and scattered in all directions. He was one of the last ones, and one of the smallest, emerging from the stone building in his slow, shambling way as if walking in his sleep. “Tell me what you learned today,” she begged as she fell into step beside him.
He didn’t answer right away, concentrating instead on the pebble he was dribbling down the lane between his bare feet. “I don’t know . . . words . . . boring stuff.”
Leah stopped his pebble with her own foot, then stood in his path.”Which words? Come on, please tell me, Matthew.”
He squinted in thought. “Names. We’re learning to spell our names. I can write mine—want to see?”
“Yes! Show me!” They crouched with their heads together beside the road and Leah helped him smooth a level patch in the dust. She watched, fascinated, as he scratched his name in the dirt with a sharp stone. “Why do those shapes make your name?” she asked when he finished. He sighed in exasperation.
“I don’t know. I’m no good at explaining things. And they’re not shapes. They’re called letters.”
“Letters? Show me again.”
Matthew swirled his hand in the dust to erase them, then wrote the symbols again, making one of the sounds in his name each time he drew a letter. “Mm . . . aa . . . thh . . . eww.”
“Oh, I get it,” Leah said. “Each letter has its own sound.” Matthew nodded, relieved that she had caught on without an explanation. “Will you show me my name now?” She tried to brush a lock of his dark curly hair from his forehead, but he pushed her hand away, impatient with her mothering.
“We didn’t write your name. You’re a girl.”
“But you know all the letters and their sounds, don’t you? Can’t you sort of . . . sound it out?” Matthew planted his hands on his hips in imitation of Abba. Leah worked hard not to laugh at him.
“If I show you, will you let me go home and eat?” he asked.
“Yes. And I’ll even share my raisins with you.”
“All right,” he said, crouching in the dirt again. “I think it’s like this. L . . . ee . . . ahh. The letters are
lamed, aleph, heth.”
“Let me try it.” She took the stone from him and copied the shapes he had written, repeating, “Lamed . . . aleph . . . heth. Like that?”
“Yeah.”
Leah copied them a second time, then a third. She was so absorbed in the wonder of it, she didn’t care that Matthew had started down the lane toward home without her, kicking his pebble. She wrote her name one more time to make sure she would remember it, then brushed the dust off her hands and skipped after him.
Abba and her older brothers, Saul and Gideon, were already seated in their places around the platform. “You are late,” Abba said. “You’ve kept us waiting.”
“I’m sorry, Abba.” Leah felt his stern gaze following her as she and Matthew quickly washed their hands. She expected another of his almost-daily lectures on the need for her to grow up soon and act more responsibly, but he must have decided that Leah had wasted enough of his time. After Matthew took his place beside his brothers, Abba recited the blessing. Leah helped her mother serve the food, listening in respectful silence to the men’s conversation.
“Abba, the new lamb that was born this morning is a male,” Saul said. At age eighteen, he worked with Abba every day, laboring in their barley field and caring for their small flock of sheep. His big bearlike frame towered over Abba’s, and he even resembled a bear with his shaggy black hair and beard. But Saul was as gentle and docile as one of his lambs.
“Maybe we can take it to Jerusalem for Passover this spring,” sixteen-year-old Gideon said. He was as different from Saul as two brothers could be—lean and sinewy, with curly brown hair that bleached to gold in the summer sun. His nature was different, too. Gideon was clever and quick-witted—and quick-tempered.
Saul frowned at his younger brother. “I was hoping to fatten up that lamb to help pay for a bride, not eat for Passover.”
Leah felt a sudden chill, as if Mama had opened the door again. If Saul chose a bride this year, it would mean another woman to help her and Mama with their work. But it would also mean that Leah would not be needed as much and could become a bride herself. She waited with her brothers, watching Abba’s face for a hint of his decision.
“This lamb will be for Passover,” he said at last. “There will be other lambs this spring, God willing, for your bride-price.” He scooped a helping of lentils into his mouth with a piece of bread, then added, “We’ll bring the lamb down from the pasture about a week before we leave for Jerusalem. It will be Leah’s job to care for it.” He held up a piece of the burned flatbread and added, “Let’s hope she gives it her
full
attention.”
Gideon turned to her and grinned. “Remember, Leah, it’s the priests’ job to offer burnt sacrifices, not yours.” All the men laughed, even Abba.
Leah kept her anger and humiliation at bay by savoring her newfound secret: Like all three of her brothers, she knew how to write her own name. Leah was so fascinated with her new skill that for the rest of the afternoon she wrote it everywhere, tracing the letters on the hearthstones with a piece of charcoal, dipping her finger in water to write it on the side of the clay jug, carefully carving it into her weaver’s shuttle with a knife. She glowed with triumph at the thought of mastering a skill that few other women possessed. But at the same time, Leah’s accomplishment only whet her appetite for more learning. Since writing her name was so easy, why couldn’t Matthew or Gideon teach her all of the letters?
She dreamed of learning to read as she methodically wove the shuttle back and forth through the warp threads, barely concentrating on the pattern of russet and gray stripes. The simple loom hung from a crossbeam below the ceiling, and the weight stones, which held the warp threads tight, clicked together rhythmically as she worked.
“Leah,” Mama said, interrupting her thoughts, “don’t forget, you must go and bathe in the mikveh today.”
Leah made a face. She had purposefully forgotten, pushing the unwanted thought from her mind as if shutting it away behind a locked door. “Do I have to go?”
Mama’s hands froze in midair, nearly dropping the distaff and breaking the thread she had been spinning. “Of course you must go! The Law commands it! Didn’t I already explain to you that after a woman’s monthly time—”
“Yes, yes, you explained already,” Leah said quickly, wanting to avoid the embarrassing lecture again. “But I still think it’s humiliating to have to walk past Reb Eliezer and all his Pharisee friends. Why do they have to hang around outside the mikveh anyway, checking to see who goes inside to bathe? They’re so nosy! Besides, the water is probably freezing cold.”
“I suppose you expect to take a hot bath, like the Romans do?”
“No, I don’t want to bathe at all!”
“It’s the Law, Leah,” Mama said, stowing her spinning in a storage basket. “And the sooner we go and get it over with, the better.”
Leah dragged her feet as she walked with her mother through the winding lanes to the public mikveh, shivering at the thought of her embarrassing ordeal. By sundown, the entire village would hear that she had paid her first visit to the bath and would know that she was now eligible for marriage. She lifted her shawl from her thin shoulders and wrapped it around her head, trying to hide her face.
“Why can’t I just bathe at home?” she mumbled.
“The bath is for purification,” Mama explained. “It must be ‘living water.’”
“But the water in the mikveh isn’t ‘living.’ It doesn’t come from a free-flowing source any more than our water does. They both come from the village well, they are both stored in cisterns . . .”
“They aren’t the same,” Mama said patiently. “Reb Eliezer sprinkles the mikveh with ‘living water’ and that makes it—”
“That’s cheating! Water is either from a ‘living’ source or it isn’t. Sprinkling doesn’t magically change it.”
Mama stopped walking. Her shoulders were bent, her face lined with weariness. “Leah, why must you always fight tradition?”
“Because the traditions are stupid! Why doesn’t Reb Eliezer sprinkle
our
cistern? Then I could bathe at home. The Pharisees make us follow all their dumb laws, yet they don’t have to keep them. It’s not fair.”
Mama grabbed Leah’s shoulders. “You hold your tongue, girl, and keep your thoughts to yourself! Don’t you dare bring shame on your father and me by speaking against the village elders! You will do what the Law prescribes without another word!”