As if they were not even a province of Rome!
It was a free country, but its inhabitants were unaware.
Rome did not impoverish them; Rome made no money on the Jews.
He sensed that it would not be a good idea to enlighten them; they would stone him. They considered themselves pariahs, oppressed and eviscerated by a foreign power, with their sole enemy Rome, or Edom, no one else.
Barefooted, tattered men, women, and children were standing around next to him. They had no festive clothes to don to observe feast days; these were the same garments they wore on the Sabbath. In Rome even Jewish beggars did not look so strapped and shabby, however hard they might try.
It was necessary for their self-esteem to see the foreign power as being responsible for their misery, yet it was not the cause.
Rome had nevertheless taken something: their pride. It was not a sound policy, which should be brought to the emperor’s attention. How could pride be expressed in monetary terms? What unit should be put on it? Half a pride equals two oxen?
The priest looked up at the sky. The day had begun to draw to a close. He asked something of Master Jehuda, who then launched into an enthusiastic explanation. The priest shook his head, and Master Jehuda gesticulated disconsolately, but the priest demurred and dragged himself back up onto his cart.
“He will not be spending the night with us,” people around Uri muttered in disappointment.
The katholikos got up onto the box seat, the soldiers clambered onto their cart, the tax collector scrambled onto the last one, and the eight carts moved off onward toward the north. They could collect at one more village before nightfall.
The carts left clouds of dust floating over the dry land. The drought was my fault, it came to Uri’s mind. Master Jehuda was lying on the ground on his stomach, his big belly pushing his backside up. The villagers fell to their knees or likewise prostrated themselves. Uri kneeled. Another psalm was chanted, with Uri joining in. By now he knew both the Judaean text and the melody. “Give us this day our daily bread,” he chanted.
It had been a joyous day. They had partaken of a priestly benediction, the Everlasting Lord had forgiven them for all the sins they had committed since the last priestly benediction, and they could sin again until the next time. Their firstborn and their best livestock as well as their best ripe fruits would end up with the Lord; very few had been found to be imperfect, which was something to be proud of. At the end of it all, that was the sense of this fine day, and the woeful figure of the tax collector was long forgotten.
As in Rome, everybody would be granted forgiveness anyway by going to the bank of a nearby river at the start of Rosh Hashanah and throwing in some object. The sins of the past year would adhere to that object, and the river would carry them away with it, while they would be left, cleansed, on the bank.
These people are not sinners in any case, Uri thought. They have neither time, nor strength, nor money, nor imagination for that.
The festival was not over. That evening, oil lamps were lit, and they all traipsed out to a field at the edge of the village where a bonfire was already crackling. They sang psalms, and the young men began capering. The girls grouped together and giggled as they watched them. The girls did not dance, only the young men, who were also allowed to drink. They pranced around barefoot, in their festive best, waving around sticks and whooping. The elderly reclined, supping, and watched them with forgiving, sage smiles: let them jump around until they drop. Uri was also invited. He was at first reluctant, but he eventually joined in the leaping around. He knew he looked stupid, but he capered determinedly.
There were some villages where people would walk on lit coals, but this was not a Jewish custom. It came from Persia, and it was nothing speciaclass="underline" lit coals make no impression on feet with thick soles.
A few days later the Levites’ carts again made an appearance, this time for the early summer tithe. Now there were eighteen carts, some already fully laden with produce and poultry, four-footed livestock trotting in their wake.
The people again gathered at the outskirts of the village, driving the animals, lugging open sacks of grain, fruit, and vegetables in large bowls. The law — not the law of Moses but the one in force — told them that “anything edible is to be tithed.” They did not bring any firstborn or best animals or the best produce; those had already been allocated and were guarded and nursed, with care being taken that they personally should be able to carry the offering up to Jerusalem for Sukkot, thereby removing the burden of transport from the shoulders of the Levites.
One Levite with a long stick paced in front of the animals and counted them. When he got to every tenth one, he pointed at it with the stick and a second Levite dipped a brush in a bucket of red paint and daubed a sign on the animal’s brow or wing. It might happen that an animal would jump impatiently out of line, in which case the Levite would gesture that it should be marked and the counting would start again at one.
The Levite might also do the counting, but then he would have to count in pairs for the rest of the day, Uri learned.
One of the sheep that had been marked raced back among its fellows. There was a mix-up, and the Levite gestured and the sheep next to it was also marked. The mark was washed off with a damp rag from the one that had rejoined the flock. Animals also had rights, they too having been created by the Almighty.
Uri stood in the crowd. This time the mood was not festive, because there was no priest present. He looked at the produce that the village had gathered: grain, shorn fleeces, oxen, cattle, poultry.
It wasn’t much. It was a poor village.
Then he looked at the three laden carts and the livestock that were tethered behind them, the tithe that fell due the village at the beginning of summer.
It was a lot.
It was not the wish of the Eternal One that Uri should become proficient in all aspects of carpentry, and around the middle of Av, Master Jehuda summoned him to say that he had received a message from Jerusalem that Uri was to return. There was no knowing why, but Uri was to go now.
The wheat was still being reaped and fruit gathered in. They had already started on the vintage, with the grapes being trampled in big tubs. There really would have been a need for his hands and feet too, Uri thought as he and two others set off back south. He curtly took his leave of the master and even more curtly of the assistants; they were able to breathe a sigh of relief that Uri had finally gone.
I didn’t make any friends, Uri concluded, but he was not sure whether he should lament the fact.
He walked with practiced tread and did not converse with his companions; he used a mantle Jehuda had given him to cover his head. Two younger boys accompanied him with great respect and did not dare to address him. His exile must have given off a different impression than Uri imagined.
Master Jehuda had instructed them that Uri was supposed to report to a certain Joseph, son of Nahum, in the Upper City when they got to Jerusalem, and the youths had promised to ask without fail for a written acknowledgment of receipt from this Joseph when Uri was handed over.
They saw traces of abandoned construction work with weeds growing over some parts of it, but there was no city wall to the north. Stunted hedging had been planted all around the City, including the north, not so much on account of possible attacking armies as of fresh arrivals who could be extorted. Everyone had to enter via one of the gates and pay a toll, and even though the hedging was such that it was easy for anyone to step over, a Jew simply did not do that, and the toll would be paid. Uri remembered that from the north the Damascus Gate was the only one through which he could have left the City weeks before, but he was wrong; there was another northern gate, the Jericho Gate, at the beginning of the road leading straight and steeply to the Temple Mount, but they were not headed that way.