The foreman divided the workers into watches to stand guard. It would not do to leave the readily transportable and valuable tiles there as they had done with the marble blocks before they had been built into the palace; it would have taken more than a whole night to lift those. Uri would be on the first watch in the evening. He was not pleased, as it meant that they would have to go without supper that day, and in the days to come there would be little opportunity to make that up: Old Ma Judith, such a decent woman, was not going to give them more. He was glad, on the other hand, that Menachem had put him on the same watch as Judas and his brothers.
Uri was relieved when Judas sent one of the brothers off to buy supper for them all.
That evening, by the light of the oil lamps, they were eating warm griddle bread with a delicious goat’s milk cheese accompanied by wine when Menachem turned up in the company of two torchbearers. He politely wished them all a pleasant meal, then said something to the torchbearers, who picked up one of the crates and carried it out of the atrium. Uri did not understand what was going on, but Judas and his brothers went on eating, so he did too. Before long two torchbearers reappeared and carried off another crate; Menachem wished them a good evening, then he too went off. A cart could be heard creaking outside, then silence fell.
“What was that about?” Uri asked.
“He was just checking whether we were on guard,” said Judas. “It wouldn’t look good if any of the mosaics were to be stolen.”
“And so?”
“We were on guard.”
One of his brothers could not hold in his peals of laughter.
“But they carried off two crates of them!”
“Sure they did. Look, Gaius, any site you can’t steal from is a site where no building will take place.”
Uri absorbed that answer.
“But won’t those two crates be missed?” he responded.
“No,” said Judas, “because the shortage will be made up by slipping in a bit more cement along the walls to make it look like it was the design from the start. It will still look very imposing.”
Uri probed a little further, asking about where Menachem had taken the crates, and who he had sold them to.”
“It’ll be a place he’s had a long time now,” one of the brothers concluded. “Menachem is the foreman on more than one site. He’s also stolen marble and sheets of silver from here without it ever being noticed.”
Uri was beginning to grasp what sort of crimes Plotius had been accused of.
“That’s nothing,” Judas suggested. “A drop in the sea, and if one thinks about it, there’s no Jew harmed. The small palace is going up at the expense of the king of Adiabene, and it will decorate the city of Jerusalem, and those two crates will also go toward the decoration of a house in Jerusalem. The only ones who are harmed are the people of Adiabene, but so far as they are concerned it doesn’t matter what exactly their king fritters away their taxes on because he’s going to fritter them away in any case.”
At this the three younger brothers also perked up.
“This is not the way to organize a really grand theft,” said Gedaliah, the youngest. “Let’s just suppose, purely for the sake of theory, that the priests wanted to steal. That can never happen, and there’s no record of such a thing ever happening, but just suppose.”
“So, let’s suppose,” said Uri, now curious.
“Let’s also suppose that the high priests wanted to steal,” Gedaliah continued. “Not that they ever did such a thing! It would never even cross their minds, but purely for the supposition’s sake.”
“Purely a supposition,” said Uri. “But how would a high priest steal?”
“By stealing the Almighty Lord’s property, that’s how,” said Judas. “They would set up a system like this. To start with, the priests would receive the meat — all sacrificial offerings, with rules on which parts belonged to the Levites and which to the priests, which could only be eaten in the Temple and which outside, which could go to their immediate families, and which to their in-laws.”
“The thing is, though, all the animals that make up the priesthood’s property, before sacrifice, are held by herdsmen in pens on the nearby hills. If one of those animals got injured, then it would no longer be immaculately pure and could not be placed on the altar as a sacrificial offering, but the priests are free to do with it what they wanted. They could eat it or sell the meat; it didn’t matter now because it belonged not to the Lord but to the priests.”
“Let’s just suppose that this is actually the practice. It would mean everyone in Jerusalem could guzzle themselves to death with meat, while in the provinces they’d be left without even enough for feast days.”
The tale accorded fully with Uri’s experiences. In the countryside they rarely ate meat, and there was little even for festivals, whereas people here, even they themselves, had plenty. He had seen meat being sold in the market, kept cool by goatskin bags of cold water — lots of meat, almost like in Rome. He had also seen live poultry and wondered how that could be.
He still did not fully understand how the system worked, so they explained.
“A sacrificial animal belongs either to the Lord or to the priests,” Judas said. “It was pure when brought into the process. Otherwise it would never have been picked out in the countryside, and the authorities would not have allowed it to cross the border into Jerusalem. Any declaration about the animal made by the priests is invalid because they are the owners, and the word of an owner, according to the law, is null and void. It is a fine law, a wise law; our predecessors were experienced men for setting down the law, blessed be their names. The word of a herdsman, by contrast, is acceptable by law, because he is not the animals’ owner. A fine law that too, a wise law. After all, why would anyone who was not the owner lie? Only, like any law, this too leaves some room for play. Shepherds, for instance, might swear that a ewe stepped in a ditch, and that was how its leg came to be broken, and that testimony would have to be accepted because a shepherd is not the owner of the livestock entrusted to his care, and from that moment on the priests are free to do with it what they wish.”
“But then who would instruct a shepherd as to what sort of statement he needed to make?” Judas asked with a malicious laugh. “A priest, of course. Let us say that an animal designated by a priest has its leg broken by the shepherd, hitting it in just the right spot with his staff, it immediately becomes imperfect just on that account. Or he cuts its nose, clips a bit from the ears, after which the butchers examine it and declare — for what else can they do? — that the animal has become unclean, and right away the animal is off to the market, and the priest makes money on it. He gives the shepherd a few prutahs, the butcher a few ma’ahs, but the real profit is the priest’s. Or rather: would be. He has to give a few zuz to the high priests, who head the whole shady business and do the bookkeeping. In that way it would be possible for Jerusalem to be choking in meat in while the peasants all around die of starvation.”
Only hypothetically, of course, added Yoram, another of the brothers, because nothing like that had ever happened, and Uri must have seen with his own eyes that people ate less meat than in the countryside.
“Oh, indeed!” Uri affirmed. “I was quite surprised myself!”
Judas’s brothers said that if indeed things were like that, then no city in the world would be more sinful than Jerusalem because everything the Ten Commandments forbids is sinful, and those who were the Law’s foremost servants would be committing sin first of all. It would be a miracle if rebellion did not break out on account of such ungodliness. But then there was little chance of that, with Jews being so law-abiding, and the peasants did not know what was going on. Even if they were told about it by excited rebels with wild, burning eyes, they would not believe it, so pure were their souls. It was divine luck that this was purely hypothetical and that no high priest or ordinary priest, no butcher or shepherd would do such a thing, at least not in Judaea.