“So, what happens when the Sabbath overtakes a ship at sea?” Uri asked. “Do the slaves lay off rowing? Do the sailors stop climbing the masts?”
“That’s a quite different situation,” Matthew responded. “There is a threat to life, so they are allowed to work. In such cases the law of the exception pertains, according to which man does not exist for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath exists for man.”
“It doesn’t say that in the Torah,” said Uri.
“But it’s there in our tradition,” said Matthew.
“All but two short of one hundred years ago it was not there,” persisted Uri. “When Pompey occupied Jerusalem, the Jews did nothing, because it was the Sabbath; they didn’t defend the City by pulling down the rampart the same day. It can’t be all that ancient a tradition, even if it has been added since. But then where is it written down?”
“It’s written down all right,” observed Plotius. “I’ve seen hefty collections of laws in Judaea and Galilee, more than one of them containing not the word of the Torah but subsequent laws that are based on the Torah. They are guarded in stout, locked chests, and they are of such value that not just anybody can consult them. I asked how much one would have to pay for something like that, and they looked at me as if I were insane: they are so precious that they have no price, they can’t be bought and sold; they are passed as a bequest from a master to his favorite pupil, to his first-born son, or to his brother. The new laws cannot be recorded in principle, as there are numerous instances where they conflict with the laws of the Torah; in short, these collections of laws do not officially exist. But all the same, in practice even those who have never seen such a book stick to these collections of legal cases. If the designated judges have to adjudicate on a complex case and in the end are at a loss what to do, they send envoys with the questions to the masters who are familiar with these collections. Naturally even they only know them through hearsay, as is permitted — though of course they have never seen anything of the like. Perish the thought! Of course, on getting the advice, the judges pass judgment according to their own discretion because there is no necessity to reach a judgment according to a nonexistent book of laws, but oddly enough in most cases they do reach them. It is what in Rome is called the law of precedence.”
Could this be the deficient legal security in Judaea of which Plotius had spoken?
They were now drinking the pure wine that Valerius, the wine king, had now ordered for their throats, and their consciousness became so weighed down that the next day none of them awoke in time, and they did not go to the house of prayer and did not take part in holy worship on that Sabbath.
“It’s only the meal you need to feel sorry about,” said Aaron, placing a wet towel around his head as a compress. “I contributed to acquiring it and it must have been celestial. On the other hand, you were let off having to listen to the sermon. Our priest is long-winded and boring in teaching virtue. He hardly ever lets anyone else get a word in edgewise; stupid, the poor man, but what can we do…”
It was good that a Torah was kept on hand for such cases, and from that they could read what was due to be read on the Sabbath. Anyone was allowed to read what was designated so long as they were among a community of at least ten men. There were precisely ten of them, including Aaron and his sons, so there was no need for them to pray together with the slaves. Matthew quickly unrolled the Greek Torah scroll and read out what had to be read, and at least they were sober enough by then to say the “Amens” in the right places.
Wherever a quorum of ten Jews are together, God is present; to be more precise, the Shechinah, or Divine immanence, is present in everyone, and for that reason the place is holy. Thus, the house of the owner of the sawmill had become holy simply by virtue of their male presence — at least as holy as the house of prayer itself. Indeed, they were even able to take a dip in the basin again before prayers, whereas in the house of prayer the faithful would only have been able to dip their hands in a bowl of water placed there for that purpose, and perhaps splash a little water casually on themselves. They too were able to partake of a big meal, which after all is the very essence of the Sabbath, because the Omnipotent arranged that on the seventh day even Jews who might have been starving until then should finally have access to food that was adequate to man.
Uri ruminated on whether the nearby brothel did not also become a holy place on the Sabbath. There were almost certainly ten men in the building who were praying right then in the prescribed fashion. Maybe most of them were even present together with Cornelius and his family for the regular Sabbath service in the house of prayer, and also said the “Amens” in the right places, and overate at the free meal. Maybe they even took along with them yesterday’s wives, whom they would be divorcing that day; for after all women and children were of equal rank, it was just that they only had to say the Sh’ma twice, once in the morning and once in the evening.
The sailors and wenches were beyond reproach: they observed the law.
It was a wise ordinance of the Lord that the Torah was the centerpiece of the religion rather than the house of prayer in which it was read out from. Since the Diaspora came into existence it is permissible to read from the Torah anywhere if ten men were present, and there would usually be that many assembled.
As a result, they did not meet with the shuttling priest, who had nothing to say on the matter of the brothel but was all the more a windbag on other matters, or with the local Jewish beggars who would overrun the courtyards and gardens of prayer houses in excessive numbers on such occasions (just as they did the surroundings of synagogues in Rome). Still, when all is said and done, and in spite of sleeping through the Sabbath service in the house of prayer, they too, worthy members of the Jewish delegation from Rome, observed the law nonetheless.
At first light on Sunday the ship was loaded, along with the galley slaves, with all sorts of precious cargo, half of which were luxury goods that the rich of Judaea craved, their wives especially: oils, paints, and balms with which it was the latest fad to daub the body in Italia; caskets of jewels; small mirrors; little jars. There were also medicinal herbs guaranteed to cure all manner of ills, either moist in barrels that kept them fresh or in sacks, dried and powdered: rejuvenating salves, aperients to loosen constipated bowels, emollients to calm loose bowels, remedies to inhibit hair loss or counter balding, potions to regrow split nails or banish pimples and warts — all in copious quantities.
The other half of the cargo consisted of Sicilian wine and sizable sacks of almonds. Before now, Uri would have been unable to conceive of that amount of almonds. He had eaten them once before: the roast fish at his bar mitzvah had a thin sprinkling of roasted almonds.
Uri himself also carried a number of smaller parcels over the plank onto the skiff that plied between the ship anchored in the bay and the shore; squinting sideways, he marveled meanwhile at the slaves, who, without a word of complaint, carried barrel after barrel, their eyes dull, apathetic, as if they were oxen or mules driving a mill. When they had finished, they seated themselves in comfort, insofar as their chains permitted; they were chained together in groups of ten, thanks to the newfangled Roman decimal system, which the Jews of Judaea had also adopted, so it seemed the chain gang was an Italian product. It was obviously more comfortable if the shackles were not unfastened when they prayed. Uri got to thinking whether it was pleasing to the Lord to be prayed to by people who had been clapped in irons, although of course He must have gotten used to that sort of thing down the millennia.