The class sat in silence, until Giancarlo asked, "What does INRI mean?"
Pleased that his son noticed, Karp pointed for everyone else to the inscription on the top of the cross. "It's short for the Latin Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm, which is the title a guy named Pontius Pilate, who was sort of the Roman judge for that region, gave Jesus."
"What's it mean?" Rachel asked, now as intrigued as the others.
"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Romans lacked the letter J and used I instead. They also used V instead of U. It's an interesting part of the story. Pilate had the inscription placed on the cross after he allowed the rabble-a Jewish rabble I might add-to take Jesus to be crucified. One of the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to change the inscription to 'He said, "I am King of the Jews." ' But Pilate replied, 'What I have written, I have written,' which was a way of him saying that he believed it to be true."
"But why did the Jewish leaders want to kill Jesus," Ira said; he seemed about to cry.
"Because they were afraid, Ira," he said. "Afraid of how a man of integrity made them examine their own conduct."
"What about Pontius Pilate?" Giancarlo said. "In the Bible, he didn't think Jesus had committed any crimes. He told them that, but in the end he let them have him."
Good point, Karp thought, but old PP was just the most famous judge who gave into popular sentiment rather than doing the right thing. There would be many others.
"You're right," Karp replied. "Pontius Pilate wasn't a good fellow. He was supposed to keep the peace and watch out for rebels who popped up from time to time, like the Maccabees, whose rebellion we just finished celebrating at Hanukkah. His job would have been easier if Jesus had just preached against Roman law, but Jesus didn't. All he talked about was living in peace and people loving their neighbors and praising God for all the good things in life."
"Then why'd he do it?" Ira wailed.
Ira's emotional outburst got the rest of the class tittering until Karp brought up his hand to silence them. "Actually, Ira, that's the best question of the night-and the answer is the whole point of tonight's lesson," he said. "Pontius Pilate gave in to the mob and the Jewish leaders because he lacked integrity. Jesus, on the other hand…," he said, turning toward the painting on the screen, "in those times, just a Jewish carpenter and scholar, had integrity."
"Look where it got him," Zak pointed out.
"Ah, yes, but look how he's remembered today by an awful lot of people," Karp replied. "To some, he's the Son of God. And even others, including Jews and Muslims, see him as a great man. But how is Pontius Pilate remembered? As a corrupt coward who wouldn't stand up for justice, a man who washed his hands of a murder."
The class was silent for a minute until Giancarlo quietly said, "It must have hurt."
Karp looked up at the painting, letting his eyes wander to the nails that protruded from the hands and feet. "Yes, it hurt," he said. "Whether he was just a Jewish carpenter with a different way of looking at the world, or the Son of God, he had to go through the pain and suffering. He could have backed out at the last minute, you know. Pontius Pilate gave him the opportunity to renounce his claims to being the Messiah. But he told them, 'I am what I am,' and sealed his fate."
Hitting the lights and turning off the projector, Karp added, "My dad used to put it another way, sometimes, quoting William Shakespeare. It's from the play Hamlet and is basically the advice of a father, Polonius, to his son, Laertes, when he tells him, 'This above alclass="underline" to thine own self be true.' I think if you follow that one piece of wisdom, you will find that you are people of integrity, too."
"And end up like Jesus?" Zak asked.
Karp looked at his son. Sometimes he wondered what would become of this boy. Like Marlene, he sometimes seemed to have a foot on one path that led to trouble, and other times one foot on a path that led away from trouble. "Maybe," he said. "But there are worse ways to end up. You could end up as a heroin junkie. Or people may know you as a liar and a cheat and want nothing to do with you. Or you could be a judge who sends an innocent man to the gallows, all because you lacked integrity. You could be the next Pontius Pilate. Or you can choose to live your life with integrity, like Jesus, and make a real difference in this world."
The class was quieter than normal when they filed out a few minutes later. Karp was certain he'd hear from their parents about his choice of topics. But he thought that, as Christmas approached, it didn't hurt for Jewish kids to learn that all the fuss was being made about one of their own.
12
About the time Karp and the boys had been arriving at the synagogue, Marlene's cab pulled up to the curb outside Ariadne Stupenagel's walk-up loft, which occupied a corner of the fifth floor of a turn-of-the-century brick warehouse between Avenues A and B on East Thirteenth Street in the East Village. Lucy and John had arrived only ten minutes before she'd had to leave-much of that time spent chattering with and holding her daughter, so there hadn't been much time to grill Jojola.
The Indian police chief had given her the same "no big deal" dream answer when she asked what brought him to town. But unlike her husband, she knew that dreams were taken seriously by Jojola. And if this dream was enough to get him away from his beloved home in the desert, it was because he deemed it serious indeed. But he'd also told her they'd talk later about it "when there's more time and the kids aren't around."
"Madam, we are here." The cabdriver was half turned in his seat, obviously anxious to get on to his next fare.
Marlene glanced at the New York City cab driver's permit hanging from the dash. Hassan Ahmed. She wondered if he was sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and immediately felt ashamed at the thought. That's what fear does to you, she thought as she handed her money through the partition. Divides and conquers. "Keep the change," she said and hoped he wouldn't know the extra-large tip was paying off a guilty conscience.
"Thank you, madam," Ahmed replied with a smile. "God bless you."
"And you," she said, exiting the cab.
As Ahmed sped off, she stood for a moment looking up at Stupenagel's building. It wasn't much on the outside; its dingy mustard-colored bricks had been surrendered to the neighborhood's graffiti artists, and the rusty metal fire escapes looked more ornamental than practical. But otherwise the building and the surrounding buildings had that look of the newly gentrified, as the upper middle class moved into yet another run-down ethnic neighborhood and caused the rents to skyrocket. There were no weeds in the repaired sidewalks and staircases; the small cement basketball court across the street had a fresh coat of paint, and the playing area was swept clean of the broken bottles, beer cans, and syringes she'd seen there in years past. Many of the windows had flower boxes, now dormant in winter but indicating a certain pride of ownership; in a window of the building across the street, she could see the black fin of a baby grand piano cruising above the sill.
Stupenagel, who'd moved into the neighborhood years before it was safe to do so, complained that it had been a lot more entertaining before the junkies got chased out and the Dominicans couldn't afford to live there and blast salsa from their car stereos. True, there were many fewer reports of robberies, rapes, burglaries, and domestic violence, as well as an increased police presence due to the income level of the new owners, "but it's all been sort of…I don't know…sterilized," her friend had said sadly.
The journalist was proud of the fact that she had been living there before Beat poet Allen Ginsberg bought the corner loft opposite from hers. She was there when he died in April 1997. "I got invited to the party when he was dying in the back bedroom; it was all very Buddhist," Stupenagel told her whenever she got the chance. "All sorts of important literary and arts people were there, like Phil Glass, Gregory Corso, Lucien Carr; Bill Burroughs showed up the next day. Did I ever tell you about the day Allen came over with Bob Dylan? They were working on a collaboration putting Allen's poetry to music and wanted my opinion. I've seen his ghost, you know…Allen's, that is, wandering around in the hallway, reciting 'Howl'…'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…'"