All Things Christmas (19 page)

“What was that light?
”

“We have seen the
Shekinah
, the Cloud of Glory,” Abba said.
“The manifestation of the Most High God.”

“And those creatures of light were his angels, cherubim or seraphim perhaps,” Shemu’el added.

Shemu’el? How could I not have noticed him beside me?

Everyone grew quiet, thinking on this. All at once the men looked at one another and cried in a single voice, “Bethlehem. We must go to Bethlehem. Let us go and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

The men scurried about gathering their thi
ngs and preparing for the trip.

“What about our sheep?” someone shouted. “Shepherds do not abandon their sheep. Have we forgotten there are ewes in t
he meadow about to give birth?”

The men stopped in their tracks and cast questioning glances
at each other.

Yes, I thought, what of the sheep?

“We shall leave the sheep in the hands of the Lord,” Abba said. “He would not have sent his messengers to call us if He did not expect us to go.”

So off to Bethlehem we went.

* * *

When men are in a hurry they take long strides, making it difficult for people with short legs to keep up. The shepherds led the way and I ran alongside. Each time I stumbled in the dark Abba’s stro
ng arm caught me before I fell.

No one knew what to expect when we arrived in Bethlehem. The angel gave us no directions, yet somehow we knew right where to go.

We turned the corner of Bethlehem’s back streets and found a man sitting on the ground
blocking the entrance to a stable. He had his coarse traveling cloak wrapped around himself as a blanket and his back propped against the post which framed the opening. He reminded me of a shepherd keeping watch in front of a sheepfold. Seeing his head resting on folded arms laid across his
bent knees, I assumed he dozed.

As we drew nearer, he heard the scuffling of our footsteps and stirred. Pushing aside the cloak gathered about his face, he lifted his head and
studied our little band warily.

He rose, stretched and rolled his shoulders before untying the straps of his
tefillin
.
These small leather pouches contained verses from the Law. Jews tie them around their forehead and on their left arm near their heart in obedience to the Torah, which said,
“
bind
the commands, decrees and laws of the Lord to your forehead and to your heart.”

He had been praying, not sleeping.

The man stood and combed his fingers through the tangles of his beard, watching us as we approached. Though clearly tired, his dark, intelligent eyes remained alert. I knew just about everyone in Bethlehem, but not him. He must have come to
be numbered in Caesar’s census.

He held his large hands in front of him, not threatening, but prepared to defend if necessary. Defend what? What needed guarding in this little room attached to the back of a small house?

He moved to the center of the doorway.
“
Shalom Aleichem
.
Peace
be
unto you,”
he said. “What is it you seek?”

“
Aleichem Shalom
.
Peace to you as well,” Abba replied.  “I am
Ya’akov
bar Yohan, a shepherd.” Planting his staff in the soft dirt, he grabbed it with both hands and gently rocked from side to side as he spoke. “These are my friends and neighbors, other shepherds. We seek the
one of whom the angels spoke.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Angels? I do not understand. I know nothing of angels.”

Abba and the other men all spoke at once, chattering in excited voices as they tried to explain what had happened in the fields.
The bright light that surrounded us, the angelic being and the heavenly host singing,
“Peace on earth and goodwill to men.”

Then they told him about the message
the angel gave us.

“We know only what we were told. The hand of the Most High urged us to leave our flocks and come to Bethlehem. We came without understanding why,” the men confessed, spreading their arms in bewilderment. “Can you help us find this wondrous th
ing of which the angels spoke?”

“Yo
u have come to the right place,”
the man replied.

Recalling their fright when the heavens opened and the heavenly host poured out, the men shrank back. But as in the fields, their fears quickly gave way to excitement. Regaining their courage, they inched forward toward the doorway, stretching their necks and craning to see. His raised hand stopped them.

“You must wait here,” he said, courteous but resolute. “The midwife and the other women just left. My wife is feeding her infant for the first time. They must not be disturbed.” He smiled and motioned the men away from the entrance. “Come,” he said,
“we shall talk while we wait.”

He seemed most interested in hearing about wha
t happened to us in the fields.

“Tell me again all you saw and heard,” he said, squatting. His eyes swept across the men circ
led around him. “Omit nothing.”

He listened, interrupting to ask questions from time to time. Sometimes he made reference to one or another of the prophets. As Jewish men will do, the shepherds all replied at once, each giving their own interpretation, telling what this
rabbi or that rabbi once said.

When they finished with the angels he asked about their new lambs. Were they healthy? Was the lamb crop good this year? He was a carpenter, he explained, from the North Coun
try, from Nazareth in Galilee.

Laughing and nodding, the men discussed the kind of things men alway
s talked about, tools and work.

Then, from inside the stable, a baby
’s cry pierced the quiet night.

~ 8 ~

“And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe…”
―Luke 2:16

The lusty cry of the newborn echoed in the night air. The men paused, listened, then grinned and clapped the man o
n the back, congratulating him.

Everyone ignored me. Curious, I tiptoed away from the men and back to the entrance. And, since no one tried to stop me, I went inside.
The family’s animals had been tethered outside and the room, which usually housed them, had been cleaned an
d prepared for these travelers.

A young woman sat on a blanket laid over a bed of fresh straw near the back of the stable. Head down, she concentrated on moving her newborn from one side to the other. Adjusting the child in her arms, she tugged her cloak open and exposed her other breast. She brushed his cheek and he latched on, eating as greedily as a newborn lamb
.

Watching her made me smile.

When he finished, she rested him on her lap and adjusted her clothing. She patted his back until he burped and then
nestled him against her bosom.

I crept forward into the ci
rcle of light surrounding them.

Her head jerked up. My crinkling sound of my footsteps on th
e straw must have startled her.

I lowered my eyes, waiting for some signal she was not upset with me for being there.

“Hello. Who are you?” She lifted a finger and motioned me closer.

“My name is Rivkah.
Shalom Aleichem
.”

“And to you.”
She smiled. “I am Miryam. That was Yosef, my husband, at the doorway.”

“The baby’s father.”

For an instant an unsettled
look clouded Miryam’s face
. She didn’t seem to know how to answer me.

She chewed her lip as she thought. Then a load seemed to lift off her shoulders. “Yes,” she nodded, “Yosef will be the child’s father.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked, noting the fatigue in her eyes.

“Tired,” she said.
“Tired, but very, very happy.”

She eased the blanket back and let me see the baby’s face. It looked pink and slightly wrinkled, pretty much like every other new baby I’d seen. I reached out and brushed back a few stray h
airs from the child’s forehead.

Miryam seemed pleased.

New mothers enjoy having people fuss over their babies. Every time I see a baby I always try to act like they are extra special.
Even the ugly ones.
Not that this child was ugly; it was the sweetest baby I had ever seen.

“May I hold your baby?”

My request shocked her. New mothers are always nervous about letting people hold their babies. Some sheep are the same way. They get very protective when they have their first lamb and try to butt you if you come too close. But, just like the ewes, new mothers eventually get better. Time passes and they worry less.

“Will you be very careful?”

A part of me wanted to tell her I knew all about newborns. I had handled more baby lambs than you could ever count. Pulled them out when they got stuck, held them up to their mother’s teat if they were too weak to nurse and cut the cord for ewes too weak to do it themselves. Many a cold night a new lamb slept w
ith me nestled inside my cloak.

Of course there were also the babies of the shepherd’s wives. My younger cousins, Aunt Tamar’s children, needed my help every day. But Miryam was new at this, so I thought it best to humor her.

I sat down and scooted back until we touched. Then she reached around and placed the infant in my arms. The first thing I did was loosen the wrap and peek in to check. The angels were right
;
i
t was a boy. When I glanced back over my shoulder, our
eyes met and we shared a smile.

Every mother wants her firstborn to be a boy. It pleases her husband. By Jewish law the first boy child belongs to the Temple. Yosef and Miryam would have to go to Jerusalem and make an offering to ransom him back.

I re-wrapped the swaddling and leaned forward, putting my mouth very close to his little ear, and whispered, “
Sh’ma
Yisrael
Adonai
eleheinu
Adonai
ehad
.”

She liked seeing me
do that
.

The
Sh’ma
is the first prayer of every Jew:
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God; the Lord is one.

He squirmed and made a whimpering sound in his sleep. Thinking he was uncomforta
ble, I adjusted him in my arms.

Miryam reached around me and put her arms
under mine
to help support him. “Here,” she said, “let me help you.”

Imagine. She worried about me dropping her baby. It was easy to see how she might think that, but given a little time she would learn.

Together, we rocked from side to side. He snuggled against me and I sang the Jewish lullaby,
Lailah
Tov
Motek
, Goodnight, my darling. His little lips ma
de sucking motions as he dozed.

Shuffling footsteps and whispered voices came from the front of the stable. The men had finally come to see the baby. Yosef and Abba were in the lead. When they saw me sitting with Miryam holding the baby, they came to a halt. The surprised lo
ok on their faces made me grin.

* * *

Eight days later, when Yosef circumcised him, they named their baby Yeshua. Since they had to make trips to the Temple to ransom their son and then again for Miryam’s purification,
they remained in Bethlehem. They may have intended to return to Galilee, but one thing led to another and they ended up staying on.

At first they knew very few people, so each time Abba made a trip to Bethlehem I tagged along. He would drop me off at Yosef’s carpenter shop to visit with Miryam and Yeshua w
hile he conducted his business.

Times were becoming hard for Abba and me. We paid taxes and duties and road tolls to Herod each time we took sheep to Jerusalem, plus the poll tax, the annual Temple tax, first tithes and second tithes. We paid and paid until
Abba’s purse was nearly empty.

Raising
more lambs seemed to be the answer. One Shabbat we asked Uncle
Chayim
to watch our flock so we could go to the synagogue in Bethlehem to pray about it. Red streaks filled the eastern sky when we left the house. We talked
and sang Psalms along the way.

Some people at the synagogue gave us unkind looks and whispered comments about smelly shepherds when we arrived. You might expect that in Jerusalem, but not in
a farming town like Bethlehem.

Many of the people in Jerusalem lived very well. They grew proud and looked down on shepherds and country folk.
Annas
, the former high priest, and his family lived in homes made of cut block, each stone polished until it sparkled. Their lavish homes crowded the hills west of the Temple.