Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (38 page)

Rachel put her hand on his shoulder. “Not all of them, Papa. Your yeshiva is still here.”

 

The day before Tishah b’Av, Salomon’s household sat silently on the floor to eat their final frugal meal, the enormity of their grief heavy upon them. Like mourners, Rachel and Eliezer ate boiled eggs for their one cooked dish and vegetables and fruit served without sauces. Salomon and Judah ate only bread, water, and salt.

Its rituals were the same, but this year’s Tishah b’Av observance was nothing like those before the calamity in the Rhineland. In previous years most Jews worked at their occupations, acting out a mourning they did not deeply feel. After all, life in Troyes was good and the Temple had been destroyed almost a thousand years ago. Some tears were shed, and by mid-afternoon everyone was weak with thirst after fasting through the long hot day, but business negotiations continued even if no money changed hands.

This year, when Rachel entered the synagogue that evening and saw it stripped of adornment, even the ark shorn of its decorative curtains, she shrank back, envisioning the plundered German synagogues and their murdered occupants. Taking off her shoes, reclining on the floor, and gazing at the bare feet around her, Rachel could not dispel the horrible image of naked Jewish bodies lying on the synagogue floors of Allemagne.

When prayers were finished and the service leader began chanting Lamentations—not the hazzan because he sang too beautifully—it was impossible to hear the verses describing Jerusalem’s destruction and not mourn for Worms and Mayence. In a low voice, Joheved translated the text for the women, words that Rachel never imagined would describe a city in Ashkenaz.

Wails of grief issued from men and women alike, threatening to drown out the readers’ voices, and both Joheved and her male counterpart below had to pause when their own sadness overcame them. Rachel wept as she hadn’t done since baby Asher died. Yet the dreadful text of Lamentations continued:

The final verses of comfort, urging the Holy One to take His people back and renew their days, were overshadowed by a series of
kinot
, dirges and somber poems, each more melancholy than the last. When the final doleful note was chanted, the red-eyed congregants slowly stood and, heads down, made their way to the street. Then, without a word of greeting, they trudged home.

The next morning at services, Rachel’s bereavement was even stronger after praying at home stripped of her tefillin. Again the shoes came off and everyone sat on the floor; again the seemingly endless
kinot
, composed for the express purpose of searing the heart and grieving the soul, and again the congregation’s tears flowed copiously as they mourned the destruction of Jerusalem and the martyrdom of Mayence and Worms.

When the closing dirge was done, the Jews of Troyes headed, not to their homes, but to the cemetery, where they would remain until it was time for the afternoon service. Salomon’s family gathered around Rivka’s grave, where he taught from his
kuntres
on Lamentations and Jeremiah. Like at a house of mourning, this was the only Torah study permitted on Tishah b’Av. But the tradition of not ending a study session with an unhappy text was too entrenched to violate, even on such a black day.

So when he explained the first verse of Lamentations, “She has become like a widow,” he emphasized the word “like.” “This doesn’t mean a true widow. Rather she is a woman whose husband has gone abroad on a journey, and he intends to return to her.”

Neither his words, nor those of the prophet Isaiah, whose consolations were read each Shabbat between Tishah b’Av and Rosh Hashanah, provided any comfort for Rachel. The Sages taught that Jerusalem was destroyed because of the Jews’ sins, their needless hatred for each other.
But what sins had the pious Jews of Worms and Mayence committed?

Her dread only heightened when the Fifteenth of Av brought, instead of the day of great happiness described at the close of Tractate Taanit, another eclipse of the moon.

twenty-one

Salomon’s yeshiva received an unusually large infusion of new students at the start of the Cold Fair, many of them older youths who’d previously studied in Mayence or Worms and who, by fortuitous providence, were away celebrating Shavuot when Emicho’s marauders descended on those cities. But many of them, filled with grief and rage, found their studies difficult, and instead of a source of pride for Salomon, the increased number of students was a heartrending reminder of his people’s loss.

Even more depressing, merchants brought responsa questions from communities that had never written to him before.

“What’s wrong, Papa,” Rachel inquired gently when she observed him weeping while reading one of these missives.

“This letter comes from Rome.” Salomon cradled his head in his hands.

“But it’s an honor for Jews so far away to recognize your wisdom and seek your advice.”

“
Ma fille
, I have no more wisdom now than last year.” He brushed away his tears. “They consult me only because the more knowledgeable scholars are dead.”

Rachel sighed and placed her hand on his shoulder. She, better than most, should know how devastating a loss Judaism had sustained.

Eliezer and Pesach had just returned from their autumn trip east for furs. At Dulcie’s insistence, they stopped in Mayence to ascertain what, if anything, remained of her family’s home.

“The Jewish Quarter was plundered.” Eliezer couldn’t hide his outrage. “The only thing Pesach brought back for Dulcie was a letter written by one of the martyrs who died in the bishop’s castle along with her parents and siblings.”

“Are there any Jews left in Mayence?” Rachel asked in dismay. She still could not accept the enormity of the community’s destruction.

“Only a few
anusim
who said they’d had no choice but to abandon the faith.”

“So the Talmud academy won’t be rebuilt.”

He shook his head. “Probably not in Worms either.”

“Oh, Eliezer.” Her chin began to quiver. “So many yeshivot have disappeared.”

The once great Babylonian Talmud academies were emptied by the Turks, Bedouins had destroyed Kairouan’s Jewish district, and the few schools left in Andalusia were closing as the Berbers forced the Jews to flee.

But Salomon and the Jews of Troyes were too troubled by their own quarrels to consider the fate of foreign communities. Cursing the marauders, now far away, was a poor outlet for their rage over the destruction of Rhineland Jewry, and none would publicly vent their frustration that God had let it happen. So their feelings were displaced onto arguments about how to deal with those Jews who’d apostatized when confronted with the choice of baptism or death. With the threat over, many
anusim
were eager to return to Judaism, and some were desirous of enrolling their sons in Salomon’s yeshiva.

Yet not everyone was eager to accept them.

Salomon’s daughters and their husbands mirrored every side of the vehement debate in Ashkenaz—should a Jew die rather than violate the Torah prohibition against idolatry? To his growing irritation, they argued continuously for the three weeks it took the grapes to ferment into wine in his courtyard.

Joheved was adamant that death was the only acceptable alternative to apostasy, and that the Rhineland Jews should be praised for refusing to violate Jewish Law. “It says so clearly in the eighth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin:

She stamped her foot into the fizzing must, sending waves of half wine toward her daughters in the vat.

“If that were the case, there’d be no Jews left alive, and Judaism would cease to exist.” Rachel wasn’t about to let Joheved lecture her about Talmud. “For Sanhedrin also says:

Meir, treading grapes with their sons in the vat next to his wife, supported her by quoting more of the text, while Shmuel stamped his feet in approval.

Thus a Jew should die sanctifying the Holy Name rather than publicly forsake the Laws of Moses, as did the martyrs of Worms and Mayence—may their merit protect us.”

Eliezer, sharing a wine vat with Judah, quickly turned over his paddle of grapes so he could lean out to refute Joheved. “You tell us that a man should die rather than commit murder. If so, how do you justify what happened in Mayence and Worms, where Jews killed themselves and their children rather than pretend to worship the Hanged One?”

“Their children would be raised as heretics if they were captured,” Joheved retorted.

“That’s no call to murder them.” Rachel stomped down into the tangled raft of grapes and stems, sending ripples through the vat she shared with Miriam.

Miriam was torn between her sisters’ views. While she would rather die than see her children abandon Judaism, she couldn’t imagine killing them to prevent it. “But if your children were captured, wouldn’t it be prudent to submit to the heretics while secretly remaining loyal to the Holy One?” she asked. “Then you could bring them up yourself and see that they followed the Laws of Moses.”

“Rabbi Yishmael’s view may be appropriate for most Jews.” Judah also took the middle ground. “However, a scholar, who sets an example for the people, should be held to Rabbi Eleazar’s higher standard.”

Yet who was he to give such advice? Hadn’t he, a
talmid chacham
, been ready, eager even, to engage in a forbidden sexual relationship when he should have been willing to die instead?

“That’s absurd.” Eliezer’s voice rose in ire. “If all the scholars are dead, who will teach Torah when other Jews repent?”

“Yet if scholars worship the Hanged One in public, even if only pretending to do so,” Joheved shook her paddle at him, “then less-educated Jews will believe that they truly committed idolatry and may follow their example.”

Meir’s eyes flashed with anger. “No true
chacham
would publicly desecrate the Holy Name in such a manner. He would die first like Rabbi Akiva.”

Salomon’s students and neighbors in the other vats found his family’s acrimony heartrending. Normally, treading the vintage was a jolly effort, with much singing and joking, and this harvest, after the first year of ample rainfall in some time, had looked to be a cause of celebration.

“Don’t you see that by choosing martyrdom, the German scholars have allowed their Torah knowledge to die with them?” Rachel heaved her grapes in Meir’s direction and trod on them. “Rather than follow Rabbi Akiva’s example, we should be like Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai, who escaped Jerusalem and negotiated with the Roman enemy to save his yeshiva in Yavneh.”

“It’s not as if the
anusim
can’t return to Judaism.” Miriam stirred the contents of her vat to calm the stormy fermentation, hoping her gentle words would have the same effect on her family. “Once they move where the Church won’t find them, they can repent their idolatry.”

Judah said aloud what many Jews in Troyes were thinking. “Yet how can we welcome these
anusim
back without penalty, when they cravenly sullied themselves in the heretic’s evil waters while their brethren died sanctifying the Holy Name?”

All this time Salomon said nothing, his face growing redder by the moment. Finally he slammed his paddle down hard on the vat’s edge, cracking the wood. “Enough! None of us know what he would do if, Heaven forbid, the sword were at his throat. None of us may judge what another Jew should do under such duress.”

He stared furiously around the now silent courtyard, bending everyone to his will. “A Jew who sins, no matter how grievously, remains a Jew,” he declared. “One who shows sincere remorse and genuine repentance is received back to his former status.”

He locked eyes with each family member in turn. “You all know that it is forbidden to remind a penitent of his previous sins. I will not tolerate anyone in my community doing so.”

Even Salomon’s pronouncement didn’t stop the fighting; it merely moved out of his presence or found another subject.

His daughters now argued over how many of the astringent stalks to leave in the vats for added flavor and bite, followed by disputes over when to remove the new wine from the lees. The vintner should wait long enough for the flavor to gain complexity, but too long gives the wine an unpleasant yeasty taste. They disagreed over how many whipped egg whites to pour through the wine to clarify it sufficiently without detracting from its character. And no sooner did one daughter open the cellar windows to prevent the rising temperature from speeding the fermentation, than another closed them to keep the fermentation from stopping in the cold.