Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (44 page)

These words proved more difficult than those on the cakes, but when each pupil successfully made the incantation, Levi distributed nuts and dried fruits while explaining how being brought to school for the first time by their fathers was like Moses receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. After this speech, he dismissed everyone to rejoin the congregation, now beginning Shavuot services in the sanctuary. Shlomo proudly accompanied Meir and their male relatives downstairs.

Only young Jacob now sat upstairs with the women. A shy child who rarely spoke, his siblings and cousins called him Jacob Tam, Jacob the Simple, just as the biblical Jacob was described. Of course they never said this when Meir or Joheved might hear, but Rachel knew that the other children considered him a simpleton. Miriam said this condition was more common if a baby came when his mother was old, which gave Rachel some compensation for having stopped bearing while she was young.

She wanted to go home to check on the Shavuot feast after synagogue, but Shlomo’s initiation wasn’t over. Levi now led his new pupils’ families to the banks of the Seine, where he explained that, like the river’s continually rushing water, a man’s study of Torah would never stop. Rachel felt a pang of sadness for her nephew as she realized that, from this day forward, Shlomo would be expected to spend every daylight hour in the school-room. No lessons in the vineyard for him.

 

Because
niddah
lasted twelve days a month, Eliezer knew the odds were almost even that Rachel would be forbidden to him at any particular time. Even so, he couldn’t hide his disappointment when he arrived in Troyes and she reluctantly stood her ground instead of rushing into his arms. He looked at her questioningly; perhaps she was nearing the end of her clean days and he wasn’t too unlucky.

But when they were alone together upstairs, she sadly disclosed that they still had over a week to wait. Her next announcement was even more disturbing.

“We need you to teach in the yeshiva this summer.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Papa’s speech is still difficult for strangers to understand, and he doesn’t have the strength to teach day and night during the Hot Fair.”

“What happened to him? You wrote that a demon attacked him and that a heretic gave him the Evil Eye.”

Rachel pursed her lips. “I know it helps Papa’s wine sell for more than I think it’s worth, but ever since Moses haCohen used Jewish wine to cure that sick nobleman, too many Edomites want to buy some when they can’t afford it.”

Eliezer rolled his eyes and waited for her to continue. This was an old complaint.

“A baron from Sens bought a cask and promised to pay for it at the Cold Fair, after he’d sold his livestock,” she said. “But when the time came, the liar claimed that he’d only agreed to pay last year’s price, which of course was lower.”

“And people took his word over your father’s?” For Salomon to have lost the Edomites’ respect was an alarming development.

“Papa was convinced that the fellow would never agree and required him to take an oath.” Rachel shook her head in disgust. “Papa even led him to the church door, where we expected him to back down and admit the truth.”

“And?” he asked anxiously.

“When the priest brought a relic before him, the swindler laid down a silver coin and began to swear,” she said. “Of course Papa immediately desisted.”

“And allowed the heretic to pay the lower price?”

“Papa was so angry I thought he’d explode.” She shuddered at the memory. “He resolved to never again deal with
minim
in a situation where they could be forced to give money to benefit the Church.”

Eliezer nodded. “It also might look as though he gave some validity to the man’s heresy if he accepted an oath based on it. That’s why we learn in Tractate Sanhedrin:

“Papa doesn’t consider Notzrim to be idolaters.”

“Perhaps we should when it comes to vows,” he said. “But wait a moment. Why would the heretic give your father the Evil Eye if he won the case?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that Papa was upset for weeks, and once the Cold Fair ended and the cheater left, Papa was attacked. Who else could have enmity for him?”

“No one. Look how the Notzrim scholars respect him.” The last thing Eliezer wanted on his first day home was an angry wife. “Speaking of scholars, why do you need me to teach at the yeshiva? I thought Meir and Shemayah were in charge.”

She shook her head. “Meir was thrown from his horse after Shavuot and injured his back. The doctor says he needs to stay in bed for at least another month.”

“What happened to Shemayah?” This wasn’t fair. The last thing he wanted was to become the acting rosh yeshiva.

Rachel explained about Brunetta’s divorce.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of Judah taking over,” Eliezer said, resignation creeping into his voice.

“Judah will never challenge his
yetzer hara
by assuming a place of authority over the students,” she reminded him. “Besides, Judah must help Papa finish his
kuntres
; he’s one of the few who understands what Papa says.”

“How can I teach this summer and conduct my own business too? Never mind negotiating a betrothal agreement with Moses.” Eliezer felt his frustration mounting. When would he have time to accomplish his astronomical research?

“I’ll handle Moses. I’ll tell him that you accept the match between Shemiah and Glorietta, but that we’ll work out the actual agreement later. And Shmuel can help at the yeshiva. He’s such a
talmid chacham
that he could probably run it himself, except that nobody would accept a rosh yeshiva who was only nineteen.”

“I need to think about it,” he muttered. “And I’ll want to talk to your father first.” Was Salomon really as debilitated as Rachel said? Or was this another of his wife’s ploys to keep him in Troyes?

“Nobody’s chosen the curriculum yet, Eliezer.” Her voice was as sweet as honey. “You could teach whatever tractate you want.”

 

The next day Eliezer sadly discovered that Rachel had not misled him or exaggerated any of the problems. A short visit with Meir was enough to verify his brother-in-law’s incapacity. The poor bedridden fellow was in agony no matter what position he assumed, subjecting Eliezer to more profanity in a half hour than he normally heard in a month of traveling. And after a meal with Salomon, during which he was lucky to decipher one word out of three, Eliezer sadly realized that foreign merchants would find the scholar incomprehensible.

The only good thing was that Rachel was so eager to appease him that she not only refrained from complaints about his buying an astrolabe, but she displayed interest in his astronomical studies or at least convincingly pretended to.

“There must be a way to ascertain whether the celestial sphere rotates and the earth is motionless,” Rachel said slowly, trying to envision the situation. “Or if it’s the reverse.”

“The sky would look identical in either case,” Eliezer pointed out, curious as to how she would respond.

She paused to think. “Surely it would be easier for the earth to rotate than for the stars to race so quickly across the heavens.”

He had to admit that this made sense. Still he followed with some objections he’d heard. “Wouldn’t people and animals fly off a revolving earth? And if the earth were constantly moving, wouldn’t an arrow shot up into the sky come down some distance behind the archer?”

She shot him a withering look. “People and animals don’t fly off a moving boat, and if you throw something in the air while traveling by boat it falls at your feet.”

Eliezer’s eyes widened with respect. “But if the earth revolved, shouldn’t all the stars and planets, plus the sun and the moon, appear to move at the same speed in the sky?”

“Not necessarily. Didn’t Rav Acha bar Yaakov suggest that each planet moves independently?” Rachel’s voice betrayed her frustration. Why was Eliezer asking all these questions?

“So how do you show that he’s right? What evidence would prove that the earth rotates rather than the stars?”

“I’m not an astronomer.” She’d had enough of this subject. “You tell me.”

“That’s it.” Eliezer almost grabbed her shoulder in excitement, but caught himself just in time. “I’m going to teach astronomy in the yeshiva this summer.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped.
Mon Dieu
, what had she started?

“I’m going to teach from the first chapter of Rosh Hashanah, the Sanctification of the New Moon,” he said. “When the Hot Fair is over, your father’s students will know how the sun moves, how the moon moves, and all the secrets of calculating the calendar.”

Her trepidation transformed into enthusiasm; now it was Rachel’s turn to refrain from physical contact. “Oh, Eliezer. I’ve always wanted to know how the calendar is determined. Even Papa doesn’t know the secret calculations; he’s always relied on tables from Mayence.”

Their excitement dampened at the memory of that ruined community and Eliezer sighed. “In that case, it’s even more important that I explain them.”

 

Each afternoon, ostensibly to benefit his injured brother-in-law, but more for his wife and her sisters, Eliezer summarized his lectures at the yeshiva. Rachel and Joheved kept busy with distaff and spindle while Miriam, the only decent embroiderer among them, worked on decorating the sleeves and necklines of Leah’s betrothal outfit.

Eliezer waited until the women were settled with their handiwork. “According to Rabbenu Salomon, the Holy One created the calendar, as it is written [in Genesis]:

Rachel nodded. “Papa says that ‘seasons’ mean our festivals, which occur on certain dates of a month,” she said. “So if there were days, years, and months at Creation, clearly the calendar began then.”

“I think the four components listed in this verse refer to the four celestial creations,” Meir said. “Signs are eclipses, brought by the sun, while seasons or festivals rely on the moon’s cycle. Days last from one appearance of the stars until the next, and a complete cycle of the four
tekufot
constitutes a year.”

“Quite possibly,” Eliezer replied. “While everyone agrees that a month lasts from one new moon to the next, the Rabbis disagree over what constitutes a year.” He continued, “As we study in the first chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin:

Miriam paused to thread her needle with a new color. “Then what does constitute a year? Which of them is correct?”

“Both are.” Eliezer smiled. “The solar year, the time for the
tekufot
to complete their cycle, is 365 days, as Rebbi says.” He turned to Rachel and asked her to explain when the four
tekufot
occur, at what times of year the sun turns in its path.

“Nissan’s
tekufah
occurs in the spring, just before Passover, and Sivan’s in the summer, at the beginning of the Hot Fair,” she said. “The other two are at Sukkot, in the fall, and in winter.” She refused to say that the heretics celebrated the birth of the Hanged One at the winter solstice.

“Excellent. A lunar year is also the time from the first day of Nissan, the first month, until Nissan comes again. As the Sages teach, a year contains twelve months—each corresponding to one of the constellations of the zodiac.”

Rachel surprised him by saying, “Papa once taught us that Nissan’s constellation is the Lamb, for the Passover sacrifice, and that Tishri’s is the Scales, for the judgment we receive on Yom Kippur that month.”

Before they could digress into discussing the other constellations, Eliezer asked, “So how long is a month?”

Joheved raised an eyebrow at his seemingly simple question. “Sometimes twenty-nine days and sometimes thirty. As it says in our Gemara,

“That is because a month, the time between one new moon and the next, is actually twenty-nine days and twelve hours,” Eliezer explained. “But our Rabbis decreed that we cannot have half a day in one month and half in another.”

When nobody asked any questions, Eliezer continued, “In a lunar calendar, the moon will be in the same phase on the same day of the month, which is why Passover, the Fourteenth of Nissan, always occurs at the full moon. But 12 lunar months only add up to 354 days, which means the holidays occur 11 days earlier in the seasons each year.”

“But if that were the case,” Rachel protested, “after ten years Passover would be in the winter.”

“And the Torah says that Passover must be in the spring,” Joheved reminded them.

“That’s why we sometimes have two months of Adar,” Meir said. “To keep Nissan in the spring.” Adar was the month before Nissan.

“Exactly,” Eliezer saluted his brother-in-law. “Our Sages require that if the sun will not reach its spring
tekufah,
the vernal equinox, by the sixteenth day in the month following Adar, then that month is declared Adar II instead of Nissan.”

The others knew this from the Talmud and waited for him to continue. “After the Holy Temple was destroyed, the intercalation rules were secretly established by a council of seven rabbis, the Sod ha-Ibur,” Eliezer explained. “Even so, the
beit din
waited for witnesses before declaring the new moon.”

“Our Gemara says they calculated the calendar to be sure the witnesses were correct,” Rachel said, adding raw wool to her distaff. She could spin almost as quickly as Joheved, who had taken more wool a few moments before.