Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (62 page)

“I don’t know, Shemiah. I’m still in
sheloshim
for my father.” Surely her son was exaggerating Eliezer’s illness, in addition to Eliezer’s fondness for her.

“The root of Papa’s problems is that he has abandoned Torah for astronomy and all those other secular subjects so popular in Sepharad. As Rabbi Yohanan taught in Tractate Berachot:

Shemiah locked eyes with her. “You must bring Papa back to Troyes so he can study Torah again. Only that can save him.”

Rachel shook her head. “I tried that a few years ago, but it didn’t work.”

“Because Papa hadn’t suffered enough yet.”

“I need to think about it.” Had Eliezer finally lost the protection of Torah study? For also in Berachot,

“Please don’t think about it for too long,” he pleaded. “I considered Papa’s condition so perilous that I rode on Shabbat to get here faster.”

 

For two weeks Shemiah said nothing about Eliezer, but his reproachful looks were like arrows in Rachel’s breast. She knew her son believed what he’d told her; otherwise he’d never have traveled on the Sabbath. But was Eliezer really that sick or had he manipulated Shemiah to force her to come to Toledo against her will? Could she possibly convince him to return to Troyes and study Talmud again?

Yet she knew the only question that mattered was if Eliezer truly loved her, and only by seeing him would she know if the answer was yes. But how could she decide without her father’s advice? And she needed to make up her mind soon, for no decision would be a decision. The end of
sheloshim
would coincide with the close of the Hot Fair, when she could travel safely with the many merchants returning to their native lands.

The thirtieth day after Papa’s death was a Friday, and Rachel solemnly accompanied her sisters to the bathhouse to acknowledge the end of this period of bereavement. Now they could return to normal life for the most part, with only the few strictures imposed on those mourning their parents. As Rachel gratefully washed a month’s worth of dirt from her hair, she wished something would happen to push her one way or the other.

The Hot Fair would be over in five days.

She considered going to the synagogue that night, to consult with Papa’s ghost, but she didn’t dare. Every day at the cemetery she’d begged his spirit, who must know her future, to give her a sign, but she neither saw nor heard anything unusual. So while her sisters were celebrating Shabbat with their husbands, Rachel went to bed alone with a heavy heart.

The next thing she knew, it was daytime and she was outside watching Miriam weed the herb garden. But wait, it was Mama, not Miriam—Mama as she looked when she was young. Mama turned around at Rachel’s approach and opened her arms to embrace her.

“You were a dutiful daughter to take such excellent care of your father.” Mama was beaming. “He is very pleased with you.”

Unable to speak, Rachel waited while her mother continued, “He told me to release you from my deathbed request so you can tend to your husband. It is your obligation to care for Eliezer, to see that his needs are met so he can study Torah without worrying about worldly concerns.”

Rachel wanted to say that Eliezer wasn’t her husband any longer, but her mother waved her hand in dismissal. “A mother knows her daughter’s heart, and there he is still your husband. Just as in Eliezer’s heart you are still his wife.”

“He is alive then?” she was able to ask.

Mama nodded. “Your father says Eliezer is not so ill that you should violate the Sabbath for him.”

“Let me see Papa. Let me talk to him,” Rachel cried out.

“He’s at Shabbat services now: I can’t disturb him.”

“But I never got to say good-bye,” she pleaded.

It was too late. Mama and the herb garden were disappearing in a fog. “He says to pray Psalms 138 and 140 on your trip,” were Mama’s fading words.

When Rachel woke up, she remembered that these were the psalms invoked to reawaken love between a man and a woman.

Saturday night, the first of Elul, Rachel was about to blow out her bedroom lamp when Miriam called through the door, “Rachel, I hope you’re not asleep yet.”

Rachel quickly let her sister in. “
Non
—I was just about to get in bed though.”

“Elizabeth needs help with some twins she’s delivering, so I wanted to say adieu to you tonight, as I doubt I’ll be home in the morning.”

“I’m glad you’ve come.” Rachel gave Miriam a warm hug.

“Shemiah says you refused to let him go with you,” Miriam said with a frown.

Before Rachel could reply, Joheved peeked through the slightly open doorway. “I thought I heard voices.” She tiptoed in and closed the door behind her. “I don’t think you should travel alone either.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be safe with all the merchants.” Rachel’s voice conveyed her determination. “My son has already spent too much time away from his wife, and I want him to be here with her, especially if I’m delayed for several months until Eliezer is well enough to ride.”

Joheved’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “You mean . . . ?”

Rachel smiled and nodded. “Rivka told me that Glorietta hasn’t immersed in the pond with her all summer.”

“I’m glad you’re bringing Eliezer back.” Miriam’s expression clouded. “Papa’s death hit Judah very hard, and I don’t know if he can finish Papa’s
kuntres
without Eliezer’s help.”

“I’m not sure Eliezer and I will stay in Troyes all the year.” When Rachel saw her sisters’ disappointment, she quickly added, “Of course we’ll be here most of the time, making sure the yeshiva thrives and visiting our grandchildren. But I’d like to travel in between fairs, for there are so many places we haven’t seen together.”

“What if Eliezer still insists on living in Toledo?” Miriam asked.

Rachel had prepared herself for that possibility. “We could spend part of the year there, with Eliezer opening a small yeshiva.”

They might even work on the king’s translations together. After all, why should all that Latin she’d learned go to waste? For if she, a woman, could study Talmud, why couldn’t she study Ptolemy or Aristotle?

“That’s a good idea,” Joheved said. “Meir and I are concerned that the only yeshivot left are in France.” She hesitated and lowered her voice. “If things go badly for the Franks in Jerusalem, I’m afraid they may take vengeance on the Jews here.”

Rachel sighed. So Eliezer wasn’t the only one afraid of what those who worshipped the Hanged One might do in the future.

“We must have faith in the Holy One, Who will never forsake us as long as we keep learning Torah.”

“You’re right,” Joheved replied, as Miriam nodded in agreement. “And we must work to send Papa’s commentaries to all the foreign communities, so his words won’t be lost no matter what happens.”

Miriam stepped forward and embraced Rachel for a long time. “I mustn’t keep Elizabeth waiting. Please be careful, and write us as soon as you arrive.”

“And my little sister needs a good night’s sleep before her long journey,” Joheved added before following Miriam out the door and closing it silently behind them.

 

The next morning Rachel rose to the sounds of one shofar after another blowing throughout the Jewish Quarter, their raucous calls intermingled with the peals of Troyes’ many church bells. Her necessities for the long journey were packed, but Rachel realized there was something she’d forgotten. She unlocked the chest at her bedside and took out her
get
from Eliezer. She noticed her hands were shaking and took a deep breath to calm herself. When she saw Eliezer again, she would return the divorce decree to him so he could destroy it.

Don’t worry, she told herself, as she rode through the narrow streets leading to the fairgrounds, where the merchants from Sepharad were assembling. Wherever there were Jews in the world, there would be Torah study. And no matter what happened with Eliezer, no matter where she ended up living, Papa’s spirit would watch over her.

 

And so may the spirit of Rabbenu Salomon ben Isaac continue to watch over all the daughters of Israel who study Talmud.

epilogue

SALOMON BEN ISAAC’S LEGACY CONTINUED through his eleven grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. By the time Joheved died in 1135, outliving her sisters and brothers-in-law, her son Jacob, now called Rabbenu Tam, was recognized as the undisputed head of Ashkenaz Jewry. Interestingly it was Hannah’s son who became the outstanding scholar and leader of the next generation, not one of Salomon’s grandsons’ sons, as his family’s greatness continued through the female line.

Sadly the erudition, creativity, and tolerance of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance were to be short-lived. As Rachel and Eliezer feared, the Crusades opened the Levant to Christian merchants, and by the thirteenth century, the great Italian city-states had supplanted Jews as long-distance traders.

In early 1171, the first accusation of ritual murder in France was leveled against the Jews of Blois, resulting in thirty-one Jews being burned at the stake—including Count Thibault’s Jewish mistress, who refused to forsake her people. In that final year of his life, Rabbenu Tam unleashed his formidable influence to provoke such widespread condemnation of the events in Blois that even King Louis publicly proclaimed his refusal to believe such scandalous charges against the Jews.

But in 1187, when Saladin united Egyptian and Turkish armies to recapture Jerusalem, nobody could save the Jews after that.

The failed Third Crusade demoralized France, and after the disastrous Fourth Crusade, which ended with the sack of Constantinople, Christian fighting Christian, the Church turned its eyes toward Europe.

The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 decreed that Jews must wear special badges to distinguish them from the rest of the population, an edict enforced in England and royal France, but ignored in Provence, Spain, and Champagne. The thirteenth century saw a growing concern with heresy, leading to the Talmud being burned in Paris in 1242.

Worse was yet to come. In 1267 the Inquisition was established to punish Christian heretics, as well as Jews who “induced” Christians to convert. Champagne was no longer a haven. In 1268 the count confiscated all Jewish goods and loans to finance a crusade that ended dismally with the death of King Louis in Tunis. Ritual murder accusations came to Troyes in 1288, where thirteen Jews were turned over to the Inquisition, found guilty, and burned alive.

The final blow came when the entire Jewish population of France was expelled in 1306, forcing more than twenty thousand Jews to leave Champagne. Thus, just two hundred years after his death, Salomon ben Isaac’s many descendants abandoned their homes and fled to every corner of Europe: Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Provence, Italy, and Spain. More expulsions followed, scattering his seed further. A statistician at Stanford has calculated that someone with European Jewish ancestry today is almost certainly descended from Rashi.

As his descendants spread throughout Europe and the Levant, they brought with them his Torah and Talmud commentaries. Eliezer may have been correct in his predictions of the Crusades’ devastating effect on Ashkenaz, but he was wrong in saying that Salomon’s words would die with him.

Today more Jews study Rashi every day than all other Jewish scholars together—in synagogues, yeshivot, and Jewish homes throughout the world. Some say that without Rashi’s
kuntres
, Talmud would be lost to Judaism and the Jewish religion would be very different, if indeed it existed at all.

And just as Talmud study has continued to thrive in our generation, as women find the subject no longer closed to them, so there is a new future for the Jews of Troyes. Empty of Jews for five hundred years, the city has been repopulated by a community of Sephardim expelled from Muslim Algeria when the State of Israel was established in 1948. Across the street from their synagogue sits the Rashi Institute, founded in 1989 to study the history of French Jewry.

Indeed some of my own research was done within its walls.

afterword

ONE QUESTION MORE THAN ANY OTHER INTRIGUES my readers: what is fact in
Rashi’s Daughters
and what is fiction?

Salomon ben Isaac was a real man, whose commentaries and responsa contain thousands of words about his life, his community, and his opinions. Regarding him, I have made every attempt to be as historically accurate as possible, and when forced to be creative, I have used the wealth of information contained in his writings to stay true to his character as I know it.

His daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren are also historical figures, as are the various clerics and feudal lords who appear in this book, and I used their real names whenever they were known. I did have to invent a name for Rashi’s wife, and for some of his granddaughters as well, because the names of most Jewish women in history have been lost to us. I also fabricated a few grandchildren who would die young, ensuring that my tale reflected this sad historical reality that was the eleventh century.