That small recess of four by five cubits, separated by a flimsy, rotting partition and a shoddy carpet from his sweaty parents and clammy sisters was an exceptional gift, he would have to admit, that he would never have come by had he been healthy. It was a prison cell, but a voluntary one — freedom itself.
He tossed and turned restlessly on his bed in that alcove for nights on end, an acidic sting constantly creeping into his throat, and if he eventually drifted off he would be haunted by abominable images and wake up choking, coughing, gasping for air because the sour spit would find its way into his lungs. He had nobody to cry out to, only the Lord, for whom he would gladly have been a priest, although he could not for lots of reasons, his physical ailments among them. Any one of his miseries was enough to disqualify him from the priesthood, but most of all it was that he did not descend from Aaron’s clan. His ancestors were anonymous Jewish grubbers of the land whom a blustering Alexander once press-ganged into military service. They had been taken prisoner by the Romans, just two years short of a century ago. He had no one to cry out to; even the Lord never answered his prayers. But that little cubbyhole of four by five cubits was an exceptional gift; nobody came in, he could read, dream, or ruminate to his heart’s content, peer out the window every now and then, and that too was life of a sort, and no doubt pleasing to the Lord, if he had created it.
He peered out the window, flexed his aching back, and it was then that he remembered something his father had said shortly before:
“You’re setting off for Jerusalem the day after tomorrow!”
Jerusalem, for Lord’s sake!
Me, of all people!
He huddled back on his rags and carefully set the scroll he was holding, a work written by a Syrian peripatetic philosopher who had become fashionable in Italia, onto the floor of packed earth, turned away from the window, and stared in front of him.
My father must love me after all, was the first clear thought to enter his head. He finagled a trip to Jerusalem for me! He can bother himself with me after all!
It was such a good feeling that tears sprang to Uri’s eyes.
Jerusalem! Home! Where the Temple is!
Since there was a Temple and a Diaspora, the entrance of every synagogue faced Jerusalem; it was toward Jerusalem that everyone looked who stood on a bimah, the pulpit from which the Torah is read. It was toward Jerusalem that all Jews everywhere in the world bowed when they said their prayers at home; he too bowed toward Jerusalem, to the southeast, when he said his prayers three times daily, his back to the north-facing window, in the left-hand corner beside the carpet that covered the door opening, where he did nothing else. Or rather, he did: he stared out the window from there. He could not stare out from anywhere else if he did not want to be noticed, but this corner had enormous power as a result of the prayers that had been performed there, and it mattered not that no one else knew: it was enough that he knew, and it was the Lord’s duty, even though He did not concern himself much with human affairs, to see that he, Uri, did nothing with his wretched life other than to bring it to the Lord’s attention that he existed. Should the Lord happen, one day, to peek into this nook.
He would be the first person in the family to go to Jerusalem since his great-great-grandfather had been dragged off to Italia. The attention of the indifferent Lord must have drifted toward him, finally!
His father had not reached Jerusalem, nor his grandparents, nor his great-grandparents, nor his great-great-grandparents, nobody he knew or had been told about, no one among the names he had been obliged to repeat since he was a toddler, so that the tribal memory was not lost. There were many dozens of names of dead people that he had to include in his prayers every single day.
Rome was only the center of the wide world. Jerusalem belonged to the Lord: the center of the Jewish world, the Holy City of the Chosen People, and therefore, because there was one Lord, the center of the whole Creation. That was where he was going to go.
It was an unexpected gift, all the more so because he had never asked for it, never longed for it.
He needed to think this through.
His father, whom he had supposed, stupidly and spitefully, did not care about him and would happily exchange him for a child in perfect health, had now presented him with the greatest gift that a Diaspora Jew could be given: to be sent to Jerusalem.
His conscience now began to prick at him. Why had he not asked the Lord to guide him back to Jerusalem? What sort of halfheartedness had gripped him, one of the Chosen People, so that this had not so much as entered his mind? Why had he been so content to be born in Rome and to live there?
Nonetheless, the main thing about the joy that was arising slowly and spreading to his every atom was “Father loves me after all.”
Uri was sitting under the window, facing the middle of the tiny room, brooding over things as he stared into the air before him. It was the beginning of February now. If all went well, he could reach Jerusalem in early April… Just in time for Passover, perhaps! He might be in Jerusalem for Passover!
He shivered: he understood it now.
His father had arranged for him to join the delegation that would be taking the offering of First Fruits — the Holy Money, the aparkhai.
He was going to Jerusalem with the delegation!
The Jews celebrated three major festivals each year, and by the Roman calendar Passover, the spring festival, was the first, when the autumn sowing would be ripening. This was the Feast of the Unleavened Bread; that is what the ancestors took with them when, under the direction of Moses, they were delivered from enslavement in Egypt. This was the festival for which all Jews, wherever they might be living, sent their sacrifices, or tithes, to Jerusalem. Anyone living up to three days’ walk from Jerusalem would take their own offering, whether of meat or grain or fruit; those who lived farther away would send it via their elected representatives; and those who lived very far from Jerusalem, like the Roman Jews — they also included, for instance, those living in Babylon or Parthia, on the Greek islands or in Egypt — would send a monetary redemption for the offering of First Fruits. The obligatory sacrifices of animals and grain could be exchanged for money at any time, but in such cases it was necessary to pay one fifth more than the officially established price for a sacrificial animal or produce.
The Roman Jews sent money to Jerusalem once a year, for Passover; a monetary redemption, and not just because crops would go moldy on the way but because the Roman Jews had little to do with agricultural production, and what little they did produce would be used to provide for their own Levites. They only had small gardens in which to grow anything at all, because the Jews of Rome were not permitted to own farmland, either within the city limits or beyond. Even a Roman citizen with full rights was not allowed to farm in Rome or in the vicinity of the city if he was a Jew; land could only belong to the community, and even that had to be beyond the city wall — the cemetery. Far Side itself did not belong to the Jews but to the state — that was the law. They had outgrown the cemetery on the Appian Way, and it could not easily be extended. Negotiations were in progress with the magistrates to open another cemetery somewhere; the municipal office was currently offering the Via Nomentana, which could not be farther away, whereas the Jewish magistrates were asking for a plot on nearby Monteverde, so a tug of war was underway.
The sacrificial money was taken to Jerusalem by an elected delegation. It was a large amount of money, so the undertaking was not without danger; there had been instances when those carrying it had been robbed and slaughtered, after which the Roman Jews would collect the money all over again and send it the following Passover. The aparchai covered a per capita tax of half a shekel (or didrachma, which meant two drachmas or two denarii) plus any voluntary donations. Jewish men between twenty and fifty were happy to pay the half shekel of tax, because he was either one of the Lord’s Chosen People or not, but if he was, then he could count his blessings.