So everyone prayed separately, and while praying they beat their heads against the sides of the ship in order to divert their thoughts. Finally, everyone returned to his own place and sat down as though he were in mourning. Gradually the night grew darker and the ship went its accustomed way. The sailors tightened the masts and sails and sat down to eat and drink, while facing them our comrades sat, distress eating at their hearts. Who knew where Hananiah could be? Maybe he had been taken captive, God forbid, and sold as a slave.
The darkness grew thicker and thicker. Rats and mice were scurrying around in the lower parts of the ship and were gnawing at utensils and foodstuffs.
Where there is great anxiety, sleep helps to put it right. But who could enjoy sleep when one of their number had left them, and they had no way of knowing whether he was alive or dead. How much Hananiah had wandered about! How much trouble he had gone through! He had put himself in danger and disregarded his own life and had had no fear for his body, desiring only to go up to the Land of Israel; and yet now that his time had come to go up, something had gone wrong and he had not come aboard!
At the midnight hour the comrades sat on their baggage and uttered songs and prayers in honor of the great Name of Him who dwells in Zion. The stars moved in the sky, while the moon was now covered, now uncovered. The ship went on, the waters moved as usual, and a still small voice rose from the ship. It was the sound of song and praise rising from one firmament to another, till they reached the Gateway of White Sapphire where the prayers of Israel gather and join together until such time as the dawn comes to the Land of Israel. Corresponding to the prayers of Israel, praises of the Holy One, blessed be he, rise up from the waters.
Is it possible for water which has neither utterance nor speech so to praise the Holy One, blessed be He? But these sounds are the voices of the boys and girls who once flung themselves into the sea. After the wicked Titus destroyed Jerusalem, he brought three thousand ships and filled them with boys and girls. When they were out to sea, they said to one another, Was it not enough for us to have angered the Holy One, blessed be he, in his house, and now are we to be required to anger him in the land of Edom? Thereupon they all leaped into the sea together. What did the Holy One, blessed be he, do? He took them in his right hand and brought them to a great island planted with all manner of fine trees, and surrounded them with all kinds of beautifully colored waves, blue and marble and alabaster, looking like the stones of the Temple; and the plants from which the Temple incense was made grow there. And all those who saw that plant would weep and laugh. They would weep because they remembered the glory of the House, and they would laugh because the Holy One, blessed be he, is destined to bring that glory back.
And the boys and girls still remain as innocent as ever, fenced about from all iniquity, their faces like the rosebud, just as we learn in the tale about the rose garden which was once to be found in Jerusalem. And the brightness of their faces gives light like the planet Venus, whose light comes from the shining of the Beasts that are before God’s throne.
And the children have no wrinkles either on their brows or their faces, apart from two wrinkles under the eyes from which their tears run down into the Great Sea and cool the Gehenna of those sinners of Israel who never lost their faith in the Land of Israel. These children are not subject to any prince or ruler, neither to the king of Edom nor to the king of Ishmael, nor to any flesh-and-blood monarch; but they stand in the shadow of the Holy One, blessed be He, and call him Father and He calls them my children. And all their lives long they speak of the glory of Jerusalem and the glory of the House, and the glory of the High Priests and the altar, and of those who offered the sacrifices and those who prepared the incense and those who made the shewbread.
And whenever the Holy One, blessed be he, remembers his sons who have been exiled among the nations, who have neither Temple nor altar of atonement, nor High Priests nor Levites at their stations, nor kings and princes, he at once is filled with pity and takes those boys and girls in his arm and holds them to his heart and says to them, Sons and daughters mine, do you remember the glory of Jerusalem and the glory of Israel when the Temple still stood and Israel still possessed its splendor?
They at once begin telling Him what they saw in their childhood, and go on interpreting like Daniel, the beloved man, and Jonathan ben Uziel. The only difference is that Daniel and Jonathan wrote in Aramaic, while these children speak the Holy Tongue, which is the tongue the Holy One, blessed be He, uses. And at such times the Holy One, blessed be He, laughs with them; and you might say that at no other times does he laugh and smile as he does when he hears the praises of his House and the praises of those who came to his House. At such times he says, ‘This is the people which I formed for Myself that they might tell of My praise.’ And he also says, ‘Comfort ye,’ for in the future Jerusalem will be builded a thousand thousand times more great than she was, and the Temple will reach from one end of the world to the other and be as lofty as the stars of the heavens and the wheels of my divine Chariot; and the Divine Presence will rest upon each and every one of Israel; and each and every one of them will speak in the Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, all the years that those boys and girls have dwelt in the midst of the sea they have constantly awaited salvation, and there is no ship sailing to the Land of Israel which these boys and girls do not follow. For when they see a ship at sea, one says to the other, The time has come for the Gathering of the Exiles. Thereupon, each of them takes one of the great sea waves and mounts it as a rider mounts his horse and rides until he comes near the ship.
And as they ride they sing, ‘I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.’ And their voices are as golden bells in the skirts of a garment, and they are heard by those who go down to the sea. Indeed we have heard a tale from such as tell only the truth, of how they were sailing to the Land of Israel on the Great Sea and heard a voice so sweet they wished to leap into the sea and follow that voice; but the sailors tied them up with their belts until the ship had sailed a distance away from the voice.
The moon sank, the stars went in, and the planets went their way. The Holy One, blessed be He, brought forth the dawn and lit up the world. As the dawn grew bright the travelers saw the likeness of a man on the sea. They stared and saw that he had a full beard, earlocks on either cheek and a book in his hand; and a kerchief was spread out under him and on it he sat as a man who sits at his ease. No wave of the sea rose to drown him, nor did any sea beast swallow him.
And what did the Gentiles say when they saw a man sitting on his kerchief and floating in the sea? Some of them said, Such things are often seen by seafarers and desert-farers. Others said, Whoever he is, he has a curse hanging over him so that nevermore can he rest. That is why he wanders from place to place, appearing yesterday on the dry land and today on the sea.
On that ship there were representatives of each of the seventy nations of the world, and each of them was overwhelmed and terrified at this apparition. So Israel stood on one side and the nations of the world on the other, fearful and staring, until their eyelashes became scorched by the sun. Then Rabbi Shmuel Yosef, the son of Rabbi Shalom Mordekhai ha-Levi, said, It is the Divine Presence, which is bringing back the people of Israel to their own place.