step out as an ordinary pedestrian when the captain espied him and ordered one of his men to bring him the young Jew.
“Galilean?”
“Nay, Judean.”
“Do you live here?”
“Aye.”
“Are there many strong youths in his place?”
“Nay, Nazareth is poor. The men have gone away. The authorities have taken away the farmers” ploughs and confiscated the tools of the tradesmen. They cannot earn a living here anymore. Therefore they have gone to Tiberias and Caesarea where money can be found.”
“We can use you, boy. We have need of men—for the slave mart. They ought to bring the money you have hidden from Caesar’s treasury. Show me and my men the way. If we catch ten of them we will set you free and your father will not need to redeem you from slavery. Now show us the way.”
At that instant Menachem uttered a piercing scream and struck the Roman commander’s chin with his skull. The soldiers set out in pursuit but Menachem had already disappeared in the running maze of streets which were traversed by small blind alleys where it was impossible to tell one house from another in the public road—unless the idolators set fire to the buildings.
In those days all the people of Nazareth knew the Jerusalemite and looked upon him as a familiar stranger in their midst. As a child he had been a dreamer, a refined son of the capital. Who knew what he had in his mind? As a young man he made it a point of honor to be a helper to the townspeople of Nazareth, a simple friend of everyone in the village, one who enters everywhere and to whom each one said: “Shalom Aleichem.”3
He helped the women carry water or thresh grain and an old man to chop wood. Why he did this he did not know. Probably out of compassion. Menachem was like a tree which must stretch its branches downward in order to protect something from rotting and falling asunder.
Despite his gauntness the Jerusalemite had developed into a handsome youth. Even in this land of black-haired people, the glint of his smooth, luxurious hair was striking. His swift gliding movements, his almost dancing gait had a certain charm. Precisely because Menachem loved the daily life of the earth was he noticed by all the young women and maidens of Nazareth. He was thinking of one of them, of Yocheved, the daughter of Abba ben Alexander when he fled from the Romans. Her house was a large one in front of the village and he knew of a hole in the ground there through which he could enter. The Romans, most likely, would not search for him there, for old Abba—who was somewhat domineering—possessed no sons.
Thus Menachem raced up the streets southwards from which Mount Tabor now appeared, now vanished in the panorama. Finally he reached a road of which only one side was occupied by houses. From this road a small footpath branched out. Menachem sped around the corner of the path and disappeared through a hole in the ground.
God would not permit His people to fall apart and be scattered individually. Life had to be communal for events affected the whole community. So once again there was public mourning, this time over the little town of Nazareth.
Only the week before the inhabitants had refused a tribute which the Tetrarch Antipas had proclaimed in the name of the Romans. There was nothing more to be found in Nazareth so they had sent word to the Idumean. Nothing but bitter pain. Cut us in two, you will find nothing!
And now Rome had arrived on a man-hunt for its money. Within three quarters of an hour the town changed its aspect three times. It was normal when Menachem’s shrieks gave a voice to one specific meaning. Then all life was sucked from the streets and it became a dead city. The strangers battered down the doors, windows and walls with axes, pickaxes, clubs and stones. The contents of the houses spilled onto the streets. They set fire to the rat holes and drove the rodents outside. These, however, were people. When would man understand that people were human beings, not animals. God had never said to mankind in the book of Genesis: “I give your fellow man into your hands. Use him. Enjoy him.”
That was the question on Yeshua’s mind as he beheld the acts of violence. He feared not for himself nor did he offer relief, as it was still for him to decide whether he would choose to feed on wormwood and bitter herbs.
In times of great anguish the holiest people and whatever they hold most sacred are sacrificed in the marketplace. Where others are present, and precisely because others are present, they give up their attachment to a child, a man, a sweetheart, to life itself, on the communal altar.
The soldiers searched the houses and hovels, dragging away men and youths to which the women clung tenaciously like dogs that refuse to release the meat which must nourish them.
“Nazareth is descending into Sheol!” wailed the man who dispensed wisdom at the city gate. It was a bright, clear day in the month of Sivan but grief and weeping filled the streets of Nazareth and screams rent the air like yellow lightning.
Yeshua wondered what he would do if the Romans dragged away his father, a man of fifty. Surely Miriam his mother would cling to him tightly and refuse to let him go. Perhaps a idolator would kick her in the stomach then.
At that moment Yehudith, wife of the tinsmith, clung frantically to her husband while two Romans dragged him away by chains around the wrist. They had probably found the chains in his workshop. The tinsmith was thirty years old and the father of three children.
Where would he die now? As an eunuch in Alexandria? Withered by the sun in the land of Kush? Had he begotten three children for this? Was it for this that his parents had looked at him gratefully when he was born? “Why must this be?” asked Yeshua. And still the events glided past him like time through space.
If they dragged away his father, Miriam would also cling tightly to Joseph. That too, Yeshua would have to witness in grief. He would have to sacrifice and give up so much before he could intervene.
How should a person intervene?
Close beside he heard an old man’s voice crying: “Yeshua, Yeshua, flee. They are coming. They are abducting young men!” But Yeshua did not flee. The old sandal maker Amitai who had warned him to flee was running to meet the Romans himself. Two huge blond men from the lands beyond the sea had seized his son. They kicked his son in the shins for he struggled to break free. Then did Amitai make a ridiculous jump for such an old man and flung his arms around the neck of his tall son. He pressed his shriveled body against him as though they were a lover and his mistress.
“My son, my only son!”
The foreign soldiers remained motionless for the boy was almost falling. A Roman centurion approached and said in broken Aramaic:
“Stop your yapping or we slay your son. Away, hop!”
They tore the old man away from his son. Amitai could not stand the shock and toppled lengthwise to the ground like a beast hurled through space. In an instant he realized what had happened. Two worlds had locked into one another like cogs. The old man raised his hands and murmured to the Romans in a language they did not understand:
“By what right do you take away my son, idolators? Even Israel has no right to drag him away for no one shall deprive an old father of his only child and breadwinner.”
“What is he mumbling?” demanded the commander. “Forward.”
Suddenly the soldiers who held Amitai’s son fast felt a stabbing pain behind their loins. Collapsing,
