Take This Cup

  This did not sound much more impressive to me. I must have appeared skeptical that anyone cared about so insignificant a chunk of rock.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Grandfather agreed, “but that’s Andromeda’s Rock. It’s the place where she was chained; later she was rescued by Perseus.”

  Now I recognized the tale, as repeated to me by Rabbi Kagba. “I know about this,” I said. “My teacher showed me the star patterns from the story.”

  According to ancient legend, Andromeda’s mother had angered the Greek gods by her prideful boasting. They sent a sea monster to destroy their cities. The attacks would only stop if she sacrificed her daughter, Andromeda, to the monster. The legend had a happy ending when a hero named Perseus, riding Pegasus, the flying horse, killed the monster and rescued Andromeda.

  I nodded. “She, her mother, Perseus, the horse, and even the monster are all named in the heavens, at least by the Greeks. And the other people who live in our country—the Parthians who used to be Persians—say their race was founded by Perseus and Andromeda.”

  Grandfather looked unhappy. “You know this story very well already.”

  “But I like seeing the place where they say it happened. Is it true?”

  Grandfather brightened at my expression of interest. He inclined his head and offered with a grin, “Perhaps an enterprising Greek merchant opened an inn here and needed to attract travelers.”

  “Didn’t the prophet Jonah leave from here when he tried to flee from the Almighty?” I inquired. “Joseph told me that.”

  “And in Jonah’s story the Almighty made a great fish swallow Jonah, not to kill him, but to save him,” Grandfather mused. “That’s kind of like a sea monster, isn’t it?”

  Now my thoughts were racing. “Who lived here before the Greeks or us Jews?”

  “The Philistines. They worshipped a god named Dagon. He was supposed to be half man and half fish.”

  “Now that’d be a monster,” I said, picturing the image. “What about the people Jonah was supposed to preach to? What did they worship?”

  “The wicked old city of Nineveh?” Grandfather pondered aloud. “I think they worshipped Dagon too.”

  “So when Jonah came alive out of the great fish and preached, they saw how much greater our God was than theirs. Even sea monsters obey the Almighty.”

  Grandfather wiped his forehead. “Have you thought about training to become a rabbi, Nehemiah?”

  “Rabbi Kagba says I could be a scholar, like him,” I reported honestly.

  “He may be right there,” Grandfather agreed. “I wonder what your mentor would think about what Jesus of Nazareth said about Jonah.”

  “Jesus? He talked about Jonah?”

  Grandfather shrugged. “So says a Pharisee customer of mine. He doubts Jesus is really the Messiah, so he asked the man from Galilee to give him a sign. ‘What sign will you perform, so I might believe in you?’ he says he asked.”

  After all I had heard about lame men being made to walk and blind men to see and even dead children raised to life, it seemed to me like a very rude question. However, I inquired, “And what did Jesus say?”

  Stroking his full, white beard, Grandfather stared at Andromeda’s Rock and returned, “Supposedly all he said was, ‘No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.’ ”1

  “The sign of Jonah? What does that mean?”

  Grandfather spread his hands wide. “I have no idea. Neither did the Pharisee, though he likes to be thought very learned. ‘A runaway prophet?’ the Pharisee said. ‘A disobedient man?’ ” Grandfather chuckled at remembering the exasperated Pharisee, and when he chuckled, he wheezed and then coughed. “I said, ‘Doesn’t this Jesus preach repentance, just like Jonah?’ And he said, ‘But that’s not a sign! All prophets do that!’ ”

  “What about being swallowed by the great fish?” I ventured, wide-eyed at the thought.

  Grandfather was seized with a paroxysm of laughter and coughing. “That’s just what the Pharisee said! Said he’d like to see Jesus manage that one!”

  “Three days in the fish,” I pondered aloud. “Buried at the bottom of the sea. Like being dead and then coming back to life. That truly would be a sign.”

  “Eh? What’s that you say?”

  “Nothing, Grandfather. Just thinking aloud.”

  Chapter 24

  The news from Jerusalem did not improve. True to my grandparents’ premonitions, the plague of the choking sickness fell hardest on the beggars of the Holy City. Word had come to Joppa from Grandfather’s business acquaintances that nearly all the Sparrows were stricken with the illness and many had died.

  No one but God kept account of Sparrows, it seemed. No one knew any of the names, living or dead. Had my friends survived?

  The Pharisee who brought the news said it was a sign of God’s judgment on sin. “Just like cripples and those who contract leprosy,” he said. “This disease is proof that God strikes evildoers and lawbreakers. No one among the truly pious is in jeopardy.”

  I felt myself staring at the man. He was speaking of my friends as if they deserved this affliction! But I knew those the Pharisee thought pious, by which he meant the wealthy, had fled from disease or locked themselves behind high walls and barred gates until the plague snuffed itself out, together with the life of the last victim.

  “I have heard,” my grandfather said, “that Lazarus of Bethany, widely regarded as a righteous man, has taken on himself the role of caregiver to the beggars, especially the link-bearer children.”

  The Pharisee sniffed. “I’m sure he means well—a charitable act. But he’s misguided. Those orphan beggars? Pickpockets and thieves, every one. No doubt they deserve this punishment.”

  I struggled with anger at his fat, pompous, arrogant face! The Pharisee must have seen the burning hostility in my eyes because when he glanced at me, he swiftly turned away.

  My grandmother had also noticed my distress. She came and stood beside me. A calming spirit, like that I had always known from my mother, enveloped me.

  My grandfather, his eyes narrowed and his voice polite but cold, explained, “My daughter and her husband—this grandson’s parents—were attacked by bandits and are likely dead. You should be more careful in what you say about orphans.”

  I clung to my grandmother and sobbed as the weight of Grandfather’s words fell across me. So he, too, believed my mother and father were dead!

  “Didn’t mean . . . ,” the Pharisee fumbled. “Your family aren’t beggars,” he finished awkwardly. Lifting the weight of several chins, the Pharisee nodded curtly to a waiting servant, who had stood silent with downcast eyes. The Pharisee completed his transaction for a dozen expensive prayer shawls and left.

  “Listen, Nehemiah,” my grandfather said, “I’m sorry you had to endure that preening Pharisee. I didn’t mean to upset you. We will not lose hope. Not you or me or your grandmother. The plague in Jerusalem is a terrible thing. Even your rabbi Jesus seems to have fled from it.”

  A single clay lamp burned in the hall outside my bedroom. Flickering light tossed fragments of shadows against the walls. The tiny flame labored to push back the darkness. It exhaled a ribbon of sooty smoke that streaked the plaster and pooled overhead like an upside-down puddle of oily water.

  Every night my grandmother lit the lamp—to comfort me, she said.

  Every morning she scrubbed at the wall and climbed on a chair to clean the ceiling.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor, my back to the entry. The meager illumination fell over my shoulder onto Joseph’s cup. The lambskin wrapping lay across my lap.

  Idly, I scratched the blackened surface of the cup but could not raise an answering gleam. There was not even so much shine as what reflected from my fingernails. Unlike the wall and the ceiling soiled with smoke, the tarnished surface of the cup refused to be cleaned.

  The obstinate stain matched my own gloomy outlook.

  Did everyone I loved die? Were my parents dead? And
Rabbi Kagba? Were my friends in Jerusalem all gone? Was I a curse and a danger to my grandparents?

  What if this unattractive object was not really Joseph’s cup at all? What if everything I had experienced had been for nothing? What if everything I had believed had proven untrue—worse than false, treacherous?

  Yet, as I reviewed what Rabbi Kagba had taught me, I could not extinguish the remaining glimmer of hope. He had spoken confidence into my life. Like the diminutive glow of the oil lamp, part of me still worked at pushing back bleak despair. I had dreamed of Joseph the Dreamer. Together we had witnessed Father Abraham and the king-priest Melchizedek, and King David and his mighty men.

  Dreams, I argued with myself. Only dreams and no substance in which to place any trust.

  And Adam’s Hart? There was the something I could not explain away. I had ridden the White Hart.

  Together with the cup I held in my hands—tarnished and unlovely but real and significant—the memory of the hart confirmed everything my mentor had prophesied over me: I would see Messiah. I would be cupbearer to the King.

  “Your thoughts can be hopeful and gloomy by turns,” remarked a familiar voice.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I replied to Joseph the Dreamer, who stood in the corner of my room. “And yes, you’re right. But the path is so uncertain. The weight of grief and suffering seems all out of proportion to the fragment of hope.”

  Joseph nodded. His expression was sympathetic and not at all disapproving or disappointed in me. He said, “When I was in the pit, pleading with my brothers for my life, do you think I was cheerful?”

  I shook my head. Though Joseph was used by the Almighty for great purposes, his life was no less difficult because he believed in his destiny.

  “When I was in prison, for something I did not do,” he offered, “I dreamed of home. I dreamed of my father, of my brother, Benjamin, of my mother, Rachel, who had died long years before. I missed her a lot.”

  This was painful for me to hear. Even knowing that in olam haba, the world to come, all was put right, I was still sorry on Joseph’s behalf.

  “And when I awoke amid happy thoughts of home and being loved, only to find myself on the wet, stinking floor of the prison in Egypt, do you think I did not grieve for what I had lost?”

  I shook my head. “It must have been a torment.”

  “Every day!” Joseph confirmed. “And each day I had to draw on the tiny bit of hope given me by the faith of my father and grandfather.” Joseph flicked his fingers toward the lamp outside my door. Pinprick sparks shimmered upward, as when my mother tossed spice into the Sabbath flames for a sweet savor.

  “Hope,” Joseph said earnestly, “is no less real because it seems small amid the darkness. Faith is no less yours to claim because you struggle against doubt.”

  Below me my grandparents had a dinner celebration with a few close friends, but none were my age. I heard their banter, but no one present was interested in talking with me.

  As soon as I was excused from supper, I came to the rooftop. The location carried my thoughts back to an earlier year—that Purim when Rabbi Kagba opened the skies and showed me the heavenly cup and the celestial hart. Bundled again in my shepherd’s coat and boots, I peered into a cloudy sky for some glimpse of my old starry friends. Misty banners, torn from the fabric of the storm, carried news of the tempest toward Jerusalem but did not linger in Joppa.

  Waves crashed against Andromeda’s Rock. Long swells swept in from the northwest, to land with hollow, jarring thuds on Joppa’s promontory. I wondered if they came from Cyprus, or perhaps as far away as the Pillars of Hercules.

  The wind howled in my ears, screeching pipes to the drumbeat of the breakers. These were lonely, disquieting sounds on a lonely, unpeaceful night.

  Still no word of my brothers. No news about my teacher either.

  I was safe, I was loved, I was cared for, yet I was restless.

  Several houses up the street I glimpsed a man striding purposefully along as he passed beneath a blazing torch. He was alone and completely wrapped in a long cloak, with a hood over his head. The wind threatened to turn his robes into sails and spin him off east, like the clouds.

  Like a ship quartering into the gale to avoid being flung on the rocks, he had to lean into the blast. Why would anyone be out on such a bitter night? I wondered. I rubbed wind-plucked tears from my eyes and watched.

  Two houses away he stopped. Peering back the way he had come, he counted entries, as if uncertain of his destination. When his tabulation ceased, he was pointing at Grandfather’s gate!

  Beneath my gaze he pulled the bell rope, but no one answered. Between the tumult of the storm and the merrymaking, I doubted if anyone would. “They can’t hear you,” I shouted. “Are you seeking Boaz the Weaver?”

  A familiar face lifted toward me. Joseph of Arimathea corrected, “Yes, I am, Nehemiah. But I’m also seeking you!”

  “Wait! I’ll be right down!”

  Moments later Joseph warmed himself in front of the fire amid a crowd of attentive onlookers. He answered my grandmother’s question about why he was out on such a fearful night. “And well you might ask. I barely got off my ship from Alexandria before the storm hit. They were so anxious to sail off toward a safer harbor that they almost threw me overboard. Just like Jonah, eh?” He smiled. “My steward was expecting me and met me. Just in from Jerusalem, he has received some startling news. My business partner, Lazarus of Bethany . . . ?”

  “Friend of Jesus of Nazareth,” Grandfather remarked. “Yes?”

  “Caring for the Jerusalem Sparrows, he took sick with the strangling sickness.”

  “And Jesus healed him?” Grandmother asked.

  “No . . . he died,” Joseph corrected.

  I was stunned and shocked. My heart sank.

  A rotund spice merchant laughed mockingly. “That’s a prophet from Galilee for you. Couldn’t even save his own friend!”

  “No,” Joseph continued slowly. “But Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead.”

  After a stunned silence, a tumult of queries equal in volume and confusion to the storm outside barraged Joseph.

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “Then he wasn’t really dead!”

  “But he’s real, I tell you!”

  “Four days in the tomb,” Joseph said. “Really and truly dead, and Jesus called him out of the grave . . . so they say.”

  “That’ll light a fire under High Priest Caiaphas. The whole country will want to see Jesus and Lazarus both!”

  Joseph ignored the mocking banter and addressed my grandfather. “Has any word come directly regarding Nehemiah’s parents?”

  Grandfather shook his head. “We’ve still had no real word about them . . . good or bad,” he emphasized with a look at me. “Only what the bandit Zimri implied.” He paused. “Then again, he is a bandit and not to be trusted and cruel by choice.”

  A spark of hope, like the pinprick sparks that had shimmered upward when Joseph gestured toward the lamp, ignited in my heart. Could the bandit have lied? Might my parents still be alive somewhere? And searching for me?

  “Then,” Joseph said, “here is a request: I would like to take Nehemiah on as an apprentice in my export business, if he agrees. I want him to accompany me to the Holy City when

  I leave tomorrow. Of course, his parents may not give their consent when they return, but until then, you can approve his employment, if you will.”

  Turning, Grandfather put his hands on his hips. With raised eyebrows he looked a question at me.

  I nodded eagerly. “Yes, please!” I confirmed.

  And so it was settled.

  Chapter 25

  Our journey to the home of David ben Lazarus in Bethany was briefly interrupted outside the Holy City. Joseph reined his horse and dismounted near a stone wall outside Jerusalem.

  Two men stacked carefully hewn limestone blocks to form a waist-high barricade. The wall surrounded a newly planted garden. Inside the
enclosure was a border of fragrant juniper shrubs. The place was busy with workmen. Boys about my age mixed mortar. Older boys worked as hod carriers, assisting the masons.

  At the sight of Joseph, I noticed heads lean together and anxious whispers pass between the laborers. Whatever this building site was, Joseph clearly had authority over it. He pushed aside a wooden gate as I slid from my donkey and hesitated.

  “Come on, then,” he instructed. I tied our mounts to the limb of a tree.

  The gate opened onto a winding gravel path that was a beehive of activity. Another boy, wielding a branch of a juniper as a broom, swept the curving track clear of dust. A man wearing the apron of a stone mason edged the path with more stacked stone. Joseph greeted the mason, then asked, “Where is Hyram?”

  The stone-setter indicated a grass-covered knoll at the back of the property. Between the fence and the small hill were beds of lavender. When the weather warmed, the lavender would perfume the air with rich sweetness.

  The trail skirted a pair of ancient olive trees, so gnarled and massive at their bases that the garden must have been constructed around them. The path ended against a rocky knoll. The flank of the hillside in front of me was faced with flat stones. At the center of the wall’s base was a square hole, slightly shorter than me, leading inward.

  A man emerged from the opening. He wore his mason’s apron with one corner turned up, designating him the overseer of the work. “Shalom, Master Joseph,” he said.

  “Shalom, Master Hyram,” Joseph returned. “You’ve made good progress.”

  “I think you’ll be pleased with the tomb.” Hyram tugged his forelock.

  “I think my father will be pleased too. I am eager to have it done before the Passover holiday.”

  I felt a pang of renewed guilt. According to our beliefs, it was a very necessary mark of respect for children to see their parents honorably interred. Joseph was paying great homage to his father with this gift.

  I, on the other hand, had run away. My father and mother, if dead as I feared, may have remained unburied except for the kindness of strangers. I squinted with the pain of regret.