The Island of the Innocent

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  Text originally published in 1952 under the same title.

  © Muriwai Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  THE ISLAND OF THE INNOCENT

  A novel of Greek and Jew in the time of the Maccabees

  by

  VARDIS FISHER

  “He shall deliver the island of the innocent”

  —Job

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

  DEDICATION 4

  1 5

  2 14

  3 24

  4 33

  5 41

  6 50

  7 62

  8 69

  9 78

  10 86

  11 93

  12 101

  13 110

  14 116

  15 124

  16 134

  17 141

  18 147

  19 152

  20 158

  21 164

  22 173

  23 183

  24 188

  25 193

  26 199

  27 210

  28 217

  29 225

  30 233

  31 239

  32 247

  33 255

  34 264

  35 272

  36 281

  37 288

  38 295

  39 302

  40 310

  41 316

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 318

  DEDICATION

  This book is inscribed to the many scholars whose labors have promoted understanding and fellowship between Gentile and Jew.

  1

  HE WAS PHILEMON, a Hellene, looking for a girl named Judith, a daughter of Israel, and he felt pretty absurd for having come down from Antioch because of an infatuation more than a year old. On the last day of his journey up the desolate hills to Jerusalem he had been engulfed by a great tide of humanity moving toward the holy city. He had seen multitudes moved by religious frenzy but never such a multitude as this. Most of it was trudging afoot, leading beasts, or carrying baskets of fruit and corn, and waterskins, and so many branches of palm and willow and myrtle that when he first looked on the amazing sight he had thought he was viewing a mirage. He then learned that this was the annual festival of the Tabernacles and that these people were going up to the Mount of the Temple to rejoice. Even more startling than the gray exhaustion in their faces or the sea of wilting branches was their delirious joy when they approached the city’s gates.

  As the towers of Jerusalem became visible pipers went ahead to lead the way; whereupon, roused by the music, the multitude began to sing:

  As the mountains are roundabout Jerusalem

  so the Holy One is roundabout his people

  from this time forth and for ever!…

  When the people came to the northern gate and Philemon looked at the faces it was plain to him that a great wild emotion was ready to overflow its channels. He heard the sound of tears and sobs and of sad lamenting, and then the shrill high shrieks of rapture, while eyes were upturned to the heavens:

  I rejoiced when they said unto me

  Let us go unto the house of the Holy Name!

  Our feet are standing within your gates,

  O Jerusalem!…

  The multitude took up the cry and it became a frenzied chant, with bodies weaving from side to side, with arms holding branches up to the light and the Eternal:

  Let us go unto the house of the Holy One!

  O Jerusalem!

  Our Jerusalem!

  Our feet are standing within your gates!…

  Philemon saw people pressing upon the gate and the wall and kissing them, and he looked away, feeling that he had no right to gaze upon those whose souls were naked before their God.

  “Do you know a girl named Judith?” he had asked one and another. “Do you know Reuben?” And always the answer had been: “Tell me the name of the father.” Philemon spoke in their language, which he had learned in Alexandria, where he had also read their holy books; and before the gate he spoke to a tall gaunt man with a gray beard. “O pious, O gentle, O worthy follower of Ezra, do you know a beautiful girl named Judith?”

  “Who are you?” asked the graybeard.

  “Philemon, the son of Hector.”

  “Son of the no-gods,” said the old man, and turned away to spit. Then a younger man stepped up, who might have been the old man’s son, and looked hard at Philemon, saying: “Why do you seek this girl named Judith?”

  “Because she is beautiful.”

  “Is there,” asked the man, addressing the graybeard, “any woman in our city named Judith?”

  “No!”

  The man was sneering. “Or any son of Israel named Alexander?”

  “No!”

  “Or any son of Israel named Menelaus?”

  “No!” And the old man spat again.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I’ve told you that I’m Philemon, the son of Hector, and I seek a girl named Judith.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’ve lived in many places—in Pergamum—in Alexandria—in Antioch—and for a little while in your city. I’ve been here before.”

  “He’s the worshiper of a thunderbolt called Zeus!”

  “And he looks for one named Judith, a daughter of Israel! Do you covet this woman?”

  “You may put it that way, though when I saw her she was hardly more than a child. I’m on my way to Alexandria.”

  The younger man looked at the patriarch and said: “The road from Antioch to Alexandria goes through our holy city!”

  “Let the uncircumcised one be. We’ve worse enemies in our house.”

  Philemon bowed to the old man and said: “Take care of your cistern.” These words, which he had learned from his Jew friends, meant, Take care of your family. The old man looked at him with sudden suspicious interest. Philemon bowed again and said, “Halleluyah!” which meant, Praise Yahweh, Israel’s God.

  “Halleluyah!” cried the old man, and made a gesture of deep reverence.

  Philemon had come far out of his way because he had not been able to obliterate from memory the face of a child-woman. He had seen her in the previous year while passing through from Alexandria to Antioch. It had been the ninth of Ab, and on this day it was the custom with Jewish girls to dance in the vineyards and challenge the men to choose their mates. Judith was dancing when Philemon, accompanied by his friend Reuben, had pushed through a throng to view the girls. She saw him almost at once, for he was taller than most of the men around him and wore splendid raiment. And he had the deepest blue eyes that Judith was ever to see. As for Philemon, he thought he had never looked upon a girl as lovely as this one, though he had perceived that she was only a child. In looking back on the experience he had never been able to determine what had so completely ravished his sense—whether it had been her mass of lustrous hair and her marvelous eyes, or her grace of movement, or the subtlety in her wantonness. From the moment she first saw him Judith had danced solely for him. This had been so plain that Reuben had made a jest of it; and Philemon had asked his friend to learn her name.

  “Judith,” Reuben had said, after speaking to her.

  “I’ll remember her. How old is she?”

  “I’ll ask her.” Reuben had then stepped forward and beckoned to Judith, who had danced toward him, her eyes mocking Philemon. And a few moments later Reuben had said: “She’s not yet twelve but she must be nubile or she’d not be dancing here.” Then maliciously he had added: “She’s a daughter of the Pious, and so is beyond your lecherous grasp. But perhaps you’d marry a daughter of Israel.”

  “Why not?”

  Reuben had shrugged. “But not such a girl as this. You can be sure that her father spends half his time praying and the other half keeping ritually clean. You’ve chosen us from all peoples, O Holy One, you have loved us and taken delight in us, you have exalted us, you have sanctified us and set us apart. Deliver us from evil men—and that means such as you, son of Hector!”

  Philemon had smiled. “I might become one of the circumcised.”

  “By the gods, the man is mad!”

  “I mean for a girl like Judith.”

  That had been on the ninth of Ab; and now, on the fourteenth of Tishri, more than a year later, he was again in that city which pious Jews called the navel of the world. He was looking for Judith, hoping she was not married, and for Melanie, and for Reuben also, the Jew friend with whom he had studied medicine in Alexandria, the world’s greatest center of learning and enlightenment. But his search for the
m seemed likely to be fruitless. Jerusalem was overwhelmed by the multitudes, and by the morning of the fifteenth the city was transformed. Before most of the homes and before all the homes in certain sectors bowers had been erected, made of the green branches; for was it not written that their God had caused them to dwell in booths when he brought them out of Egypt? He will swallow death in victory and wipe the tears away from all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from the earth.

  Philemon could see everywhere the leafy booths with the house itself serving as the fourth wall. On his former visit he had learned from Reuben that the learned scribes disputed long and earnestly over countless matters in the holy writings. Which trees might be used for the booths? Some said the palm and willow; others, that palm and willow were to be borne aloft by the worshipers before the Holy Place. A learned scribe, one Hosah ben Jorah, had ruled that the fruit of goodly trees meant the ethrog or citron; that the boughs of thick trees meant the myrtle (provided that it had not more berries than leaves); that the citron must be without blemish; that the palm branches must be three hands high and suitable for shaking; and that all branches must be free of the pollution found in idolatrous groves where the heathen worshipped….

  He had learned that the Jews were divided into two principal factions—the Hasidim or Pious, and the Letzim or Hellenists—those who faithfully and proudly obeyed the Torah to its last letter, glad to be a peculiar and a chosen people, and bitterly contemptuous of all heathen; and those who, with more enlightenment, were devoted to Greek medicine, science, philosophy, sports and art. These latter knew the Jews were abhorred by all the peoples around them; but, said Reuben, nobody hated Jews as much as many of the Jews themselves.

  Reuben had said also that war between the two factions was inevitable and imminent. No statesman could ever bridge the gulf between Jews who clung fanatically to the superstitions of Moses and Jews who enriched themselves with the art and philosophy of the Greeks. What could there be in common between Euripides, who had said that humanity drifts on legends, and an old graybeard like Jesus ben Sirach, who had spent a lifetime in subtle sophistries, trying to prove that Jews were superior to all other peoples? Could Greek democracy and Jewish theocracy ever find a common ground of fellowship?

  Philemon had observed that his friend spoke with bitterness; he had seen bitterness in faces when Jew looked at Jew. And now, while wandering through the city, he felt that an explosion was indeed imminent. He saw fear, suspicion, contempt, hate. What a strange people they were!—for, hated by the whole world, they were ready to leap at the throats of one another. He spent the whole day trying to find Reuben, that brilliant friend who had studied Hippocrates and Herophilus with him in Alexandria’s halls. How Reuben had loved the aphorisms of the great Hellenes! How his eyes had shone when he quoted Sophocles, “Sleep is the physician of pain”—“Death is the supreme healer”! Or Herophilus: “To lose one’s health renders science null, art inglorious, strength effortless, wealth useless, and eloquence powerless.” Philemon had liked to retort with wise words from that book which in his language was called Ecclesiastes: “Who is the wise man, and who knows the interpretation of a thing? There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and enjoy his labor.” And always Reuben said bitterly: “The Preacher was not a Jew!”

  He was looking also for Melanie, a girl whom he had once loved, whom in fact he might have married but for her outrageous ambition to become another Aspasia. “Aspasia,” she said to him one evening in Antioch, “was not a whore, yet you think of her that way!” He was also looking for Judith. Had she married? Jewish girls at the age of twelve were ready for marriage, and boys who were not married by the age of eighteen looked upon themselves as disgraced. Or was she lying in a man’s arms in one of the booths? Jealousy like a discharge of bile into his stomach came up his throat in bitter flavors and he smiled to think how far an infatuation had led him into folly.

  When three stars announced the beginning of the day of the feast, trumpets on the temple mount shouted to Israel. A little past midnight the temple gates were opened, and worshipers by the hundreds came forward, dragging their beasts to the slaughter. All night Philemon watched, and at daylight he saw a priest with a group of musicians go with a golden pitcher to the Pool of Siloam. When the priest returned he was welcomed by a threefold blast from trumpets and joyful voices were crying: “With delight we draw water out of the wells of salvation!” Then from a distance he could see a procession going round and round an altar, singing: “Now work salvation, O Holy One! O Holy One, give prosperity!…”

  Weary and famished, Philemon went to a Greek tavern on the western hill and ate and slept; but by early afternoon he was again prowling through the city, staring at the people, trying to look into the booths. In many of these he heard sounds whose meaning was plain to him and he wondered if all people mixed carnal love with their worship. He talked with a Greek who explained that for the Jews this was the Season of Gladness. Their Day of Atonement had come and gone; the sins of Israel had been transferred to a scapegoat, the goat for Azazel, which had been taken into a wilderness and thrust backward over a precipice. The Ancient of Days had ordered the events for the coming year….

  As he followed the crooked paths and the ugly streets he searched all the faces that passed. Every friendly face he accosted with the question, “Do you know Reuben? Do you know a young girl named Judith?” On the morning of the second day, feeling vaguely angry and unhappy, he climbed the steps to the outer court to watch the rites. The flesh offerings had been made. At the moment when Philemon took his position, wine or water—he could not tell which—was being poured over the great altar and the temple musicians were making sweet sounds with their flutes. Then the multitude began to sing.

  Blessed be the Name of the Holy One

  from this time forth and for ever!

  from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof!

  the Name is to be praised!

  O, praise the Holy One, all you nations!

  laud him, all you peoples!…

  When the choir uttered the words, “O give thanks to the Holy One!” and again, “O work then now salvation!” and a third time at the close, “O give thanks unto the Name!” the worshipers vigorously shook their branches toward the altar. At the close of the hymn a hysterical woman lifted her hands to the sky and shrieked, “O work salvation to the son of David!” People stared at her, not knowing what she meant. Amiel ben Micah could have told them but at this moment he was sitting in a tiny mud hut giving names to the holy angels of Israel.

  It was the evening service that amazed Philemon. Great preparations had been made in the Court of Women: four huge candelabras fed from golden bowls, their wicks made of the discarded holy garments of priests. Each bowl held fifteen gallons of oil. Galleries had been erected for spectators around three sides of the court, in the upper tiers of which sat women, with men below. Lighting the temple courts was a symbol of Shechinah, the spirit of the Holy One: he was the light of the world, and on the fifteenth of Tishri there had been a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

  While studying the lighting, the most brilliant he had ever seen, save only in the lighthouse on Pharos, Philemon became aware of a commotion on the wall beyond. The Levites, with harps, flutes, cymbals and trumpets, were taking their places on the fifteen steps which led down from the Court of Israel to the Court of Women. In a few moments they began to play and sing. Almost at once there came forward a group of men bearing flaming torches and these began to dance before the people, chanting words while making wild movements with their firebrands. It seemed to Philemon that some of the men were drunk. A few of them bore four, five, or even six torches and handled them like skilled jugglers, tossing them but never letting fire touch the earth. One, the most practiced of all, was able to kneel or rest his elbows on the earth, yet keep four torches circling one another above him.

  From time to time Philemon had observed the man sitting on his right, a pale and unhappy Jew. He now said to him: “What does the dance mean?”

  The man shrugged. Speaking in Greek he said drily: “It’s a fire-dance obviously—some old sun-dance.”

  “Are the dancers drunk?”