KABBALAS HATORAH : BASED ON A TRUE STORY

Spring was always beautiful in Barcelona, and this year, 1715, was no exception. The harbor was one of the busiest in the Mediterranean, crowded with all sorts of ships 365 days a year. On this evening, Signor Bembo, the Genoese captain of a merchant vessel was loading the last of his cargo; the ship would sail with the morning tide. As Bembo looked up at the sky, which was ablaze with a thousand stars, he suddenly heard the sound of a man clearing his throat. At the bottom of the gangplank stood a Spanish gentleman of about 30 or so.

“Yes, what do you want?” barked Bembo.

“Permission to come aboard, captain,” replied the gentleman.

“Granted,” barked Bembo, who instinctively fingered the dagger he wore at his side. Although the civil war had ended over a year before, conditions in Spain were still unsettled, and one could not be too careful with strangers.

Once on board, the Spaniard removed his hat and bowed low. “I am Don Antonio Carvaljho.”

He certainly has the manners of a gentleman, Bembo thought to himself.

“I understand you are sailing for Livorno in the morning. I have urgent business there which requires my presence. Will you take me, captain?”

“You come to me now, in the middle of the night? Let me see your passport. Senor, are your papers in order?”

“I have not had the time to take care of all that. I told you, matters of the most extreme urgency require my immediate presence in Livorno. Believe me, I will take care of the formalities upon my return.”

“Are you crazy?” said Bembo, his voice rising, “I can lose my rights to trade here if I do not obey the regulations. I do not know you, nor do I care to. Be off with you and let us forget that this conversation ever took place.”

The Spaniard came closer. Bembo fingered his dagger more tightly. “Look, captain, let’s speak plainly. I am in trouble...it involves a gambling debt, do you understand? I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain the matter to you!” The Spaniard’s eyes flashed in the evening light.

These Spanish aristocrats are all hot-blooded crazies! Bembo was thinking to himself when the Spaniard’s words brought him back to reality.

“You are an Italian,” said the Spaniard. “That means you are a businessman, so let us skip this conversation and get to the bottom line. How much do you want?”

This was indeed a language the Genoese captain understood. Anything for the right price. He already had 18 other passengers, each of whom had paid about 50 maravedis. “Two hundred...and fifty maravedis! That’s my price, take it or leave it!”

“Agreed. Here is 100 right now. The rest when we get to Livorno.”

“No! You will give me all of it right now or we can forget this whole deal.”

The Spaniard had no choice, and Bembo knew it. Without another word, Don Antonio turned and disappeared down the gangplank, returning 15 fifteen minutes later with the money and a small traveler’s chest. Bembo counted the money, looked at the Spaniard and decided that he had better not betray this one. In general, it was better to not play tricks on these revengeful Spaniards, especially the aristocrats.

“Just go below and find yourself a place to sleep with the others. We should be in Livorno in four days.”

The Spaniard went below without another word.

It was already late, and the passengers had gone to sleep. Don Antonio found an empty spot and lay down, holding his chest in his arms. His heart was still racing, and he could not sleep that night. He would not feel at ease until the ship sailed, until he was out of Spain.

He was still awake when the ship sailed at dawn. By then the whole ship was awake, including the other passengers. Don Antonio eyed them; they were the usual group of Mediterranean passengers: some merchants, the family of an officer on their way to join their father and husband at his garrison in Parma, a couple of their servants, two pilgrims on their way to Rome. After an hour, a sailor brought breakfast. Everyone ate except for one of the merchants, who had brought his own food. No one took any notice, no one, that is, except for Don Antonio. As inconspicuously as possible, he eyed the merchant, who was unaware he was being observed. After breakfast, the passengers went their different ways; Antonio followed the merchant. He wanted to know why the fellow had brought his own food. Maybe he did not like what the ship’s cook had prepared. Or maybe.... By late morning, Antonio was exhausted from lack of sleep; he went to his berth and slept for l2 hours. As a result, he awoke when everyone else was falling asleep. Irritated by the anomalous situation in which he found himself, Antonio went up on the deck and stared out at the Mediterranean. Except for the pilot, who was more asleep than awake at the helm, the deck was deserted. The sea was particularly beautiful in the warm spring night. He stared out to sea and lost himself in his thoughts....

Suddenly, a sound floating through the night air from the other side of the ship snapped him out of his revery. Making his way quietly to the other side of the ship, his eyes widened as they beheld the solitary figure of the merchant swaying in the night air. Straining his ears, Antonio heard the merchant intone in a low voice, “Hayom shiva v’arba’im yom, shehem shisha ....”

Antonio did not understand the words, but they were neither Spanish nor Italian, that much he knew. Forgetting himself, Antonio exclaimed, “By all the saints!”

At that, the merchant wheeled around and, seeing Don Antonio, turned white as a sheet. “Senor! What are you doing here? What do you want?” he said in a frightened voice.

“What are you doing here? What strange words are you saying? Are you in league with the devil?”

“Senor, please, it is nothing! I was merely singing a tune I heard in Livorno. It’s just a little song; it’s nothing, really!”

“A song from Livorno! I heard you, and that was not Italian. What language was it?”

“Oh, Senor, you are right! I forgot; I heard it in Turkey, yes, in Constantinople! It’s Turkish, you know, that’s why it seemed strange. It’s nothing, really! And now I’m going to sleep. Good night, Senor.”

The merchant sought to go past Don Antonio. Antonio grabbed the merchant’s arm and gripped it tightly. “Oh, no you don’t! Do you know what I think? I think you are a Livornese Jew! That is why you eat your own food and say strange words when nobody else is looking!”

The expression of sheer horror on the merchant’s face showed that Antonio’s hunch was accurate; the merchant was indeed a Jew. “Please. Senor, I beg of you.”

The Jew was about to plead for his life when Antonio cut him short. “Be quiet! Come with me,” putting his hand over the Jew’s mouth so that he could not scream out loud, Antonio pulled the merchant to the ships bow.

The merchant’s eyes bulged with fright. Antonio could see that the merchant was afraid he was about to be thrown overboard into a watery grave. “Be silent,” Antonio hissed. “I am not going to harm you. If I wanted to kill you, I would have cut your throat already. I want to talk to you, away from the pilot.”

Slowly removing his hand from the merchant’s mouth, Antonio stared at the merchant. Then he looked around to make sure that nobody else was on deck. Turning to face the merchant, Antonio was silent for a full minute. Then he hissed in a low voice “I, too, am a Jew! I am fleeing from the Inquisition; one more day and they would have arrested me. I had to give all my money to the accursed captain. There, now you know it! If the captain finds out that I have no more money, he’ll probably try to have me killed, but I’ll show him a thing or two! I was in the army for three years....”

Meanwhile, the merchant’s eyes were bulging even more than before. First, he had thought he was about to be killed, and now, this! “Ribono shel Olam!” he exclaimed.

“What’s that you’re saying? Is it Hebrew?”

“Why yes, it is. It means Almighty G-d. You mean you never heard this before? Do you really know no Hebrew?”

“Ad-nai, that is what I was told by my mother.” As he pronounced the word, he crossed himself. “She told me that was how you say G-d in Hebrew. It’s the only word she knew. She was not mistaken, was she? How did you say it? ‘Ribonoshelom?’”

“Ribono shel Olam. That means Master of the Universe. It’s another way of saying G-d. But your mother was also correct. Ad-nai also means G-d. Is that really the only word you have ever heard?”

“Yes, it is. We had no ‘wise man’ or ‘wise woman’ among us to teach us. It is too dangerous!”

“Why did you make the sign of the cross when you said Ado... when you pronounced G-d’s name?”

“Don’t you also cross yourself when you mention G-d’s name?”

“Certainly not! That is what the Christians do to remind themselves of their god. A Jew must never do such a thing! We do not believe in their idolatry!”

“My mother always crossed herself whenever she said Ad-nai. We thought this is what you are supposed to do.”

“I will now teach you your first lesson in our faith: Never cross yourself under any circumstances! Another thing, it is not proper to say Ad-nai except in prayer. G-d’s name is too sacred to be pronounced except in prayer.”

Antonio thought he heard a sound. Instinctively, he grabbed his sword and wheeled around, resolved to kill whoever had discovered them. He’d throw the dead body overboard. As it happened, it was just the creaking of the wood of the ship’s mast in the Mediterranean wind.

Now it was the merchant’s turn to talk. “Listen, I know of others like you who have escaped Spain and found refuge in Italy and the East. I will help you.” At that, he pulled out a small purse. “Here, take 60 maravedis for now. You are right; a person without any money is doomed on this ship. Take it; I am happy to do this mitzvah.”

“What is a mitzvah?”

“It is a good deed. A Jew strives to do good deeds pleasing in the eyes of G-d. Do you really know nothing of our holy faith?”

“Salvation is possible through the Law of Moses, not through the law of the Christians!” As he recited these words, Antonio’s face flushed, and his eyes shone.

The merchant stared at him with a puzzled expression. “What is that you said?”

“What? Have you never heard of our confession of faith? Aren’t you a Jew? Every Jew knows the Confession of Faith! What do you say when you have your prayer meetings?”

The merchant felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Listen, Senor, there is no such thing as a Jewish Confession of Faith. We have our own prayers, thousands of years old. What you are reciting sounds like a Catholic religious formula. It’s like when you crossed yourself. I see that you Jews in Spain have picked up some strange customs from the Christians. It’s not your fault, but you have much to learn. Soon you will be in Italy, and you shall see for yourself.”

“Have the Jews then no confession, no creed or statement of faith?”

“Not in the same way the Christians do. You have been brought up among them, so you know no different. Actually, now that I think of it, we do have 13 articles of our holy faith, composed centuries ago by the Rambam.”

“By what?”

“Rambam. Maimonides. A very great tzadik…er, a saint.”

“A saint? Do we have saints, then?”

“That was a bad choice of words. Not a saint like the Christians. A man who was very wise and did many mitzvos, many good deeds. Look, when you get to Livorno, they’ll explain the whole thing to you.”

“No! Tell me now! I have risked my life for the true faith, and I must know its creed. Tell me the 13 articles right now. I must know what it is we believe!”

The merchant saw that Antonio, like the other secret Jews in Spain, had been so thoroughly Christianized that he could only conceive of Judaism in Catholic religious terms. “Very well, sit down here, and I will explain them to you….”

The conversation lasted all night, as Antonio was introduced for the first time to the real Judaism, not the confused admixture of Christianity and half-forgotten Jewish notions that the secret Jews in Spain, cut off from all contact with their coreligionists around the world, mistakenly thought was the faith of their ancestors.

An hour before dawn, the ship’s crew came on deck. Antonio and the merchant abruptly ended their conversation and went below as if they did not know each other. Although they lay down in their respective berths, neither man slept. Instead, they lay there awake, faces flushed, hearts beating rapidly.

Later that morning, after breakfast, the two men resumed their conversation, this time below deck as all the other passengers were on deck taking in the morning sea air. “Tell me about yourself,” said Antonio. “I do not even know your name.”

“My Hebrew name is Yehudah Aryeh, which means a lion. To the Christians, I am Leone. My family’s name is Magino. I live in Venice; my family came there 200 years ago from France.”

“From Venice? What are you doing here, on the other side of the Mediterranean? What are you doing in Spain?”

“Times are hard for everyone, especially us Jews. I have business contacts in Spain and I am able to import Spanish goods from the New World to Venice.”

“How is it that you, a Jew, are permitted into Spain?”

“I do not tell them I am Jewish. If they were ever to find out, it would mean my life. Every time I enter Spanish territory, I risk my life. Why do I do it? My family needs to eat, and times are hard. I am compelled to take great risks to make a decent profit. I hope one day, with the help of the Ribono shel Olam, to make enough money to stop going to your bloody country. I am really getting too old for this kind of dangerous life.” The merchant paused for a moment. “And you, Senor, what is your name and how do you come here?”

With typical Spanish grandeza, Antonio straightened his body, threw his head up, and said, “I am Antonio Duarte Guzman de Carvaljho.” Then, with a frown, “until recently Captain in the forces of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain – currently a fugitive from the Inquisition.”

“What happened?”

“We were betrayed. We gathered at my cousin’s house for the Passover feast...”

“For the Seder?”

“Seder? What’s that?”

“You have never heard the word Seder? That is what Jews call the Passover meal.”

“We have no name for it.”

“Do you celebrate all the holidays?”

“Certainly, if we are able. We keep both the Passover and the Atonement.”

“Yom Kippur. We call the Atonement Yom Kippur. What about the other holidays?”

“What other holidays?”

“Well, you know, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkos, Shavuos...”

“I have never heard of those. My mother is learned in our faith. She taught me everything I know. She has never heard of those days.”

“But they are written in the Torah – you know, the Bible?!”

“We have never heard of them.”

“Well, then, how did you know how to do the Seder, er, how to celebrate Passover? And anyway, how do you know when Passover falls out if you have no Hebrew calendar?”

“Hebrew calendar? Do the Jews have their own calendar?”

“Ribono shel Olam! Tell me, Don Antonio, how do you celebrate the Passover?”

“Well, Passover falls out on the full moon of March, you know, 14 days after the new moon of March. There are certain places where our brethren celebrate Passover two days later, but they are mistaken. My mother explained the whole matter to me. Many years ago, the Inquisition in their town was extremely vigilant on the full moon of March, so to avoid being caught, the local secret Jews postponed the Passover feast by two days. In time, this became their fixed custom, and their descendants continue to celebrate Passover two days after the full moon even today. We tried to point out to them their error, but they will not listen.”

“Unbelievable.”

“What is unbelievable?”

“Never mind. Please continue. Well, we kill a lamb...”

“How do you kill it?”

“I don’t know; we just kill it. Do you mean that the Jews have a special way of killing animals?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you all about it later. Please…”

“Then we read the passage in the Bible about the first Passover in Egypt. Then we eat the lamb, naturally while we are standing, with our boots on, and with staffs in our hands, as the Bible commands. That is all.”

By this time the merchant’s jaw hung open from sheer astonishment. He didn’t know what to say to Antonio. There was so much to tell him. “Senor, our wise men have an expression in the Talmud – you remember, the Talmud is one of our holy books – which fits you and your fellow secret Jews: Tinok shenishba bein hagoyim, a baby captured in infancy by the gentiles who knows nothing of our faith.”

Stung to the quick, Antonio’s face turned bright red. “Oh Signor Leone, do not make fun of us! Have we not suffered enough? At home, the Inquisition watches us like hawks, ready to pounce upon us if we make the slightest slip. Our fellow Spaniards despise us and call us Marranos, pigs. Are we to be despised by our fellow Jews, too?!”

“Heaven forbid!” cried the merchant. “I did not mean to mock you. You have endured terrible things for the sake of our holy faith, and we Jews consider you heroes. Believe me, Senor Antonio, the Ribono shel Olam will reward you and those Jews martyred in Spain beyond your wildest imagination. It is merely that I now see how cut off you have been from the Torah, from our Tree of Life.”

“A tree of life to them that grasp it,” Antonio recited the well-known Biblical verse as he had learned it in the Spanish.

“Exactly, Senor. Through no fault of your own, you and your brethren have become separated from that tree, but now you will be able to grasp it once again. Just wait until we get to Livorno. You will be amazed at what you will discover. Livorno is a city of many scholars of the Torah, many schools of Torah learning. Yes, Senor, you will be amazed.” As he said this, his face shone with a special excitement.

Antonio’s brow, however, was troubled. “But my family! They have all been arrested. I alone was not in town when they raided our house; otherwise, I would be in a dungeon being tortured at this very moment.”

“It is terrible, Senor, but I am sure that there is nothing that can be done for them.”

“My wife will be burned. Of this I am sure. My mother, too. You know, it was she who introduced me to our religion. I was 13 years old when, one day, out of nowhere, she summoned me to her room, and when we were alone, she told me how the law of the god of the Christians which I had been following was not good, nor true. Instead, I should follow the Law of Moses because it is true, good, and necessary for my salvation.”

“Your mother is a tzadekes, a righteous woman. Whatever happens to her, she is assured a place in Paradise.”

“Oh, do you really believe that, Signor Leone?”

“The Torah says that any one of us who dies for our faith is assured Paradise, which we call Olam Haba. How much more so a devoted Jewish mother who did her best to bring you to our faith at such great personal risk!”

“Oh Signor Leone, I pray you speak the truth!” Antonio looked down, somewhat embarrassedly. “You know, my mother told me last month that in her entire life she had been able to keep only 16 Sabbaths properly, so closely was she watched.”

“Senor, G-d does not reckon these matters as you and I do. Believe me, G-d knows how difficult it was for your mother to keep the Sabbath. In the Talmud it says, ‘lefum tzaara agra,’ which means that G-d will count those 16 Sabbaths very heavily, very heavily, Don Antonio! It is difficult for me to explain all this to you here. I am a merchant, not very learned at all. I have a brother in Venice who is a real scholar of the Torah, but I began to work at a very young age and never had much chance to study our sacred books. Believe me, Senor, when we get to Livorno, they will explain everything to you.”

Suddenly, they heard the steps creak. Some passengers were going below. The two men hastily terminated their conversation and went above.

That night there was a storm, not too uncommon in that part of the Mediterranean at that time of the year. The ship tossed and turned all night as the captain and the sailors struggled desperately to save the ship. By morning, the storm had passed, and all the passengers were summoned to the deck by the captain.

“Ladies and gentleman, as you know we ran into a severe storm. The storm has taken us southward, and we are way off course. It will take an extra day to get to Livorno. I am sorry, but it is not my fault. It is an act of G-d!”

The merchant’s face wore an expression of deep distress. Antonio noticed this and went over to his new friend and teacher. What’s wrong? It’s only an extra day. Soon we’ll be in Livorno. It is I who should be depressed, considering what has happened to my family. Why are you so downcast?”

“Don Antonio, this ship was to dock at Livorno on erev Shavuos, the morning before the holiday of Shavuos. I had planned to celebrate the holiday among my fellow Jews. Now we will be on this ship. Think of it, Don Antonio. Shavuos, zman matan Toraseinu, on this ship among idolaters!?”

“Signor Leone, I do not even know what Shavuos is, let alone those other words you just said.”

“Don Antonio,” the merchant said, his voice rising, “Shavuos is the anniversary of the day our ancestors received the Holy Torah from G-d Himself! Have you not read in the Bible the story of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai?”

“Yes, I have read that. But I do not remember any holiday commemorating it.”

“Well, actually, it doesn’t say it directly, but take it from me, we Jews know which day the Torah was given, and we are bidden to celebrate it. Haven’t you heard of the Pentecost?”

“Yes, 50 days after the Passover. But that has to do with certain sacrifices, not with any anniversary of the revelation at Sinai.”