O, Yerushalayim!

by B. Halevi

His frenzied fingers played frantically along the forlorn blades of grass, digging into the ground, entrenching themselves well past his nails before jerking their way out. He barely registered the ruin he was wreaking on his long, beautiful fingers or the clumps of shredded grass collecting around him or the tears snaking down his face. They moved slowly down the bridge of his nose, catching on his nostrils, and dangling off his frozen mouth, suspended in midfall as if turned to granite, along with his expression. He had eyes only for what lay behind him: a black, black cloud.

From the hollow among the bushes where he crouched, Yehuda could see the thick heavy mass that stood against the black of night – an even darker black. It hovered above the Har Habayis, and he knew that it was filled with smoke, debris, and human remains – the charred remains of his brothers. His assessed the lower portion of the blackness, straining but failing to make out the structure of the ruins underneath he knew were there. It was too dark. Or maybe there were no ruins. He didn’t know how much of the Mikdash remained; thank G-d he’d fled too early to find out. He only knew that it was a building that was practically impossible to utterly and totally destroy. He hoped. He had been in that building.

As his memories from earlier in the day engulfed him, it looked as if he was in another world, and he was. A searing heat emanating from the city tore at his body, and his nose filled with the rising stench of smoke and the sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh. He tried to slow his breathing, turn back the nightmare, but it was no use.

A loud wailing wafted through the night, seeming to begin in the westernmost corner of the city and spreading until it was flowing from across the whole city. Woman and children helpless against the marauders, keening for their lost husbands, fathers, lives, and for the Mikdash. In his deranged state, it seemed as if the very ground itself was crying.

His whole body was trembling, and when he failed to stem the memory, his fingers finally left the soil so he could clamp them tight over his face. O, Yerushalayim….

*  *  *

I was at my guard post deep inside the bowels of the Mikdash when I first heard the banging. Thud. Thud. I lifted my eyes towards the noise and then sent Shimon to check what was going on. Shimon returned nervous and twitchy.

“It’s a night attack, Yehuda.”

I nodded in serene ignorance. “Is something wrong?”

He gulped, “I think this is the night they get in.”

I furrowed my brow and drew in my breath through puckered teeth. I glanced thoughtfully at the storage room behind me and then nodded in decision. By now, my four starved and gaunt fighters were completely alert and waiting for my response. The storage room contained our cache of weapons, including some rare ones that were not meant to be used except under exceptional circumstances.

“The way I see it,” I said slowly, looking them each in the eye, “our chief responsibility is to ourselves. Since our best chance of survival is if we are better armed, I suggest we help ourselves to the most dangerous weapons we can find.”

They all gave their frightened consent, and I watched with detached air as they sifted through piles of implements, each with various points and edges, looking for the one in which to place their trust. It was no light decision. I was their veteran leader, my skills honed by the many years I’d spent as a legionnaire fighting under the Roman Eagle. Now I was on their side, and reading their body language, I saw that they trusted me fully to see them through this alive. The decision I made to raid the weapons pile served to convey to them just how desperate I thought our situation was; we were breaking all our commander’s rules. Seeing how their apprehension was tinged with a faith and trust that I would see to their survival – that was when I began to sweat.

*  *  *

It was barely an hour later when the smoke first hit us. We looked at each other, and this time I sent Gad out to check on it. Two minutes after he left, we heard banging, a cry, and then caught sight of our first enemy combatant. Before anyone could move, I loosed my spear and sent it flashing through his chest.

 Just around the bend, I heard a gasp and then, from someone else, a whimper – and then the sound of two men running up the passageway from whence they came. My two men rushed forward. We didn’t have much time. They probably thought we were a full contingent and intended to return with reinforcements.

 I hurried after my two men, hovering momentarily over the dead enemy to retrieve my weapon. It was what lay just around the turn that really caught my attention. Shimon and his brother Antigonus were crouched over a prostrate form. The cry we had heard – Gad! It was a horrible sight to see him prostate like that on the floor. I saw his lips form words as he gasped out his final words before falling forever still.

I asked Shimon what Gad had said but he just shook his head. Antigonus’ eyes flashed disbelief when he told me. “The Mikdash is on fire!”

Around us, the bodies began to pile up, and the enemy began to slow down and hang back. We stood there, all three of us, back-to-back in the middle of the corridor, a whirling circle of danger and destruction. It was truly quite a fighting accomplishment, but now all three of us were bone tired and covered in muck and human gore. The Mikdash burned, and chunks of rock tumbled around us as it disintegrated. From the distance, grunts, cries, sounds of battle, and the crashing of cascading rock whirled towards us and filled the corridor.

Suddenly the soldiers around us disappeared. We were left standing alone. I looked at Shimon, who looked just as confused as I was.

He shrugged, “I don’t know, Yehuda.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “In war you come to expect the unexpected; you have to just stay focused. We need to get to Abba’s tunnel. We must. It’s our only way out of this gehenom. We will survive this.”

They nodded their determined agreement. That was when I saw Antigonus’ face melt into an expression of horror. I whirled around to discover a huge fireball hurtling down the corridor directly towards us.

Now I knew why the enemy left; they must have had a premonition. The fireball reached the end of the corridor and snaked across the walls of our room until we were completely encircled by a two-foot-thick wall of flame. Instinctively we drew together in the center of the room. Someone whimpered. “Stone doesn’t burn,” Shimon muttered in confusion as he huddled against his brother in mounting horror.

Limestone does burn, I knew, but I thought it better not to share this. “We need to get out of here,” I told them, trying to jolt them from their stupor.

“Where do we go?” Shimon asked, wide-eyed and helpless as he gestured at the flames licking the air, just waiting for a taste of our skin. “We’re as good as dead.”

“We have to go through,” I insisted.

They just stared.

“There are probably legionnaires on the other side just waiting for us to come through.”

“So, hold your weapons ready,” I countered. I gave them as confident a look as I could muster, and when they reluctantly nodded, started a count of three.

“Echad, shtaayim, shalosh….” I let loose a bloodcurdling war cry and charged through the flames. Sure enough, there were legionnaires on the other side waiting for us to come out. I lifted my spear and stepped forward to meet my attackers. At that moment, when everyone’s attention was focused on me, I realized to my utter horror that I was completely alone. My men hadn’t followed me out!

*  *  *

 “No!” I cried in anguish, but there was nothing to be done until I dealt with the immediate danger facing me. Metal clanged against metal and I entered battle in earnest. I caught my attacker’s weapon on my spear and then, locking it in place, pressed in close while simultaneously withdrawing a dagger from beneath my shirt and sinking it into his chest. Breathing heavily, I looked up and was gratified to see that it was no longer just my fight. Mikdash soldiers were pouring into the room.

Briefly ignored by the enemy, I turned back to the flames to find out what happened. That was when I saw a sight that I will never forget as long as I live. Antigonus lay on the floor, the backdrop of flame casting shifting light over his mutilated body. His body was so scorched that it was barely identifiable, and the golden hilt of a dagger was protruding from his chest. Apparently, he had gotten the worst of both worlds. He hadn’t left the flames quickly enough, and when the heat finally did drive him out, he’d fallen on an assailant’s dagger.

Astonishingly, I discovered that he was still alive, so upon double checking that the enemy wasn’t paying any attention to me, I scrambled to his side.

“Where’s Shimon?”

He painfully twitched his head in the direction of the flames.

He had to be dead then. It dawned on me that Antigonus and Shimon were twins.

As if reading my thoughts, Antigonus moved his lips in a painfully futile attempt to talk: “B-b-b-orn togeth-r, d-di toge …”

“Don’t talk like that,” I whispered. “We’ll get you out of here.”

As he forced out his next words, his face screwed up into a grimace, and I realized he was laughing. “D-do yo-ou b-believ- in G-G-d?”

I froze. my life until this point flashing briefly before my eyes – my years living as a Roman soldier, my abandonment of my people, and my eventual return to defend the Mikdash. And then this. What did I believe? My face flushed red with embarrassment. Was I even now proceeding as if I had no beliefs? My only hope was that I could redeem myself now.

“W-well, I d-do. S-so there’s n-no bette- p-place I can d-die.”

I was completely taken aback and had to gulp down the bile rising in my throat.

“Y-you g-go – l-l-live. Believe.”

I was sobbing now. I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder – as if that could do anything for him – and he grew closer to the end, his breathing growing shallow, his eyes glazing and losing focus. His lips formed the shape of a word, but no sound came out. Yerushalayim. It took the full strength of my survival instinct to tear myself away.

*  *  *

I stood just inside Abba’s hidden tunnel, as we had agreed, and waited for Abba. On my way there, I saw that the whole rest of the outer Mikdash was a raging inferno, but the inner Mikdash, for some reason, still resisted the flames. Many surviving Jews fought their way to the inner Mikdash, even without knowledge of an escape tunnel because it seemed to afford the best chance of escape.

I waited for Abba alone, only years of experience keeping me from dwelling on my lost men. Abba had better get here soon, I thought; otherwise, he’ll never make it. Reading the sounds coming from above, I knew the western Temple would soon fall, too.

A pounding of feet. Shuffling of heavy objects. The creak of the sliding panels. Roman or Jew? I gripped my sword and set my legs, ready to flee up the passage and claim my freedom at a moment’s notice.

“Abba?” I whispered in the dimly lit passage. A flustered and breathless man slipped into view.

“Yehuda,” he said, grabbing a torch off the wall – I hadn’t thought to do that – and limping towards me.

“I’m hurt.”

I looked and saw that someone had taken a slice of flesh out of his leg. It was bound up to staunch the blood flow, but the binding was soaked through. I tore the edge of my tunic to make him a new binding. He shook his head but grudgingly let me work, “We have to go. They’re coming.”

“Hush. Now clench your teeth and don’t cry out. This will hurt.”

He clenched his teeth but continued talking through them.

“Be quick. They are hunting for me specifically for my rank. I heard a centurion bellowing to find me and had a bunch of them on my tail. I made sure to lose them before entering room so that they wouldn’t see the entrance, but they are in the area and may find it.”

He was so clearheaded, so in control. How did he do it? For me, this was just another war that, this time, was on behalf of my own people, but for Abba, this was his life. The cause had consumed him, and now all was lost. Where did he get the wherewithal? What was he running on?

A little voice inside me wondered about it. Did he still take no blame? With the war lost, the damage he caused must be looking him full in the face. True, he saved his uncle Yochanan ben Zakai – a family favor, I presumed – but what about the burned granaries, the famine? Did he still accept no blame? This would break me.

There was noise overhead. The Romans! – they discovered the passageway! I finished wrapping up Abba and left the discarded binding on the floor. Maybe the Romans would trip on it. I hoisted Abba off the floor, and we stood there for a moment clasping hands and listening with our ears cocked. We heard the creaking of the passage and then loud exclamations of triumph, then movement as the legionnaires gathered.

“We’re going to make it,” I whispered. “Glad you have my back; it feels like old times.”

“Don’t worry about noise; they will come up the passage even if they don’t know we’re here.”

The first Roman slid into view, and with that, we fled.

*  *  *

We were panting hard now, and Abba’s limp was slowing him down. Stealth would have served us better than speed because then, even when the Romans followed, it wouldn’t have been at a run, pell-mell down the passage in a frantic chase. In our state we couldn’t win a war of speed. Luckily for us, the passage forked a little way back. Maybe they would go the wrong way.

As we rounded a bend, I pulled up short. “There are people up ahead,” I hissed grabbing Abba by the shoulders, “I hear noises.”

Abba cocked his head and listened; he nodded. “The end of the passage is just around the next bend,” he said pointing, “There are probably Romans there having an orgy. They don’t know about the passage, but we can’t just barrel out into their midst.    

“What do we do?”

Somewhere behind us I heard the Romans pause and puzzle over a fork in the road.

“I picked this passage for a reason,” Abba said, his lips flattening into a tight smile. I recognized this as his sign of nervous satisfaction. Huh, he’d planned for this!? He indicated a small body-sized fissure in the wall about six feet off the ground. It did manage to look innocent as if it were just missing stones. The passage was littered with gaps like this one so, it would not stand out.

“It’s bigger than it looks, so you could fit in, but it’s not enough for both of us,” said Abba. “I left a sealed jug of water in advance and made it comfortable enough to stay in for few days, though hunger will eventually force you out. I suggest you try to escape tonight under the cover of darkness.”

 The realization of what he intended sank in.

“One of us must stay and fight, and the other will go and hide,” he finished lamely.

 Behind us, we heard the shouts of Romans debating which way to go. Most seemed to want to go left.

“We will both go in,” I said overly harsh, trying to stem his argument before it began. “I see enough room for two, we can handle a squeeze.” I eyed the gap. There was enough room, almost.

“Even if there is, if they don’t find someone, they will search the passage. Someone must be the sacrifice,” replied Abba.

 “Well, let me; why you?” I demanded; I’d never abandoned a comrade before. “You’re hurt; you can’t fight them. They’ll slaughter you.”

He shook his head. We both knew that argument was ridiculous; they would slaughter whoever stayed. Dimly, I was aware of the Romans hustling towards us. They had made the correct choice and turned right. We had maybe two minutes.

I looked into Abba’s face and saw that it was drawn and withered. His eyes were pleading with me. “I have nothing left,” he said. “This fight was everything to me, and it’s over. My soldiers – my sons – are dead, the Mikdash nearly razed. Let me die with it. You were always the outsider in this war – despite your return to your people. Why should you be martyred for it?”

So, he had broken, too. Well, it was my job to have his back when he was down and weak.

“Listen, you’ll get over it,” I began, fighting a rising sense of desperation, but then, the dead look in his eyes caught me. The little voice in my head that wanted to survive spoke up again: Why should you die, it breathed at me. He caused this, he created this disunity. Let him die for it; it’s only fitting. I tried to beat down the voice, but it was too late.

“Quick, they’re here,” Abba hissed frantically shoving me towards the fissure, never knowing what terrible thoughts I was thinking about him. “Get in before we both die.”

In confusion, I obeyed as he hoisted me up and in. Tucking me away out of view, he spun around to face what was coming. Not a moment too soon; the Romans came barreling around the corner. Completely muddled, I watched as he hurled his torch into their midst. He couldn’t hold it in battle. His newly freed hand came up with the concealed Sicarii blade he always carried, and it quickly followed the torch. Now his sword was drawn, and he was in their midst. One went down, four were left.

Then, they were on top of him. l huddled in my hole in the wall and covered my eyes not bearing to look. I was horrified. The little voice from before was completely vanquished for the time being, and I was left broken by what I’d done. We’d had each other’s back for years, and now I’d, I’d…

The Romans finished with him and then marched off. I didn’t have the guts to look out and see what I had wrought. If I did, I would have seen what I found later that night when I left: two dead Romans and Abba’s lifeless body splayed on the stone floor, his life’s blood leaking away, his head turned to glare directly at me through the fissure as if to keep me in place, worried to the end that I would come out to help and ruin his plan. Or, perhaps, his glare was an accusation. The torch lay broken on the floor beside the carnage, where it had landed after Abba threw it. Its dying flame winked out, and the whole passage descended into blackness.

Eating my heart out, it occurred to me that in a way, Abba’s plan had left us both dead.

*  *  *

After what felt like interminable walking, Yehuda finally came to the mouth of the tunnel. A sliver of moonlight shone through the small aperture, and the arid, summer breeze that prickled the back of his neck felt fresh compared to the stale air that had previously hugged him. He emerged into a thicket of tangled bushes. It was as if Abba had arranged for the perfect camouflage around the passageway entrance. Yehuda quickly assessed his surroundings from the safety this concealment afforded him. Freedom at last, or so he hoped.

Finding a small hollow among the brush, he lay down. Tearing at the grass with his fingers, he vividly saw in his mind’s eye a replay of the entire scene. Tear stained, grimy, and physically battered, he was emotionally spent. He’d lived his whole life sword in hand, bringing death, but today’s battle forced him to question everything about himself. Even the qualities he’d thought he had were lost. Until now, he wore his honor on his chest, a badge of humanity. This war had broken even that. His honor was no longer intact. He was a shell of himself. Suddenly, he was sobbing again. My heart betrayed me… No, I betrayed him. My inaction betrayed him. I have no honor left.

Sinking into a fitful sleep, he awoke before dawn to an eerie silence. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and then, ready to face whatever awaited him, took his first step out into the dangers of tomorrow.

Yehuda found himself wandering aimlessly for a few days. He was in a daze. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, how to get there, or even how he wanted to live. Always, he’d been a man on the move, a creature of war. As a teenager, he ran away with his best friend Abba and joined the Roman auxiliaries. Abba returned home to a normal life while still young, but Yehuda stayed on, eventually winning his way to powerful friends and entry into the regular legions. And then it all fell apart. He lost his powerful friends and made an ignominious return home. And now, after everything that had transpired, he found himself questioning everything about his life. All the men of the sword on his own side had proven to be self-interested brigands. The only people of worth he had met while in Yerushalayim were the plain people, the city folk who were at everyone else’s mercy and remained noble – and the Rabbis, who constantly preached about righteousness even when it wasn’t popular.

Eventually, without realizing it, his feet began to take him to Egypt. Like a horse let loose in the wild that followed the path it knew, his body searched for the familiar route. Whatever the reason, he found himself traversing the same route he had taken to get from Egypt to Jerusalem but in reverse.

As he descended yet another desert mountain, he belatedly realized he recognized the valley. He found himself telling an imaginary companion all about it. “Did you know I was once a Roman officer serving in Greece?”

Silence.

It should have been a dramatic and petrifying revelation. He was admitting he had once been one of the enemy. Yet his proclamation was met only with the listless silence of the cacti and thornbushes.

Yehuda went on talking to himself. “I had a falling out, so I went to Egypt and from there traveled through these very mountains to get to Yerushalayim. I was determined to get back to my people. A bunch of Edomites led me here to meet up with a large group of pilgrims – nazirim, the whole lot of them, except me.”

As he talked, the whole scene came back. It didn’t matter to him that he had no audience. He was happy to fill his thoughts with the cheerful memory that temporarily blotted out the events of yesterday. The whole valley had been brimming with braying animals and flocks of sheep. A mass of nazirim needed an even larger mass of korbanos, and they were bringing them along!

Yehuda tried his best to describe the scene to imprint it in his memory. “There was singing and dancing and celebration. It was kind of like the celebration of the first fruit, he reflected, comparing the celebratory atmosphere of the two events. “I was not a very religious man, but it was inspiring. I spent the trip in a state of ecstasy.”

Yehuda winced, strongly suspecting he was overdoing it by talking to an empty valley. It wasn’t even entirely true. Actually, he had been quite overwhelmed by the bombastic noise and couldn’t stand the pervading stench of the animals.

At that moment, Yehuda was overcome with emotion. He was already in a fragile state. The poet in him could appreciate the irony: two trips – one a return to his people, coming up from Egypt (from near slavery at the hands of pirates), and the other, his descent downwards, slinking away from the complete destruction of the Mikdash. The two trips couldn’t have been more different. Unbidden words of poetry sprang from his lips, an elegy of mourning that totally captured his mood: betzeisi mimitzrayim…betzeisi miyerushalayim. He wanted so desperately to capture in words the melancholy he felt, to contrast the high he’d felt returning to his people, as if he’d won a great victory, to the low he felt returning on the same route having failed to save the Mikdash. A lonely man with no friends or family and barely even a nation.

Wistfully, he wished for a better future. He thought about all he had experienced this last year and hoped to one day recover and return to Yerushalayim a better Jew. He knew that if it ever came about, he would be returning not just to the Mikdash but to G-d himself. Again, unbidden words sprang to his mind, capturing what he yearned for: Sasson vesimcha venas yagon ve’anacha b’shuvi leyerushalayim. Please let there come a time, he prayed silently to G-d, when all of Yehuda will be able to return filled with joy and celebration to Yerushalayim.

This story is adapted from a chapter of an upcoming novel. To contact the author through the Where What When, please email adswww@aol.com.