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Rabbi Jacimus was hard in his ways, but he was a gentle man, a wise man, and he told wonderful stories. Stories were our history, and who we were, and there were times when I liked nothing better than stories.
Yet I was coming to understand something of the greatest importance: all stories were part of one great story, the story of who we were. I hadn’t seen it so clearly before, but now it was so clear that it thrilled me.
Often in the school and sometimes in the synagogue, Rabbi Berekhaiah stood up, though he was shaking on his bent legs and he raised his arms and with his head bent and his eyes cast upward he would cry out: “But who are we, children, tell me?”
And then we would sing it out after him:
We are the people of Abraham and Isaac. We went down into Egypt in the time of Joseph. We became slaves there. Egypt became the smelting forge and we suffered. But the Lord had redeemed us, the Lord raised up Moses to lead us, and the Lord brought us forth parting the waters of the Sea of Reeds, and into the Promised Land.
The Lord gave the Law to Moses on Sinai. And we are a holy people, a people of priests, a people of the Law. We are a people of great Kings—Saul, and David, and Solomon, and Josiah.
But Israel si
Yet Our Lord is a Lord slow to anger, and steadfast in his love, and full of mercy, and he sent a redeemer to end our captivity in Babylon, yea, this was Cyrus the Persian, and we returned to the Promised Land and rebuilt the Temple. Turn and look towards the Temple, for there every day the High Priest offers a sacrifice for the people of Israel to the Lord on High. All over the world there are Jews, a holy people, faithful to the Law and to the Lord, who look towards the Temple, and know no other gods but the Lord.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One.
And you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength.
And these words, that I command you this day, will be in your heart:
And you will teach them diligently to your children, and you will talk of them when you sit in your houses, and you walk by the roads and when you lie down and when you get up.
We did not have to be at the Temple to keep the sacred Feasts. Jews all over the world kept the sacred Feasts.
It was not safe yet to travel to the Temple. But the news came to us that the fighting had stopped in Jerusalem, and that the Temple had been purified. The fire signals coming from Jerusalem told us all was well.
And we went out at dawn before the Day of Atonement to watch for the first light because we knew that the High Priest was rising with that first light to begin his ceremonies in the Temple, his bathing which he would do again and again that day.
We hoped and prayed there would be no rebellion, no trouble.
Because on this day the High Priest would seek to atone for all the sins of the people of Israel. He would put on his finest vestments. The Rabbi Jacimus, the anointed priest himself, had described to us these holy garments, and we had learned how they were to be from the Scripture:
The long tunic of the High Priest was blue, and tied with a sash at the waist, and its hem was trimmed with tassels and small golden bells. One could hear these bells when the High Priest walked. Over this tunic the High Priest wore a second garment called the ephod which had much fine gold and fancy work on it, and a breastplate of twelve shining gems, one each for the tribes of Israel, so that when the High Priest went in before the Lord, he would have there the Twelve Tribes. And on the head of the High Priest was a great turban with a golden crown. It was a “glorious thing to behold.”
But before the High Priest put on these beautiful vestments, these vestments as fine as those of any pagan priest in any Temple anywhere, he would dress in simple linen, pure and white, to perform the sacrifices.
On this day, the High Priest laid hands upon the bullock to be sacrificed for Israel. And he would lay hands upon the two goats.
Now one of these goats would be sacrificed, but the other, the other would carry all the sins of the people of Israel out into the wilderness. It was the goat for Azazel.
And what was Azazel? We little boys wanted to know. But we already knew. Azazel was evil; it was the demons; it was the world “out there,” without the Law, in the wilderness. And everyone knew what the word “wilderness” meant because all the people of Israel had once roamed through the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land. And the goat would carry the sins back to Azazel to show that the sins of Israel had been forgiven by the Lord, and evil could take back what was evil as we would have no more of it.
But the most important thing which the High Priest did was to enter the Holy of Holies of the Temple, the place where the Lord Himself was Present; the place where only the High Priest could go.
And all Israel prayed that the power of the Lord there would not break out upon the High Priest, but that his prayers of atonement would be heard for himself and for all of us, and that he would come out to the people having been in the Presence of the Lord.
In the late afternoon, we gathered in the synagogue where the Rabbi read the scroll that the High Priest was reading in the Court of the Women: “And on the tenth day of the seventh month there shall be a day of atonement …and you shall afflict your souls.”
The Rabbi told us what the High Priest was telling the crowd in the Temple Court: “More than what I’ve read out before you is written here.”
At last darkness came. We stood on the rooftop barefoot waiting. Those on the highest places cried out. They could see the fire signals from the nearest villages south, and now they lighted the fires to spread the word north and east and west:
Everyone was shouting with joy. We were dancing. Our fast was ended. The wine was being poured. The food was put on lighted coals.
In a cleansed and renewed Temple, the High Priest had completed his task. He had come out of the Holy of Holies safely. His prayers for Israel had been complete. His sacrifices complete. His readings complete. And he was gone now as we were to a banquet among his kindred in his home.
The early rains had been good. The planting had started.
And hard on the Day of Atonement came the Feast of Booths where all Israel had to live for seven days in booths built of tree branches to remember the journey from Egypt into Canaan, and for the children this was special fun.
We gathered the finest branches we could from the forest, especially the willow branches from along the stream, and we lived in these booths, all of us, men, women, children as if they were our houses, and we sang the happy Psalms.
Finally, news came that Herod Archelaus and Herod Antipas had arrived home, along with all those who had gone to Caesar Augustus. We gathered in the synagogue to hear the a
Herod Antipas, a son of the dreaded Herod the Great, was to be the ruler of Galilee and Perea. And Herod Archelaus whom everyone still hated very much would be the Ethnarch of Judea, and other children of Herod ruled other places beyond. One princess of Herod was given the palace of the Greek city of Ascalon. I thought that was a pretty name.
When I asked Joseph about the pretty city of Ascalon later, he told me there were Greek cities all through Israel and Perea, and even in Galilee—cities with temples to idols of marble and gold. There were ten Greek cities around the Sea of Galilee and they were called the Decapolis.