Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter (49 page)

“He complained that you stationed your husband just outside the door,” she said. “But not much else.”

“How do you deal with Ashmedai’s lust?” I couldn’t imagine Yalta so overcome with passion that she attacked Rav Nachman.

She shrugged. “Men and their demon counterparts do not arouse me, so it is not a difficulty.” When I looked at her in surprise, she said, “For someone who knows so much about women’s most personal concerns, you are woefully ignorant in one area.”

“What do you mean?”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me just say that I am pleased Nachman travels around and takes all those women for a night, because while he is gone I am free to enjoy mine.”

I blushed not so much at what she’d admitted as at my own blindness. I was aware she had her favorites among the slave girls. On occasion I’d witnessed one furtively exiting her private quarters, followed shortly by a languid-looking Yalta. And it wasn’t that I was unaware of what rabbis called “women who rub with another.” Rava argued that only illicit relations with a man rendered a woman unfit to marry a
kohen
; those between two women had no legal consequences.

I tried to cover up my lack of worldliness. “I can see how that would be an advantage in dealing with Ashmedai.”

“If you want him to keep your conversations secret, you should command him explicitly to do so.”

Her words sounded like guidance rather than criticism, so perhaps the test I had passed made me more worthy in her sight. I took a chance and ventured a risky question. “What did you have Ashmedai do?”

To my surprise, she didn’t hesitate. “He told me how to control Zafnat.”

THIRTY

SEVENTH YEAR OF KING SHAPUR II’S REIGN
• 316 CE •

T
isha B’Av had concluded, and though the heat was only slightly less stifling, I looked forward to the boat ride our family and Rava’s students would take to Pumbedita for Joseph’s betrothal on the fifteenth. During the previous month, I’d traveled there regularly to plan the feast’s details with Homa and Abaye. We’d chosen that date because a Mishna from Tractate Taanit taught that Israel had no days as joyous as the Fifteenth of Av, when the daughters of Jerusalem went out to dance before the young men eager to choose brides from among them.

Once we were all on board Rava explained how the Fifteenth of Av had become such a joyous holiday. “This was the day when the Israelites wandering in the desert realized they were finally going to enter Eretz Israel.”

“How did they know that?” my nephew Huna asked. Huna was Tachlifa’s son, one of several of my brothers’ sons who came to study with Rava after Father died.

“Remember how, when the spies returned with their evil report, the Almighty declared that every man over twenty would die before the new generation was allowed to cross into the Land?” Rava asked as the students gathered around him.

Even little Acha knew this piece of Torah.

“That day was Tisha B’Av,” Rava said. “In the wilderness the Israelites didn’t die normally from illness or accidents. Instead, every year on Tisha B’Av, each man dug a grave and slept in it, and during the night some of them died.”

When Kahana asked, “Is this the origin of Israel mourning on that day?” I was impressed at how the Sages found support in the Torah for the rabbinic observance of mourning the Holy Temples’ two destructions.

Rava nodded. “In the fortieth year, Tisha B’Av dawned and every man rose from his grave. At first the people thought they must have miscalculated the date, so they slept in their graves the next night and . . .”

“Again nobody died,” eight-year-old Chanina called out.

Rava tousled our son’s hair affectionately, and again I wondered why my husband only had problems with Joseph.

“The same thing happened the next night, and the next,” Rava said. “Finally the full moon made it obvious that the Ninth of Av had passed without a death, and thus no men of the spies’ generation remained.”

Acha looked confused, so Rava knelt down and explained: “Just as every month begins with the sliver of a new moon, so the middle of the month, the fifteenth, always coincides with the full moon.”

Our voyage was as merry as one would expect with a boat full of youths on their way to a betrothal banquet. Much wine was consumed, which led to singing and joking, most of it rather indecent. It was inevitable that some of them ended up in the water, but because Jewish Law mandated every father to teach his son to swim, no one was endangered.

 • • • 

The students were so eager to start celebrating that, led by Kahana and Adda, they raced up to Abaye’s while the rest of us waited for the carters. But when we arrived, Chama was waiting at the gate, his face creased with worry.

“Bibi has been stricken,” my son whispered. “We don’t know if he will recover.”

“I must go to Abaye,” Rava said before rushing inside.

“But Ashmedai promised Em that Bibi wouldn’t die until after she did,” I protested. Then I quailed as I realized what that implied.

“Em is well.” Chama put his hand on my arm to steady me. “She’s with Bibi now, trying to heal him.”

“What happened?”

Chama reddened with shame. “Bibi and I heard of a way to see
mazikim
and decided to try it.”

“What did you do?” I was both horrified and intrigued.

“Bibi placed ashes around his bed at night and in the morning there were marks like chicken scratches,” he whispered. “But we wanted to see the demons, not just their footprints.”

“And then?” I prompted when he hesitated.

He looked down at the ground and mumbled, “We heard that if you took the placenta of a black cat whose mother was also black, burned it to ash, then ground it up and put some in your eye, you would see them.” He sounded guilty rather than proud.

“You weren’t concerned about the danger?”

“We were supposed to keep our mouths closed and seal some of the ash in a tube so we wouldn’t be harmed,” he explained. “But Bibi was so amazed by the sight he gasped.”

I held my head in my hands. “He gave the
mazikim
an opening.”

“Can you help him?” Chama begged me. “You’re a great
charasheta
now.”

“If Em can’t help him, I doubt I can.” I was angry and frightened. I’d faced Samael, and Em had negotiated with Ashmedai in order to save Bibi from an early death. Now the boy’s recklessness might negate all our efforts.

We walked slowly to the door and entered a house shrouded in silence. The hallway was crowded with students, heads bowed in prayer. I found Em in the room next to our bedroom, reciting psalms with the other women. Homa patted the cushion beside her and squeezed my hand when I sat down. I spent the night entreating Heaven to have mercy on poor hapless Bibi, and in the morning I sensed the Heavenly Court weighing his Torah studies against his foolhardy behavior.

I didn’t see Rava or Chama for two days. It was on the eve of the Fifteenth of Av that Rava staggered into our room, collapsed on the bed, and murmured that Bibi would recover. Within moments my husband was asleep.

 • • • 

Joseph and Tamar’s betrothal was rescheduled for the first week of Elul. Thus we were still in Pumbedita as the month began, awakened by one pious man after another blowing his shofar in anticipation of the New Year. Goaded by their respective students, Rava and Abaye revisited an old debate between them—the importance of intent in one’s actions.

“Shmuel taught that if a pagan forced a Jew to eat matzah during Pesach, the Jew has fulfilled the mitzvah.” Rava threw down the first opinion. “Therefore even someone who blows a shofar for a song on Rosh Hashana has fulfilled the mitzvah.”

Rava’s students murmured their approval until Abaye objected: “If you maintain that performing mitzvot does not require intent, how do you explain the Mishna from Tractate Rosh Hashana that teaches: ‘If someone passes a synagogue and hears the shofar, if he directs his mind to it, he has fulfilled the mitzvah. If not, he has not fulfilled the mitzvah.’”

Abaye’s students now elbowed Rava’s as Abaye gained the advantage. But Rava replied, “Directing his mind to it does not mean he intended to perform the mitzvah, only that he realized he heard a shofar blast.”

A hush came over the room as the students gazed at each other in confusion. Abaye shook his head in annoyance and retorted, “The Mishna says he
did
hear a shofar.”

“The Mishna refers to a case where he thinks he heard a donkey braying,” Rava said calmly. Many of his students chuckled while Abaye’s waited anxiously for their master’s next salvo.

“What about this Mishna in Tractate Berachot?” Abaye’s eyes gleamed as if daring Rava to refute him. “If one is reciting words of Torah and comes to the Shema during the time he is obligated to say the Shema, if he directs his mind to it, he has fulfilled the mitzvah and if not, he has not fulfilled it.”

Abaye’s disciples looked smug again until Rava replied simply, “It means he intended to say the words of the Shema.”

Abaye shook his head in exasperation. “The Mishna states that he
is
saying them.”

“The Mishna refers to a case when he is checking for mistakes in the scroll and might be hurriedly slurring the words. Directing his mind to it means he is reciting the Shema with proper pronunciation.” Rava sounded like someone patiently repeating a lesson for small children, provoking growls of resentment from Abaye’s students and smirks from his own.

Abaye drew himself up to his full height to deliver his ultimate assertion. “So according to you, who holds that mitzvot do not require intent,” he accused Rava, “someone who sleeps in the sukkah on the eighth day, after Sukkot is over, even if he sleeps there because it is cooler, has violated the prohibition against adding extra days to a festival.”

With an expression of utter confidence, Rava shook his finger at Abaye. “Though performing a mitzvah does not require intent, transgressing a prohibition does require intent.”

That was undeniable. As always, Abaye accepted defeat graciously, although his students’ disappointed whispers showed that they did not.

This time I agreed with my husband about intent. I explained to my sons that, following Rava’s view, it would be easier to gain merit for performing mitzvot since they could be done without intent. “So when the Heavenly Court balances your mitzvot against your sins, to judge if you are worthy of being written in the Book of Life, the mitzvah side of the scale will be heavier than if both, or neither, required intent.”

Chama and Joseph understood me immediately, and by the end of the midday meal, after they pointed this out to their cohorts, Abaye’s students were looking more relieved than angry.

 • • • 

The day before Joseph’s betrothal banquet, as I was reviewing the preparations with Em and Homa, Chama hesitantly interrupted and asked if we could talk privately. My anxiety heightened, I led him to the garden and waited impatiently for him to speak.

Thankfully, he came directly to the point. “I want to study with Rava, but I doubt he’ll accept me without your help.”

My heart swelled with joy at the prospect of Chama coming to live with us. “You don’t need his approval. Just come and start studying with him like the other students did.”

“I’m not like his other students, Mother. You know that,” he said. “And I do need his approval. I want him to teach me Maaseh Bereshit and Maaseh Merkava.”

I swallowed hard. Convincing Rava to teach anyone, let alone Chama, the secret Torah would not be easy. “I assume you’ve thought of arguments to persuade him.”

“I am thirty now, which is older than he was when he started with Rav Oshaiya,” Chama began. “I have learned priestly magic from Grandfather and from Uncle Mari, so I am not a novice in these subjects.”

“Perhaps it would be better if you appear to be interested in learning only Torah from him at first,” I suggested. “Then when he sees what a fine student you are, you can approach him about more esoteric subjects.”

“His students are encouraging us to study with him, asking why we stay here gnawing bones with Yosef and Abaye instead of eating fat meat with Rava in Machoza,” he replied. “I could pretend that they convinced me.”

“They say that?” I asked. When Chama nodded, I was proud that my husband’s students praised him so highly.

We continued to sit in silence. The longer we remained, the surer I felt that he had more to say. “When did you decide you wanted to study with him?”

“After Bibi was attacked.”

“How did that change things?”

“I wanted to see
mazikim
just as much as Bibi, maybe more, but he was the one injured.” Chama’s voice was heavy with regret. “I now realize how ignorant I am, and that I need to study with an expert on the secret Torah before I try anything like that again.”

“I think Rava will respond well when you tell him this.”