second row of stones.
The rabbi said that kind of talk was just what he expected from a circle of radicals like us, then he reminded me—as if I needed reminding—that as a newcomer to the community, I had no right to interfere with its internal affairs.
“And unless you honor the Sabbath by praying with us, all your earthly toil will be in vain,” said Rabbi Aaron.
Acosta jumped to his feet. “With all due respect, Rabbi, here’s how it’s going to be. You pray, and we’ll defend the ghetto. It’s called division of labor. It’s a modern concept, so you wouldn’t know about it.”
“You’re going to regret that comment,” said Rabbi Aaron.
Half a block away, I saw Reyzl leaving the print shop and heading home for the Pesach feast.
“Yeah, we may end up regretting a lot of things,” I said.
“I’d sooner commit kidesh hashem and die with God’s Holy Name on my lips than violate Shabbes with a bunch of fraydenkers,” said Rabbi Aaron, and several of his hangers-on nodded in unison, their close-cropped hair staying rigidly in place. Then they actually started removing the cobblestones from the barricade.
Rabbi Hillel says, In a place where there are no men, try to act like a man.
I faced Rabbi Aaron’s students and said, “In all your years of study, did you people happen to skip over the passages in the Mishnah which tell us that it is permitted to violate Shabbes on a woman’s account in order to deliver a baby, and to openly carry the necessary implements and heat them in a fire?”
But they acted like they didn’t hear me. They just kept on removing stones as if I wasn’t even there.
I wondered if they went through this at Masada, where the last of the Zealots committed mass suicide rather than surrender to their pagan enemies, or in York, En gland, where the Jews had taken their own lives rather than fall into the hands of their Christian attackers. All we ever get are the grand and glorious speeches about their heroic sacrifices. But I wondered if they bickered among themselves, taking sides and splitting along the fracture lines of old rivalries. Fortunately, all my years of apprenticeship in institutions of higher learning had prepared me for this type of circumstance.
Acosta looked like he was ready to split one of the disciples’ heads open with a paving stone. So I said, “Haven’t we learned that Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nasi saved the Jewish nation after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple by writing down the Oral Law in spite of the prohibition against doing so? Didn’t he break the rules in order to save our very souls?”
I said all this while gathering the muddy stones and feeding them back into the rotation, even as the rabbi’s followers undid our work by taking the stones off the pile and tossing them back into the mud.
This bit of horse play from a rustic Purimshpil went on for a few go-rounds, until Acosta recognized that he would never win a theological debate with the esteemed rabbi and his followers, and limited himself to muttering about how the toil and sweat of men like us had built the gates that allowed the rabbi and his personal band of zealots to pray in peace.
But the rabbi’s band of devotees refused to listen, and it was about to turn into a tug-of-war over the muddy stones when Rabbi Aaron called them off.
“That’s enough, my boys,” he said. “Although removing the stones is the correct action to take, it is not worth the cost of desecrating the Sabbath.”
The rabbi’s students reluctantly dropped what they were doing and murmured in agreement.
Luckily, the batlen returned at that moment with the message that the butchers were sharpening their cleavers and gathering under the banner of the double-tailed lion.
“Good,” said Acosta. “Now run and tell the other guilds to do the same.”
“What other guilds?”
“The goldsmiths, tailors, and shoemakers.”
The batlen said, “What are we going to do to our enemies? Throw shoes at them?”
A couple of the men in our crew laughed, but Acosta’s back went rigid.
“If necessary,” he said.
“I’m disappointed by your apparent lack of faith,” said Rabbi Aaron. “I shall have to have a word with your rabbi.”
I knew that was an empty threat, having seen how the two rabbis got along.
And with that, Rabbi Aaron whisked up his coterie of budding scholars and left us to our fate.
When they were gone, I asked, “Who are the Freethinkers in this town?”
“Anyone who doesn’t agree