particular subject with him. I told myself it was simply that I did not wish to start down a road that must inevitably lead to a break between us should we disagree. But that was not quite the whole of the matter—there was also that part of me that did not wish to expose to his scrutiny views that defined me so deeply.
Once it happened that we argued over his friendliness towards the tallyman at the docks in Kefar Nahum, a stunted half-pagan they called Rakiil, the Babbler, who worked tabulating the catches the fishermen brought in so they could be assessed for tax. In Galilee, it seemed the tax collectors were not nearly so hated as in Judea, where they worked directly for the Romans; yet neither were they embraced, nor free from corruption. Rakiil was a figure of ridicule at the docks, because of his deformities and his work—the local boys tormented him, intoning his name in a mocking cry like a gull’s that would send him chasing after them red-faced with anger. But he had a streak of petty baseness in him that made it hard to feel any sympathy for him, seldom missing a chance to inflate a tally or to set a fine, if he could find the excuse for one.
Yeshua, however, had somehow got it into his head to make Rakiil his friend, and never neglected to greet him and exchange a word with him when he passed through the docks. Now, if Rakiil had responded to his overtures by becoming suddenly merciful and fair, I might have been the first to see the wisdom in his actions. But in fact he continued as mean-spirited as before, regarding Yeshua’s friendliness with suspicion and going out of his way to impose thestiffest possible tallies on Yeshua’s men, to show he had not been duped. I could not fathom, therefore, why Yeshua continued in his kindnesses and did not simply condemn him as an ingrate and a churl, who took pleasure in extorting from the poor rather than simply doing his job, as even Yeshua’s master Yohanan had taught.
When I made this argument with Yeshua, however, he said, “How honest would my kindness to him be if it were only a means of seeking more favourable treatment from him?”
This sort of logic infuriated me.
“By that reckoning we might just as well embrace even the Romans, and make an end of it.”
“You hate him because he’s a tax collector,” Yeshua said.
He was trying to bring the thing around to my politics, so that he might say, Did not even Solomon collect taxes, so why take it out on miserable Rakiil, and what did it matter what yoke you were under since there was always a yoke. But this was not an argument I cared to engage.
“I hate him because he’s vile.”
“Will your hatred make him any less so?”
“No more than your love will.”
I knew that to follow him to the logical end of his reasoning must lead where I could not go, for if I must love even my oppressor, then how could I ever muster my forces against him. Yet the fact was that there was something in Yeshua’s stance in this matter that I admired, perhaps because it reminded me of my own youthful contrariness, that he seemed always to embrace exactly those who were universally despised, as if to show how little he cared for the opinions of the world. Indeed, it was almost axiomatic with him that he reverse the usual order of things, giving the smallestheed to those of highest standing while always finding the way to raise up those whom no one else took into account. In this he showed himself exactly the opposite of a collaborationist, since he did not profit in any way from his behaviour, but rather often opened himself up to censure.
Nowhere was this clearer than in the matter of the lepers. The Galilee was even more hopelessly backward than Judea in its treatment of lepers, subscribing to the usual Levitical proscriptions and refusing to acknowledge any medical basis to the condition; and since none of the towns had any adequate authority for sorting the more serious cases from common boils or sores, they
Once it happened that we argued over his friendliness towards the tallyman at the docks in Kefar Nahum, a stunted half-pagan they called Rakiil, the Babbler, who worked tabulating the catches the fishermen brought in so they could be assessed for tax. In Galilee, it seemed the tax collectors were not nearly so hated as in Judea, where they worked directly for the Romans; yet neither were they embraced, nor free from corruption. Rakiil was a figure of ridicule at the docks, because of his deformities and his work—the local boys tormented him, intoning his name in a mocking cry like a gull’s that would send him chasing after them red-faced with anger. But he had a streak of petty baseness in him that made it hard to feel any sympathy for him, seldom missing a chance to inflate a tally or to set a fine, if he could find the excuse for one.
Yeshua, however, had somehow got it into his head to make Rakiil his friend, and never neglected to greet him and exchange a word with him when he passed through the docks. Now, if Rakiil had responded to his overtures by becoming suddenly merciful and fair, I might have been the first to see the wisdom in his actions. But in fact he continued as mean-spirited as before, regarding Yeshua’s friendliness with suspicion and going out of his way to impose thestiffest possible tallies on Yeshua’s men, to show he had not been duped. I could not fathom, therefore, why Yeshua continued in his kindnesses and did not simply condemn him as an ingrate and a churl, who took pleasure in extorting from the poor rather than simply doing his job, as even Yeshua’s master Yohanan had taught.
When I made this argument with Yeshua, however, he said, “How honest would my kindness to him be if it were only a means of seeking more favourable treatment from him?”
This sort of logic infuriated me.
“By that reckoning we might just as well embrace even the Romans, and make an end of it.”
“You hate him because he’s a tax collector,” Yeshua said.
He was trying to bring the thing around to my politics, so that he might say, Did not even Solomon collect taxes, so why take it out on miserable Rakiil, and what did it matter what yoke you were under since there was always a yoke. But this was not an argument I cared to engage.
“I hate him because he’s vile.”
“Will your hatred make him any less so?”
“No more than your love will.”
I knew that to follow him to the logical end of his reasoning must lead where I could not go, for if I must love even my oppressor, then how could I ever muster my forces against him. Yet the fact was that there was something in Yeshua’s stance in this matter that I admired, perhaps because it reminded me of my own youthful contrariness, that he seemed always to embrace exactly those who were universally despised, as if to show how little he cared for the opinions of the world. Indeed, it was almost axiomatic with him that he reverse the usual order of things, giving the smallestheed to those of highest standing while always finding the way to raise up those whom no one else took into account. In this he showed himself exactly the opposite of a collaborationist, since he did not profit in any way from his behaviour, but rather often opened himself up to censure.
Nowhere was this clearer than in the matter of the lepers. The Galilee was even more hopelessly backward than Judea in its treatment of lepers, subscribing to the usual Levitical proscriptions and refusing to acknowledge any medical basis to the condition; and since none of the towns had any adequate authority for sorting the more serious cases from common boils or sores, they
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