This is the life-story of Jesus of Nazareth told by his adopted sister, Deborah from childhood to the crucifixion.
Together with her husband, Judas, Deborah learnt the sacred mysteries of the Jewish faith and her understanding of the incredible events that were to unfold offer a remarkable interpretation of the origins of the Christian story.
Deborah is a perfect heroine….I read it in one sitting, not because I was in a hurry but because I became absorbed in a well-told story, Mary Loudon, The Times
Fascinating, instructive and thought-provoking. I believed in the characters and admired their strength, courage and tenacity.
Luke Mulrany, Historical Novel Review.
The wonderful twist this book brings to the greatest story ever told is that Deborah became the wife of Judas Iscariot. The Bookseller
Maggy Whitehouse creates a vividly beautiful Northern Israel as a backdrop to her emotional, often grippingly mystical tale. Theologically it is highly controversial but as a story it is heart-warming. Kentish Express
The Book of Deborah
Chapter One
We were a full day's journey from Jerusalem before anyone noticed that Yeshua was missing.
It was hardly surprising; there were hundreds of us in the long, dusty, straggling trail of people travelling homewards to Galilee: distant relations gossiping and sharing around news of betrothals arranged over the festival; new acquaintances swapping background and lineage; old quarrels added to, or resolved. Everyone assumed that everyone else was somewhere around and you might not see members of your own family for half a day or more.
I was curled up in the back of a half-empty ox-cart owned by my cousin Jonah. On the way down to Jerusalem the old brown ox had hauled sacks of olives and dates, hard cheeses and other Galilean specialities but now all he had to pull were a few purchases from the big city and the occasional traveller, wearied from the journey. They did not even notice me, tucked away at the back and wrapped from head to toe in an old blanket. The rug cushioned me from the bumps along the way and protected me from the stifling yellow dust that billowed up, all around our path but, mostly, it hid me from prying eyes.
Jonah occasionally threw me a word or a question and I would stick my freckled nose out of the blanket in response, but he was a sensible man and did not badger a little girl who preferred to be left alone.
I rested my head on a pile of yellow straw, day-dreaming of my beloved, remembered, silver sea, deaf and blind to the sights and sounds around me and the dozens of shouting and laughing children who ran backwards and forwards with the irrepressible energy of youth.
Through the babble, I still heard Miriam’s voice, sharp with worry, calling, ‘Yeshua? Yeshua! Where are you?’ and sat up, blinking in the clouds of dust to peer over the side of the cart. We were just pulling up at our lodging house for the night, and it was time for families to regroup.
‘Deborah!’ she saw me and came hurrying over. ‘Is Yeshua with you? Have you seen him today?’ Her normally calm face was pinched with worry, her shawl falling back from her long, dust-covered hair.
‘No. No, I haven’t.’ My heart went out to her but before I could do, or say, anything else, she made a gesture of despair and vanished back into the crowd.
Anxious moments passed and I could feel the rumour spreading before I heard the words. As Miriam continued the search, the volume and quality of people’s voices changed around her, lifting into a buzz. There was a boy missing! No one knew when he had vanished. Perhaps he was hurt, or even worse, taken by wild animals or robbers on the way. How exciting! Pretty soon, everyone was asking the same question: ‘Have you seen Yeshua Ben Joseph? The carpenter’s son from Nazara?’
Nobody had, and the buzz rose higher. Its tone changed. People started to say that Yeshua's parents should have noticed earlier that their boy was missing. There were self-righteous comments about those who let their children run free, and the other mothers swept their own broods protectively into the lodging house.
They conveniently forgot that it would have been just as easy to have lost their own child. More than sixty of the travellers were Nazarenes and Yeshua should have been safe with every one of them. There was constant mixing of adults and children on the route and it was only if something went wrong that people withdrew into their smaller groups and started defending themselves by blaming others for whatever misfortune might have occurred.
It seemed that Salome, my sister, had also been missing for most of the day. James said cuttingly that you only had to look for the moon-struck faces of the silly boys who followed in her footsteps to find her holding court. He did not have much time for his beautiful brown-eyed sister, who turned his friends into gawky idiots who wanted to adore Salome, instead of doing sensible things with him.
Yeshua himself was easy enough to overlook; or perhaps I should say that he made himself easy to overlook. He was a slight, graceful, almost feminine boy of twelve, with a habit of vanishing wherever he was. Even if he had not moved, people sometimes did not see him. In the hubbub made by the dozens of other children weaving in and out of the crowds, he would have found it easy to go his own way - had he even started the journey with us.
Anxious (and embarrassed) enquiries discovered quite swiftly that he had not. No one had any recollection of seeing him after our family group had hurried through breakfast in order to be ready to leave as soon as the morning trumpets signalled the opening of the city gates.
Even Joseph and Miriam’s closest relatives laughed at them when they said that Yeshua would not have defied them or stayed behind deliberately. The rule in Nazara was strict discipline and a heavy hand, but our family relied on love, trust and kindness. Even at the age of seven, I could see how people’s reactions added to Miriam and Joseph’s pain as we gathered together to discuss what was to be done. Everyone obviously thought - and some of them began to say openly - that they deserved what they got for their naïveté.
Seeing their hurt, I lost my temper. ‘We are trustworthy!’ I shouted. ‘If Yeshua is missing it's because he's hurt or lost. He wouldn't disobey.’
‘Deborah, don't be rude to your elders,’ Miriam's words were gentle, and too late I saw that I had done more harm than good.
I did what I usually did at such times and ran away. I should be honest and say I never actually ran, but did my usual lopsided trot on my stiffened leg. My ears were ringing with what I imagined the women were now saying about me and I tumbled into the lean-to that served as a stable and hid behind the manger, the sound of the ox and the donkeys’ steady munching drowning my tears of self-pity.
Joseph came to find me a little later, when he knew the worst of my tantrum would be over. He sat down beside me in the straw and waited until the last hiccuping tears were finished. Then he took my hand.
‘We have to go back, Deborah,’ he said. ‘We're leaving first thing in the morning, just you, your mother and I. James and Salome can go on with Simon, Jonah and Judah and their families, but you are too young. You must come with us.’
‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m not too young,’ I wailed desperately. ‘I can go with them. Please let me go with them.’ I began to cry again, but I knew I would have no choice.
Joseph picked me up, holding me in his dear, strong, slightly uncomfortable masculine way, patting just too hard in just the wrong place. Somehow that never mattered with him; he was full of his own rough kindness. I nestled into his jerkin and entwined my hand in his comfortable, long grey beard. If only I could tell him that I was afraid of Jerusalem and the pain I felt there. If only I could tell him that only that day I had vowed never to return, but I did not dare.
Not for the first time, I wished that he were my real father, and Miriam my real mother. Perhaps then I would have the courage to speak. But if I had been their child, perhaps I would never have been so afraid.
James, Salome and I were born in Bethsaida, a prosperous little fishing town in northern Judea, where the Jordan River flows south into the Sea of Galilee. I was not lame then and I spent most of my early years running and playing by the water or watching the fishermen pulling in their catch. We were Jews in name and Father was a pious man in his way, but we did not count ourselves as orthodox and it was only later that I discovered how very lax we were. Mother's ancestors came from Petra, the home of a proud and arrogant race, and that meant more to her than any Jewish heritage. Two or three evenings each week she would shut the door of our house, blocking out the people and the busy streets, and set torches in the walls to create a golden, flickering light. She shook loose her golden-red hair and lifted down a musical instrument that her father had given her: a strange kind of drum with coloured ribbons and loose metal pieces, which made a thrilling, rippling sound when she shook it. She began by beating a slow rhythm, building steadily in speed and passion before beginning to dance around the room, faster and faster until you were giddy from watching her. Just as you thought she must fly up into the air, she would stop, in one sudden but graceful movement, her arms held high in the air and her head thrown back.
Once she had finished that first explosion of movement, Salome and I were allowed to join in with her. She was impatient when we were clumsy, but the magic and wildness of the dance were usually enough to inspire us into being nimble. We spiralled round and round, in Mother’s footsteps, our hearts pounding and our faces shining up with delight until we could dance no more and half-fell and half-sat against the walls, exhausted and panting. If Father were there, he would watch us from the doorway of the other room, never saying a word, but usually we danced alone. Mother did not dance like anyone else I had ever seen and she never danced in public.
Later, after supper, she would tell us stories of the battles, quarrels and triumphs of Petra. The Petrans were the race who spawned Vashti, Queen of Persia, who defied her husband and returned home in disgrace to make way for Esther, the holy woman who saved the Jews. Once a year, at Purim, we celebrated Esther as a saviour and condemned Haman, who had tried to destroy her and the whole Jewish race; but Mother scorned Esther - a milk-sop woman, she called her - preferring Vashti’s defiance and pride.
‘She was a real Petran,’ Mother said. ‘She was not afraid even of the King of all Persia. She left behind every gift he had given her, every item of clothing but a plain shift, and rode home on an old, lame donkey.’
‘But why would she leave all her jewels and clothes behind?’ Salome asked, not understanding.
‘Because she wanted nothing of Persia,’ said Mother. ‘She was a Princess of Petra and she despised a mere warlord with no ancestry. His baubles were nothing to her.’
Salome wriggled uncomfortably. She loved beautiful things and her pride and joy was a pair of carnelian earrings that Father had given her for her ninth birthday, but she would never have dared to contradict. None of us would. Sometimes I wondered what it must have been like for a simple Jewish girl to follow such a fiery beauty onto the throne of Persia, but I kept my mouth shut and sided with Vashti, because Mother told me she hoped I would grow up to be just like her.
Many people in the village were afraid of Mother, and both Salome and I had plenty of practice in ducking to avoid her ever-ready hand. But she did not hold grudges and she would captivate us with stories of strange gods and demons, and heroes and heroines, while we made bread in the morning and before we went to sleep at night. Father adored her, and so did we.
It was because of Mother that Father was estranged from his family, the Nazarenes who lived in the hill country to the south-west. Like them, he was directly descended from the line of Jesse and David, and it was well known that Nazarenes looked down their noses at other less well-connected Jews - as they in turn were looked down on by the Jews in the south. It seemed that all Jews criticised all other Jews either for not being stern enough, well bred enough or for being too rigid in their beliefs.
Arguments would break out even in our little town over what seemed to me to be the strangest things and several families did not talk to each other because they differed over tiny points of law. Father thought the more orthodox enjoyed quarrelling with each other, and one of his favourite jokes was that a Jew finding himself in a strange country would have to build two Synagogues; one he would go to and the other he could criticise and pointedly avoid.
The Nazarenes had gone even further than that; they had founded their own village called Nazara from the Hebrew netzer, meaning the shoot of a plant or a tree, so they did not even have to walk the same ground as less well-connected Jews. The Messiah, they said, would come from the branch of Jesse and they had to keep their blood pure.
With an attitude like that, Father's defiance of custom when he refused a suitable Nazarene girl and chose to marry Mother, was simply asking for trouble. He left the little hamlet in disgrace and was often heard to say (at least at home) that if the Messiah was as big a snob as the rest of his race, he would rather He did not come at all.
For all that, Father still went to Synagogue each Shabbat and took James along with him, but I don't think Mother had ever been to a service and I know I had not. I remember Salome asking her why we did not go, and her answer: ‘The Jewish religion is for men and brings nothing but servitude to women.’ Such things stay in your mind if you hear them very young.
Mother's Petran ancestors had moved away from the rose-red city and come to the fertile Galilee of the Gentiles more than a hundred years before. They and the other unbelievers in the hills and valleys were forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmonean conqueror, John Hyrcanus and his successors, who brought the first peace to the warring area for many years. But many of the people converted in name only without letting go of their old tribal lore and that had not changed down the generations. ‘They can make us behave like Jews, but they can't tame our hearts,’ Mother said once, with a flash of her bright blue eyes and a toss of her head.
She still visited the Mikvah, the Jewish ritual bath, once a month, mostly for the pleasure of immersing herself in the cool water and learning the latest gossip. It was wise to go so no one could openly accuse her of being impious. Even though women in our area were not necessarily expected to attend Synagogue, the Mikvah was still thought to be important and most of the women obeyed the laws of purity; keeping apart from their husbands, publicly at least, for two weeks in each month.
Mother was wild but, in those ways, she was careful. ‘It is important to take care of yourself,’ she said once. ‘Fight when you want to, not because you have to.’
James left us when he was thirteen and I was five. I can just remember the quarrels about his leaving but it was only later that I understood how shaming it was for Father that his only son refused to follow in his footsteps. James wanted to be a carpenter and a Nazarene, not a fisherman. One day he walked out of our house without a scrap of food or fresh clothing. From then on, Father said he had no son.
I missed him very much, but Salome’s distress and continual tears were the hardest thing to bear. Both Mother and Father snapped at her as she trailed around miserably for weeks and, though I dared not say anything in front of them, I would hug her tightly in bed at night to try and comfort her.
We got messages regularly via peddlers and other travellers, that James was happy and apprenticed to his Uncle Joseph in Nazara. He even sent gifts of furniture, but Father never accepted any of them and he sent no message back.
Instead he channelled his love into his work and his two daughters. He was proud of Salome's budding beauty and he would play rough and tumble with me in the evenings, both in and around our two-roomed home, with its yard full of scratching chickens and piles of fishing net. I would end up hiccuping with breathlessness and laughter as he gathered me up in his arms and threw me up into the air.
One cold, windy spring morning when I was six, Mother sent me down to the sea-front on my usual errand of fetching Father home for his midday meal. At that time of day Father would be mending his nets with his fellow fishermen and sharing companionable gossip. By the time I arrived, having been diverted by a peddler, a baby donkey and a handful of figs from the garden of a friend, the weather had made one of its swift turns for the worse. The wind rose, bringing sudden horizontal, slashing rain as the sea welled up to meet it. All over the harbour, men were lashing the boats to the shore and I can still see Father, his black hair plastered to his face, standing on the edge of the pier with the others, hauling on the ropes and shouting.
Father's left foot caught in the nets as they began to slide, out of control, towards the water. He lost his balance, just as another squall hit us with a force that completely knocked me over - but I still saw him fall as the netting, wrapped around his leg, slid over the wooden structure and into the sea. I remember staggering up, my mouth wide with horror. All was noise and confusion and my tiny shout was whipped away in the roaring wind. I raced between the huge men who were trying to catch hold of Father below and my feet too slipped away from me. There was a crack as I hit the side of the boat as it swung heavily inward on its fatal journey. Then nothing.
Most of the days that followed I was left to my own thoughts, lying with a strapped leg and bandaged head in the dimness of our whitewashed house. The strong wind that had killed my father whistled around the building and worried at the loose wattle for three days. I have always associated that impatient, heartless wind with the sound of the mourning women sitting, swaying and wailing, on the stools in the middle of the room.
Salome told me later that Father's fishing colleagues came in, one by one, and explained to Mother how they had tried to save him and how they had caught me just before I too vanished beneath the water. She said they each stroked my forehead and called me a poor child, but fever had already taken me and all I could see were strange and frightening gloomy figures and all I could hear were the sounds of inhuman restlessness and all too human grief.
Someone obviously nursed me, but it was not Mother. Salome was there often, bringing me water and bathing my brow. I remember asking her if Father were dead. She said yes, but I did not really know what death was although I was afraid that I would die too. I tried to ask Salome but she became agitated and told me not to talk of such things.
One night I grew maddened with the wind and the pain and the mourning and I too began to cry out and wail. Mother came then, but instead of offering comfort, she shouted at me to be quiet. I subsided and hid below the covers, afraid that she too was only a ghostly part of this strange new world of pain and fear.
I never saw her again.
By the time I could get up and pull myself painfully around the town, the inhabitants of Bethsaida seemed to have erased her from their memory. She was as dead as my father and my first, halting questions met with such a bustle of avoidance and hostility that I quickly learnt to stop asking and wrapped my misery up in a tight little ball inside me, where no one could see it. Salome asked too but stopped abruptly after one elderly woman slapped her across the face with a stern admonishment to ‘Hold your tongue and forget her, lest, it happen to you too.’ Something twisted in my mind and heart then, as my hip and leg were twisted beneath me.
For a few weeks we were cared for by friends - we had no relatives in Bethsaida or in Kfar-Nahum, the nearest big town. Salome and I were too bewildered to wonder what would become of us, so we bit our lips and struggled on, while holding onto each other tightly and weeping at night. Even though her arms around me were painful to my still battered body, I think I would have died without that warmth and the certain knowledge that here was still something I knew and understood. She took comfort from me too, but we were so afraid we never spoke, even to each other, about our Mother’s disappearance or anything to do with it.
Our future arrived one evening in the form of James, grown lanky and bronzed beyond recognition, and with him a big, burly, grey-haired man with warm, hazel eyes, who told us that he had come to take us back with him to Nazara.
Losing our parents was bad enough, but now Salome and I were to be taken from the home we loved with its beautiful seashore, familiar streets and the secret places where we could play and hide. Even if life had been horrific of late, Bethsaida was all we had ever known. While we stayed there, we could still believe that everything would be all right and we might wake one day to find the last weeks had been nothing but a terrible dream. To be told that we had to leave felt like having our hearts torn out. And nothing we had ever heard about the devout Nazarenes and their uncivilised hamlet up in the hills could make the idea attractive - for all Uncle Joseph's seeming kindness.
He had borrowed a donkey and cart to fetch our few possessions and to carry Salome and me. He said it would be best if we started the following morning at dawn and travelled all day and part of the night so we could get there as soon as possible. That way we would not have time to fret and worry about leaving. It was kindly meant and we were too frightened to protest.
I was too lame to go and say goodbye to any of the places I had loved - the little cove to the west where I played in the rock pools, the market place with all its exciting colours, scents and sights, or even the formerly much-loved harbour place, where Father had worked with his friends.
That night I barely slept. I did not know how to pray, or who to pray to, but I remember begging someone, something, anything, to let us stay in Bethsaida and to let Mother come home.
Morning came, a dull, cloudy day, and nothing had changed. There was no alternative but to allow myself to be lifted into the cart and to bury my head in the straw as our home vanished slowly behind us.
All that terrible morning I wept in grief, pain and confusion. Salome tried to comfort me, but even she lost patience when I refused to listen and she left me to my misery.
Uncle Joseph did his best to entertain us and talk of the life we had to come, and James was as matter-of-fact and solid as he always had been. Salome had begun to enjoy the journey by the time we stopped for a lunch of barley bread and olives half-way up the hillside and was chattering away to her heart's content. She blossomed under Uncle Joseph’s good humour and interest, but I would not talk to anyone. Instead, I stared inconsolably at the great sea spread out below us, knowing that soon it would be out of sight - perhaps for the rest of my life. I stopped my ears to Uncle Joseph's words of encouragement and could barely eat for sadness.
I slept for most of the afternoon and into the dusk of the evening. The strong beams of a full moon met my eyes as my sister woke me gently.
‘We're there!’ hissed Salome. ‘Look!’
I sat up, wincing with pain and stiffness. The sleep must have cleansed my mind a little because I found I did care, after all, what Nazara was like.
The huge moon threw silver shadows on the village's outline and turned it into a magical, fairyland place, even to our grief-exhausted eyes. Salome held my hand tightly, both of us half-eager, half fearing this first sight of our new home.
We could hear whispers of sound, for it was a warm night and many of the residents were sleeping or talking quietly on the roofs of their whitewashed houses. Animals moved around contentedly in their stalls and the soft, warm scent of living hides sat comfortingly in the still air.
As we came into the main street there was movement; a wisp of a boy ran, light-footed like a deer, to meet us. Joseph swept him up in his great arms with a roar of welcome, which must have woken half the town. When they had finished embracing, we were able to see a slight boy of about eleven with bright eyes, who looked at us with a grave but not unfriendly face, then bowed to us solemnly.
‘This is your brother Yeshua,’ said Uncle Joseph proudly. For a second, the boy grinned from ear to ear, but before we could take a closer look in the half-light, he had turned and started running home to tell of our approach.
A few sleepy voices called out to Uncle Joseph as the cart rattled over the rough road and he called back, ‘Yes, it is I! Say a welcome to my daughters!’ And suddenly from, it seemed, a hundred directions came soft voices on the wind: ‘Shalom! Shalom, daughters of Joseph, shalom!’
In our exhaustion it seemed like a dream or a greeting from another world. Back home in Bethsaida, Mother's stories often told of spirits and voices on the wind; of silvery elves and of strange foreign places where magic hung in the air. She told us too of princesses with laughter like the sound of tiny bells, and with faces so beautiful the animals would bow down before them. We, so tired, and so dirty, half-delirious with the strain of the last weeks, tumbled down from our cart at the end of our journey, before just such a creature. She was standing motionless in the halo of light from her front door, her pale skin glowing and her eyes smiling a welcome, which caught our battered hearts. As she held her slender hands out to us, both Salome and I fell forward into her arms, dissolving into exhausted tears.
She washed our hands and feet with a touch so light we could barely feel the rippling of the water on our skin, and put us to bed with a drink of warm goat's milk and a honey-sweetened oatcake. Then she sat with us, looking at nothing in particular, but singing a strange, soft melody in a soft and beautiful voice until Salome and I felt soothed and comfortable enough to curl up together and fall into a deep, if not contented, sleep.
In the weeks and months that were to follow we discovered slowly, but surely, how blessed we were. We had been adopted by a kind and loving family, who took us to their hearts without question and we were never considered to be anything but a part of the whole.
Nazara was quite a pretty little place, and the house where we lived not unlike our old one. But it was all small, parochial and poor compared with Bethsaida and there were only about 120 people living in the village at all.
It was true that everyone was related. We did not have to introduce ourselves and we did not have to tell our story, because everyone already knew it. Joseph had three full-grown sons from his first marriage, Jonah, Judah and Simon. They had wives and children, and their wives had their own families. Then there were Joseph's late wife's parents and sisters and brothers, and their families. Miriam's parents were dead and she was an only child, but she had cousins who had other cousins and dozens more distant cousins, so before you knew it, two thirds of Nazara had the right to call me ‘Sister.’
Everyone was kind, especially to me as I crept painfully around with my suspicious and frightened eyes, missing everything familiar and liable to burst into tears of grief or confusion at any point. I grieved for my parents and the old familiar things; for the sea and the open space along the shoreline, and for the privacy of a home where no one worried where you were or cared about your business.
Here, there were always people to notice you or - as I thought - to poke their nose into your business. You could not walk along the street without six different relatives calling your name, and any quarrel or illness, or good or bad news, was around the village within seconds. I felt stifled, especially during the frequent family meals, for Joseph and his children all held open house for each other.
From the very first, Joseph was a good guardian to us . He was stern but fair, and his manner seemed so similar to our own father's that it was easier than it might have been to adapt. But Miriam was by far the most important person in our new world. She was Joseph's second wife, young and slender and with an inexplicable elf-like appearance, which she shared with her only natural child. Salome and I were afraid to love her in case she too should be taken from us, but Miriam's constant gentleness and warmth were such that no child could resist her for long. She acted as if we had been born her own children, telling us she that had always wanted daughters of her own.
I stayed wary and withdrawn for several weeks, but the ever-open offer of two gentle arms to nestle in, her inability to be offended or upset if you did not respond to her, and the sound of her deep and gentle voice in song were irresistible.
Miriam sang to welcome in the morning; to celebrate the rising of the bread; as she walked to the well or as she laid us to bed. Her voice was like water and moonlight, and when anyone asked why she sang so much, she said it was her way of giving thanks for the beauty of the world.
Her son was just like her and they would exchange glances and smiles almost as though they spoke a secret language. Surprisingly, this did not make others feel excluded; instead, in a strange way, you felt almost honoured that they were part of your life at all.
At first I wondered why Yeshua did not mind this invasion of cousins into his home, but once you got used to who he was, the idea that he might object was simply out of the question. He, too, acted as though we had always been there, and shared everything he had with a smile. Salome tried to provoke him several times, just to see how much he would take, but he never once rose to the bait.
‘He's like a girl,’ she said scornfully. ‘He's soft.’ And she would stamp her foot with frustration as, yet again, Yeshua politely removed himself from her taunting and wandered off in his own little dream world.
James used to joke that Yeshua was so removed from things that even mosquitoes would not notice him and would forget to bite.
I thought they were both wrong; I thought Yeshua was more real than anyone I had ever met. It was everyone else who seemed unreal whenever he was around. If anyone were baiting an animal, a bird or a child, Yeshua would be there in an instant, putting himself between the two, his wide grey eyes flashing with a depth of anger unexpected in such a mild boy. He never said much, but the person he was challenging would back off and walk away as though that slight boyish figure were a man twice their size. If they did not, and acted as though they wanted to fight, Yeshua would flash them a look of withering fire, gather up the animal or child and walk away. He never looked back at them and, somehow, they never followed him.
This did not make him popular, but he was not afraid of anything, not even the dislike of the other village boys, who enjoyed taunting animals or stealing milk and fruit. Yeshua did not care that they hurled insults at him for being a goody-goody.
‘That's their opinion,’ he would say. ‘Why should I believe it?’ and he would get on with his work.
If anyone said something he thought untrue or unkind, he would stare at them as though he saw right into their soul. Grown men sometimes flushed and turned their head away when Yeshua looked into their eyes.
I was too shy to talk much to Yeshua. Sometimes I felt I wanted to be one of the little hurt creatures that would crawl into his arms, but I was afraid he would look into my soul with those great eyes and find nothing there that he could love.
James was happy in Nazara. He loved his work in the carpenter's shop and enjoyed his travels around the area, building stables or helping out in a new house. He looked exactly as you would imagine a son of Joseph should look, strong and sturdy and dark-skinned from the sun. I think he, not Yeshua, was the one who found it difficult to have two stupid sisters around. Having chosen to leave home, he could not appreciate the extent of our mourning or how we missed the old life.
For those first few weeks, Salome was almost as withdrawn as I was. There had been plans for her to become betrothed to the son of Father's fishing partner, but there was now no chance of that and she felt she had little hope of making a good match here.
Seeing Nazara in the unkind light of day with its narrow streets and basic houses, she pronounced it a dump, but her poor spirits revived steadily when she realised that, after all, there were more than enough young boys in the village to make good her loss - and that none of them smelt of fish! I thought rather sourly that her grief had been less for our parents and more for her own self-esteem.
Salome's prettiness included some of Mother's fire though none of her colouring. Her hair was raven black, her eyes dark and she had dancing and grace written in her bones. She danced the Petran way once, at a family group, twisting and swirling in such a beautiful haze of movement that I felt the easy tears prickle behind my eyes. No one else was impressed and Salome swiftly understood that no woman in Nazara danced in such a way. She accepted the change with her usual good temper and learnt more orthodox steps instead. I could see how important it was for her to be thought lovely and good, and if that meant dancing different steps it was no trouble to her to learn them. I thought the Nazarene dances were nothing in comparison with the Petran ones, but I held my tongue.
Our names were wrong too. The Nazarenes pronounced them differently, and even when we pointed out that we preferred the Greek versions we were given at birth, many of the villagers would not adapt and it was a source of much irritation, to me especially. I developed a deaf ear to ‘Devorah!’, which did not endear me to many.
We found that every town and village had different opinions on the appropriateness of Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew and on the different pronunciations of names and places. Father would have said it was the Jews loving to disagree again, but we did not think jokes like that would be well received in Nazara.
Miriam told us we could call her Mother if we felt comfortable with it, or Miriam, if we did not. We called her Mother Miriam which she liked. But as time went by we dropped the Miriam and both she and Joseph became just Imma and Abba as though they had always been so.
Often, in that first year, I would dream of Father’s death or of Mother shouting at me as I lay ill, and would wake rigid with fear. For Father I could let go and grieve but the pain for Mother had no relief. She had left and I did not know why. If I tried to talk to Salome about it, she would only say,
‘This is our life now. There is no point in looking back,’ and I would turn away holding my head high to show I did not care. I could only assume that Mother had no longer wanted us, or that she blamed me for living when Father had died - or that she herself was dead too. Her death, though terrible, was the only solution I could live with, so that was what I taught myself to believe.
Even though Imma was kind, fair and so understanding that it was impossible not to love her, there was so much emphasis on good manners in Nazara that I thought talking about my other parents, who were, effectively, outcasts, would be rude. Salome and James never mentioned them, so neither did I.
There was one other thing I did not tell Imma, or anyone else. My wounded hip and leg refused to heal completely and I was constantly in pain, but I was too proud to act the weakling. I pretended that my crookedness did not hurt and helped to fetch the water, or went on errands, or stood to hold the thread as Imma wove the fine cloth she made on her loom, because I wanted her to love me and to think me useful. My own mother had been loud in her irritation about cripples who wallowed in their suffering, so I lied and pretended but I could not help being bad-tempered and irritable when I wanted so much to be good.
‘You are a funny child, Deborah,’ Imma would say, stroking my forehead. ‘You say so little and look so serious. Why don't you play with the other children?’
I would say I did not want to, when I ached to be able to rough and tumble and race around like the others. In Bethsaida I had not needed other children. Mother, Father, Salome and my beautiful sea had been all the playmates I wanted. Now I wished with all my heart to be a normal child who could run and play but I dared not, in case my weakness showed. I was a very lonely little girl for all the love that was available around me.
As time slipped by, the old life became almost like a dream, half-remembered and confused. It seemed easier to put it away and forget about it altogether. Salome was still inclined to be quite snobbish about Nazara but once she realised that her arrival in the little village had caused quite a sensation - she was by far the prettiest girl there - she began to enjoy herself. She gathered around her a little court of both boys and girls who were as impressed by her big-town ways as they were by her beauty, and she made best friends with three other pretty Nazarene girls. The four of them would run across to Japhia just a short walk away where there were shops and peddlers and merchants and less-observant Jews, who were quite prepared to flirt with pretty girls. Imma had to be quite firm with Salome sometimes. Very soon, preparations were under-way to make her safely betrothed to Zachariah, a tall, good-looking Nazarene, who worshipped the ground she walked on.
We settled down and adapted, as though we had always been Nazarenes, apart from knowing how to deal with the one member of our new family who did not make any sense at all: the God of Israel.
Abba, James and Yeshua together with most of the other men from the village went to the Synagogue three times a day. Imma went once or twice during the week and took Salome and me every Shabbat - a completely new idea to us. At home we had paid lip-service only to the Sabbath day but here, in Nazara, all the rules of the Torah were followed in detail.
We carried nothing outside the village limits and did no work on Shabbat. We ate cold food prepared the day before, and we spent hours in the Synagogue praying and worshipping this strange deity, who seemed to demand constant and fervent obedience.
Imma led us, each week, into the women’s section of the Synagogue. We sat behind a beautifully carved wooden balustrade with gauze hung across it so that none of the men could see us. Imma would listen with great attention as the men read the Torah and tracts from the Prophets, and Simeon, the Rabbi, translated the meaning of the Hebrew text into Aramaic in his sermon. Salome and I went only because we had to. She fidgeted, sighed and looked bored, and I put my face to the gauze so that I could see the outlines of the men and tried to understand what was going on.
The Lord and His prophets were always talking about duty and sacrifice and vengeance. They did not seem to have anything to do with reality, and most of the Nazarenes seemed perfectly normal away from the Synagogue. I could just have disregarded it, as I thought they did, had it not been for Abba and Imma's insistence that we should involve the Lord in everyday life.
Once Imma realised how poor a religious upbringing we had had, she used to explain things carefully and clearly so that we could understand the rules and regulations. But in that, as well as everything else, she was unusual. Most of the other women, even if they were from the Netzer-shoot of Jesse were less pious. They gossiped quietly during the Synagogue service and eyed up each other's clothes and jewellery. Many of the men too (from the little I could see through the veil of gauze) seemed bored and restless. After feeling first curiosity, then irritation, at all this senseless fuss, I slipped into boredom and eventually resignation. I spent most of my hours at the Synagogue in my own little dream world where I had a tiny multi-coloured boat and could float on my dearly-remembered sea. In my mind I put in at unoccupied coves, and looked at beautiful flowers and lush green hillsides and played with imaginary friends. Then I could dance again and I would run, jump and cartwheel on the sand and in the bright summer grass. Imma asked me once what I was thinking of, and when I confessed shamefacedly (though I did not tell her about the dancing), she said that being joyful was as good a way of worshipping the Lord as any. I didn't understand, but I was glad she was not angry.
Abba, Imma, James and Yeshua went to Jerusalem three times a year for the great Jewish holy festivals but for the first year after Salome and I arrived only the men went.
‘You two have had enough disruption in your life for a while,’ Imma said when we protested. ‘There will be more than enough time to see Jerusalem.’
Salome, who was intrigued by talk of the city's legendary beauty, felt hard done-by, and I was curious at what it would be like to go, but glad not to have the strain of a long journey. I could only walk comfortably as far as Japhia, which I loved, and which was much larger than Nazara and more interesting than Bethsaida or even Kfar-Nahum, which I had visited once. It was often full of Herod Antipas's soldiers and merchants from the south and the east (I once saw one with skin that was the palest creamy pink and hair that was almost white) and there was nothing nicer than sitting, watching the hustle and bustle, while Abba or Imma went about their business there.
We women enjoyed the times when the men and the rest of the village were away. Nazara took on a dreamy, restful air and there was extra time for picnics and play. Imma was as good as a sister to me. When she had time, she would play with me in gentle versions of the childhood games I enjoyed so much but was afraid to play with the other children. She never, ever told me I was silly or stupid the way all the other children (except Yeshua) did.
Spring comes to Galilee in a great rush of wind and colour. The buds seem to erupt overnight into daisies and poppies and the beautiful blue teasels appear from nowhere, making the hillsides as bright as the sky. Imma's songs would change from warming winter carols into bright ripples of sound to welcome the new life. Often, newly-fledged baby birds would land right by her hand as she was grinding barley and, instead of shooing them away, she would chirrup to them and offer them a handful of food. If Salome and I were nearby, they would come to us as well, so at first we thought that all the birds in Nazara must be tame. They came to Yeshua too and they seemed cautiously fond of Abba and James, but as soon as anyone else came to our bright little home, they fled.
That second year in Nazara, we were all to go to Jerusalem for Pesach, the Festival of the Passover and the Exodus from Egypt. The whole village bustled with preparations for days before every big festival and this time we felt a part of the excitement too, arranging for the animals to be looked after, drying food for the journey and airing our best clothes.
All the Nazarenes who were going started the journey together at dawn, with those to be left behind waving us off. I felt quite confident, as I had grown a little stronger over the year and I had had enough time to plan my strategy carefully. There were plenty of carts to sit in, as the Nazarenes took the opportunity to take wares to sell, other than those for the obligatory Temple tithes. I could perch on sacks of grain or beans, or among cages of chickens and geese, and though that felt sore after a while, it was quite bearable. Some people rode on donkeys and they too would happily offer a lift to a tired little girl who was stiff from the bumps on the road.
If there were no other way, one of my many uncles or step-brothers would let me ride on his shoulders. I was a slight and bony little thing and they would hardly notice my weight. Playing this game let me believe that no one really noticed my crooked hip and ungainly walk.
Salome and I had never been further south than Nazara, so we were sleepless with excitement the night before we left. We expected to see many new and exciting things but, even so, we had no idea how swiftly and how much the countryside would change as we began the journey south. Even though we followed the fertile route of the River Jordan, and it was a bright and abundant spring in Galilee, the land grew steadily more and more barren as we moved towards Jerusalem. Our feet and legs became covered with dust from the road, which slowly crept in through everyone’s clothing until we all felt grimy and many began to cough. The bright spring sun burnt into us and the lush spring grass by the side of the path gave way to a harsher kind, already yellowing and dry. The rocks too were different; not dark and spotted as on the hills at home, but pale yellow-white. I thought they must have been bleached by the heat.
We carried food for the journey, but there were plenty of places to stop and eat and rest-houses with long low dormitories each night. In spite of the heat and the dust we were a cheerful crowd, singing psalms and local songs and even a reserved little girl like me found that smiles and friendship come easily when you are on the move. Every hour we met up with more people, and by the time we were a day’s journey from our destination you could not see any part of the road ahead or behind us that was not filled with the faithful going to the Holy City.
On the morning of the fourth day, we saw Jerusalem; a huge, golden, walled city with whole villages, each as big as Nazara, clustered around it like courtiers bowing to a King. I had never imagined anything so impressive or so frightening.
But worse than the size of the place was the stink.
You can smell festive Jerusalem long before you can see it clearly. The stench of blood and burning flesh from the Temple hovers on the winds and curdles the blood of children like me, who have never considered the reality of religious sacrifice. This great and wondrous place, the centre of all the Jewish faith, was also a charnel house for a fearsome God, who wanted worship through the death of small and beautiful things.
Instead of staring at the wonderful sight in awe, I felt the heavy air turn my stomach and I was sick, violently and ashamedly, by the side of the road.
We entered the city through the Damascus Gate, and the walls stretched so high above us that I was afraid they would topple over and fall. I shrank back in Jonah’s cart and tried to make myself invisible among the sacks-full of grain, hiding my eyes as we approached the lodging house where our close family group was to stay.
We left our belongings in the long dormitory room, washed and changed and joined the queue of people going to the Temple. It seemed as though everyone coming for Pesach was buying, or carrying animals and birds for the sacrifices, staring in wonder at the fabulous Temple or gazing in fascination at the strange people and the exotic wares for sale along the way. I did look, but I could not bear the sight of all those living things, which so soon were to be slaughtered, and I hid my face in Imma's skirts and wept as Abba bought a beautiful fluffy lamb for our family's Pesach offering. I was sick again when the women added a basketful of gentle white doves to the haul, and though Imma was as kind as she could be, she didn't seem to see what was wrong. I felt betrayed that she, who loved all wild things, could condone killing creatures for the Lord. I was unable to speak to her or explain how I felt because of all the others there. Even worse, I was afraid she would stop loving me because I did not understand.
Jerusalem is beautiful. Its streets are wide and crammed with colours never seen in the parochial north. Spices and fruits add their tang to the busy air and everywhere fabulous peoples from unheard-of cultures haggle and bargain and laugh and shout. To Salome and I, the pale golden rock walls of the Temple, wholly magnificent, seemed higher than a mountain and larger than the whole of Japhia. I should have felt all the wonder and joy that my sister did, but I was tearful and sorry and resentful and incapable of enjoying myself. I made it worse of course by making a friend of the lamb and stroking him. I bawled when Imma took me away, scolding me for upsetting myself by becoming fond of the animal and forbidding me to go near it again.
So we came, tear-stained and tense, to the Mikvah, the ritual bath everyone took before being allowed into the Temple itself. The men went to their section and we joined the crowd of women queuing for ours. I sulked through the formalities of washing both hands and feet, but Imma wisely said nothing, just held my hand tightly and led me firmly to the water. As we stepped in together she said a prayer, softly, so that only she and I could hear. ‘Lord, we, thy servants Miriam and Deborah come in humility to thy gate. Cleanse our soul and our spirit, O Lord as the water cleanses our body.’ Then she lifted me and together we sank down into the cool clear water, dipping below the surface so that our hair mingled together as one.
Time stopped. Light became like pearl and sound was soft - muted as though we had entered another world. Comfort, even peace, rose inside my body as though there were a femininity and an understanding greater than the two of us enveloping and loving us. For those moments, the Temple was holy even to me.
And then it was over; hands reached out to help us up the steps and the next women slipped into the water. The world resumed its normal shape and colour and Imma turned to help Salome. We were just another mother and her daughters in the company of a bustle of women.
We met up with the men inside the perimeter walls and began pushing our way through a throng of people all milling around as they met up with acquaintances and exchanged news. Unbelievers, peddlers and travellers keen to see this marvel of architecture, were allowed into the outer Temple court and some even called it the Court of the Gentiles. To go further within, towards the holy place itself meant death if you were not a Jew. On this festival eve however, it was mostly the faithful who gathered together to worship.
To Salome and the others there was an air of excitement, but all I could hear were the plaintive cries of the animals and birds able to smell the scent of death ahead. Among the flocks of people were dozens of traders offering cages filled with livestock for those who had not had the foresight to buy outside, or who wanted a last-minute extra offering.
We joined the queues through into the Court of the Women, and Imma, Salome and I, with the others of our sex, waited there as the men took the animals through into the Court of Israel. Imma had warned us that we were excluded from the inner courts, although there was a balcony where we could watch on special occasions. This day, none of the women seemed to be watching and I was glad of that.
Who would want to see these strange and inexplicable male rituals anyway, I wondered, and why did Yeshua, who was all that was gentle, want to go in with the other men? It was unanswerable.
Even after the surprise and the pleasure of the Mikvah, I had decided that I hated the Holy One and his Temple and the cruelty that was worshipped in the name of goodness, but that was something else I knew I would have to keep to myself.
Of course I would not eat the sacrificed lamb at the Seder supper, which marked the beginning of Pesach, even though it smelt delicious. Luckily, I was not the youngest child, so I did not have to speak up and take part in the service and most of the time I could hide, dismally, at the back of the room. I could not escape entirely, for all the children at the Seder were expected to drink wine with the adults, to mark each section of the service. I know now that Imma watered my wine, and gave me as little as she could, but even so, the disgusting taste made me choke and the effect of the alcohol only made me feel worse.
I was sulky and withdrawn for the whole week of rituals, services and sacrifices; for the family meals and meetings. I took little notice of the beauty and excitement around us and made no new friends with the other children, who regarded the city as a great adventure. Instead, I spent hours plotting ways of staying behind in Nazara whenever the others came again. Several times Yeshua came to sit next to me at meetings or meal times and he would smile at me invitingly. But he never asked me what was wrong and, though part of me knew that he would have listened, I could not make myself speak. Not even he seemed to think as I did and I would rather have been thought sulky and bad-tempered than mad.
I shook the dust of Jerusalem joyfully from my feet when we finally left and promised myself that, whatever happened, I would never return.
And now, because of Yeshua, I had to go back.
