“No, I’m still counted among the bnei nevi’im, not the nevi’im.”
We stopped in front of a flat-roofed house made from chiseled stone, its street side broken only by a plain wooden door. The door swung outward, and an old man stepped into the street, his coal black eyes fixed unblinking on my face. I turned away from the intensity of his gaze and inspected him out of the corner of my eye. His gray hair and beard were darker and better groomed than Uriel’s. The bright white of his linen robes contrasted with the raven black totafot boxes bound to his arm and forehead. Uriel had also worn totafot in the early morning but removed them before eating.
“Welcome Lev ben Yochanan, I am Yosef ben Avner. I am aware of Uriel’s instructions to you; nonetheless, speak your message and fulfill your master’s command.”
It was one thing for Raphael to assume that I was Uriel’s servant, but it was another for Yosef, a prophet, to call him my master. I wanted to protest, but thought better of it—I could already see that Yosef wasn’t someone to argue with. “The time has come for the gathering.” My voice sounded hollow. “Master Uriel has informed the others. He will await you at the junction in the morning.”
“Very good. We will be there.” Yosef continued to bore into my eyes, even as I turned away. I tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening inside the prophet’s house, in vain.
“Raphael, I see that Lev’s knee needs care. In my quarters, you will find clean fabric and ointment in the remedy box next to my mat.”
Raphael entered the house, and Yosef turned back to me. “You would like to observe my disciples.” He had the same unnerving practice as Uriel of telling me what I was thinking. “They are engaged in training now, and it is not desirable to disturb them.” His eyes flickered over me from head to toe. “Yet, there is a way you can help my disciples. Then you may enter and enhance, rather than disturb.”
Curious though I was to see what was going on inside, Yosef’s piercing eyes made me glad I had a ready excuse. “My kinnor is with Master Uriel.”
“No matter, you will not need it.”
Raphael returned with a cloth and a bowl of water and bent down to clean the wound. He opened a small clay jar filled with some evil-smelling substance. I clenched my teeth when the herbs touched my knee, but the sting lasted only a moment. A layer of yellowish ointment coated the wound, which I could suddenly barely feel. I eyed the wooden doorway narrowly and asked Yosef, “What else would I do?”
“You will see a stool in the middle of the room.” Yosef nodded to Raphael, who entered the house, closing the door behind him. “All you must do is walk in and sit down.”
“That’s it?”
“That is all.”
I had no more excuses to give Yosef, and it did seem a small price to satisfy my curiosity, yet my tongue turned pasty as I stepped toward the door. How could sitting on a stool help the disciples in their training unless they were to do something to me while I sat defenseless?
My moist palm took hold of the iron door handle. A floor of beaten earth met my footfalls inside, where the room was heavy with quiet. Eight disciples were ranged along the walls, each seated on a reed mat, legs folded, eyes closed. An alcove high in the wall contained over a hundred scrolls, far more than I’d ever seen, many brown and cracking with age. In the middle of the room sat the sole piece of furniture, an empty stool.
I limped quietly to my place, and sat down, my knee protesting. No one reacted to my entrance. Other than one disciple who scratched his nose, no sound or movement disturbed their rhythmic breathing. Yosef leaned against the doorframe and watched.
I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly hot and itchy. I couldn’t see that they were acting upon me in any way, but these were not ordinary men; they were bnei nevi’im, disciples of the prophets. Uriel and Yosef both knew things about me without being told, sensing my thoughts as if they were spoken aloud. Is that what the disciples were doing now, reading my thoughts? Would I even know it if they were? I fought the desire to press my hands over my ears as if to block the way to my mind, knowing how useless such a move would be.
I had agreed to help, but my thoughts were my own. My forehead creased as I tried to empty my mind. It didn’t work. Memories came pouring in on me, the very ones I least wanted to share: Dahlia surprising me while I bathed at the spring; almost losing the flock in a thunderstorm; the feel of Mother’s hair on my cheek. Sweat beaded on my forehead, but my failed efforts only proved I couldn’t clear my mind by force. My kinnor provided my only refuge from thought, but it was far away. Silence pressed down on me. My kinnor. The kinnor channeled my music, but it wasn’t the source of it. Closing my eyes, I reached for a nigun to play in my mind. A melody whispered in my ears, and my shoulders relaxed. Thought and memory faded as my fingers worked strings they couldn’t feel, plucking the notes sharper in my mind than I ever did with my hands.
Yosef finally broke the silence. “What can you tell me about our guest?” The disciples turned toward their teacher, eyes still closed. I blushed, hoping no one would mention the incident with Dahlia at the spring. One replied, “He is a boy, Master.”
“Why do you say so?”
“His footsteps. It took him eight steps to get from the door to the chair. It takes me five or six. Also, his steps were soft, lighter than a man’s, but not hesitant like a woman’s would be on entering.”
“But slightly uneven,” the disciple next to him added, “as if he’s walking with a limp.” I touched my left knee, still aching from the fall that morning.
Yosef was not yet satisfied. “What else?”
“He’s a musician, Master.”
“Interesting. Why do you say so Nadav?”
“He’s tapping his feet.” I peered down; I hadn’t realized my feet were tapping out the melody in my head.
“Do only musicians tap their feet?”
“No, I even do it myself sometimes.” The disciple cocked his head to the side. “But there’s something different about the way he taps, the rhythm is more…complex…than when I do it.”
“I see.” Yosef’s voice gave nothing away, but he was smiling. “What else?”
The navi’s eyes swept back and forth across the disciples, but no one responded. Finally, the one who scratched his nose earlier said, “He’s uncomfortable with us speaking about him.”
“What tells you this, Elad?”
“When Nadav described him tapping his feet, he stopped, and he’s breathing faster than he was before.” Instantly my cheeks grew hot.
“Very perceptive.”
This was my first experience with using the ears to see, and I was amazed at how much the disciples were able to learn just by listening. Yet, within half a year, the skills of these disciples would seem basic to me. When one enters a place that light cannot penetrate, his ears become his eyes. I would learn to hear the difference between a wall and a doorway and to distinguish the footstep of friend from enemy.
“The time has come to take mercy on our guest who has provided an opportunity for so much insight. Open your eyes and greet Lev, a musician that Master Uriel has hired to play for us during the gathering.” Yosef smiled at Nadav, the one who had guessed I was a musician, and from the look of gratitude on his face, I gathered that a smile from Yosef was a rare reward.
“I must ask you to excuse us now, Lev. We will meet again tomorrow at the junction.”
The sun was approaching its midpoint in the sky when I left Yosef’s house. I walked back, barely thinking about where I was going, mulling over everything I’d seen and heard. In all the stories my uncle had taught me, the Holy One simply chose the prophet—there was never any mention of disciples or training. Yet, Raphael said that all prophets, every single one of them, had trained. Some could have learned from other prophets, as Raphael was learning from Yosef, but what about the others? Abraham and Moses had been alone, cut off from any other prophets—where could they have trained?
Unbidden, an image rose in my mind of sitting on the ground in our sukkah, listening to Uncle Menachem tell the stories of the prophets. This was my favorite time of year, after the grape harvest, when we moved outside for the seven-day festival, sheltered only by a roof of fallen branches. During Sukkot, we worked as little as possible, spending our time inside the sukkah, singing, feasting on a roasted ram, and telling stories. I couldn’t remember having my nightmare even once while sleeping inside the fragile walls of the sukkah.
These days, most men considered shepherds little better than illiterate thieves, respecting no man’s boundaries, and ignorant of the ways of Israel. But on each night of Sukkot, Uncle Menachem told the story of one of the seven shepherds of Israel: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aharon, Joseph and David. It always seemed strange that our greatest leaders came from a trade so widely despised, but I never thought to question how they became prophets. In the stories the Holy One simply addressed them—that was all.
I turned the stories over in my mind as I wound through the streets of Beit El. It couldn’t just be coincidence that they were all shepherds—could they have trained for prophecy while in the wilderness with their flocks?
As my mind wandered, my feet led me back to the gate of Beit El. I stopped just inside the heavy wooden doors, realizing that Uriel would not look for me much before sundown. I had time for myself, a rarity in Levonah. I turned my head up and sniffed—the scent of roasting meat hung in the air. I immediately knew where I wanted to go; I just needed to get there.
I hurried back to the main square and spotted a farmer drawing a lamb up a wide thoroughfare. I crossed the square to follow, and the enticing aroma of sizzling fat and meat thickened as I left the open plaza. I was on the right trail.
The road climbed gently, the stone pavers underfoot polished by the steps of countless feet. Flights of two or three stairs occasionally broke its smooth incline. Before long, we had walked enough to cross all of Levonah twice, yet we weren’t even at the center of the city. Of course, Levonah was little more than a farming village compared to the Holy City of Beit El, where Jacob—one of the seven shepherds himself—had built an altar a thousand years before. The street broadened into a marketplace. Open storefronts lined the sides, and freestanding stalls ran down the middle. The man leading the lamb disappeared into the crowd, but it no longer mattered—I had arrived.
The familiar animal odor of earth, blood and manure filled the air, and sheep bleated from a storefront on my right. I stepped in, seeing that the store opened out to a pen in the back, where lambs lapped water from a trough. “How much for one of those?” I asked, though I knew I didn’t have enough copper to buy one.
The burly shopkeeper eyed my dirty tunic. “The lambs start at three shekel silver, the rams go up to eight.”
“Eight shekel silver? We get only half of that for a ram that size.”
“A shepherd on your first trip to Beit El, eh? The sheep you sell are for eating; it doesn’t matter if they have a bad eye or walk with a limp. Mine have no flaws. If you get any big ones in your flock like that, bring them to me. I’ll give you a lot more than you’ll get from the slaughterers.”
A rhythmic cooing rose from dozens of holes carved into the wall. “How much for a dove?”
“I can give you a good one for half a shekel.” He pulled a small iron weight from a pocket of his smock and put it on one end of a scale. On the second pan, I dropped a few copper pieces, my earnings from the wedding earlier in the summer. Just as my fourth copper piece landed on the pan, it sank, bobbing up and down until it came level with the iron. It was most of what I owned, but I couldn’t miss this chance—plus a hefty sum awaited me at the end of the gathering. An image of Dahlia floated into my mind, her nose crinkling with envy when she heard I’d gone to Beit El a year early.
