The Daughter of the Maccabees
written by: Leon Shousterman
A land flowing with milk and honey. Surely, some ancient cynic, surveying the dreary hills of Canaan and comparing the reality to the grand promises recently issued by tribal chieftains, coined that metaphorical placename. Perhaps, each time they heard it, the sons of Israel could barely stifle their laughter behind the formidable presence of Joshua. And yet, who’s to say? Maybe to the former nomads — men who had been accustomed to breakfasting on camelthorn and dining on tales of manna and quail supposedly offered by the Almighty to their forefathers — this lean and stony land may indeed have seemed a vision of abundance.
But then, what would nomads know of metaphors — or literature, for that matter? Historians claim the Bible wasn’t written in Canaan, nor anywhere near the events it describes, but in Babylon, centuries later. It was then, strolling post-lunch through the alleys of Semiramis’s gardens, that bearded Jewish sages, competing in eloquence and dictating their best lines to scribes trailing at their heels, composed the tale of their tribe’s turbulent history and the blessed land promised by God Himself in return for righteousness and obedience. And how that tribe, in the end, sinned and transgressed the divine law, and was punished — humiliated, expelled from the land flowing with milk and honey, and cast into others far poorer, both in spirit and in substance.
In this book, later granted the grandiloquent title of Holy Scripture, even the most minor events — long since eroded from collective memory — took on colossal scale and occurred only with the intervention of cosmic forces. A reedy marsh where Pharaoh’s chariots bogged down became the Red Sea, parted by Moses’s command. A cloud that dimmed the sky for half an hour during battle begat the legend of the sun reversed in its course by Joshua’s decree. The feeble walls of Jericho, breached by a battering ram, transformed into colossal citadels brought down by the sheer volume of Israelite shouts.
The Jordan — a miserable ditch, narrow enough in places that a good athlete might leap across — gained renown as the most famous river in the world, cited in more works of literature than the Amazon, Mississippi, and Volga combined. Thanks to ancient writers who knew little of actual geography but were rich in poetic flair, ponds became lakes, lakes became seas, and scrubby hills covered with thorny grass and stunted trees with tough leaves were exalted as mountains. But who would call them that, having glimpsed the Alps or Cordilleras even from afar?
Today I chose to wander these hills — landscapes that evoke an elegiac mood and a wistful sense that a better world must exist somewhere. Undoubtedly, Jesus of Nazareth, gazing at this scenery, felt something similar, and thus began preaching to Galilean shepherds, to comfort them, to lift their spirits, to suggest that all was not lost. Late autumn isn’t ideal for such walks — the overcast sky added to the gloom — but I sensed there would be no second chance. I am unlikely to return. Just yesterday, negotiations concluded for the sale of my firm’s local branch — the very one where I’d first launched my business. It had long become a financial burden, and shedding it was a necessity. Now, nothing ties me to this land.
A quarter-century ago, I arrived in Israel hoping to find a new homeland to replace the old one, which had grown too inhospitable. But what is a homeland? Is it anything more than an adult’s nostalgia for childhood — a time when life seemed infinite and each day promised wonder?
My brightest childhood memory is catching May beetles. In the evenings, they swarmed the streetlights around our courtyard, buzzing rhythmically — a sound I found oddly pleasant. Occasionally, exhausted from flapping and banging against the glass, they would land on nearby shrubs. Then, I would tiptoe closer, hold my breath, and snatch one — gently, so as not to crush it, but firmly enough to prevent escape.
I’d keep them in a box or jar, sometimes tying a string to one leg and letting them fly. Despite my care — fresh leaves, clean jars — the captives weakened. They stopped flying, barely crawled. I would feel sorry for them and release them, imagining them soaring off joyfully. Of course, worn down in captivity, they were probably easily eaten by birds or other predators, but I never saw that. In my mind, we parted as friends. And so, the May beetle remains for me a symbol of the purest, most joyful moments of childhood.
Years later, after living in Israel about a year — still without a car due to desperate frugal habits — I wandered down a side street in Tel Aviv one sweltering Saturday at noon. The air was humid and the streets deserted, everyone hiding behind shuttered windows in air-conditioned rooms. The whitewashed buildings glared in the blinding sun. Beneath a tree with garlands of yellow flowers, I heard a familiar buzzing and spotted winged insects — exactly like those from my childhood courtyard.
Delighted, touched, I stretched out my hand, ready to catch one. But just then I realized they weren’t beetles at all — they were huge black bumblebees. Terror struck me, then quickly turned to a deep, childlike sorrow. I barely stopped myself from crying. Later I realized it wasn’t sorrow, but longing — longing for something irretrievably lost. Perhaps for a homeland.
Isn’t it strange that the only piece of “homeland” I truly mourned was just a beetle?
I also realized it was fear — fear of this new, uncharted world I was now living in, where familiar sounds and sights might mean something entirely different, unknown, even threatening.
Very quickly — perhaps within a month — I understood that Israel could never be my homeland. Everything — landscape, people — felt alien. At first, this realization oppressed me, because I’d been taught since childhood that one cannot live without a homeland. I eventually recognized that idea for what it was: a Soviet superstition, a relic of a bygone era. However, I was only truly cured years later, when I stumbled across an essay online by a young but already prominent Russian-American writer. At first, I was irritated by the author’s vanity — he’d quoted one of his earlier works as an epigraph — but after a few paragraphs, I was captivated by the boldness and precision of his thought.
The essay was a scathing critique of none other than Pushkin, specifically the verses that praise “love for one’s ancestral graves.”
“Why,” he asked sarcastically, “does this supposedly noble and natural feeling carry such a necrophilic undertone? Is there truly nothing more life-affirming in one’s homeland to admire?”
He then dissected the other ingredients of the homeland myth: the childhood landscape, the mother tongue, the idealized beauty of one’s ethnic type. And he came to a harsh but logical conclusion: all of it is illusion, the product of state propaganda. Anyone capable of independent thought, he argued, must cast off this spiritual bondage and choose, consciously and freely, a homeland from among many options. Only such a homeland deserves one’s loyalty and love.
Of course! I’d long felt the same, but had lacked the intellectual courage to crystallize my vague thoughts into certainty. Now I felt liberated — like Prince Gautama at the moment of enlightenment. Freed from the superstitions of the past, I went beyond the essayist’s conclusions. Surely, a truly gifted person cannot be content with anything less than the entire world as his homeland! The more powerful the intellect, the more it chafes against national boundaries. I am talented, and so the problem of choosing a homeland doesn’t even apply to me. “The whole world is my dominion,” I repeat, echoing Ferdowsi’s great warrior hero.
Aren’t those poor souls who must content themselves with some shabby corner of earth simply to be pitied? Take, for instance, the perfect embodiment of such fate, whom I encountered during my walk: a religious Jewish girl, likely not even twenty, dressed in a full-length wool skirt and a shapeless brown coat hanging loosely off her thin shoulders, her coarse, tangled black hair resembling twisted wire, her pale face dotted with pimples — a testament to her zealously guarded virginity. And of course, her nose — an Ashkenazi beak with enlarged pores, unbecoming even for a man, a death sentence for any hope of feminine allure.
And yet — her eyes. Astonishingly beautiful eyes. Large, dark brown, framed by long black lashes, bottomless (forgive the cliché — it is fully earned here), like wells in the center of a sunlit marble plaza.
I would wager she doesn’t even own a television. Pious Jews consider it a source of temptation, incompatible with a righteous life. She has likely never read anything except rabbinical texts. Barely past legal age, she will be married — if not this year, then the next. Her life will become a carousel of pregnancies, births, breastfeeding, diaper changes — a flood of infants. She will outdo Rachel and Leah and all their handmaids combined. Ten children, maybe twelve. A whole tribe.
And I wouldn’t have doubted for a moment that she deserved no other fate — if not for the piercing, intelligent, emotive gaze of her immense eyes.
Those eyes are what first drew me in. I was amused by the clash of beauty and grotesqueness. But gradually I became more interested in her behavior. She had likely come with family or friends, then wandered off alone. She meandered, plucking dull wildflowers, picking up curious stones. She lingered by ancient olive trees, caressed the gnarled bark, plucked dark green olives and studied them, rolled them between her fingers, tasted them.
What struck me most was her joy — childlike, unfeigned delight accompanied every action.
In Russia, such delight is often called “calf-like.” But what’s so peculiar about a calf’s joy? I’d call it “dog-like.” In San Diego, I have a chocolate Labrador. When I return from a trip, she recognizes my car from afar, barks ecstatically, leaps onto my chest, licks my face and hands. Why? I barely spend time with her. I rarely feed her. I understand when people love me — they get something in return. But the dog loves me for nothing. To rejoice at someone’s mere presence, to love like that — you must be brainless. But this girl? She is not. She’s intelligent, sensitive. She must know the world beyond her insular community is vast, beautiful, full of temptations. So why such rapture?
Maybe she knows something I don’t. Feels something I can’t. I suddenly suspected she harbored a secret, and I watched her jealously, hoping to uncover it.
Earlier, I said she was plain. That’s not entirely true. She is ugly — maybe even hideous — but not always. Sometimes, for a fleeting instant, she transforms. When the sun breaks briefly through the clouds, like silent lightning, the light strikes her face and — everything changes. The pallor gives way to golden glow. Blemishes vanish. Her features sharpen, grow noble. Her eyes shine with triumph, her posture exudes grace — perhaps even haughty confidence. She becomes one of those women utterly convinced of their own power. It seemed that at any moment she might cry out: “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys! As a lily among thorns, so am I among the earthly beauties you have known before.”
It took me a while to notice these changes. But once I did, I couldn’t look away. I watched, desperate not to miss the next metamorphosis. My heart raced. My breath caught. A sweet, aching anticipation bloomed in my chest — the feeling of a timid lover awaiting a first date. I hadn’t felt that in decades. I couldn’t remember the last time anything stirred me. Not the grand cities of Europe, like open-air museums; not the gold-spangled Sikh temples; not the breathtaking landscapes of Africa or New Zealand; not even the naked teenage acrobats in Bangkok dens — all were curiosities, seen and forgotten.
I know full well it’s an illusion — light, shadow, weather. Step to the side, change the angle — and it’s gone. The thought of this vanishing miracle fills me not with sadness but with bitter disappointment, like when I mistook bumblebees for beloved May beetles. Soon it will be dusk. The sun will set. The girl will again be plain. And never again will I feel awe or joy or any real emotion. This is the last time I view the world with wonder. The last time my heart races. The last time my chest aches with anticipation.
It must be genetic. Perhaps I lack some gland that produces the necessary chemicals for such feelings. But — nonsense! We share the same ancestors, do we not? Are we not both descended from the Maccabees? Could it be that the kinship between us is far more distant than I had thought until now?
But really — if I had lived in the empire of Antiochus Epiphanes, would I have joined the rebels? Hardly. If forced to take up arms, I’d have chosen the other side — where all the splendor of world culture resided. And what did this land have to offer, except stones covering patriarchs’ bones? Truth be told, I’d have found a way to avoid the conflict entirely — not out of cowardice, but because I see no reason to shed blood for a worthless patch of desert.
She, on the other hand, would have joined the zealots with joy — even if those pious warriors, who shunned even accidental female contact, had driven her off with sticks and stones. She would have followed anyway — scavenging scraps, hauling water, tending the wounded, burying the dead.
And when, against all odds, the ragged rebels triumphed — when enemy chariots tangled and elephants panicked, when the proud warriors of Alexander’s lineage fled before a handful of fanatics — she would likely not have survived. People like her cannot return to mundane life after tasting glory. Run through by spear or crushed beneath a maddened elephant, she would lie in the dust, bloody and broken, glassy-eyed — but still wearing that rapturous childlike smile.
I, meanwhile, would have been nowhere near. I’d have been in some Damascus tavern, sipping thick wine, pondering the meaning of life, watching slave girls dance with detached amusement. There could scarcely be two creatures more alien to each other.
“There’s the rub!” I would cry, like the Prince of Denmark. Here lies the resolution of my torment. She and I, perhaps, do not even belong to the same people. That is why I feel as much a stranger here as anywhere. Not the fiery blood of the Maccabees flows in my veins, but the icy lymph of Ahasver. I am the Wandering Jew, plodding endlessly through the spirals of the cosmos. All I have seen. All I have grasped. Yet nowhere do I belong.
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