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captivity
forbidden to learn by heart
that day’s reading from the
Septuagint, provided he
pretend to understand the
Hebrew and translate from
that.
It did not occur to Uri as a child
that his mother’s knowledge
of Aramaic was somehow
unusual, and that other
mothers spoke better Greek
than she did. It was only as an
adolescent that he reflected
on the fact that his mother
was called Sarah, which was
a name, as he was well aware
by then, often bestowed on
proselytized women who had
converted to the Jewish faith.
By that time, however, he
was not on good terms with
his father, so he did not ask
if Sarah was Jewish by birth,
and there was no way he was
going to ask his mother, with
whom he had never had a
good relationship. She took
such care to abide strictly by
the religion of her husband
and son.
If Sarah was not originally
Jewish—as her religious
overzealousness suggested,
because fresh coverts were
always that way—then she
must have been born a
slave and Joseph must have
emancipated her. Given
Joseph’s business acumen,
he would have chosen a
slave girl who spoke Aramaic,
which meant she would have
come from Syria or Babylon.
Uri assumed that his father,
who had been orphaned at
a young age, could not have
been prosperous enough to
land a Jewish girl, for even
if he had waived a dowry he
would not have been much of
a catch, and so he had been
obliged to marry a slave girl.
Under the laws of Palestine,
this meant that he, Uri, as the
son of a proselytized slave
girl, would be of very lowly