174
györgy spiró
wondered? Uri raked through
his childhood but could not
identify a single transgression
so massive that he would have
to be inexorably blinded on
its account; when he looked
back, even with the best will
in the world toward the Lord,
he could find nothing in his
actions.
The most obvious explanation
was also the boldest: the
Lord did not concern himself
with anyone, even his Chosen
People; all that had been
entrusted to him was the task
of the Creation and getting
the stone tablets delivered
by Moses to his people.
That explanation was not
something that came from any
original thinking on Uri’s part;
the Lord Almighty was cast in
the same terms collectively
by the Zadokite sect of
Roman Jews, also called the
Sadducees, who accepted only
the five books of Moses and
nothing else, nothing handed
down in the oral tradition,
and that was also the official
position of the high priests
in Jerusalem: the Creator
had generously created the
world, and mankind as part of
it, that it should exist, but he
had no further say thereafter;
everyone was free to do with
his life as he wished, within
the bounds of the Law, though
naturally anyone who broke
the Law would be smitten
down.
Man lived as best he could,
then died, and there was no
hell, no heaven, the way the
primitive Jews imagined over
there in Palestine; there was
no transmigration of souls, as
the primitive Pharisees also
believed, as no one rises up
from the dead, or only after
the coming of theMessiah, but
that was still a long way off.
“We have not suffered enough
yet to be forcibly washed,”