Free The Brotherhood of Book Hunters by Howard Curtis, Raphaël Jerusalmy Page A

heavily lined face made pale by long nights of prayer, but here stood a tall, robust man in his thirties, entirely dressed in dazzling white, with tanned skin, a thick but meticulously groomed black beard, and a broad smile. It was evident that the rabbi had been expecting the two Frenchmen and that he knew the purpose of their visit. That was why his conduct took François aback. A Jew receiving a visit from emissaries of a king would have been expected to bow reverently, but this man remained straight-backed and simply held out his hand. He was almost six feet tall. François, who was shorter, and still dirty from the ride, felt somewhat intimidated. As for Colin, he was openly offended.
    The secretary put some tea down on the table, then returned a few moments later with a thick volume under his arm. He looked quickly through the list of orders handed to him by Federico, ticked certain titles, then consulted a big register. Even though Rabbi Gamliel owned a well-stocked library, he never let the books he had read out of his sight, but was constantly scribbling notes and references in them. His phenomenal memory allowed him to cross-check different texts studied over a period of several years. He remembered the exact place to find such and such a passage. The inventory held by his secretary did not therefore list the Rabbi’s personal copies. It comprised works that were not all kept in Safed, or even in the Holy Land. It was a kind of bookseller’s catalogue, listing hundreds of manuscripts and printed books, with their dates and places of publication as well as the various places where they could be acquired. As soon as news arrived that a synagogue had been pillaged or a house of study razed to the ground, Rabbi Gamliel’s secretary would consult his lists. If a Babylonian Talmud was burned in Cologne, it was quickly replaced with another copy from Orléans or Barcelona. If a scholar in York asked a difficult question about the dietary laws, he was referred to a commentary dealing with that same law, written in Smyrna a few years earlier. Whenever a sage was summoned to debate the Trinity with the inquisitors, he was provided with documents from several churches to help him to juggle skillfully with the often conflicting, even contradictory opinions of the various clergies.
    When you came down to it, it was the tragic dispersal of the Jews that saved them. No tyranny, however widely it extended its net, could reach them all. No epidemic could wipe them out. For that to happen, it would have to spread immediately to the four corners of the earth. But it was to their books above all that the Jews owed their survival. For it was the same Talmud that was read—in Hebrew—in Peking, Samarkand, Tripoli, or Damascus. And as long as it was read, out loud or in hiding, by a whole congregation or a solitary hermit, they would be able to sail through any storm.
    Being forbidden everywhere to raise troops, to bear arms, or even to ride horses, the Jews had been forced to create an invisible army, an army without a garrison or an arsenal, which operated under the noses of the censors. Thanks to their common language and this network of communication, they had for centuries maintained a nation without a king or a land. Louis XI had always been fascinated by the way the rabbis spread their teachings beyond borders, thus weaving the invisible links that united their people. Like them, he was trying to impose French as the official language of the kingdom and had just ordered the creation of a letter post. The young monarch reigned over a confused jumble of constantly squabbling provinces. Bretons, Burgundians, Savoyards, and Gascons did not speak the same language. How could they come to an understanding? Would Gamliel supply the books on which the King of France was counting to assert his power from Picardy to Lorraine, from the Languedoc to Normandy, and counter the hold the Roman Church had over his