Queen of the Jews by NL Herzenberg

man, and the crowd fell silent. It would have ended very badly—and not for the man who shouted in Greek but for Mattathias, who would have ended up speared by Seleucid soldiers if his father hadn’t pulled him away from the scuffle and shoved Mattathias behind him.

The same force that many years ago had made him throw himself at that man in the crowd made him now throw himself at his own son, his Eleazar. It made him claw at his son’s garments, forcing him to disrobe so that, he, the father, could sleep with certainty that his son had remained a Jew. Although Eleazar was stronger and quicker than his aging abba, he couldn’t kick or push or hold him to the ground because his body remembered the love he had felt for his abba in the days of his infanthood, when his abba rocked him on his knee or gleefully lifted him up and swayed him in his arms right-left, right-left, and then counted one-two-three before tossing him on a bed.

Now that his abba was tossing him on the bare floor instead of a soft bed, Eleazar’s respect for his abba made him unable to resist, and so he let himself be pushed and disrobed and inspected with harshness that brought tears to his eyes.

His abba beheld his son’s fully circumcised organ, and shame overcame him and he hung his head low as though only now he realized what he had done. He had attacked his own son, and for what? For nothing. This was a good son. As good as the other four, or at least no worse. Flesh of his flesh, and so forth. Mattathias left the room, his heart too heavy for words.

Later that day, during the annual celebration of top-tier Olympians, Mattathias stood a little away from the crowd of celebrants, knowing full well that as a priest he would be expected to act. He purposely shied away from his duties, for they were duties only in the eyes of the Greeks or of those Jews who, out of desire to survive, had convinced themselves that there was not much difference between the multitude of painted pagan gods and the one invisible God of the Jews. So convenient for them to pretend there was no difference.

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