Rabbi Meir Told Rome the Pig Would Return the Kingdom

The message from the Roman government was one line long. Send us one of your torches.

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In the study house they read it twice. Rome had torches. Rome had whole rooms of torches, and gems, and pearls by the chestful. A government does not write to a conquered people for lamp oil.

They decided it meant a man who could throw light on a point of law. They sent Rabbi Meir.

They Asked Him and He Answered

He went in alone. The officers had made a game of it: a question, then his answer, then another question before the answer had finished landing. They asked and he answered. They asked again and he answered again. Nothing they put in front of him stayed standing long enough to become a problem.

So they went looking for something a sage could not possibly have a use for. Why, they asked, is that filthy animal of yours called hazir?

It was a good trap. The pig is the one creature in the Torah a Jew is not supposed to have an opinion about beyond keeping away from it, and here was a room full of men who ate it.

Because It Is Going to Give the Kingdom Back

"Because it is destined to restore," Meir said. "Lehahzir. To give the kingdom back to its owner."

He had answered the etymology question and said something else underneath it, in a building where Rome kept its records, in front of men who worked for the government that held the country. The name of the unclean animal, he told them, is built out of the verb for handing back what you are holding.

And then, because he was not finished, he kept going. The wolf, he said, is going to be sheared for fine wool. The dog for ermine. A world flipped over, the animals nobody would touch turned into the furnishings of a palace, and every one of them evidence that the arrangement in the room was temporary.

"Enough, Rabbi Meir," they said. "There is nothing new under the sun."

The Line They Used to Shut Him Up

They had quoted his own scriptures back at him, and they had picked well. What was is what will be. What was done is what will be done. Nothing new.

The sages had an answer to that verse, though it was not one Meir could have said out loud in that room. In the days to come the generations will crowd in front of the Throne and ask who gets to sing first. Master of the universe, who recites the songs before You? And the answer comes back that it was only ever Moses and the generation who stood at the sea, and it will be them again, because they already sang the new song and Isaiah is still calling for one. The verse does not forbid anything new. It only forbids the counterfeit.

Which is what the officers had accused him of. Making it up. Getting creative. A pig that hands back a crown.

The Herald Who Called for the Reward

There is a scene the sages told about the end of it, and Meir had been sitting on the front half of it when they cut him off.

A herald goes out and calls across the whole world: anyone who never ate the meat of a pig, come and collect what is owed you. Crowds of the nations come forward. They never touched it. They want the reward.

And the Holy One says: shall these be paid in two worlds? They took their pleasure in this one. Now they want a share in the world that belongs to My children too?

The herald goes out a second time. Anyone who never ate carrion, or a mauled animal, or a creeping thing, come and collect. The crowd thins. Most of them did not keep that one at home and did not keep it anywhere else either.

So the animal at the center of the whole exchange turns out to be doing exactly what its name says. Handing things back to whoever they belong to.

Not a Private Torch

Rome had asked for one man, and one man had gone, and that is how the story is usually told. But holiness in Israel was never handed down that way.

When the Holy One gave most of His instructions, the wording was ordinary. Speak to the children of Israel. At the section that begins "You shall be holy," the wording changes: speak to the whole congregation. Gather every soul first. Every commandment is folded up inside that section, the honoring of parents, the Sabbath, the refusal of idols, the warning against theft and false oath, the love of a fellow, all of it packed into three words, and a teaching packed that tight does not get murmured to a few clever men.

Meir walked back out of the Roman building with the rest of the midrash still unsaid in his mouth. The sun over the street looked the same as it had that morning, exactly as the officers had said it would. The kingdom was still theirs. The name of the pig had not changed.