Rabbi Meir Told Rome the Pig Would Return the Kingdom

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Send Us One of Your Torches

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

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.

He went in alone. The street outside kept its ordinary noise. Inside, the officers had already arranged the chairs.

They Asked Him and He Answered

They 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 (חזיר)?

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. Meir did not look at the door. He named the animal they had thrown at him.

Because It Is Going to Give It Back

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

He had answered the language 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 they 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 (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

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 (Isaiah 42:10). 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.

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.

He Walked Out With the Rest Unsaid

Rome had asked for one man, and one man had gone. 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 teaching 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.

Kohelet also praises joy as eating, drinking, and rejoicing, and the sages hear in that eating the Torah and the good deeds that accompany a person all the way to the grave. Rome had wanted a torch that would light their questions and then go out. Meir had named an animal that keeps handing a crown back. He did not eat with them. He did not stay for the next round. He took the street, and the street did not look new. The sentence he had spoken still sat in the room behind him.