Two Funerals Met and Simeon Cleared Ashkelon

Two men died on the same day in the same city. One was a great and righteous sage. The other was a tax collector, a known sinner. Both funeral processions met in the same narrow street.

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While the town honored the sage's bier, enemies attacked and scattered the crowds. One loyal disciple stayed beside his master's body. When the townspeople returned to finish the burial, in the confusion they took the wrong bier and laid the publican in the sage's tomb with full honors. The sage was buried disgracefully in the tax collector's plot.

A Dream That Reordered Honor

The disciple was broken. For what sin did my teacher deserve this, he asked, and for what merit did a sinner get the funeral of a righteous person? His rabbi came to him in a dream.

Take comfort, the dead teacher said. Come, I will show you my honored place in paradise, and also show you the man in Gehinnom, the door of which even now creaks in his ears. I once listened to contemptuous talk against the rabbis and did not rebuke it. For that I was buried without honor. The publican once prepared a banquet for the Roman governor, who did not come, and the food was given to the poor. For that act of unintended charity, he received the honor meant for me.

Until Simeon Dies

The disciple pressed further. How long will the publican burn? The rabbi answered, Until Simeon ben Shetach dies. Simeon knows that several witches practice their dark trade in Ashkelon, and he idly allows it. When he dies, he will take the publican's place in Gehinnom (the realm of judgment after death) until the witches are removed.

In the morning the disciple hurried to Simeon and reported the dream. Simeon acted at once. He assembled eighty strong young men, chose a rainy day, and marched on Ashkelon. Silence in the face of evil is itself an offense. A great man pays for every act he could have stopped and did not.

Three Figures Who Draw a Curse

The sages weighed three figures who draw down a curse, and against each one a verse rises like a witness. First stands the inciter. Who was the first inciter? The Serpent, who whispered to the woman in the garden, "For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened." Because he incited her with that crooked tongue, Scripture fixed his name to the deed forever.

Second stands the one who tramples the words of the Sages. Jeremiah declared, "Cursed is the man who does not heed," for to despise the teaching of the wise is to break the covenant itself. Third stands the one who takes a patron of flesh and blood, leaning his whole weight upon a mortal arm. Again Jeremiah cried, "Cursed is the man who trusts in a human being and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns from the Lord."

Three curses, one thread. The tongue that deceives. The ear that scorns wisdom. The heart that abandons Heaven for an arm of flesh.

Rain on the Road to Ashkelon

Simeon chose rain so that excuses would stick to the ground. He did not wait for a cleaner day. The dream had already priced delay. The sage who failed to rebuke contemptuous talk paid with a wrong burial. The publican who fed the poor by accident paid with a moment of honor and then with fire. Simeon, still alive, still able to walk, refused to inherit the publican's sentence by leaving Ashkelon alone.

Honor at a funeral can lie. Gehinnom does not. The march in the rain was an answer to both.

The narrow street that forced two processions together became a mirror. The town thought it knew how to rank the dead. One bier deserved song. The other deserved a quick hole. Confusion, enemies, and a loyal disciple who would not abandon a body rewrote the ranking without anyone intending a parable. Heaven, the dream insists, had already rewritten it for reasons the living had not bothered to measure.

Contemptuous talk against the rabbis is easy to ignore when the wine is good and the company is clever. The sage learned too late that silence can be a kind of agreement. A banquet abandoned by a governor is easy to throw away when pride is stung. The publican learned, without planning to, that food given to the poor can outrank a résumé of sin for one funeral's length. Both lessons arrive sideways, which is how most moral lessons arrive when people are busy being sure of themselves.

Simeon's march in the rain answers a third kind of ease, the ease of a leader who knows about evil and schedules it for later. The witches of Ashkelon were not a rumor. They were a file on his desk that never became an order. The dream put a price on that delay measured in Gehinnom hours. Eighty young men and wet roads were cheaper. The three curses of the Tanchuma stand nearby like warning posts. Do not incite. Do not scorn the wise. Do not lean your whole weight on flesh. Simeon chose the harder leaning, toward responsibility while breath remained.