From Gethsemane to Arimathea [part 13] Kriyah _renting of cloth

Author: C.C. Saint-Clair
 

On the hill, only the breeze moved. It fluttered through the women's veils while, silently, huddled together, they wept. It is there, on the escarpment, huddled together, that Yacov, Yosei, Yehudah and Shimon found their womenfolk, as they returned from their own vantage point.

The brothers, being men, had been allowed to stand watch closer to the Taw but, as Jews abiding by Yaweh's ruling that the energies of dark suffering and death are impure, they, too, had not approached the cross. As on Golgotha, they could only observe from a distance.

The brothers helped the women to their feet. The family had to get back on the trail that lead to ramparts of Jerusalem a couple of kilometers away. They needed to pass through the Huldah gate before it closed for the twenty-four hour duration of the Shabbath.

Though the men were more than able to keep themselves safe in or out of the fortified city, they would never allow their women to risk becoming prey to the watchmen who roamed from dusk to dawn.

The moment of kriyah is the moment of rending one's clothes as symbol of the heart being rendered by grief, at a loved one's passing.

"Now is the time to tear kriyah," said Myriam Magdalene, hand over heart. Her words jolted Myriam back to the grotesque reality of the present moment. Her first-born had expired, murdered, after hours of suffering from the blows and cuts of the flagrum and from the ignominious atrocity of death on the Taw! So absurd and incomprehensible it was that her mind had lagged behind the reality of what had come to pass below the escarpment, in the orchard of the merchant of Arimathea. Yes, she thought, she's right. It's time for kriyah.

Shimon put his arms around his mother's shoulders. She let herself fall back against his chest for a brief moment. Then, unequivocally, she slipped her son's dagger off his belt. As if testing its sharpness, she ran the ball of her thumb across the tip of the blade. A carmine drop beaded and welled followed by another. Along the first knuckle of her thumb, they ran. Surrendering briefly again to the private world of her thoughts, Myriam watched the irregular dot of red cast against the dusty grey of the soil on which she stood before lifting her eyes to the pale shape of her son on the other side of the leafy barrier of branches. She sighed and, into that sigh, her shoulders slumped. Yet, she knew that it was not her place to question her God's will. It was not anyone's place. And so, with the last shred of strength she was able to summon, she intoned,"Baruch atah Adonai" Her voice rose. "Eloheinu Melech HaOlam Dayan HaEmet." With the point of the dagger, Myriam, mother of yeshua, rendered her robe at the place where it shielded her heart.

One after the other, her daughter-in-law, her daughter and each of her surviving sons rent their robe. Gravely and clearly, they addressed their God, as Myriam had. "Blessed are You, God," they spoke, "our God, King of the World, the true judge."
--------
Yacov, Yosei, Yehudah and Shimon untethered the donkeys that had brought them thus far. Hearts heavy with thoughts, they patted the undemanding beasts on the withers and flanks, as they always did before mounting them. The panniers still contained the produce bought at the market earlier that day. They adjusted the strap that kept them secure over the beasts' back and, with the burial grounds at their back, they turned the donkeys towards the Huldah gate through which they would enter Jerusalem.

With not a word exchanged, Yacov took the lead with Yosei. They spurred their mounts into a rib-rattling trot. The women's donkeys followed as they always did. Yehudah and Shimon bracketed their womenfolk from the rear. As fast as their mounts carried them, the group regained the pilgrims' tent grounds.

Once inside the grounds, they would push their grief aside because the Torah demanded that no sadness, no grief be indulged during Shabbath, the twenty-four hours of every week during which Jewish hearts and spirits were commanded to have no other focus than a reflection on the teachings of their one God and the ramifications and applications of these teachings to their daily lives.
 

Posted in: Christianity