Judith: The Wise
Available to agents and editors
Synopsis
2,700 years ago, the Assyrian Empire is the greatest political and military power on earth, stretching from ancient Mesopotamia in the east to present-day Turkey. Even after most of Israel’s population is slaughtered or deported, a remnant of their ancestral land remains defiant and insists on independence. In retaliation, the emperor sends his general, Holofernes, with an army of over 100,000 to plunder and destroy the sacred Temple. As the last stronghold defending the road to Jerusalem, Judith and her small hometown of Bethulia must stop the invading force, or the name of Israel will be erased from the face of the earth.
When General Holofernes besieges Bethulia, the leaders are helpless against the thirsty and angry townspeople who demand total surrender. Judith rises from the depths of mourning her beloved husband’s death to realize she has the chutzpah and a plan to save her people. After years of training to be a wise woman, she is prepared to use her gifts for strategic planning.
Judith defies the protests of the leading men of Bethulia, boldly exits the town’s gates, and confronts Holofernes alone in his command tent. Aware that the general is stricken by her beauty, Judith persuades him to share a feast with her. They engage in a seductive and lethal word game, where she gives her enemy one last opportunity to redeem himself, but he fails. Induced with cheese to prompt him to drink more wine, Holofernes loses consciousness just before attempting to assault her. Grasping his sword to slice off his head, Judith wrestles with the use of deception and violence for a greater purpose.
Judith the Wise is an epic tale of guile, piety, and murder in the tradition of many great biblical narratives.
Who was Judith?
What is the inspiration for JUDITH THE WISE?
My novel, JUDITH THE WISE, draws inspiration from the Book of Judith, which is included in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons but is considered an apocryphal work by Protestants. Interestingly, the Jewish community holds the story of Judith in high regard, even though the book is not part of the Hebrew Bible. Her narrative has become linked with Hanukkah celebrations, especially within orthodox circles
Excerpt
690 BCE – The city of Bethulia, an Israelite outpost within the Assyrian Empire
The spindle, whorl, and distaff clattered across the courtyard stones when my wool snagged. Too familiar with the sound to startle, the pacing crow didn’t pause its strut, a ridiculous counterpoint of dipping back and forth. The neighborhood women continued to produce gossamer-thin fibers; only the slight tightening at the corners of their mouths betrayed they’d noticed my latest failure.
“Again, Judith?” Abran sighed, which meant I was as useless as a stabled ass. I remained seated, forcing my slave to retrieve the tools. “Other fourteen-year-old girls manage this. Thankfully, your betrothed appreciates that you aren’t dyed from the same cloth as other maidens.”
Her harsh tone stung. If my parents lived, my mother would’ve shown me the spindle’s ways just as she’d taught me to braid my hair. I tilted my head back to ease the ache in my throat and glimpsed blue between gaps in the pomegranate branches. Instead of plump and crimson, the over-ripe fruit withered by the relentless swelter hung dark and shriveled.
“Show me again,” I said quietly. One day, I’d be responsible for teaching my own daughters. How could I rebuild my lineage when a simple filament defied my touch? Surely, my cousin Manasseh deserved a wife capable of this much.
Abran grabbed a hank of wool. “You must twist it gradually. Take a small bunch and roll it down your thigh using the flat of your palm.” She produced a long, even ply, wound the strands onto the spindle’s end, and then arranged my grip on the distaff. “Hold it steady and draw the wool out—not so much at once.” Mimicking her technique, I pulled tuffs from the dew-retted pelage and let the spindle craft its magic. “There. Keep the tension. Keep it gliding.” When the string didn’t snarl, and my movements smoothed, she returned to her task and the chatter.
“I remember a woman who had ten children. All perished.”
Rivkah scrunched her thick eyebrows together. “A woman without children is the same as dead.”
“Of course. Of course,” the friends murmured.
“Mother Sarah died from shock when she believed Abraham sacrificed her son. That’s proof enough for me.” Babatha shifted her substantial weight and groaned. “My joints may creak like an old door, but my tongue still dances.” We offered her sympathy.
“A red cord tied to the wrist.” Hannah’s copper pendants swayed from her protruding ears as she spoke. “That’s what kept my youngest alive.”
“Better to weave it into the swaddling cloth,” Abran said. “The demons can’t count all the threads, so they leave the baby alone.”
“Have you heard about Miriam?” Rivkah asked after a lull in the conversation. “It’s so sad. She’s sixteen and a half and hasn’t been blessed with a boy or girl. If she isn’t ready now, she never will.”
“It should be in a good hour,” Babatha said. “Only Yahweh can give in a good hour.”
The women’s voices merged in a litany of rules and cautions. Hang dried fish above the bed. Bury the afterbirth deep. Never cross the shadow of a woman carrying life. If you spin at twilight, you’ll spin darkness into the baby’s soul.
When Abran checked my work, my yarn was lumpy in spots and too thin in others, snapping at its weakest point. Tossing the sweaty, clotty piece, she stared at me. I wished she’d forsake me, yet dreaded it. She reached for a carding paddle. “Here, loosen the tangles like this.” She placed wool on the boards and dragged the teeth through the hairs until matted clumps formed ordered clouds. The hot fleece released its sweet and musky scent of lanolin. “See, we want softness.” She thrust the combs at me and spun away, blind to whether I’d started correctly.
“Listen, this is a true story,” Babatha said. “I once met a foreign woman, childless and desperate, who requested an amulet from me. I brought her to a scribe, and he inscribed a prayer on a shard of an old jar and gave it to her. Then God opened her womb because she trusted the words, though she couldn’t read a single letter.”
All the women turned to the heavens and kissed their fingers. “There’s nothing more important than belief. Thanks to the Lord for his wondrous miracles,” Rivkah said.
“I hope—” I began.
Babatha dropped her spindle. “Stop!” All attention fell on me. “You can’t speak of the future. We have women heavy with young here. And what are you doing, Judith?” The puff of wool had escaped, leaving my combs to click together in vain. The girls younger than me, adept at spinning, snickered.
I jumped up, knocking over the low stool. “Why is it forbidden to discuss our hopes when a woman is great-bellied?”
“Because it is so,” Babatha answered, repeating the phrase I’d heard my entire life. I hid my clenched fists behind my back.
Abran jerked out my arms. “You’ll tie up your womb if you do that.”
I set my hands in my lap, careful not to clasp them lest I bind my belly closed. For it is written, I parodied silently. I didn’t think the King of Heaven and Earth cared about the exact placement of any part of me.
Abran ignored me for the rest of the day. The women’s fingers endlessly repeated the same patterns while the rhythm of their talk rose and fell with the motion of the spindles. Their minds moved as one; their expressions mirrored each other; they completed each other’s sentences. Unable to contribute to the conversation, I slumped and watched bits of fluff gyrate in shafts of light.
“The vine has wine!” Abran broadcast from my bedroom window. Though pleased I’d reached my bearing season, I cringed at the public announcement. She caught me as I bounded up the stairs to the roof. “Judith, where are you going? A woman with her monthly impurity shouldn’t be standing.”
I paused, one foot hovering over the next step, and pivoted toward Abran. Her sculpted cheekbones and full lips, carved as precisely as hieroglyphs, belonged in an Egyptian palace. She deserved to be worshiped by her people, not bent over my sheets. But what path lay open to me? I couldn’t free her; I’d already lost too much.
“Nonsense.” My voice sounded childish. “I'm not suddenly fragile from a little bleeding. I only want to catch a breeze.”
“Not weak, precious,” she said. “Don’t be ill-humored. Manasseh will delight in learning your fountain has been unsealed. Soon, you’ll be wrapped in wedding linens, blessed to carry his seed.”
Tonight, he’d break bread with the elders of Bethulia, all of them nodding and smiling while they discussed my flow as casually as they discussed the weather. Manasseh would look at me and think about...seeds. I yearned to feel the warmth of my child against my chest and watch my husband bend to kiss the forehead of our firstborn, but right now, that was someone else’s story. “I need time.”
“Time you shall have, but not too much.”
A cramp reminded me of my aches. “I’ll rest for a little while.”
Abran assisted me with the absorbent rags and helped me lie down in a pile of cushions. “I can get you herbs for the discomfort.” Her Nubian remedies had no place in a daughter of Israel’s chamber. I rejected the offer and buried myself in the pillows. My twisted belly found no relief, a pain that swam like a fish in a pond beneath my skin, unable to find a way out. I distracted myself with thoughts of Manasseh. Since our betrothal a year earlier, I longed to nuzzle his neck, inhale the fragrance of his clothes, and for him to cup my breasts, full of hunger. It was absurd to harbor these excitements about my best friend, but as the last in our family line, a kiss carried the weight of generations.
On the seventh day, Abran escorted me to the rooftop, where we joined the neighborhood women for my first visit to the mikvah. I accepted their congratulations and leaped over the balustrade onto the adjacent building to traverse the “City of Women,” the maze of hidden pathways high above the streets created by common walls and mutual rooftops. At the gate tower, we descended the inner stairs and pulled our mantles tight to our faces to emerge into the bustle of Bethulia. Ancient songs erupted from our throats, and our tofs beat a warning rhythm. The crowd of merchants and customers scattered at our approach or averted their eyes as if our impurity might spring like a lion to maul them. No one was more dangerous than a woman under taboo.
With each strike against the drum skins, I stomped my feet and sang louder to claim the ground from which others fled. The gate’s doors groaned shut, and our procession followed the narrow road through the valley. The twin spurs of Mount Horon extended shadowy limbs over the pastureland, inviting us to enter the cave nestled at its base. While the other women lingered outside, sang bawdy tunes, and passed trays of fruits, nuts, and pastries, Rivkah and I entered the cavern and veered into a side chamber hewn from the bedrock. A dozen flickering lamps magnified Rivkah’s already enormous eyes. I disrobed, and she sponged me using water from a basin and then explained the laws of purity, the familiar ways of our people. Pronounced physically clean, she beckoned me down a tunnel to a natural pool for my ritual purification. The day’s heat eased, and I welcomed the cool air saturated with minerals. The limestone curb hemming the bath gleamed in the torchlight, and the murky surface rippled from an unseen spring. I recited the blessings and surrendered to the water’s embrace.
Rivkah and I emerged from the cave, and the womenfolk greeted me with ululations. Swept up in the swirl of hips, I joined their music and dances. When we’d exhausted ourselves, we retired to the shade of a half-fallen tower and settled on spread blankets to feast on soft eggs, fresh cheese bearing the stripes of reed baskets, and dried figs stuffed with almonds and drizzled in honey, their sweetness intense as myrrh perfume. Marriage advice poured as freely as the raisin wine. They instructed me how to stretch grain during lean periods, soothe fussy babies, and stir Manasseh’s desire. “Since he is your lord, bow to him,” the eldest said, grave as Mount Sinai delivering commandments.
Waves of laughter swept over the group. “Bow to Manasseh?” Babatha wiped tears from her cheeks. “The same boy Judith convinced to climb the tallest pear tree in her father’s grove?”
“And fell,” Hannah said, “breaking his leg and pride in one tumble.”
Rivkah winked at me. “There are different ways to show respect. I doubt any of them involve Judith bowing.”
Memory after memory spilled from the women’s mouths: the time Manasseh and I organized children as a tableau of King Saul’s soldiers, and neither of us agreed to play Goliath. Each demanded to throw David’s victorious stone. And the summer, we acted as prophets and took turns proclaiming visions from atop the wall until guards drove us away. We were two wild spirits matched wit for wit, racing neck, and neck through our early years.
“Such a pair of scorpions,” Abran concluded.
No one spoke of dowries or bride prices, not when our families’ blood purchased the wealth Manasseh and I inherited. But war left its mark on us all. My friends gestured while they ate, traded recipes, and gossiped as if a decade of peace had healed a twisted shoulder, a missing ear, and a wrist crooked from a collapsed roof. Habitually, Rivkah touched the scar that curved from her temple to her jaw as she touted her grandson’s first steps—the gash, one of the cruel signatures the Assyrians had seared into Bethulia. The past poisoned the honeyed fig’s sweetness on my tongue, and I retreated from the celebration meal.
The hillside terraces caught the mellowing light, their charred olive trees gripping soil rich with centuries of fallen leaves, though they no longer yielded a harvest. Mount Horon stood solid against the shifting sky, its strength pressed close to Bethulia, whose homes built from its bones huddled like a family at prayer behind the defense walls. Smoke curled gently from their hearths, miniature wisps of the black billows that once rose from our burning city. A blast of the battle horn and our carefully reconstructed lives—wool-spinning, water-drawing, lambs flayed for feasts, the yoked oxen breaking the ground with plows—all were brittle in a future shaped by fire and sword. What power did lifetimes of knowledge possess when the armies attacked? Wisdom meant nothing when all you loved blazed to ash.