Before we return to the story and relate how Hillel’s  wife and son joined him in Judea, we must look into the marriage customs and the  place of women in society in Judea and Babylon. It is easy to lump ancient  society’s approach to women under one distastefully male-dominated,  woman-abusive state of affairs, but it is not the way things were.  Generalizations are never entirely true, and when one examines the history of  those two countries, many surprises surface.
             
This segment is by no means the entire story. Much more research is  needed, and will be added as the book develops, since the subject is extremely important if one is to understand Hillel’s views of marriage, family, and women in general. There are many sources that are easily obtained, but also some  unpublished dissertations about the subject I happened to see more than ten  years ago in the wonderful New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish  Division room. At  the time, I was researching my biography of Maimonides, and the material I needed was 11th and 12th centuries, so I did not study those  papers. I plan to go back there and see if they can still be accessed. 

Two months  later. 

The late  afternoon sun that poured into the room, illuminating the peaceful scene,  suddenly disappeared in the startling way it happens during Judea’s long summer.  With the habit of a lifetime of teaching, Shemaya and Avtalion anticipated the  exact moment it would happen, and finished the lesson just on time. The students rose from the floor, preparing to leave for the day. Hillel slowly extricated  his mind from the absorbing glow of the studies, a process that for him was much  like emerging from a deep sleep into the morning, through layer upon layer of  consciousness.
    The giant door keeper walked into the room. “A  messenger left a letter for Hillel ben Gamaliel,” he declared, handed it to  Shemaya, and left. He did not know any of the students by name, and refused to  have any personal contact with them. Most of the students resented him, but  Hillel felt  that the giant did  not want to befriend the people he might be asked to turn away if they did not  pay.             
     Shemaya gave the scroll to Hillel, who looked at it for a long moment  without breaking the seal. “It has my brother’s seal,” he said at last, rolling it between his hands. “I can see the small chip on the side of the letter…” 

For a change of pace, I thought I should bring out a bit  of the original source material. As I have mentioned before, Hillel’s legends  and sayings are not concentrated in one source, but are spread over the huge  Talmudic literature. Some are his sayings, some are his rules and laws, and  some are legends about him. Previous books about Hillel dealt with the story  from the religious, not historic angle. I am doing the exact opposite – I am  attempting to string the scattered literature on a thread of accurate history –  so it is hard to decide how to present the three parts of the book as I am  developing it. It may change as I go along, but for the moment, I see the parts  done in this manner:
 
1. The historical material about the time of Second  Temple I am getting from Josephus, other primary sources, and secondary historical works,  some available to anyone interested, some rather obscure.

2. The legends/sayings/laws from the Talmudic literature.  Many exist in the wonderful Pirke Avot, some have been collected by amazing scholars such as Nahum N. Glatzer,  Yitzhk Buxbaum, and some fascinating  articles by Judah Goldin in the Chicago  Journals. I promise to have every single bit listed in the bibliography, even if it exists only in Hebrew. 

3. The story line that I am developing as a “speculative” biography where I connect the dots and try to understand how a magnificent human  being such as Hillel would react to his challenging time and place.

    “Duck!” cried  Menahem, and grabbing Hillel’s garment, dragged him into a dark entryway to a  shop. Hillel, startled, did not struggle and stood quietly in the dark little  corridor. “What is it?” He asked. “What did you see?”
     “Antipater. I  recognized his chair, being carried at the end of the street. Thank God, he did  not see me.”
  “But…why  should such an important man even notice you?” asked Hillel, for a moment  doubting his friend’s sanity. Antipater was a highly placed, extremely wealthy  Idumean, and a close friend of Hyrcanus, the High Priest. Certainly not someone  Hillel would imagine within the sphere visited by Menahem. 
     Menahem  laughed, a little hysterically, visibly relaxing from his momentary terror. “No,  don’t worry, I am not insane… usually I would not assume that important men  would pay attention to me… but I once I met him in the street just as he was  descending his chair to go to the baths. I looked at him and said something very  stupid.”
     “You talked  to Antipater? Why didn’t you just step backwards, respectfully, and let him  pass?” asked Hillel, bewildered by his friend’s behavior.
     “It happened  some years ago… I was younger, and I had the gift of prophecy,” said Menahem, "or if you prefer, the curse of prophesy. At that unhappy moment, Antipater had  his young son with him. My eyes fell on the child. He was extraordinarily  handsome, and there was something about him that triggered the prophetic voice;  I could not control it. So I blurted it out – saying that the child would become  a ruler among men. The child laughed happily, but his father took it seriously.  You know the Idumeans are superstitious to the core, despite the fact that they  have been converted to Judaism, if you accept enforced conversion as real, which most of the Pharisees do not...”
     “I should  think it would depend on the convert,” said Hillel. “If he wanted to convert, it could be quite all right.”