Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3

by Benjamin Laskin

  Note 6: Because I swore an oath of secrecy, I cannot divulge the phrase. However, I can reveal that it was Aramaic, and that the uttered passage is found in the text of the holy Zohar.

  Upon entering the cave, I was surprised to see Captain Cyrus sitting legs crossed in the center of the chamber. I said hello, but he didn’t answer. Clearly, he was in a deep meditative state.

  Not wanting to bother him, I plunked myself down beside him to begin my own voyage and research. There was so much to learn, and so much I wanted to know. I wondered where amidst the vastness of the Midrasha Captain Cyrus was hanging out, and what he might be investigating. I wondered if I could find him in there, sneak up on him, and tap him on his spectral shoulder, so to speak.

  I shook the dumb idea from my mind. Surely to have done such a thing would have resulted in a stern rebuke, and a scolding for treating the holy Midrasha like a souped-up video game. I prepared myself for my ascent with prayer, meditation, and breathing, and then away I went…

  I established a good connection. The cosmic weather was fine, and I could see the crystal records with a clarity I hadn’t experienced until now. I wondered if I was getting better at this, or just a boost from being in the presence of Cyrus’s far superior voltage.

  My intention for coming to the Midrasha this day was to look up the life of a great sage: Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, the holy Baal Shem Tov (the Master of the Good Name). I had recently mentioned him to Virgil, and I wanted to check my facts.

  The Baal Shem Tov, 1698-1760, was a rabbi who dramatically shook up and revitalized the Jewish communities and thought of his time. He breathed new life into a downtrodden and beleaguered nation at the end of its rope. The past century of sadistic pogroms, discrimination, and false messiahs had come close to permanently crushing the spirit of his people. The teachings of the Baal Shem Tov continued to be studied down the centuries; both by his direct followers—known as Chassidim—as well as by those of other streams of Jewish thought, who saw wisdom in many of his parables and the stories told of him.

  So absorbing was his life and deeds, I couldn’t tear myself away from his record. The Besht (an acronym for Baal Shem Tov), as he was also known, was born in the small village of Okup on the Russian Polish border in 1698. I reviewed his boyhood and how his elderly, pious parents brought up their only child. I saw his dying father call the five-year-old Yisrael to his bedside and tell him, “My last message to you, dear son, is fear no one and nothing but the Creator! Love every person with all your heart and soul!”

  Now parentless, young Yisrael was drawn to nature to seek out his Father in Heaven. I observed him often going into the fields and woods, spending many hours alone, praying, reciting psalms, and speaking to God like a child to his father.

  Skipping ahead a few years, I saw him as a young man being recruited by a mysterious group of “hidden tzaddikim”; anonymous, learned-but-humble sages who traveled among the common people. They aroused the hearts of their dejected and long-suffering kinsmen by elevating their souls with kindness, good works, and joyous prayer, reconnecting them to their spiritual roots.

  As a member of the hidden tzaddikim, young Yisrael roamed Poland and the Ukraine doing the most menial of labor as he secretly continued his Torah studies and poured his heart out to the Almighty. Outwardly, he played the ignorant bumpkin, but inwardly he was becoming a learned and holy sage.

  Aware of Yisrael ben Eliezer’s unique qualities and spirit, eventually the hidden tzaddikim appointed him as leader. His first instruction to them was that they go live among their people and get work teaching young children, which is exactly what he himself began to do.

  Every day Yisrael collected the children from their homes and shepherded them to school. On the way, he recounted stories about the great leaders, prophets, and sages of the past, and reviewed their school lessons. At the end of the day, he escorted the children home. He often stayed with them till late in the evening and helped them with their bedtime prayers. He carried out his work with joy and the singing of lighthearted, improvised melodies called nigunim. All the villagers considered him little more than a genial simpleton.

  In time, however, Yisrael ben Eliezer revealed his true self, staggering all who thought they knew him with his wisdom and penetrating understanding of Torah. From then on, he became known as the Baal Shem Tov, or Besht.

  The Besht gained a reputation for performing miracles in order to help his kinsmen in dire straits, or to teach his students a profound lesson. Many tales were told of the Baal Shem Tov’s supernatural ability to elicit cures for the desperately ill, or to enable hopelessly barren couples to have children. In some of these stories, the Besht was said to have been able to traverse vast distances in miraculously short times, a phenomenon known as “kfitzat haderech,” or shortening of the way.

  It was awesome for me to be able to see him in action, and to witness ‘first hand’ which of the fabulous stories and abilities told about him were fact or fiction. It became evident that the truth of this emuna-fueled, spiritual giant made the fiction look puny.

  By studying and reviewing the life of the Baal Shem Tov, one of many great sages from the past, I realized that the Midrasha did have its limitations. For instance, I could view with perfect clarity everything the living, physical Baal Shem Tov said or did, but not his soul. I could watch him in prayer or meditation, or asleep and dreaming. I could observe him during his spiritual ascents, but I couldn’t follow him on any of them. All that I could learn from them was what he decided to report to others afterwards.

  Maybe I didn’t know all the tools available to me for navigation in the Midrasha. Or, more likely, such knowledge was simply off limits to cupids like me. As the captains explained to me many times, we cupids were constrained by our own adaequatio: “The understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known. You can only know what you are prepared to know.”

  Where did the Baal Shem Tov go during those ascents? I wondered. To what heights did he ascend? I knew the stories, but for now, I could not verify what took place.

  Another far more startling curiosity occurred while I was observing the great tzaddik. I was absorbed in a commentary he was delivering to his students around his Shabbat table in April of 1746 regarding a passage in the book of B’reshit, Genesis, when he suddenly stopped mid-sentence. He turned his gaze slightly upwards and to the left. He tilted his head, stroked his beard in contemplation, and winked.

  At me!

  I flew back in astonishment. The rebbe smiled, a knowing twinkle in his eye. I floated to the other side of the room to see if it wasn’t just my imagination. His eyes followed. His students tracked their rebbe’s gaze, but shrugged in incomprehension.

  “Rebbe?” a student said. “What do you see?”

  “I see,” the rebbe replied looking right at me, “that we are never alone.”

  I inched away, confused, even a little scared. The Besht raised a finger and smiled again, as if to say goodbye, and thank you.

  Whoa! What was that?!

  I drifted away and pondered what I had just witnessed, floating among the clouds that hovered here and there within the vast expanse of the Midrasha. I had been observing the past, a time before my own creation, but there was the Baal Shem Tov addressing me today!

  How could it be? I knew the past was fixed and could not be changed, which could only mean that he was seeing…the future?

  Wow. Wait till I tell Captain Volk about this!

  I noticed something in the corner of my eye. It was a gleam of light about forty levels down and to the right. (There is no space and time inside the Midrasha as conceived in the three-dimensional world, so I can only speak in clumsy geometrical terms.) I jettisoned over to check it out, but saw nothing. I was about to go in search of another record to look up, when I felt a passing breeze and saw another glint of light. This time I knew the source. It was Captain Cyrus.

  The captain was zipping from crystal to crystal like a honey bee, tagging
record after record. I had no idea what he was up to, and he was too intent in his work to notice me. I called to him, but he didn’t reply. He seemed like a man on a mission.

  I flitted over to one of the crystals he had tagged, expecting it to be the life of some great historical figure. But it was nobody special. Just an average Joe. I checked on another, and another. Nobodies, all of them. The only thing all these nobodies had in common was that they were all still alive, works in progress: people whose lives were being updated and recorded every second. They weren’t historical. They weren’t famous. They were regular folks, as best I could tell.

  What was Captain Cyrus up to?

  There was no way I could catch or keep up with him. I couldn’t possibly maneuver so nimbly through the maze of thousands of crystals. I’d have become dizzy and disoriented and lost my way. I had read stories about cupids in the past that had gotten lost in the Midrasha and never returned. I didn’t want to end up a disembodied archival footnote.

  Instead, I glided upwards to obtain a bird’s eye view. I scanned a sector of the Midrasha looking for the violet glow of a record being accessed. After a minute, I spotted just such a purplish illumination. I was about to travel over to it, when I saw another record light up.

  Huh, I thought, that’s a nice trick. I didn’t know we could open two records at the same time.

  But then there was another, and another, and within seconds it seemed as though I was looking down upon the nightscape of a New York or Tokyo, as thousands upon thousands of records switched on, bathing a large expanse of the Midrasha in a cool, lavender light. It was beautiful and eerie at the same time.

  I was concerned if what I was witnessing was normal, and must admit that I feared for Cyrus’s safety. My concerns and questions, however, could only be answered outside the Midrasha, and having had enough adventure for one day, I began the process for exiting.

  I returned my astral body to my physical one inside the cave. I glanced over at Captain Cyrus. He was still deep in meditation. In fact, he was in so deep that his eyes were glazed over, and his body trembled and emitted a kind of heat wave.

  And was that sweat on his brow? I had never seen a cupid sweat before. I didn’t think we could sweat. It was no ordinary perspiration, either. It sparkled. I watched as a glistening droplet slid down the side of his face and hit the granite floor with an audible—tink!—and rolled away.

  I got up and retrieved the bead. I examined it, rolling the gem-like stone between my fingers. It was hard and brilliant.

  Whoa, Captain Cyrus sweats diamonds!

  I dropped the jewel into the zippered pocket on my sleeve.

  22

  Malachim!

  It was the first time in weeks that I had shown up late for practice, but I knew my excuses would not save me from Captain Volk’s disciplining hand.

  I met him on a grassy knoll near the entrance to a grove of aspen trees that, oddly, I had never noticed before. He was dressed in his usual one-piece uniform and blue baseball cap with its large, red letter C, and was just finishing his afternoon prayers. At his feet I saw a satchel and a bow and quiver of arrows. I approached and lowered my head, waiting for my punishment.

  Volk said, “Amen,” and then delivered his customary stinging rebuke, a brain-scrambling slap to the back of my head. Ouch!

  “Thank you, Sir,” I grimaced.

  “Don’t mention it.” He grabbed up the satchel and bow and quiver from the ground and slid them around his shoulders. “Now, let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

  I detected an unusual graveness in his voice, but wrote it off as annoyance at my tardiness.

  “Captain,” I said, “I just came from the cave, and I wanted to ask—”

  “It can wait.”

  “But—”

  Whack!

  “Ow, okay, okay…”

  “Cheer up, Kohai. You’re going to like this.”

  “I like everything you teach me, Captain,” I said, following him into the grove.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Okay, most everything. But I can definitely do without the head-slaps.”

  Volk grinned. “I can’t.”

  Looking around as we penetrated deeper into the forest, I said, “Where the heck are we? How come I’ve never noticed this place before?”

  “Adaequatio again, Kohai. It was always here, but you couldn’t see it because you weren’t ready to see it.”

  “It works for the physical world too?”

  “Of course. Think of it as a ‘trained eye.’ If an etymologist were walking through these woods, he would see all sorts of bug life that an untrained eye would miss.” He pointed to a fat, camouflage-green caterpillar on a nearby branch. “A bird watcher would notice dozens of different birds that escape your attention.” He pointed successively in four different directions to four different species of birds. “A blind man would hear sounds you don’t hear.” He stopped, held up his hand to signal silence, and then drew my attention to the whistling breeze through the trees, the distant gurgle of a brook, and the rustle of a chipmunk dashing across the dried leafage on the forest floor.

  “But an entire forest? How could I not have noticed that?”

  “Which means we have a lot more work to do yet.” He hiked a thumb behind him to a narrow trail that came to an abrupt dead end. “Guess you didn’t see these fun and games either, huh?”

  He pushed back some branches and revealed a large meadow that had been turned into a sprawling obstacle course.

  “Cool! Did you build this?”

  “The original architects are long gone, but Captain Cyrus and I have been keeping it up and have added to it some. You’re expected to do the same.”

  Volk walked me through the course, giving me a brief explanation of all the many obstacles. The course contained ropes and nets, walls, ditches, pits, beams, and just about every conceivable obstacle to test and train one’s physical abilities: running, jumping, balance and agility, speed and stamina. Placed throughout were dozens of targets. It looked hard, but it also looked fun.

  “Is this where Captain Cyrus learned the things I saw him do at that wedding?”

  “Some, yeah. Whatever gains you achieve here will be expressed much more fully both down on Earth and beyond the curtain that shrouds our little yeshiva playground. The better your balance, speed, and agility are here, the greater they will be elsewhere. Now, you ought to be able to complete this course in under five minutes.”

  “Five minutes!” I exclaimed in disbelief.

  Captain Volk ignored my incredulity. “I’ll be waiting, but don’t come back until you finish, no matter how long it takes you.” He tossed me the satchel and the bow and quiver of arrows. “Arm up. Every target on this field must have an arrow, knife, or throwing star in it by the time you’re done. And no cheating.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “Then you’ll be keeping me waiting a long time, Kohai. And you know well that I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  I caught Volk’s menacing drift, and rubbed the back of my head.

  “Now get going. I’ll be watching you from that hill over there.” He pointed and began walking. Then he stopped and turned to me. “Oh, and Kohai. Remember, it’s not just about your physical fitness. Lead with your mind and your body will follow.” I nodded, not really understanding. He turned again and began ascending the hill.

  I loaded up my person with throwing knives, shurikens, darts and bolas, and the bow and quiver of arrows. I jogged over to the start of the course and began to psych myself up.

  I can do this, I thought. Captain Volk thinks I’m a wimp, but I’ll show him. I’ll make us both proud. I squinted with determination at the finish line two hundred yards away, breathed deeply, and did some quick stretching and hopping, like an Olympic runner at the starting line.

  Volk, meanwhile, sat down in the shade of an aspen tree. He raised his hand and brought it down like a karate chop. Go! Then he pulled his baseball cap down
low over his forehead, and took a snooze.

  I attacked a series of hurdles and slickly breezed over them in quick succession, ending with a roll and coming up with two throwing knives, nailing the first targets. Then came a winding course of tires that I stamped my way through without missing a beat, cartwheeled over one log, dove under a second, sprang to my feet, fired off arrows at two swinging targets, and nailed those too.

  Next up, I had to dive under a fence, pop up, clear two more, higher hurdles, dive again, hit three targets with shurikens, and then dash towards a bog that doubled as a long jump pit. And there my acrobatic grace ended in muddy humiliation.

  I climbed out and ran back for another attempt, which resulted in an ignominious replay of the first. I slapped at the fudge-like mire, spat out a mouthful of soggy debris, and crawled again to dry land. Insisting that the third time’s a charm, I rushed at the bog, and this time I cleared it by a toe’s length.

  I re-calibrated my strides and charged at a thick rope that dangled from a high wooden wall. My hands slimy with mud, the rope slid through my grip. I slammed into the wall and dropped unconscious to the ground like a singed leech.

  It was an hour and a half later when I stood in front of Captain Volk, dripping mud, my uniform in tatters, and heaving to catch my breath.

  Captain Volk tipped his cap up and gave me an inspecting eye. “Back so soon?”

  “Five minutes, no way! Impossible!”

  “You aren’t calling me a liar, now are you, Kohai?”

  “Huh? No, Sir! I’d never do that, Sir. It’s just that—it’s very hard to imagine, Sir.”