“Signs multiply every day,” he went on. “We will come to the Tribulation, and we will pass through, and we will prevail, for God is on our side!”
“Amen!” people called. “Preach it!” Most of the well-dressed men and women in the pews were white—most, not all. Nobody’d accused Lester Stark of being a racist, not even when he was starting out in Alexandria, Louisiana. He agreed with Martin Luther King that God cared more about the color of a heart than the color of a skin. People in his organization who didn’t feel that way suddenly found they didn’t work for it any more, and it did fine without them.
“We will prevail,” he repeated, “but it won’t be easy. The Antichrist is coming. He will lure many away from the true path, the path of righteousness. You won’t let yourselves be fooled, will you?”
“No!” the congregation shouted, and, “No way, Reverend!” and even, “Hell, no!” The sound engineers would have to scrub that before the sermon aired. The Lester Stark Hour stayed clean. Stark occasionally swore in private, but never in public. He didn’t think that was hypocrisy; he called it good manners.
“Here are ways you can tell the hour is approaching,” he said. “Before long, I’m sure, the Temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt. The Rapture will come. The Antichrist will be loosed upon the world. And he will be a great trickster, like Satan, his master, who dwells below. Beware, lest you follow him and stumble into eternal damnation.”
Many preachers these days got nervous talking about damnation. Not Lester Stark. He didn’t shy away from it. It was nice to think everybody would go to heaven and see God face-to-face, but it wasn’t in the cards, not from what the Good Book said. You could make people happy, or God. Stark knew which was more important to him—and to the people who listened to him.
“For those with eyes to see, the signs have been here for a lifetime,” he said. “Israel was reestablished in 1948, for the first time since Roman days—fulfilling prophecy. It took the Temple Mount in 1967—fulfilling prophecy. When the Temple rises again—fulfilling prophecy…”
He left it there. Sometimes what you didn’t say was as important as what you did. If you could make your listeners form pictures in their minds, you had them. If they did some of the work themselves, the ideas seemed their own. And people clung tighter to what was theirs than to what you handed them.
“The other day I heard from Rabbi Kupferman at the Reconstruction Alliance in Jerusalem,” he said. “These Israeli patriots have been preparing for the appointed hour since the Six-Day War. They’ve made vestments for the priests and sacrificial vessels and musical instruments and hangings for the Temple….”
He paused again. The TV screen would show the Reconstruction Alliance’s address and URL. If his listeners could speed the Temple’s rising by sending a contribution, that helped God’s path.
Not that God needed help. When He wanted something, He made sure it happened. “If you’re like Doubting Thomas, here’s another sign for you,” Stark said. “In the history of the world, there were only nine red heifers, the animals whose ashes brought sanctity and purity to priests in the First and Second Temples. Now a tenth has been born—here in the United States, I’m proud to say. As some of you will have seen, it’s been brought to Israel, where it can sanctify and purify priests in the coming Third Temple.
“But do you need so many portents if you have faith? Remember our Lord’s words to Thomas after He rose from the dead. ‘Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ ”
He looked out over the congregation. He looked straight at the camera, out to the much larger congregation he couldn’t see. “Believe,” he said. “Believe with me. If you don’t, nothing is possible. If you do, everything is. Thanks, and God bless you.”
He stepped away from the pulpit, and dipped his head when the congregation broke into applause. The choir sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The light on the camera went out. On the air, the announcer would be asking people to tune in to The Lester Stark Hour next week, and to send contributions to….Fundraising embarrassed Stark, but you couldn’t do God’s work without it.
A few people came up to shake his hand, to tell him or ask him something. He took his time with them. This was part of his job, too, sometimes the most rewarding part. Too many preachers scanted it once they got too big for their britches. Not Lester Stark.
Rhonda waited when he managed to get away. “You were good today, hon,” she said, and kissed him.
She made him smile. She always did. To him, she looked as good as she had in her cheerleader days. If she was a little wider through the hips now, so what? She hadn’t had four kids then. He wasn’t the same, either, but she put up with him.
He squeezed her. “Thanks,” he said, knowing she meant it. She always leveled with him, which kept his head on straight. “Let me clean off the TV makeup, and then shall we head for home?”
“Sounds good,” she answered.
He drove their Navigator. They went past the statue of Vulcan up on Red Mountain. The iron statue’s torch glowed red, not green. That meant someone had died in a traffic accident the day before. Lester Stark prayed for the victim’s soul and drove on.
People said the United States was full of guns. People who talked that way had never been to Israel. Soldiers going on leave or returning to duty took their assault rifles with them. Security also toted Galils, and were ready to use them.
Eric Katz had stayed in Israel enough to take lethal hardware for granted. But the men outside the Reconstruction Alliance’s museum weren’t playing. They didn’t just carry rifles. They wore helmets and body armor and khaki outfits that weren’t…quite…Israeli Army uniform. Their eyes said they would shoot in a second.
They had reason to be jumpy. Around the corner from the Reconstruction Alliance building in the Jewish quarter of the Old City stood the Burnt House. A priestly family had lived there when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD (or CE, depending on your attitude toward such things). One man died reaching for a spear. Plus ça change…
Even from a block and a half, the guards creeped Eric out. “I don’t know why Yoram sent us here,” he grumbled.
Orly shrugged. Since she wore a tight T-shirt and jeans, Eric would’ve given that his undivided attention most of the time. Not everybody male in the Jewish quarter appreciated Orly’s outfit. Two Orthodox men sweating in long black coats out of The Matrix and broad-brimmed black hats yelled unpleasantries.
“It’s for the artifacts, not the politics,” she said.
“No shit!” Eric exclaimed in English. The Reconstruction Alliance was a feather on the tip of the Israeli right wing. The people here had never stopped being mad that the Army hadn’t blasted the Dome of the Rock after the Six-Day War. If they’d had their way, the Temple would have risen then—and every Muslim country in the world would have hated Israel forever. So would every archaeologist and art historian.
Orly shrugged again. “Nobody would notice them if not for ISIS and Hezbollah and our other friends.” Eric grunted. The Israeli right was strong because the country had neighbors dedicated to wiping it off the earth. Once, people thought the neighbors were dedicated to wiping Israel off the earth because the right was strong. But the Palestinians hadn’t made a deal even with the Israeli left. So…
So those guards gave Eric a fishy stare as he came up. They gave Orly a once-over, too, but a less demanding one. The Arabs didn’t use provocatively dressed women as distractions to help guys with bombs. Death before immodesty, Eric thought.
When he and Orly passed and started to go into the building, a guard said, “Everything out of your pockets and into a tray. Same with your purse, lady.” His Hebrew had an American accent like Eric’s. He couldn’t have made aliyah to Israel long before.
They went throug
h an airport-style metal detector and X-ray inspection. “Okay?” Eric asked.
“I guess,” an attendant answered. His Galil was slung, but he could grab it in a second.
After all that tsuris, they had to pay admission—adding insult to injury. Eric didn’t like giving these people money, either. But he couldn’t walk out now.
The first thing he saw inside was a model of the Temple. There was another that had been on the grounds of the Holyland Hotel and now lived in the Israel Museum, but this one was larger and more ornate. It was based on Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple: half classical, half bulkily Semitic, and over the top with gold leaf.
“Wow!” Eric said. “How’d you like to have that on the skyline?” An Alliance functionary stood by to explain and comment. Her disapproval stuck out like spines. The air-conditioned room suddenly seemed thirty degrees colder.
One of these days, I will keep my foot out of my mouth, Eric thought. Don’t know when, though. But Orly, bless her, said, “It’s pretty tacky.”
“Why did you come if you make fun of us?” the attendant asked.
“We’re archaeologists,” Eric answered. Let her figure that out.
Her feathers unruffled—partway. “Then you’ll want to see the sacrificial implements,” she said. “Come down the corridor.”
Eric and Orly came. They saw a seven-branched menorah nearly as tall as a man. The sign, in Hebrew and English (no Arabic here—surprise), said it was fit to be kindled in the Third Temple. It was the first gold menorah since the days of the Second Temple.
“That’s a lot of gold,” Eric murmured.
Also on display were golden pitchers for filling the menorah with purified oil, and a vessel with a brush and tongs for cleaning the cups that held the oil. The precious metal…This was Fort Knox’s gussied-up cousin.
The table for the twelve loaves of showbread—one for each tribe of ancient Israel—was larger and more impressive than the menorah. It wasn’t solid gold, but only—only!—wood overlain with gold. It still weighed several hundred kilos. Golden censers that would be filled with frankincense stood nearby.
“They don’t think small, do they?” Eric had trouble staying flippant.
“It’s splendid,” Orly agreed. “It’s also—pointless.”
“We don’t think so,” the attendant snapped. “What we have here is only a fraction of what the Temple once boasted.”
Herod had squeezed his kingdom till its eyes popped to pay for rebuilding the Second Temple. Maybe he thought that would make his subjects forget he was a foreigner, and barely a Jew. Having Roman backing didn’t hurt, though.
Like the table, the incense altar was of gold-plated wood. It was ready for the Temple. With it stood an incense chalice and a golden shovel for coals and ashes.
Two mizrakim—one silver, the other gold—rested on wooden bases. The vessels looked like cups with pointed bases and long handles. They were for spilling blood from slaughtered animals onto the altar.
Blood sacrifice had vanished from Judaism for more than 1,900 years. Eric didn’t miss it. “What would the SPCA have to say about this?” he wondered.
He didn’t expect the Reconstruction Alliance girl to follow him, but she did. “All animals will be killed humanely, of course,” she said.
“Of course,” he echoed. In the fourth century, they’d called the Roman Emperor Julian the Bull-Burner because of his sacrifices. The fourth century was much more used to gore than the twenty-first. Did these people think about the public reaction if they started killing cattle and sheep and goats and doves for the glory of God?
Of course—not, he thought. Why would they? The Third Temple had two chances of going up—slim and none. It would take…He didn’t know what it would take to make that happen. The end of the world? Even that might not do it.
There was another shovel for ashes, this one bigger and made of silver. Its place was at the southwestern corner of the sacrificial altar. With it went a three-pronged fork for turning offerings or rearranging the woodpile.
There was a wheeled copper cart for hauling ashes (Eric didn’t smile). There were copper vessels for meal-offerings and silver measuring cups. There was a copper laver with six faucets to hold the water the priests would use to purify their feet and hands. There were stone vessels for preparing the red heifer’s ashes. (A placard said they’d been made years before a red heifer was found. These people might be out there, but they were thorough.)
There was a lottery box to choose which of two goats would be sacrificed each Yom Kippur and which made the scapegoat for the people’s sins. It came with two sets of lots. One was wooden, as in the First Temple, and one golden, as in the Second. Thorough—yeah, Eric thought.
There was a harp and a lyre. There were long, straight silver trumpets. There were shofars, the ram’s-horn trumpets overlain with gold (for Rosh Hashanah) and silver (for fast days). Really thorough.
There were priestly robes, woven in one piece without any seams except the ones joining the sleeves to the robe. There was a crown for the high priest, and a breastplate, too, with precious stones bearing the twelve tribes’ names. Verses in Exodus told which stone went where. There were golden bells to alternate with woven pomegranates on the hem of the high priest’s robe.
And there was the Ark of the Covenant. Its placard warned it was only a model, which made Eric think of Monty Python. The golden cherubim on top didn’t look like the cute little cherubs on Valentine’s cards. They had wings, but the resemblance ended there. They reminded Eric of spirits from Mesopotamian mythology, which was about what they were.
Seeing the Ark gleaming in gold, seeing the gold-plated carrying poles, brought Indiana Jones to mind again. Eric imagined himself in a fedora, brandishing a bullwhip. He shook his head. Only Harrison Ford could bring it off. A bald, bearded, fortyish Jewish archaeologist needed to stick to floppy hats and whisk brooms.
Well, Harrison Ford would look the fool at a real dig. Since Harrison Ford had more money than Carter had Little Liver Pills and all the starlets he could eat, that was imperfect consolation.
There was a jar for donations as they left. Eric and Orly looked at each other. The Reconstruction Alliance people were crazy as bedbugs and had poisonous politics, but their artisans did wonderful work. Eric threw in a 10-NIS coin. Ten New Israeli shekels—between two and three bucks—wouldn’t let the Reconstruction Alliance ship the Dome of the Rock to Hoboken.
Orly put in one of those fat, two-toned coins, too. She looked no happier about it, but…Conscience does make cowards of us all, he thought.
After the AC and the fluorescent lights, the street was like walking into an oven. Eric looked for a falafel stand. Deep-fried smashed-up garbanzo beans didn’t sound like much, but he’d got addicted to Israeli fast food. It had to be better for you than a Big Mac.
“What did you think?” Orly asked.
“It’s the fanciest goldwork I’ve seen outside the British Museum and Cairo,” he said slowly. “But it’s so pointless. Do you think they’ll build the Third Temple?”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“Okay. We’re on the same page,” Eric said. And Orly voted Labor but wasn’t part of the peace movement even before the second Intifada. The Arab uprising made its goals painfully naive. (The right was no better. Israeli politics were, amazingly, even uglier than the USA’s.) He went on, “Why’d Yoram wanted us to see it, though?”
“Maybe he thinks more’s hidden under the Temple Mount,” Orly said.
Eric laughed. “Whatever he’s smoking, I want some, too.” Orly grinned. If you wanted pot or Lebanese hashish, you could always get some. Eric had the munchies without weed. Where was a falafel stand?
* * *
—
Gabriela and Brandon swept into Israel on a wave of publicity…aimed at the States. The Israelis were
much less overwhelmed. Gabriela had discovered that as soon as she checked in with El Al for the flight from JFK. The United States talked the talk about airline security. Israel walked the walk. Her luggage, and Brandon’s, and everyone else’s, got inspected with microscopic thoroughness. She herself got grilled like a Coney Island frank.
Finally, she lost patience and complained, “Do you know who I am?”
The man questioning her was handsome in a tough-cop way. He was also quite grim. “No,” he said in Winter-Is-Coming tones. “Purpose of your visit to Israel…?”
Sometimes you could cut through crap by pulling rank and blustering. Sometimes—less often, Gabriela had found—bluster brought more crap down on you. This looked like one of those times. “Journalism,” she answered mildly.
“Tell me more,” the security guy said, so she did. Brandon and Saul Buchbinder chimed in here and there. When they finished, the Israeli shook his head. “Those people…”
“It will make an interesting story,” Gabriela said, hoping she was right. “People in America care about what’s happening with the red heifer.”
“They should find something more important,” the man said. But he passed Gabriela through. The rest of the entourage also endured the kind of security nobody’d done since the Vopos quit trying to keep people from getting out of East Berlin. They all passed and were grudgingly allowed on to the 747.
“Jesus!” Brandon said with feeling.
“Not on this flight,” Saul said. Gabriela gave the joke the small laugh it deserved. Brandon scowled. He liked to top other people’s lines. When they did it to him? Not so much.
One more flight. Gabriela’d long since lost track of how many she’d taken. The rest of the crew were also veterans. Business class made travel easier to endure, but easier wasn’t easy.
Alpha and Omega Page 4
