Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series)

by Benjamin Laskin

  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.”

  “You are right, Kohai,” he said, getting to his feet. “It is hard to imagine, and that is precisely where you screwed up. I said let your mind lead and your body follow. We are angels, Kohai, spiritual beings, and until you fully comprehend and appreciate that, you will never fulfill either your potential or your true purpose. Our power is mind and spirit. Those at the Academy don’t understand this. They suffer spiritual amnesia. They suffer from an identity crisis. They have forgotten who they are. They think they are cupids; they don’t know they are angels—malachim!”

  Volk said the word with a burst of pride that I had never seen him exhibit before.

  “Malachim!” he repeated, smashing fist to palm. “Holy messengers! That is how we used to be known. Full of honor and glory, we whirled to and fro between the human world and our own. We sang psalms of praise and blasted trumpets and shofars. We did our divine jobs with loving abandonment and joy!

  “But now look at us,” he continued bitterly. “If the humans consider us at all, to their minds we are chubby, freakish little creatures tied to a commercial holiday used to sell chocolate and dopey greeting cards.” He shook his head in disgust. “The humans have forgotten us.”

  “But why, Captain?” I asked.

  “It is because we appear in our own eyes as grasshoppers that we appear in theirs as cartoons,” he answered. “So lacking in self-respect and dignity have we malachim become, we’ve even taken to using their fatuous name for us, cupids!”

  Volk sna
tched his baseball hat from his head and jabbed a finger at the red lettered C. For a moment I thought he was going to frisbee the cap, but he didn’t and yanked it back on.

  Volk continued his rant. “The great malachim—the Chayot Hakodesh, the Ophanim, the Erelim, the Chashmalim, and the Seraphim—how contemptible we must appear in their eyes. Should I ever have the honor to stand before cousins like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, or Raphael, my head would hang in disgrace, and tears of shame would pool at my feet. What hope have we any more of ever rising to the level of assistant for such holy angels as they…?”

  I was confused. Angels?

  This revelation aside, I never saw the captain so worked up. The graveness I had detected earlier was real. Something was definitely bugging him. I almost asked him if he had had a fight with Grace, but luckily checked myself before uttering the inanity.

  I knew Volk took his job seriously. I knew he and Cyrus were descended from mighty cupids. Until now, however, I didn’t realize how deeply they truly felt about their mission, or their fellow cupids.

  “Captain Volk,” I said softly. “You said that we are just one kind of angel. Are other angels as bad off as we are?”

  “I doubt it, but that’s not our business. Captain Cyrus and I, and now you, Kohai, are the last malachim of our kind. As long as we live, our business is to carry out our divine duty, unless or until otherwise directed.” He gave my shoulder a paternal squeeze. “What’s this?” he said, patting at the zippered pocket of my sleeve.

  “I almost forgot,” I said. “It’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

  I unzipped the pocket and pulled out the plump, gemlike drop of sweat I had picked up from the floor of the Midrashic Chamber. I held it up towards the sun. The drop dazzled in the light.

  “Cool, isn’t it? I got it from Captain Cyrus.”

  “What do you mean you got it from Captain Cyrus?” Volk said, apprehension in his voice.