They turned into a small street and the rebbe let go of the doctor’s hand. Immediately the crowds and the smells of spice and Turkish coffee were gone. The street narrowed and then widened out again. A group of men and women dressed in white and beige, topped with gaudy sunhats, moved toward the rebbe and the smiling doctor. They were singing hymns and several dragged a large wooden cross. “That can’t be good for the back,” the rebbe thought, stopping to catch his breath. He stared around in wonder. These people, pale and plain as cotton balls, nodded their heads to the doctor as they passed. Who were they? One man wearing round glasses like the doctor pulled out a camera and shot a quick picture of the rebbe standing beside the Third Station of the Cross.
“What?” the rebbe screamed. “What are you doing?” The man smiled and took another picture. The rebbe screamed again, a curse so ancient that even he did not know its meaning, and then he charged at the man, kicked at him, and jumped on his back. The doctor pulled the rebbe away, almost throwing him onto the ground as the group scattered.
“My back,” the rebbe said, from the ground where he lay awkwardly on his side. “Ohhhhh! My broken back.”
“Like the agony of Christ,” the doctor said, smiling. “This is where Jesus fell for the first time.”
“My back, my back! What are you, crazy? Take me home.”
“Do you want to be saved?”
“Yes. Pop my back. Please pop it.”
“God made his original covenant with a Jew,” the doctor said. “And now it is time to renew that covenant.”
“Pop my back!” the rebbe screamed. “Pop it. I must go home.”
“Do you know that even from here on the Via Dolorosa, you can hear the Shabbat sirens sounding for the Jewish sabbath. I can leave you here,” the doctor said. “Or, I can pop your back now and you will come to my office for a final adjustment. It is not far from here.”
“What are you going to do?” the rebbe said, wincing in pain.
“I will fix you so you do not feel pain when you pray,” the doctor said.
The rebbe paused for a moment and looked down at the stones beneath him. He stood up. “Okay. I will go. But I must be home by Shabbat. Now, please pop my back. I am broken in two.”
The doctor moved in behind the rebbe and placed his hand between his shoulder blades and thrust forward as he pulled in from the front. “Now we will walk.”
“Who were those people? Who was the man with the camera?” the rebbe asked, and took a long drink of his water.
“Pilgrims,” the doctor answered. “Holy pilgrims.”
As they passed the Condemnation Chapel and the Chapel of the Flagellation, the doctor excitedly explained the importance of the buildings. “And just over there is Our Lady of the Spasm.”
“Spasm?” the rebbe thought. “What is this, sick? Flagellation, condemnation?”
Then they passed the Church of Saint Anne and left the walled city through Saint Stephen’s Gate.
“There is the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Basilica of the Agony where Jesus was betrayed by a kiss. And of course across the valley, there is the Mount of Olives.”
The rebbe knew the Mount of Olives well. He planned to be buried near his father on the western slope facing the Old City. His head began to buzz from thirst and the heat and he wanted to sit down, but he didn’t dare, as they were passing through a Muslim cemetery. A shepherd and his flock were fast approaching through the tall, dry grass. “How much farther?”
“Not far. How is your back?” the doctor said, not waiting for an answer as the road sloped down into the valley. “When the Messiah returns, all who are buried here will be resurrected.”
“Yes,” the rebbe said. “I know that.”
They walked in silence down among the cracked Hebrew gravestones. The rebbe read the names to himself and mumbled a silent kaddish for the dead. And though he knew they would one day be returned to the earth he felt a deep sadness for them as there was one thing the dead could not do. They could not perform God’s mitzvah of prayer.
After noticing a grave marked with the name Ben David, the rebbe bent over and placed a stone on the grave. “Our Messiah must come from the house of David.”
“The same as Jesus,” the doctor said.
The rebbe turned around and faced the Old City. The sun was finally starting to move down the sky toward the west and he removed his kippah for a moment and mopped the sweat from his brow. “There. You see.” He pointed vaguely toward the city. “The sealed gate. It is called the Gate of Mercy. That is the gate the Messiah will use when he at last enters Jerusalem.”
“The same gate that Jesus last used when he entered Jerusalem,” the doctor answered. “You see. We are just splitting hairs.”
They walked farther up the mount, the rebbe close on the heels of the doctor as he drank the last of his water. The rebbe’s beard felt as heavy as stone against his chest. When they crested the hill they could easily see the black smoke rising from the forest to the west as the fires moved slowly toward Tel Aviv.
“Blessed are the humble-minded, for they will possess the land,” the doctor said, his voice rising. “Blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for uprightness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.”
“That is beautiful,” the rebbe said.
The doctor smiled. “You have reached the top. Look!”
The rebbe looked out beyond the Valley of Kidron and saw the Old City and the shining gold of the Dome of the Rock and imagined a time before the walls and the city when Abraham, a simple man, answered a call from the wilderness and was tested.
The doctor put his arm around the rebbe and said, “We are very much alike.” They began walking toward a white arched building at the end of a gravel road. “Prayer is the backbone of your life, and prayer is the heart of my life. Look to the west. It is burning. They are sinning in Tel Aviv, they are sinning in London, they are sinning in New York. But here in Jerusalem, in this prayer factory, there is goodness. It is us against them. Those who will live and those who will die.”
They arrived outside of the new hastily constructed Resurrection Hotel that had been built to accommodate the thousands of expected pilgrims arriving to celebrate the millennium and await the Resurrection.
“You know, there is only one God,” the doctor said. “It is just that you are praying in the wrong language, so to speak, in an awkward manner. Look at how these prayers have twisted your body. I know that terrible things have happened to the Jews. Terrible tragedies. Because your prayers simply went poof, into the sky. Nobody was listening.”
“Many strayed from the path,” the rebbe said, sadly. “But I am a good person. I perform all six hundred thirteen of God’s commandments.”
“But it is time for a new covenant,” the doctor said, leading the rebbe under the archway into the Resurrection Hotel.
The hotel lobby was sparsely decorated and shabby. It looked as if the furniture had been borrowed from another hotel. Several plain-looking people dressed in drab colors and comfortable shoes lingered in the lobby, talking quietly.
“Vus nu?” the rebbe said, raising his voice to break the silence of the cool lobby. “What now?”
“My office is just down this corridor,” the doctor said, leading the rebbe to a wooden door where a sign hung that said: Holy Mission Chiropractic.
The doctor opened the door and the rebbe followed, feeling faint. There was another closed door across the room, emblazoned with a golden crucifix. The rebbe stood stunned. He felt that he was in another land, far from home.
“Would you like some water?” the doctor said, pulling a paper cone from beside the water cooler.
“No, no,” the rebbe said. “I will be okay.”
“I know you will. I must apologize,” the doctor said, gesturing toward the closed door. “It seems my colleague is in with a patient. He will not be long.”
The rebbe
began to sway back and forth and mumble under his breath as he moved. He felt a pain in his spine, but it was a good pain, a familiar pain, a pain that belonged to him.
The doctor smiled and said, “You are praying again,” and dropped a cushion on the floor before them. “Let me show you how.”
The doctor fell to his knees on the cushion and placed the palms of his hands together. He looked up at the rebbe. “It is easy. And it does not hurt.”
“No,” the rebbe said. “No!”
“It says in Revelations that the conversion of the Jews will herald the coming of Christ,” the doctor said. “Please kneel.”
The door opened, and out stepped the man who had photographed the rebbe on the Via Dolorosa. Behind him, in the center of the room, the rebbe could see tilted to an almost vertical position on the chiropractic table, Yitzchak, precious Yitzchak, smiling a horse-toothed smile, with his arms stretched out wide to meet the rebbe.
“He has been adjusted,” the man said. “Is your patient ready, Doctor McGraw?”
“Yitzchak!” the rebbe called, and sang out the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God. The Lord is One,” as loud as he could both forward and backward, as he had been told his great-great-grandfather, may his memory blessed, had done to vanquish the cossacks in the town square of Dokszyce all those years ago.
The Ascent of Eli Israel
Toward Jerusalem
Spring was in full flame again and Eli was a shepherd at Betar, south of Jerusalem, but up even higher in the sky. His friend Zev knew a man who had a flock of sheep out over the Green Line, who knew that Eli needed help. He asked if Eli could watch over his sheep. Most of the great leaders in the history of mankind have been shepherds, Eli thought: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Joseph. All the twelve tribes, all of Jacob’s twelve sons, had been shepherds.
Eli recalled the words of Micah the prophet that said the Lord would come forth from his throne and tread upon the high places of the earth.
So he agreed to go.
“Just melt into the land,” Zev had said to Eli. “And you’re gone.”
Eli fashioned a carpetbag out of an old red, black, and green riding blanket, and tied the heavy load to him with rope. And he herded sheep out there, protecting the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, with just his wooden staff, an old .38 Special, and his lumpy carpetbag pressing into his back.
It was quiet. He had never heard quiet like this. Every once in a while, some broken-down fellahin would ride by on their donkeys and wave, or an F-15 would buzz the sky overhead, but Eli was alone out there, waiting for his next instruction.
Sometimes a gray wolf would saunter past and sit down. Even in broad daylight. And the wolf wasn’t looking at his sheep at all. They would sit and stare at each other for hours, and Eli would ask him questions, questions about life and purity and goodness. He would fall asleep, and when he awoke the wolf would still be there, watching him.
With all the static of the world gone, a simple piece of grass became a thing of monumental beauty. He would hold a single blade in his hand for hours and feel its texture, as smooth as a satin dress then rough as sandpaper, causing his fingers to bleed. He discovered that all the elements of the universe existed inside of everything, and if he looked the right way he could turn a blade of grass into a meal filling enough for a week, or a sky full of stars into an intricate checkerboard that would entertain him until the sky turned blue with morning. He stretched his shadow across the land and ran after it laughing, or ran from it crying. Sometimes, he saw things that he would normally have heard and heard things that he should only have seen.
He could feel God moving throughout creation and would call out, “Do you hear me? Do you hear me?” and tell him how far he had been from him and ask him to bring him closer to his strength.
It had been more than a year since he had been called.
“Eli Haller, son of man. Go to the house of Israel.”
He had jumped up off his mother’s couch, spilling the scotch he was pouring into a tall glass, and said, “What? Who?” From the darkness of his aging mother’s Brooklyn apartment he heard a heavy silence. His mother’s door was still closed, and only the flashing of the muted television lit the room. He lay flat against the floor, his heart beating against the carpet. Over the top of the couch he was able to see that the door was still triple bolted.
“Shit,” he said, reaching for the bottle of Dewars on the low glass table beside him. The light and shadows cast upon the ceiling from the streetlights down below seemed to blur and distort before his eyes, like something melting.
The voice came again and he dropped the bottle.
“Who are you?”
The answer was more of a breath than a name. Eli felt it through all of the cells of his body.
“Who are you?” Eli screamed.
The room filled with fire, a black fire radiating darkness, a fire so dark he could only see inside himself, his ribcage heaving, blood racing through the veins, heart pumping, bubbling cells and microcells and the spaces between them. His bones ached, and it was inside him now, a winged pillar of black fire with four faces, looking to the east, west, north, and south. He could see them all at once. One face was a child, the other a man, the third was a lion, and the fourth face an eagle. Four voices joined as one and said, “I am the Lord and I have judged you.”
“No,” Eli screamed, and tore at his hair, banged his head against the floor. He saw the hurt faces of his wife and child, felt the soft touch of her hand against his cheek. He lifted his face from the carpet, and heard a distant crying that he knew belonged to Josh.
“You have known the dark path,” the voice said. “I will breathe a new spirit into you, remove your heart, and give you a new one. You will walk in my light and follow my laws, and others will, too. And I will be your God and their God.”
A wind came and the wings whipped the dark fire into a pillar of burning orange flames. “Those who don’t walk my path will know no God and will suffer famine and pestilence and the sword.”
When God had gone Eli Haller lay still for hours afterward crying everything into the carpet.
In the City of the Patriarchs
On the bus from the airport, an old rabbi turned his face away from Eli and told him in heavily accented English, “You are dying, friend.”
Just after nightfall, the bus dropped Eli off outside a barbed-wire compound at a place called Tel Romeida, which sat on a bluff overlooking downtown Hebron. His body shook beneath a crushing headache as he searched for the home of his only remaining friend in the world. Muezzins began to wail from their minarets under a tangle of faintly blinking stars. Eli forced a stiff-necked nod as he passed bored-looking Israeli soldiers who leaned against gray cement blocks spitting sunflower seed shells into the air.
Eli had managed to find his way to the city of Hebron from the address on an old postcard Zev had sent him in New York.
Zev lived in a caravan on the top of a hill, just above the Arab homes and vineyards clustered together down below. He hugged Eli close to him, saying with a smile, “Brother! Just in time for the simcha.” He took the bag from Eli’s hand and dropped it to the floor.
“I knew you’d come someday,” Zev said, stretching his arms expansively as he whooped: “Welcome to the wild, wild West Bank!”
Zev was still a big man, with giant shoulders and long hair, and could have been Eli’s brother or a mirror image only five years older. Now he wore a kippah on his head and a long beard with sidecurls at his ears. They had met years back at a John Lennon memorial at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, had prowled the streets of New York, and flunked out of A.A. together. Zev had been at the hospital when Eli’s son was born and they’d celebrated together on pills Zev had stolen from the E.R.
Eli covered his ears and said, absently, “You look great, Zev.” He felt burning throughout his body, as if his veins were filled with something other than blood. His eyes felt as if they were swathed in cot
ton.
“I’m doing my best to be my best,” Zev said, leading Eli into his home. “You look like shit.”
“I do,” Eli said, and he wanted to sit down before he fell down. He still heard the voice in his head, but it was in no language he had ever heard.
“What?” Zev said.
“I don’t know,” Eli said, and was silent for a moment as he looked around at the spartan interior of the caravan. “Is this the house of Israel?”
“This is the house of Zev, man. Come on, take a load off.”
“Okay,” Eli said, and Zev suddenly looked like some giant biblical Samson. “You look healthy. Really.”
“It’s the Torah, man,” Zev said. “You have no idea.” He led Eli to a red plastic chair, and watched him drop into it. “The shiksa?”
“Gone,” Eli said.
“The kid?”
“Gone, too.”
“Well, he’s not Jewish anyway,” Zev said, surprising Eli. “Thems the breaks, bubelah.”
“What?” Eli said.
“One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. I wish her luck,” Zev said, ruffling Eli’s hair. “Smile, man. You’re part of the tribe of the Messiah. We’re going to a party. Sefer Torah, man. A party for the new Torah scroll. Stick with me. I’ll get you back on your feet.”
“Let me lie down first.”
“You just got here and you’re crashing?” Zev said.
“I’m an ‘elder statesman of American television,’ ” Eli said bitterly, quoting the TV Guide critic who pronounced his production company, Ellis Hall Home Entertainment, and his Cold War schlock “a dinosaur deader than Ed Sullivan.”
The Ascent of Eli Israel Page 7
