by Alan Gold
* * *
FOUR DAYS LATER, Yael was sitting up in bed, eating grapes and sipping pomegranate juice and, strangely, beginning to enjoy being a patient. Her private room was full of sunlight, a spectacular view over the Mediterranean, flowers, fruit, dozens of get-well cards, stuffed animals, and a pair of felt lungs inside a plastic rib cage, a joke from surgical coworkers in Jerusalem.
She’d been visited by colleagues and concerned friends. She’d been interviewed by the police, by Shin Bet, and by others who simply explained that they were from “the government.”
Her problem was that she had absolutely no memory of what had happened in Peki’in. The anesthetic, the shock, and hitting her head on the floor when she fell with Bilal on top of her had robbed her of the memory of two days of her life. She remembered going to Peki’in desperate to save poor, dead Bilal. She clearly remembered the drive and Yaniv. But from there her mind was a complete blank. She had no memory at all of the synagogue, the shooting, the imam, or the massacre. To her it was a complete blank, and no amount of thinking about it made any of the details reappear. As soon as she was feeling more like a human being, she’d ask Yaniv to remind her of the details.
* * *
THE TIME AND PLACE of the meeting were sent to Eliahu Spitzer’s phone by text message. He had wanted to go to the rabbi’s home, a place that felt like a sanctuary, in some ways more sacred than a synagogue to him. But the message was clear about the time and place, and Eliahu made his way slowly to Sacher Park by public transport and then walked the rest of the way.
Eliahu arrived as the sun was setting, bathing the Old City in warm light like rich honey. Christian domes and Islamic minarets were interspersed in amber shades amid clusters of mobile phone antennas and modern glass-and-chrome structures. In this light, at this quiet time of day, everything was beautiful. The bullets and the bombs and the blood that had been spilled here were purified by the sunset and, for fleeting moments, forgotten.
He gazed out across the open expanse to the clusters and strings of people moving through the park. The modern intersected with the ancient, both in the buildings of Jerusalem and its people: women in power suits, police officers in uniforms, youngsters drafted into the army using mobile phones in one hand and clutching high-powered rifles in the other, children in American T-shirts, Arabs in veils, and Orthodox Jews in black hats and frock coats.
Reb Shmuel Telushkin ambled up the path toward Eliahu, his gaze on no one and nothing in particular. Eliahu stood as his mentor and teacher approached, but the rabbi paid no mind and sat down on the end of the park bench without a word.
“How are you, Rabbi? I hope you’re well,” said Eliahu.
The rabbi drew a deep breath as he looked out across the park, but didn’t answer. Nor did he look at Eliahu.
“Your family?”
The rabbi gave a nod as his only response.
“Good,” answered Eliahu as a strange uneasiness spread over him.
The two men sat in silence for a long moment until the rabbi spoke with a voice so soft that Eliahu had to lean closer to hear.
“How many are dead?”
“Three,” replied Eliahu soberly.
“All of them Arabs?”
“Yes.”
“But there were others?” said the rabbi. “The girl . . . the doctor. And the American?”
Spitzer hesitated before answering. “Yes.”
“And what of them?” the rabbi asked in a tone that said he knew the answer already but that this, in true Jewish fashion, was to become a teaching moment.
Eliahu didn’t answer. He was not expecting to be questioned, and the interrogation took him by surprise. In his head he went through the responses he might give: that the two Jews who survived didn’t know anything; that they would be taken care of. But in the silence the rabbi turned to face him for the first time.
“What of them? Such a mess. This is not what should have been. When you came to us, I had such hopes. I thought that out of your tragedy . . . but it wasn’t to be.” The rabbi sighed.
Eliahu was starting to get annoyed. Where was the praise for what he had done for their cause? Where was the warm hand on his shoulder and the encouragement for what he must do next to prepare Israel for the Messiah?
“Nobody could have foreseen what—”
“God foresees! The Almighty knows everything! You may have been blind to the consequences, but because of your failure we are weaker today than before. Because of you!” The rabbi shook his head in dismay.
Eliahu was too stunned to speak. A grown and experienced soldier, a man who had seen more war than most, and suddenly he felt like a schoolboy being reprimanded.
The scolding continued. “Who is our puppet now, huh? Which Arabs can we call upon to place their bombs? Huh? When this false government”—he waved a hand in the direction of the Knesset—“starts to talk of a peace process once again, who will throw the stones? If there is peace, this false Israel becomes strong. But while there is violence it is weak; it can be torn down and God’s will be done.”
“There will be others. I can find another imam,” Eliahu said desperately.
“Bah!” spat the rabbi. “This failure cannot be endured.”
“What are you saying, Rabbi? What can I do?” begged Eliahu.
“Nothing. You can do nothing.” The rabbi stood.
“The doctor and her boyfriend, they know nothing. They have nothing to hurt us.”
“There is too much attention around them. Too much attention on you. You have failed, and exposed yourself by your failure. It is a matter of time before your Shin Bet brothers come for you.”
“Rabbi. Please.”
“There is nothing you can do. We have no place for you.”
And with that, the rabbi walked away into the sinking sun and fading light.
* * *
UNUSUALLY FOR A MAN whose life had been dedicated to action, Eliahu Spitzer sat in his office for much of the evening, incapable of moving. He had intended to return home but he was fixed to his chair, his mind in turmoil, ever since returning from his meeting with Reb Telushkin in the park.
He looked around his familiar office: the television, the bookshelf, the photographs on the wall of him smiling and shaking hands with prime ministers, presidents, and heads of foreign delegations. He looked at his desk; there were no papers or files, just a photograph, a computer screen, and a keyboard. Typical of his orderly life, no mess, no fuss, everything in its precise place. It was his Germanic background: everything had to be precisely so.
He couldn’t stand the offices of his colleagues, where coffee cups and books and documents obscured the tops of their desks. All that was allowed on top of his desk, aside from the screen and the keyboard, was a photograph of his beloved dead daughter, Shoshanna, when she was just nine years old, smiling at him from the distant past, dressed in a swimsuit, standing on a sandy beach against a blue sea and sky. It was a vacation they’d taken when he’d been posted to America. Where was it? Oh, yes, Florida. She was smiling back at him. Those were halcyon days of innocence and happiness. He would give anything just to hold her again, just to have her young, innocent arms draped around his neck, telling him she loved him and that he was the best daddy in the entire world.
He found himself immensely tired—so exhausted that he could easily drop off to sleep in his chair. All this duplicity, lying, cunning, and subterfuge had drained him of everything, including his own self. But his energy had come from his cause: to create a land of chaos so that the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, would know that he had to come again and save his people and Israel. None of his former friends or his family understood or even knew of his mission; he’d only seen his Shoshanna, so young and happy in that brilliant light, beckoning him to come to her. He thought he could bring her back when the Messiah returned.
But Reb Telushkin had cut him dead. All the struggles, all the cunning. Why should he continue with it? Why struggle when it was so easy to close his
eyes and sleep? And in sleep, in sleeping forever, he’d see his Shoshanna again. Hold her, hug her, protect her.
And he closed his eyes, and in the blackness he saw again the brilliant white light. Framed in the center of the light was the distant face of his Shoshanna. He would do anything to hold her again, his precious, beautiful daughter. Eliahu said a b’rucha over his girl, as though this were the anniversary of the day she was murdered.
“Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say Amen.”
He opened his eyes, suddenly feeling calm and rested. Knotted muscles uncoiled. Now he knew what he would do. He should have done it years ago, but it wasn’t too late. In fact, this was the best time to do it. He opened his desk drawer, took out his prayer book, and opened it to Hallel, the Praise of God. When he’d finished saying the prayer, he took out a revolver from the back of his drawer, said another quick b’rucha, this one for the rest of his family, and put the barrel in his mouth.
The last word he said before he pulled the trigger was his daughter’s name.
Shoshanna.
* * *
126 CE
The village of Peki’in
IT WAS A BLISTERINGLY HOT Sabbath day. Others hoped that their one day free of work would reward them with prayer and that after the worship they could return to their homes from the synagogue in Peki’in to benefit from the occasional breeze that might blow up from the olive groves below. Then they could rest.
But Abram ben Yitzhak, grandson of the beloved builder of the synagogue—Samuel the olive merchant—and his good wife, Sarah, had a duty to perform and until it was done, he would earn neither respite nor a cool breeze.
Today was the anniversary of his grandfather Samuel’s death all those years ago, and so it was Abram’s duty to visit the cemetery and say prayers. The young lad remembered his grandfather with enormous fondness; remembered how he would sit beside him in the synagogue and Grandfather Samuel would explain the meaning of every stone, every column, every artifact, and why he had the builders place them there. His favorite moments were when Grandfather Samuel told him of the way he’d escaped the Romans when they’d destroyed Jerusalem, of Samuel’s bravery on the journey, of the way he’d saved the life of Grandmother Sarah and her family, of how he’d tricked the Roman centurion when he’d boldly faced him on the road north by sending Grandmother Sarah to hide in the woods, and of how he’d entered the village of Peki’in to crowds lining the streets and thinking that he was the king of Israel.
But those days were long gone. The Romans now owned all of Israel and the surrounding nations, their legions were everywhere, Jews were servants in their own land, and anybody who opposed their Roman rulers was crucified along the roadside. Many of the Jews of Israel, especially those who had somehow survived the siege of Jerusalem, had been expelled, sent to other countries as slaves. But those who remained had learned to live their lives in isolation, and the village of Peki’in was rarely bothered by centurions or their troops, who generally marched north and south along the coast road and the Highway of the Kings.
And so life in Peki’in continued as it had always continued: growing olives in the valley, making pottery, and supplying other villages with herbs and spices, which grew in abundance on the rugged hills.
Abram had lived in Peki’in all his life, and in the past years had tended to his family’s graves now that his father Yitzhak was bedridden. Unusually, Grandfather Samuel had written before his death that he wanted his bones to be dug up after two years, when his flesh had been eaten by worms, and placed in a limestone ossuary, a practice that had not been undertaken for at least two lifetimes. He had learned of the technique because he’d lived for many years in Jerusalem, where the cemeteries were full of such bone boxes, as the villagers crudely called them. When his testament had become known two years earlier, there was disquiet in the village, but the rabbi of the synagogue had decreed that there was no part of Jewish law that forbade it, nor did Roman law in Judea deny the right of a Jew to an ossuary, and so it had been done.
Now, as Abram left the small but beautiful synagogue, he kissed the two stones that his grandfather had taken from the destroyed temple in Jerusalem built by King Herod, a curse on his name and may his evil children piss on his grave, and walked the half a league to the village cemetery up on the hill. He found his grandfather’s grave and said the memorial prayer, said a prayer for his Grandmother Sarah, placed fruit and bread on both graves, and left the cemetery by a different road. Instead of returning to the village, Abram sat on a rock and scrutinized the surrounding countryside. Satisfied that there were no Romans, no spies looking at his activities, and no villagers to notice what he was doing, Abram walked along a shepherd’s track to the upper hills above Peki’in.
He continued to stop and sit on rocks with a commanding view of the village and its roadways, checking, always checking, that nobody was watching him. Only four people in the village knew who was living in the cave he was about to enter. If word spread and the information came to the ears of the Romans, then not only would the two blessed men be crucified but the entire village would suffer decimation, in which one in ten of the residents would be hauled out of the square and whipped, have his eyes gouged out, and then be nailed upside down on a cross of wood as a Roman lesson to all who dared to disobey.
After Abraham climbed a narrow rocky track that led to the top of the mighty hill, the mouth of the cave came into sight. Panting from exertion, Abram stood beside the low-lying limbs of a carob tree and rested. Above the screams of two ospreys circling high in the sky searching for prey, he heard the voices of two men, one older than the other, in heated argument. He smiled and continued to listen to the frenzied words, the fury of one, the denial of the other. Abram could have spent the day just listening to them arguing. The anger, the indignation, the vehemence, the wounded pride, the treachery, the forgiveness, the love, the concern—it was a school for adults, an energetic and animated search for the truth, which he loved listening to.
“Fool of a son,” said the father. “How could your mother have given birth to such a blockhead? Don’t you understand the beauty of what I’m describing? How could you argue for such a simplistic form of the Divine when you just have to look around you and—”
“Father,” interrupted the son, shouting over the other’s voice, “my love for you knows no bounds, but your portrayal of the Shekinah shows me that your eyes are dim and your mind needs rest. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meetings because the cloud had settled upon it. And the cloud was the Glory of the Lord. It is the very nature of—”
“Idiot! Imbecile! This shows you have no understanding of the word ‘cloud.’ What it means is . . .”
And so they continued, and Abram would have listened for much longer had it not been the Sabbath and his mother expecting him home from synagogue and the cemetery. He coughed and called out the code. The interruption immediately made the men stop speaking. From the mouth of the cave, a tentative voice said softly, “Abram?”
In a low, gravelly voice, the boy said mischievously, “It is Yahweh, the Shekinah, Adonai, the Cloud and Spirit of our people Israel.”
A man walked out of the cave, beaming with joy. “Abram,” said the older of the two men, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who had lived there for the past twelve years. He opened his arms, and Abram walked gleefully forward and hugged the scholar. “How are you, my lovely child?” he asked.
Abram was about to answer, when Rabbi Shimon’s son, Rabbi Eleazar, walked out, smiled when he saw his father and the young boy, and joined in the hug.
Eagerly, Abram said, “I’ve brought you food and—”
“Wait,” said Rabbi Eleazar, “let us thank the Lord God Almighty that you are safe and that you have been spared to visit us again.”
And the three of them prayed. Whe
n they’d finished thanking the Almighty for His many blessings, the two rabbis eagerly waited for Abram to open the sack he was carrying, and gazed ravenously at the food. His mother, one of the few who knew of the rabbis in the cave, had packed cheese and bread, fish caught from the sea the previous day, and pastes of olive and herbs.
Eleazar thanked the Almighty that for at least a few days they wouldn’t have to eat the fruit of the nearby carob tree, which, though delicious, was boring after days of eating nothing else. They went into the cave and sat on wooden stools, which Abram had brought to them when his father had become bedridden from a farming accident and handed over the care of the rabbis to his trust.
Yitzhak had first hidden the rabbis when they escaped the vengeance of the Roman commanders in Jerusalem. It was an incident that had become Jewish folklore: Rabbi Shimon was debating the effect of the conquerors on the land when he openly criticized the Romans for constructing marketplaces, baths, forums, roads, and bridges not for the benefit of those who had been conquered but for their own benefit. He mused about the reasons why conquerors rape and pillage a land instead of bringing the benefits of their civilization to those people now under their control. Overheard by a Jewish spy who reported his words to a centurion, Rabbi Shimon was condemned to death, but he escaped to the uncharted wastes of the Galilee with his son. They were taken in by Abram’s father and given safety in a distant cave far above the village in the mountains, where they’d lived for year after year.
