The Devil in Jerusalem

by Naomi Ragen

  Picture her then as she remembers it: a run-down labor room in the old Bikur Cholim hospital in the 1980s on Strauss Street, where shower curtains separated mothers screaming in pain because the hospital couldn’t afford to give epidurals to the fertile, devoutly religious population they served. Her final scream, and then, the walls going neon, the midwife gasping, and she, as adoring as one of those Magi in a Christmas painting she would never in her life see, holding out her arms to accept the infant. She does not remember that he was brown, small, and wiry; that he struggled, flailing, as she clasped him in her arms, as if trying to leap out of them. She remembers him shining like gold mined from the deep, dark crevices of her family’s despair. A son, after so many daughters! A child who simply by virtue of his maleness had been granted the possibility of becoming a great scholar and religious leader, redeeming his own father’s bitterly disappointed hopes.

  They had not always been so devout. Part of the desperate flow of Jewish refugees from Arab lands fleeing the newly awakened hatred of their Muslim neighbors, their families had arrived penniless to tent camps in the desert in 1948. Slowly, the fledgling Jewish state provided them with shelter in huge, ugly housing projects. But Menachem’s father, Aaron Shem Tov, joined the army and served well, making influential friends who helped him find work in the civil service. He rose through the ranks until he and his young family could afford a larger apartment near the shuk.

  It was a neighborhood of outwardly charming Jerusalem stone houses built at the turn of the last century by warm-hearted Jewish philanthropists endeavoring to help the devout, visionary, and impractical immigrants who chose to leave their homes and find their way to the Holy Land. Inside, they were decrepit, damp, dark, and cramped, the alleyways between them shrinking as ugly add-ons made of tin and chicken wire grew like weeds, choking off the light and air.

  But Aaron had seen the apartment’s potential, taking down walls, repainting and adding modern conveniences, turning the dark spaces into spacious, light-filled rooms. Not all of his neighbors felt it was worth the effort. One by one, the descendants of the original North African immigrants for whom the housing had been built sold their picturesque homes, purchasing boxy modern apartments in dusty, outlying suburbs. Those coming in their stead were invariably stringently devout, indigent Ashkenazi Jews who looked askance at him and his Sephardic ways.

  It was then his wife decided to cover her hair with a wig, to which eventually a scarf was added. He followed suit, acquiring the black velvet skullcap covered by the large Borsalino hat favored by the Ashkenazim. He began to study the sacred texts in weekly and then daily study sessions. He saw the birth of his son, Menachem, as a reward for his growing piety. In his heart, he prayed that the child would grow to be a great Talmud scholar, a light to his generation through scholarship, diligence, and good works, and that this glow would be reflected on him and his wife and the rest of his family, so that his daughters might find worthy matches when the time came.

  And for a while, Aaron Shem Tov believed that this might be possible. Menachem, the elder Mr. Shem Tov would tell reporters later when they crowded around his home looking for statements, answers, insights, or simply to find someone to blame, had led the congregation in Anim Zemirot—the last prayer of the Sabbath morning service—when he was barely two and had to be stood up on a chair to reach the bimah; and by the age of three, he had already learned the entire first chapter of Genesis by heart. The accusations now being made against his saintly son were lies, wicked lies, he told them, spun by his son’s enemies, former classmates who had always been consumed with jealousy of his brilliant, pious son’s special powers. What stories they fabricated to blacken his name and raise themselves up! How could any intelligent person believe them?

  How, for example, Menachem had bullied and frightened children in the neighborhood, pushing them violently off slides and swings, tripping them with wires drawn across alleyways in the dusk. How he was eager to beat up others, but unlike most of the boys didn’t stop when he drew blood. How he had been suspected of tying rubber bands tightly around the necks of kittens, of being involved in the bleeding rumps of dogs whose tails had been ripped off. All of them, Mr. Shem Tov fumed, outrageous and malicious slanders with not a shred of truth.

  Not that Aaron Shem Tov believed his son had been perfect. Far from it. Yes, he had gone through a hard period, his teachers often citing him for laziness and arrogance and bullying others. But what business was that of the reporters? I did everything I could to change him, his father thought, flinching from the memories.

  That was true. He had punished Menachem more severely than he had ever been punished by his own father, beatings with sticks and straps that had gone on so much longer than he ever intended because of the boy’s arrogant refusal to cry.

  He never cried.

  No matter what punishment was meted out, Menachem’s dry eyes were direct and unflinching, exposing one’s helplessness, daring one to try harder, until finally his father had to recognize his own impotence. Eventually, Menachem’s yeshiva, too, ran into the same wall of unabashed disdain. Running out of ways to change his character, his teachers raised their hands in defeat, informing his parents that their son would have to learn elsewhere.

  To be thrown out of a yeshiva in Jerusalem was no small matter. All the rabbis talked to each other, and it was impossible to find an equally prestigious educational setting that would take him in. Having no alternative his parents, to their immense and unending shame, were forced to send him to a place that took in delinquent yeshiva boys.

  The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Kaban, was a saint, a man steeped in the wisdom of the kabbalah. It was his life’s mission, he often said, to gather the errant little sparks of holiness that had not found their place in the more well regarded institutions and to bring their potential to fruition.

  And it had surely been so with Menachem, who had walked in that first day with a charisma that covered him like thick honey, mesmerizing his classmates, who very soon found it impossible to do anything without his influence and approval. There followed some troubled days when even the devout Rabbi Kaban’s doubts had been aroused. But he persisted, calling Menachem into his office daily for stirring private talks, attempting with concentrated love and devotion to reach the boy’s soul. When nothing else worked, he threatened him: “If I throw you out, there is no place else for you to go and soon enough the Israeli army will draft you. You’ll find yourself on the front lines.”

  Whatever the reason, a swift, almost miraculous change came over the boy. He began to earnestly apply himself to his studies. Rabbi Kaban would find him in the yeshiva at four thirty every morning, sometimes remaining until midnight, poring over texts. It was a success story, and Rabbi Kaban’s gratification was immense. He quickly made Menachem his assistant, allowing him to give lessons to the other boys.

  But then, something odd happened, something Rabbi Kaban could not have predicted. Instead of focusing on Talmud, Menachem began to focus solely on the Zohar, a medieval compilation explaining the kabbalah, which was meant only for responsible scholars over forty years of age. From there, his studies had taken him to even more esoteric texts, the Fountain of Life, The Palm Tree of Devorah, and finally, The Book of Creation.

  When this happened, Rabbi Kaban could no longer stay silent, admonishing his star pupil, “These works of practical kabbalah are not meant for someone your age. Leave it before you bring evil into your life.”

  But Menachem simply looked at him with the same unblinking stare that had so unnerved his father and teachers, his eyes arrogant, his lips tightly stretched into a small, secret smile.

  He refused to obey.

  It was then that the stories began. How he had opened the door of a locked mikvah by using the names of angels. How he had used an incantation to grow money between the pages of a book. How he had driven a car with no gas all the way to the graves of the saints in Meron.

  His reputation spread.

  Rabbi
Kaban, perturbed, decided that what his star pupil needed was greater stability in life. He resolved that it was time for Menachem to marry. And so when a rich merchant came to him for advice about a monetary matter, the rabbi asked him instead if he had any marriageable daughters. As luck would have it, he had two.

  The eldest, Ruth, was a pretty, pale, docile girl of eighteen who had just graduated Beit Yaakov Seminar and hoped to teach. The father, whose heart had been set on an Ashkenazi Talmud scholar, was less than enthusiastic at first about this short, dark, Sephardi boy. He was finally won over by the rabbi’s and his own daughter’s endless entreaties.

  Ruth had never met anyone like Menachem. She was stunned, enthralled, captivated, her mind dizzy with possibilities. He was so wise! So learned! He knew things even the greatest scholars didn’t dare delve into. He was going to be a leader in the Torah world, and she would be his wife, an important rebbetzin. It was everything a devout haredi girl dreamed of.

  A lavish wedding was held in a large catering hall. The entire yeshiva attended. Menachem was set up financially by his father-in-law, although not in the luxurious manner he had expected and felt he deserved: a small attached cottage in a far out suburb, an hour’s drive from Jerusalem. He received a small monthly stipend from his father-in-law but not enough to cover all his expenses. Resentfully, he had no choice but to continue giving lessons, while he learned kabbalah deep into the night.

  Eventually, even more outrageous stories of Menachem’s miraculous use of the names of angels and the holy tongue reached Rabbi Kaban. At that point, the good-hearted old teacher finally felt compelled to act: he ordered his pupil to put aside his dangerous dabbling in the forbidden knowledge once and for all: “If you use their names to call them, they bring demons with them, and before you know it, you are at their command and not the opposite.”

  “What do you know, old man?” Menachem answered in contempt, turning his back and slamming the door to the study hall. Only then did a shocked Rabbi Kaban fully realize the depth of his mistake, and that it was beyond his power to correct it. He cut off all ties with Menachem Shem Tov and forbade his students any contact with him.

  Menachem set up his own yeshiva nearby, in one of the poorly attended synagogues of a dying congregation that was only too happy to allow him to fill its run-down premises during the day with the sound of students learning the sacred texts. Some starstruck students from Rabbi Kaban’s yeshiva followed him, and others came from all over, drawn to his growing reputation as a kabbalist and holy man.

  But he never had more than ten students at any given time. Whether this was his choice, or because people who admired him soon found their admiration outweighed by their fears, is hard to know. In any case, there was a constant flow of those who came and those who left, never to return. He always maintained that this didn’t bother him. On the contrary, he claimed he wanted only those willing to submit to him completely, that the others were worthless to him and to themselves. They were weak, vacillating, undependable, and thus unworthy of learning the sacred secrets of the universe that he had to offer. Only those exhibiting the tremendous discipline he demanded would be able to reach the highest spiritual level, he said. The others were of no use to him and the sacred knowledge, being vessels too weak to hold the great light.

  Soon a loyal, handpicked cadre surrounded him, willing to do his bidding mindlessly in return for sharing his powerful secrets. These men came with him to pray at the graves of saints, conducted secret rituals under the full moon in the thick forests that surround Jerusalem, daily witnessing Menachem Shem Tov’s miraculous secret powers. Or so they swore.

  If any one of them veered even slightly in an independent direction, ceasing to be “faithful servants,” he immediately withdrew his light from them, turning his face away. Those who didn’t immediately make amends were mercilessly beaten in the forests, then secretly dropped off at the emergency rooms in various Jerusalem hospitals. When they healed, they either willingly returned to a double dose of light or were no longer part of the group.

  Those that left never spoke to anyone about what they had been through, terrified of Shem Tov’s mystical powers to harm them. Those who remained spoke in awed whispers of the dire punishments that had befallen those who had dared to speak out against their mentor and teacher and their loved ones: how their kidneys failed, their virility vanished, and cancerous growths sprouted like summer weeds. They went on and on, feeding each other tales of destruction and retribution that filled all listeners with fear.

  They swore they had seen him change all the traffic lights to green, that he had commanded the wind to pick him up and carry him, that he had thrown dice and predicted the numbers again and again and again, that people who wanted money were asked, “In which pocket, left or right?” And according to their answer, that pocket would fill with money. They swore they had seen him submerge his head underwater for forty minutes. They swore he had put his hand on the stomach of a man’s father and removed his illness. They swore Aaron Shem Tov had announced to the fifteen known kabbalah masters in Jerusalem, “Here is my son, a new wonder worker.” And the masters had risen to welcome him. And in the dark crowded alleyways of the place near the shuk where little yeshivot blossomed and wilted like wildflowers, everyone swore these tales were true.

  People said they had witnessed these things or at least heard about them from very reliable sources. Because to those with faith, hearing about something was the exact same thing as seeing it with one’s own eyes, was it not? They swore it was true and believed it was true, the way they believed the Torah was true and God existed. They made it all part of the same faith, inseparable. And it was, at least among the handpicked people with whom Menachem Shem Tov surrounded himself.

  Soon after his marriage, Menachem arranged a match between his wife’s sister and Shmaya Hod, one of his devoted followers. But the girl had her doubts: “He spends all his time with Menachem in the yeshiva. All day and all night. It’s not the kind of life I want,” she told her sister Ruth in confidence. Ruth immediately told her husband. The day before the vort to seal the engagement, Menachem instructed Shmaya Hod to call it off, causing his wife’s family untold humiliation.

  While his father-in-law cut all ties with the young kabbalist, Ruth Shem Tov was loyal to her husband to the point of obsession, refusing any contact with her parents and family for years. It is hard to know if she bitterly regretted her actions later, when Menachem lost interest in her and her love turned to abject fear. By then, there was very little left of who she had once been.

  Then came a time of turmoil. A plot was uncovered and thwarted by the Israeli Secret Service among yeshiva students who planned to fire an RPG missile at the Al-Aqsa mosque to create chaos and usher in an all-out war of Gog and Magog, which the Talmud says will precede the coming of the Messiah.

  At first, the students kept silent, but later, after sitting in jail for years, they would claim that Rav Menachem Shem Tov had put them up to it. But by then the statute of limitations had run out and as the crime had not taken place, and there were those who had been tried, convicted, and punished for it, police did not pursue it.

  Other kabbalah masters also began to complain. “We, who truly know the magic incantations, would never dare use them.” But not all agreed. They told stories of the great kabbalah master the Baba Sali, who during a hilulah ran out of arak. He reached under his flowing robe and pulled out a bottle from which flowed an endless supply, enough to quench the thirst of the hundreds of disciples who had come. Others argued that it was a well-accepted tradition to use practical kabbalah to heal the sick or to match the unwed with marriage partners. But even they agreed that if a person misused his power there would be a terrible price to pay.

  While some would later call Menachem Shem Tov a classic psychopath, there were those who would argue that his behavior proved that the demons he had summoned to do his bidding had taken up residence within him, and now it was he who did theirs. Either theory would do
concerning the events that followed his introduction into the lives of Shlomie and Daniella Goodman.

  23

  Just when Bina and Morris had despaired of getting Hod or Goldschmidt to talk, a local law enforcement officer in the Galilee got assigned a call from someone who spoke Hebrew with an accent so American they thought he was speaking English. Actually, it was a mixture of the two languages. What he said was, “Ani ausiti citizen’s arrest. Bo quick!”

  When the officer arrived forty minutes later, he and his partner found two Hassidic types going at it, one all in white and the other all in black, each with long payot and beards, both of whom looked worse for the wear. The one in black had two black eyes and a bloody nose and was lying on the ground, as the one in white, his face scratched, shoved his shoe into his opponent’s stomach after kicking him a few more times in the behind.

  After separating them and handcuffing them both, police shoved them into a squad car and took them down to the station, the one in white protesting all the way. His name, he claimed, was Shlomie Goodman, and this man was responsible for injuring his children in Jerusalem and was wanted by the police. The one in black, on the other hand, claimed to be the aggrieved party and demanded to be released.

  To their surprise, the one in white had actually been telling the truth.

  “You’re never going to believe it, Bina,” Morris exulted. “They’ve arrested Kuni Batlan up in Karmiel.”

  “However did they find him?”

  “Get this! Shlomie Goodman became Superman. He found him, beat the crap out of him, then called the cops.”

  Her eyes widened. Would wonders never cease? She was in a strange way displeased. The father’s sudden attack of conscience would now force her to change her opinion of him. Perhaps he really was as unbelievably naïve as he seemed. That was the only innocent explanation for what he had allowed to happen to his children, and one she was loathe to adopt because it meant letting him off the hook.