The Jerusalem Inception Part 3

Rabbi Gerster entered the apartment first, touching the mezuzah on the doorframe and then his lips. They hung their coats in the foyer and entered the dining room, where the table had been set with silver utensils and white cloth.

Temimah and Benjamin's mother, Rachel, shuttled dishes from the kitchen. The mother and son had come to lunch every Sabbath since Benjamin's father had left the sect many years ago, never to be heard from again.

Benjamin's dark eyes glistened, and he whispered, "How was it?"

Lemmy crinkled his face.

Rabbi Gerster began to sing: "Tranquility and joy, beacon for Israel, day of Sabbath, of rest, day of delight."

Benjamin and Lemmy joined him, singing the familiar tunes until the women were ready to serve the meal.

The rabbi recited the blessing on the wine goblet and the braided challah bread, which he sliced with a long, toothed knife. They ate gefilteh fish in jellied broth and wiped the plates with chunks of challah. The three of them sang again while Temimah and Rachel cleared the table.

Next came a large pot of tcholent-a concoction of meat, beans, vegetables, and spices that had been cooking overnight. Temimah's ladle broke through the crust, and she served her husband. He pointed at the steaming, generous portion. "My dear wife wants me to get fat!"

Temimah emptied a full ladle in Benjamin's plate, then in Lemmy's. Her face, framed by a headdress tied behind, was bright with sweat. "So?" she asked. "How is Sorkeh?"

Everyone looked at Lemmy.

"Sorkeh?" He creased his forehead. "Who's Sorkeh?"

They laughed, and the rabbi started chanting, "Sabbath today, Sabbath the sacred day," saving Lemmy from further inquiries.

After the meal, while the women were busy in the kitchen, Rabbi Gerster leaned back in his armchair, sipped tea, and quoted from memory: "The heaven and the earth were completed in all their glory, and on the seventh day G.o.d finished the work and blessed the Sabbath."

Lemmy listened carefully. Every Sabbath lunch, his father followed the same routine: A quote from the Torah and a trick question.

"Torah and Talmud," the rabbi intoned, "what's the difference?"

"Torah is G.o.d's word," Lemmy answered. "Cast in stone. Talmud, on the other hand, is a compilation of transcribed arguments between Talmudic scholars."

"I disagree," Benjamin said. "The sages' arguments originated from G.o.d's words, which had been pa.s.sed down the generations by memorizing until the Babylonian exile, when every word was transcribed." As always, he ran out of breath before he ran out of words.

Rabbi Gerster turned to Lemmy. "Nooo?"

"How can Talmud be cast in stone? It's a collection of oral debates about law, rituals, business, science, ethics, animal sacrifices, and everything else."

"Since when," Benjamin asked, "does the style determine the substance?"

"Ah!" Rabbi Gerster lifted a finger. "A disagreement between two promising scholars!"

Lemmy noticed his father glance at his watch. Was he also thinking of the woman from yesterday? Would she come to visit?

"Talmud," the rabbi said, "just like Torah, is divine, and therefore solid and unchangeable. The sages were inspired when they expressed their arguments, channeling, so to speak, G.o.d's own words."

"But how can we apply fixed rules to a changing world?" Lemmy swayed in the manner of Talmudic scholars. "Torah says not to start a fire during the Sabbath. It made sense when starting a fire was hard work. But today we can flip a light switch with a finger."

"Good question!" Rabbi Abraham Gerster clapped his hands. "Why keep the rules? And why continue to wear long black coats and black hats even when the summer comes?"

"Tradition," Benjamin said.

"Correct." Rabbi Gerster lifted his tea cup but didn't slurp from it. "For thousands of years, Jews have kept a fire burning from before sunset on Friday and devoted the whole Sabbath to rest and study. Should we throw away those traditions just because men invented electricity?"

"Men didn't invent electricity," Lemmy said. "G.o.d did."

"True." Rabbi Gerster chuckled. "Good point."

"So maybe," Lemmy pressed on, "G.o.d expects us to understand that He created electricity for our use, Sabbath included, even though men had not discovered electricity until centuries after Talmud was written."

"G.o.d had reasons to delay such discovery," Benjamin said. "But the rule remains, because we turn the light on by closing an electrical circuit and creating something new, which is forbidden during Sabbath."

"Beautifully spoken!" Rabbi Gerster knuckled the table.

As if in response, someone knocked on the front door.

Lemmy went to the foyer and opened the door.

It was the woman from the alley. "Shalom," she said.

He nodded, unable to speak. Her black hair was again tied up in a knot, revealing a small bandage on her forehead, which otherwise was as white as marble. She wore a long dress with sleeves down to her wrists. Her eyes were accentuated by slanted cheekbones and pencil-thin eyebrows. Her beauty made Lemmy think of a sentence from morning prayers: How wondrous your creation is, G.o.d. How wondrous!

"I'm Tanya Galinski." She offered her hand.

He made a slight bow, but didn't take the hand.

"I forgot." She smiled and dropped her hand. "It's a sin to touch a female."

Lemmy beckoned her into the foyer.

"You must be Abraham's son."

He nodded.

"You inherited his good looks and his gallantry. Thanks for defending me yesterday."

Lemmy turned before she could see his blus.h.i.+ng face and went to the dining room.

Benjamin was saying, "That's why Rabbi Eliezer said that-"

"Excuse me," Lemmy said. "It's the woman from yesterday."

Rabbi Gerster put down his teacup, which clanked against the saucer. He got up and went to the foyer, where he ushered her into his study and shut the door.

Lemmy stared at the door, astonished. Talmud forbade a man to be alone in a room with a woman other than his wife. How could his father shutter himself in his study like this? And with a secular woman, no less!

Chapter 5.

When the door closed, Tanya handed him the white handkerchief, washed and neatly folded. He pocketed it and took her in his arms. Pressed to his chest, she could hear his heart beating through the black coat, which smelled of cooked food and mothb.a.l.l.s. She held him tightly, expecting the surge of love and longing that had swept over her every time she had thought of Abraham over the years. But this man did not feel like her Abraham, and the tickle of his beard on her forehead suddenly overwhelmed her with something close to revulsion. She tore away from him, turning to face the wall of books.

He blew his nose. "Oh, Tanya! To see you alive!"

She looked up at him, this bearded, imposing rabbi, who had somehow evolved from the electrifying youth she had loved. The last months of World War II had been a burst of joy within a world of blood and suffering. But his death had hacked her spirit in half, turned her into an emotional amputee. During the intervening two decades, she had missed him constantly-the warmth of his skin, the firmness of his muscles, the taste of his lips. In her dreams, he appeared unchanged, stimulating her like nerve-ends on a missing limb. In her mind, he had remained young and fierce, full of venom for the n.a.z.is and pa.s.sion for her in an emotional dichotomy of equal intensity-an eighteen-year-old who killed and loved quickly, wholeheartedly, before his world came to an untimely end.

But this man radiated neither rage nor pa.s.sion, and his blue eyes were filled not with fire, but with tears.

Tanya gestured at the small study, the walls of books, a plain desk, and a narrow cot with white linen. "For this you survived?"

"No! For you I survived. For you!" He unb.u.t.toned his coat. "They picked me up from the road and threw me in the back of a truck. A field hospital, full of wounded, dying soldiers." He fumbled with the b.u.t.tons of his white s.h.i.+rt. "It stunk of rotting flesh and gangrene, the ground muddy with blood." His s.h.i.+rt parted, exposing the scars-crests and cavities, red and blotchy. "But I wouldn't die!"

Tanya placed the palm of her hand on his rutted skin.

"I wouldn't give up," he said. "I was certain you were coming for me."

"My G.o.d," she whispered, moving her hand on his disfigured chest, "how terrible!"

"Through high fever and torturous chills, lungs filled with my own blood, I saw your face, felt your hand on my forehead. She's coming! She's coming!"

"But I-"

"Every time they cleaned my wounds, every time they squeezed the pus from my chest, I screamed. She's coming! My Tanya is coming!" His rabbinical facade was gone, his face twisted with agony. "But you didn't! Why?"

"You're blaming me?"

"Blame?" He groaned. "It's not about blame."

"Yes, it is! Why did you go with him that morning? To kill a few more Germans? They were losing the war anyway. You left me in the forest, and he came back. I was at his mercy!"

"You should have given Elie that b.l.o.o.d.y ledger."

"It wouldn't have satisfied him. I had to escape."

Abraham stepped closer, his head leaning forward to look down at her face. "Oh, G.o.d Almighty, you've remained the same.

So beautiful."

Tanya stepped backward. "Elie told me. They turned Abraham into a b.l.o.o.d.y sieve. Those were his words: b.l.o.o.d.y sieve. And the image has stayed with me since."

"So you ran away."

"What was I supposed to do?"

He seemed hurt by her very question. "Search for me!"

"For another rotting body among thousands?" She breathed deeply. "Why didn't you search for me?"

He used the handkerchief to wipe his eyes. "How I missed you. All these years!"

"Your loyalty wasn't to me."

"True." He b.u.t.toned up his white s.h.i.+rt and black coat. "I was filled with hate."

A lifetime had pa.s.sed since she had last seen him, a youth with blond hair, walking off into the forest with Elie Weiss, fearless, eager to hunt down the retreating n.a.z.i troops. b.l.o.o.d.y sieve. But he had somehow survived and now, not yet forty, he looked like a biblical prophet, his beard long and gray, the odd, spiraling side locks dangling by his face. His blue eyes, still young, were set in wrinkles that didn't originate in smiling.

She fought back her tears, then gave in, letting them flow down her cheeks.

He took her hands and began to sing. "Let's run in the fields, in the farms, explore the vineyards."

She couldn't breathe. His voice was the same-deep and solid, like the roots of a strong tree.

"Have the vines flowered? Have the poppies reddened? Have the pomegranates sprouted?"

She cried, and he cradled her face in his big hands. "There," he sang, "there I shall give myself to you, my beloved."

Tanya's hand reached up, the tips of her fingers on his moist forehead.

"I did search for you," he finally said, his voice cracked. "But I found Elie instead, and he showed me your boots and blanket, all chewed up, encrusted with your blood. He said there were bones too, even some hair, which he buried in the forest."

Tanya sighed. "I ran from him. The front was getting close, but the wolves, they smelled my fear, my desperation, and attacked me. American soldiers heard my screams. They shot some wolves, and the pack attacked the wounded." She shuddered. "I don't remember the rest."

His shoulders sank, deflated. "It's my fault. I left you defenseless. And for what? To hunt down Germans-an infantile revenge when the ultimate payback would have been us!"

"Us?"

"A family. Children. A new life. Isn't that what the n.a.z.is had set out to destroy?"

She looked at him, finding traces of her Abraham under the untrimmed beard and premature wrinkles.

"When I saw those boots, the blood," he cleared his throat, as if the memory was choking him, "I lost hope, felt like I was dead, but still alive."

"So you rediscovered G.o.d?"

He sneered. "There's no G.o.d."

"But-"

"You of all people should know. You saw their a.s.sembly-lines of death, the factories of extermination, whole families, whole villages."

She nodded.

"You saw the innocent children. Pregnant women. Rabbis whose lives had been dedicated to wors.h.i.+p, to the glory of G.o.d. How could He exist? It makes no sense, unless He is ruthless and evil and a menace, a graceless Almighty, who deserves neither undue recognition, nor unanswered prayers!"