When Paul finished his prayer, Rivka immediately began praying the Kaddish. She closed her eyes and recited the words, and as she did, their meaning expanded to fill her whole hungry soul.
Let his great name be magnified, be sanctified, in all the universe that was created by his word.
Soon and swiftly, let him reign—in our days and in our lives—in all the house of Yisrael; and all will say, “Amen!”
Let his great name be blessed—forever and forever and forever.
Let him be blessed, let him be praised, let him be honored, let him be worshipped, let him be glorified, let him be exalted—the Holy One, the Blessed One—he who rises far above any blessing or anthem or honor or worship of mortal men; and all will say, “Amen!”
Let his peace and let his life pour out from the heavens on all Yisrael; and all will say, “Amen!”
He who makes peace in the heavens, let him make peace in us—in all Yisrael; and all will say “Amen!”
After a moment of silence, Rivka heard a voice say, “Amen!”
She opened her eyes.
Paul stood there, his eyes still shut, tears running down his cheeks into his beard.
“Beautiful, my daughter,” he said. “That touches my soul deeply.” He pulled the prayer shawl away from his head.
Rivka stared at him. His skin looked parched and weathered from long travel under wind and rain and sun. A deep indentation on the left side of his forehead reminded her that he had received a stoning more than once.
Paul opened his eyes.
Rivka gasped. The left eye socket gaped empty. Was this Paul’s “thorn in the flesh?” What suffering he’s been through!
His right eye looked at her knowingly. “My daughter, you see my weakness, and you feel pity. Do not. The Lord has shown me this—that his strength is revealed in my weakness. When I am weak, then he is strong.”
A strange peace settled over Rivka’s heart. Yes, evil flourished in her world. Yes, trauma filled her life. Yes, confusion reigned in her heart. But it was nothing compared to what this man had suffered. Through it all, let God’s great name be magnified.
Rivka smiled. She looked for a long minute into Paul’s good eye. He was ugly—far more than she had expected. And she loved his beautiful ugliness.
“Go in peace, daughter of Zion,” he said. He touched her forehead. “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth beauty from ugliness, strength from weakness, wisdom from foolishness.”
Then he turned and limped away toward his horse.
Two soldiers came and grabbed Dr. West’s legs. The burial detail, Rivka guessed. They made quick work of him, dragging his body onto a thick cloth, wrapping him up.
Rivka went to sit on a rock by the side of the road, her legs wobbly, her mind spinning.
Within minutes, the soldiers trundled Dr. West off toward the city. Dozens more went with them, carrying the bodies of the night’s dead.
The rest of the troops formed up. A centurion gave the order. The procession started forward. Soon it disappeared into the night.
Rivka sat alone with her thoughts.
My strength is made perfect in weakness.
A shadow appeared above her.
Rivka stood up and fell into Ari’s arms. She gripped him, letting the sharp release of tears consume her.
Ari said nothing, just held her tight.
She cried until she was finished. Really finished. Then she let go her grip on Ari.
He released her at the same moment. “Rivka,” he said, “we must talk.”
She nodded. “Fine. But not here. Let’s walk.”
“Can you walk on that ankle?”
“Not very well, but I can walk. I don’t want to stay here.”
“Wait.” Ari strode over to the boulder that had given Dr. West cover during his attack on the Romans. He came back a moment later, holding a gun. He flipped open the cylinder and ejected the cartridges into his hand.
“Any bullets left?”
Ari held them out for her to see. “Three.”
“Keep them,” Rivka said. “They may come in handy.”
* * *
Ari
Ari and Rivka ended up walking most of the night, resting now and again. Ari felt mentally exhausted but physically charged. Rivka’s ankle made it impossible to walk very fast, but she felt too restless to sit still for long. She refused to try climbing the wall back into the city, and they could not get in through the locked gates.
So they walked.
Near morning, they found themselves atop the Mount of Olives, sitting on a large stone, facing the Temple Mount. Here and there the torches of Temple guards lit up the Temple’s stony blackness.
“So,” Ari said. They had talked about Damien, about Brother Baruch and Sister Hana, about HaShem. Now it was time to talk about themselves. “I am still waiting for an answer to my question.” He shivered in the predawn chill. If she was not even going to think about marrying him, then he wanted to know quickly.
“We’ve still got a problem,” Rivka said. “Remember? I’m a Christian, and you tell me I’m therefore not Jewish. And you’re…What are you? I need to know, Ari.”
Ari sighed. “I do not even know what to think anymore, my friend. But I fail to see why you take the name of Christian so lightly. Think how many of our people died at the hands of…those people. At the hands of men like Constantine. The Crusaders. The inquisitors. Hitler.”
“None of that has happened yet, Ari. In this time, Christians are still the dregs of society. They haven’t become conquerors or Crusaders or inquisitors yet. And Hitler was a pagan, not a Christian.”
“What about Brother Baruch?” Ari turned to look at her. “Is he a Christian? Would he sign any of those creeds that Christians will someday fight wars over?”
Rivka sat silent for a moment. “The Athanasian Creed he probably wouldn’t understand. The Nicene Creed might be a stretch in a couple of places, although I would need to talk to him to find out. The Apostle’s Creed—misnamed, by the way—I think he would be fine with that one, but again, I’d need to talk to him. But all those are decades or centuries down the road. Those Greek creeds just aren’t relevant to these Jewish people.”
“So Christianity does not exist yet?” Ari felt a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. “And if that is the case, how can you be a Christian? You do not exist?”
“I’m a throwback, I guess.” Rivka returned his smile. “No, a throwforward. But let me clue you in on something, Mr. Defender of Judaism. Have a look at that Temple. Is that Judaism? Judaism as you know it? They kill animals in there, Ari. They say prayers you’ve never heard, and they don’t know the ones you and I learned in shul. They don’t recite the Kaddish at funerals. Synagogues are something fairly new, and the liturgy is just getting off the ground. You’re right that Christianity as we know it doesn’t exist yet. Neither does Judaism. Not as we know it.”
“So I also am a throwforward?” Ari scratched at his beard. “Well, just tell me this, then. Do you really believe HaShem is both one and three?”
“First you answer a few physics questions for me,” Rivka said. “Do you really believe in multiple universes? Electrons that are both waves and particles? Wormholes that let you be both today and yesterday at the same time?”
“Manifolds need not be simply connected—”
“Manifolds, shmanifolds, Ari! Maybe HaShem isn’t simply connected, either, whatever that means. The universe is a funny place, isn’t it? I don’t understand it, and neither do you. So how do you expect to understand HaShem?”
Ari sighed. “I only wish…” Never mind. Better not to say it.
“You only wish what?”
Ari said nothing.
“Listen, Ari, any guy who wants to marry me had better learn to answer my questions, because I don’t take no answer as an answer.”
“I only wish…I understood why HaShem showed such poor judgment in choosing his friends,” Ari said.
“You mean the Christians, Ari?”
“I mean all of them. The Christians. The Muslims. The Haredim.”
“Some of them are nice people, Ari.”
“And some of them are evil.”
“Really? I’m shocked, shocked to hear there are bad people in the world.”
“Bad religious people, Rivka. People who claim to be friends of HaShem. Why does he put up with them?”
“And his choice is what, exactly, Ari? Zap them with lightning? Turn them into pillars of salt? Drown them? Been there, done that already in Genesis. None of that works very well.”
“Then why did he do so the first time? You are not making much sense, Rivka.”
“Neither are you. I think we’re both tired.” She leaned heavily against him. “Where do we go from here, Ari?”
“We cannot leave,” he said. “We are trapped.”
“I know that. I mean, what do we do now?”
“I intend to learn a trade,” he said. “Brother Baruch is teaching me to be a scribe.”
“Want some advice?”
“If you have it.”
“Get a sword and learn to use it.”
“I am a pacifist, remember?”
“You’re a member of the Israel Defense Forces, aren’t you?”
“The reserves. Everybody is.”
“Didn’t you have orders from your prime minister?”
“Yes. My orders are to take whatever steps are required to preserve the State of Israel. I have not done very well, have I?”
“But Ari, there won’t be a State of Israel unless the Jewish people survive for the next two thousand years.”
“They will survive. No thanks to a certain religion which shall remain nameless.”
“Jews will survive only if Judaism survives, Ari.”
“You told me Judaism does not exist yet.”
“It’s forming now. One man will make it happen.”
“Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai,” Ari said. “Every schoolchild knows about his Torah school at Yavneh.”
“There’s a story about him, how he barely escaped alive from Jerusalem during the Jewish revolt—”
A sudden burning filled Ari’s heart. He grabbed Rivka’s shoulder. “We do not know if we are in our own universe or a parallel one, do we? Rivka, what if Yohanan will not get out?”
“He’s a sweet little man,” Rivka said. “I met him yesterday and—”
“What if he will not get out?”
“According to the history books, he will—”
“In our universe. But what if he will not in this one?”
“Nothing much changes. The city still falls. The Temple burns. The sacrifices end. No more dead animals. No more priests. But there’ll be no Torah school. No Haredim.”
“No Jews,” Ari said in a flat tone. He hated the Haredim, but they had kept his people alive for two thousand years with their inflexible ways. “No Zionism. No State of Israel.”
At that moment, the golden roof of the Temple lit up with the first rays of the rising sun. Ari stared at it. The roof blazed red.
All of this will burn. My city. My Temple. My people. Perhaps nothing I do can change that. Perhaps the currents of history are too strong to change what will be. And yet to do nothing is to do something.
Ari closed his eyes—too late. The hot tears spilled out, burned down his cheeks, burrowed into his beard. He would live to see Jerusalem aflame, and that was unbearable. How much worse if Torah died out in Yisrael? Then Yisrael would die, too. He covered his face with his hands.
He felt Rivka’s arm around his shoulders.
“Yeshua wept here also,” she said.
Ari had never heard that before. “Oh?”
“Could I tell you about it sometime, Ari?”
“Sometime, yes, perhaps. But not—”
Something brushed the back of Ari’s neck. He flicked at it. An instant later, he felt the sudden, sharp lance of a hornet sting.
Part V
Tesserae
Summer, A.D. 2000
tessara (noun), plural tesserae
1. Each of the small pieces used in mosaic work.
2. A small square of bone, wood, or the like, used in ancient times as a token, tally, ticket, due, etc.
Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language
Epilogue
Dov
“SO THEY’RE DEAD, AREN’T THEY?” Jessica said.
Dov stopped the car and shrugged. “After talking to Ari’s colleagues, I do not know how to assign a meaning to that word. They talk about reference frames and coordinate patches and things which I do not understand. In our reference frame, they have been dead for many centuries.”
“But in their own?” Jessica asked. She opened the door on her side but just sat there, her eyes seeming to look far beyond the dusty parking lot of the dig.
“They are still alive in their own frame,” Dov said. “They have gone to their final rest already, but not yet, my friend. That is all I can say.”
Jessica wiped her eyes. “Can’t somebody make another time machine and go rescue them?”
“The physicists believe it is really impossible. Again, I do not understand the details, but they have no plans—”
“Dov! Jessica!”
Dov turned to look. Luke Morgan, a big, ruddy-faced American with a blond ponytail and piercing blue eyes, strode toward them. He wore a curious expression on his face.
“Welcome back to the dig, you two! Have you finished your fifteen minutes of fame yet?”
“Fifteen minutes?” Dov squinted at the big man. “I do not understand.”
“Never mind.” Luke opened the door and thumped Dov on the shoulder. “I want to show you guys something.” He went around to the passenger side, helped Jessica out, and gave her a big hug.
“What is it?” Jessica asked.
Luke simply turned and began walking. Something in his step seemed strangely light.
Dov and Jessica hurried after him.
They reached the grid of squares that formed the dig. Luke strode out onto one of the meter-wide earthen walls that separated the squares. Dov waited for Jessica and motioned for her to go first.
Luke zigzagged along the grid until they reached the square where Dov had been digging with Rivka only three weeks earlier.
Dov’s heart felt hollow and cold.
Suddenly, Luke spun and faced Jessica and Dov, gesturing with a flourish toward the mosaic. A number of volunteers stood around the edges of the square, admiring it. Dov saw that the earthen wall on the far side had been cut through to uncover the top part of the mosaic.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Luke said. “I present to you the famous Rivka Meyers Memorial Mosaic, now complete, with the exception of some minor damage at the southwest corner.”
Dov’s eyes dropped to the mosaic. It was beautiful, the colors incredibly vivid, the details perfect, each tessera exactingly cut—
“Oh my gosh!” Jessica said.
Dov sucked in his breath.
“Look at the faces, Dov!” she said.
Dov could look at nothing else.
The mosaic was a portrait of Rivka and Ari—under a wedding canopy.
Continue the Adventure...
Want to know what happens next?
Read the continuing adventures of Ari and Rivka in Premonition, the second book in the City of God series. Rivka knows that James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, will soon go on trial for his life. Can Rivka save James? Or is Ari right that history can’t be changed? Will Rivka make things better … or worse?
Premonition: Book 2 in the City of God series
How To Help the Author
A note from Rivka and Ari: “Word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing force in the universe. If you enjoyed reading our adventures in Transgression, we’d appreciate you rating this book and leaving a review. Even if you write only a sentence or two, it will help.”
About The Au
thor
Randy Ingermanson got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley.
For no good reason, Randy would rather make up stories about imaginary people than do honest work. This is a serious character defect, but he’s not a bit sorry.
If you’d like to get an e-mail alert whenever Randy has a new book out, or whenever he’s running an especially good deal on one of his books, then feel free to sign up here:
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Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2000, Randall Ingermanson
All rights reserved.
First edition, Harvest House Publishers, 2000
Second edition, DitDat, Inc., 2014, DitDat.com
Cover design by Damonza.com
The quotation from Psalm 93:1-2 is from the NIV, and falls under the current fair use guidelines of HarperCollins.
Standard Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, and government entities are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, corporations, or government entities is just a coincidence and doesn't mean a blessed thing.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Chip, the crazy editor who bought my first book and unleashed me on an unsuspecting world.
About the City of God Series
When I began writing fiction, I had a dream to write a particular kind of suspense novel. It would be similar to the historical suspense Ken Follett writes, and somewhat like the historical action-adventure fiction of Wilbur Smith’s River God, but it would be set in first-century Jerusalem.
Why first-century Jerusalem? Because that place and time set the direction for the next twenty centuries of western civilization. Something big happened in Jerusalem in the first century.
Transgression Page 34