Don’t think about that, Chaim told himself. It was like trying not to think about an elephant. Every stride from the ox brought him closer to…what he was not thinking about.
He tried thinking about the rabbi instead. There’d been some grumbling when Shlomo Kupferman announced he would conduct the sacrifice. Would be here, Chaim corrected himself frantically. In ancient days, the person who would be here was the High Priest’s son and heir. By doing this himself, Kupferman announced that he intended to become the High Priest when there was a High Priest again. Nobody was in a good position to tell him he couldn’t. He was the Religious Affairs Minister. That wasn’t the same as being the High Priest’s son, but you could say it was the modern equivalent. Kupferman had. And he’d got away with it.
He wasn’t claiming to be High Priest yet. He wore an ordinary priest’s white vestments, like the ones in the Reconstruction Alliance’s museum. Chaim had never been to the museum, but he’d seen online pictures of the vestments and Temple goods there.
In olden days, the officiating priest would have stayed secluded in a room of the Temple before he…officiated. Every day, he would have been sprinkled with ashes from all the red heifers ever sacrificed before (careful there!), to make sure he was ritually pure.
You couldn’t do that now. The chain had been broken all these years. Some rabbis said that was reason enough to let it stay broken. Not Kupferman. He insisted that if modern Jews did their best, God would accept it. If you rebuilt the Temple…
You had to sacrifice a red heifer.
Chaim started to puddle up. I won’t cry, he thought fiercely.
The elders of Israel would have gone up onto the Mount of Olives to witness the sacrifice in days gone by. In a way, the elders were there now: TV would broadcast the ceremony. Kupferman used modern things when they suited him.
Chaim looked down from the causeway. It passed over the graves of the rich who waited there for the Messiah. The causeway was double-arched, to keep pollution from rising from the ground and invalidating the ceremony.
“Welcome!” “Shalom!”
A man’s voice, and a woman’s. Chaim didn’t see anybody, but he knew he’d heard them. “Did you say something?” he asked the man leading his ox.
“No.” The fellow shook his head. “Nobody said anything.”
“But—” Chaim looked around again. None of the other boys or the men leading their oxen had heard the voices.
Am I going nuts? he wondered. How could he help Rosie if he couldn’t help himself? How could he help Rosie even if he could help himself?
He heard more voices. Some spoke Hebrew, some Yiddish, the way some pious Jews did with everyone except God. Some spoke Russian, some English. Some spoke languages he didn’t recognize. Their rising tide meant he couldn’t understand any of them. Nobody else near heard anything.
He looked to the heavens. Why me? he asked God, as Job might have. God didn’t answer Job, and He didn’t answer Chaim, either. God wasn’t in the habit of answering. He usually asked questions. Answers were up to you.
How am I supposed to know what the answers are if I don’t even know whether I’m in my right mind? Chaim demanded of Him.
One more thing God didn’t answer.
* * *
—
“The Jews will not build their Temple,” Jamal Ashrawi preached. “It would insult God if they succeeded. They took down the Dome of the Rock. Will they build on the spot from which the Prophet, peace be unto Him, left earth behind to go with the angel Gabriel to heaven?”
“No!” shouted the crowd in the mosque in Hebron.
Jamal Ashrawi said no more. He knew he’d already said everything that needed saying. Some who listened would have weapons. Some would be hot to use them. Even with the mortar from Iran, they hadn’t stopped the Zionists from building the causeway. If they could ruin the rabbis’ ceremony, though…
Officially, Ashrawi didn’t know any crews were operating. If the Israelis caught him, he could say he’d spoken abstractly. It would embarrass the Zionist entity. It might save him.
He stayed in Hebron and watched TV. He, who had killed a kid after his pilgrimage, scorned the Jews for wanting to kill the red heifer.
It was an impressive ceremony. The rabbi’s plain white costume reminded him of a pilgrim’s robe that destroyed the difference between rich and poor. The red heifer was a handsome beast. The pyre where it would burn was large and well made. No doubt the pagans in Arabia before Muhammad’s time had had impressive ceremonies. But they worshiped idols. Ashrawi thought the Zionists did, too.
He watched boys ride across the causeway on boards fixed to the backs of oxen. Something about them—or maybe about one of them—raised his hackles. A slow smile stretched across his face. He thought they were in for a surprise.
The Grand Mufti didn’t know what kind of weapons the mujahidin would use. The 160mm mortar was lost. But the Palestinians had plenty of smaller, more portable 120mm and 82mm models. They had rockets and machine guns. Maybe an artillery piece hid in a cave whose mouth God had turned in the right direction. There was also the simplicity of assault rifles and explosive vests.
A rising shriek came from the TV. Jamal Ashrawi knew what that meant. Somebody had fired a rack of Katyushas. Two dozen rockets smashing down at once could tear up a square kilometer.
One burst in the Jews’ cemetery, not close to the red heifer and the rabbi who would kill it. The picture slewed crazily as the cameraman ducked for cover. For a moment, only cloud-flecked blue sky showed on the screen Ashrawi was watching. Another rocket blew up, this one also, by the sound of it, not close enough to the sacrifice.
Hillside replaced sky: the cameraman found his courage. Haji Jamal saw graves blasted open and tombstones shattered and tilted. He waited for the rest of the barrage to devastate the area.
He waited…and waited. One more Russian rocket smashed to earth only ten or twenty meters from the red heifer—but the charge in its nose didn’t go off.
“You idiot!” Was Haji Jamal screaming at the rocket or the man who’d launched it or the drunken infidel who’d botched its assembly?
Katyushas were reliable. Armies and guerrillas everywhere used them. Why were the Palestinians cursed with a defective batch?
“Inshallah,” Haji Jamal muttered. Of course it was as God willed it. Everything was—everything had to be.
This was the second time an attack on the Jews rebuilding their Temple had failed—the third, if you counted the Iranians’ fiasco. If God willed it to be so…But that was not an if. Such failures argued that God might want the Temple built—rebuilt, the Zionists claimed.
Why? Not for the reasons the Jews thought He did. If God wanted the Jews to build the Temple, then it had a role to play in the Last Days.
Well, then, let them build whatever they pleased now. Why not? It would only make their downfall sweeter. When Jesus and the Mahdi came to sweep them away, when the stones and the trees cried out that they had Jews hiding behind them so the Muslims could kill those Jews…How the Zionist dogs would howl then!
One of the bodyguards scowled. “Why do you smile, Haji?” the man demanded. A chill ran through Jamal Ashrawi. Just because the guards protected him from the Israelis, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn on him. “Why do you smile?” this fellow repeated. “Everything we try goes wrong.”
“It is as God wills, Ishak,” the Grand Mufti said. Several guards frowned and muttered. Ashrawi explained what he thought God’s will meant. “Let them build,” he finished. “Are they not building their own destruction?”
The guards didn’t say yes right away. They put their heads together. At last, one by one, they nodded and smiled carnivorous smiles. “It could be so, Haji Jamal,” Ishak said. “How they will shriek when God shows them they have built on sand.”
“Why didn’t you see thi
s sooner?” another bodyguard asked.
Ashrawi spread his hands. “I am only a man, Ali. God holds everything in His mind, from the Creation to the Last Days. I have to judge by signs and portents. Usually, we oppose the Zionists with all our power. It took me longer than it should have to realize the best way to oppose the Jews now is not to. If God opposes them—”
“And He does,” Ali broke in.
“Yes.” The Grand Mufti nodded, too. “He does. And, since He does, the best thing is to let Him confound them. Let their hopes grow. God will deal with them, and they will not have joy of it.”
The guards muttered more among themselves. Then they also nodded again. “We shall be here for the Last Days!” one said.
“It is an honor,” Ashrawi agreed. “We must deserve it.”
* * *
—
When the Katyushas screamed in, two boys jumped off their oxen and ran back toward the Temple Mount. So did a man leading the oxen. Chaim had a hard time blaming them. The rockets’ screech was made to terrify. And there wasn’t an Israeli who didn’t know what they could do. Eretz Yisrael’s neighbors had launched them too often to leave anyone in doubt.
He wondered why he didn’t run, too. He wouldn’t pollute himself if he did—probably. The causeway was made to carry the red heifer and the man who would sacrifice it above the religious pollution that rose from the ground. But he stayed, even when first one rocket, then another, burst in the graveyards below.
Ahead, Rosie looked around in mild surprise. She showed no fear. She’s too brave to sacrifice, Chaim thought. Rabbi Kupferman wouldn’t have agreed. He stood by the pyre as if carved from stone. Chaim admired Rosie’s courage without noticing his. That wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
More Katyushas crashed down. These didn’t go off. Chaim heard thumping and clattering as they struck and rolled away. “It’s a miracle,” said the man leading his ox. “God wants us to go ahead. Otherwise, all those…miserable things would have blown up, like they usually do.”
Was it a miracle? Was God putting His oar in again? Did He really want Rosie dead so much? Chaim wouldn’t believe it. But what else was he supposed to think?
He didn’t have much time to make up his mind, not any more. He was almost to the sacrificial pyre. He looked down into the ritually pure jug. He hadn’t spilled a drop of water from the Pool of Siloam. If that wasn’t luck…What difference did it make? They’d kill Rosie, and soon.
Even here, Rabbi Kupferman or somebody had gone all out to avoid pollution. The rabbi and red heifer and pyre stood on a concrete platform raised on little concrete arches. Those kept pollution from rising up, like the arches on the causeway.
Off in the distance, bombs burst and machine guns chattered. Was the Heyl Ha-Avir paying back the people who’d launched the Katyushas? Chaim didn’t get the chance to wonder. The man who led his ox said, “Time to get on with the show.”
He didn’t want to get down. But his shoes thumped on the concrete. His heart thumped, too. The rest of the boys who hadn’t run descended from their oxen, too. Maybe there won’t be enough water now, Chaim thought. Maybe they’ll call things off.
Kupferman showed no sign of that. He stood with Rosie, waiting for everything to be ready. Everyone except Rosie looked solemn: the rabbi, the men who’d led the oxen, the other boys, even the cameraman. Everyone except Rosie and Chaim, rather. The heifer was calm, and Chaim was frantic.
Suddenly, he knew what to do. The insight was almost blinding. Was God talking to him? Did prophets feel this when He spoke through them? Chaim wouldn’t have been surprised. He felt that sure, that exalted, that right.
He ran up to Kupferman. The old man’s frown was fearsome. This wasn’t in the program. “What do you want, boy?” Kupferman said gruffly. “Get back where you belong.”
Chaim knew exactly what he wanted: “Take me instead!”
“What?” The rabbi’s eyebrows came down and together in a scowl that should have petrified Chaim.
It didn’t. “Don’t sacrifice the red heifer,” he said. “She hasn’t done anything to get her throat cut for. She’s…” He found the word. “She’s innocent. Use my ashes instead.”
Kupferman stared at him as if noting him for the first time. After staring, he did Chaim the courtesy of not laughing at him. “When Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, God gave him a ram instead. So you want to turn it around and die in place of a beast?”
Chaim nodded. “I’d know what I was dying for. Rosie has no idea. That’s not right.”
“The purity of the red heifer is what the ritual requires,” Kupferman said. “Not even a cloth has ever lain across her back. That would be pollution, and would render her unfit.”
If that was what it took…Chaim grabbed for the handkerchief in his trouser pocket.
Hands seized his arm. Two who’d led oxen had come up without his even noticing. He wouldn’t have had much chance against one of them. Against two men, he had none. “Come on, son,” one said, not unkindly. “Don’t mess things up.”
“But—”
That man twisted his arm, enough to show how much it might hurt if he twisted more. “Don’t mess things up,” he repeated.
“We go on.” Kupferman sounded half pious, half relieved. I scared him, Chaim thought. That didn’t do anybody any good, though: not Chaim, not Rosie.
Kupferman prayed in Hebrew that sounded more Biblical than modern, and in Aramaic, which was more like Hebrew than Arabic was, but not much more. Chaim wondered how he knew what prayers to offer when no one had conducted this ritual in close to 2,000 years. The verses were bound to be in the Mishnah. Everything was: it was Judaism’s file cabinet, for those who knew where to look. And Kupferman would.
He led Rosie into the hollow space inside the pyre and turned her so she faced west. The last thing the red heifer should see was the Temple—or, here, the Tabernacle. Rosie let out a surprised grunt when Rabbi Kupferman stooped and tied her feet together, but no more. She was innocent; she expected no evil.
Kupferman looked toward the west. No doubt he was seeing the Temple in his mind’s eye. He took the knife in his right hand. “No!” Chaim cried bitterly.
Swift and practiced as a shochet, Kupferman cut the red heifer’s throat. Ritual slaughterers weren’t supposed to cause much pain. Rosie’s grunt, again, sounded more surprised than hurt. But blood spurted from her. There was red, and there was red. Her hide and her blood told of the difference.
Rabbi Kupferman, his face exalted, caught the blood in the cup of his left palm. He dipped his right forefinger in the gore seven times and sprinkled it toward the Holy of Holies. “O God, I thank Thee for letting me live in such times!” he cried.
Rosie no longer lived in them. Pampered her whole life but betrayed at the end, she crumpled. A man holding Chaim murmured, “The sacrifice is accomplished.” No Jew had meant those words literally from the days of the Second Temple till now.
Kupferman lit the pyre. It caught at once—did oil soak the wood? He held up another piece of cedar. “Is this cedar?” he asked three times. He held up a small plant with long, narrow leaves and a spike of blue flowers. “Is this hyssop?” Once more, the question rose three times. He held up woolen fabric dyed almost the color of Rosie’s blood. “Is this scarlet?” he asked three times.
No one tried to tell him it wasn’t. He tied the piece of cedar and the hyssop plant with the scarlet fabric and cast them onto the red heifer’s burning body. They were not so rare as the heifer, but they made an essential part of the sacrifice.
After the pyre burned down, the remains would be quenched with the water from the Pool of Siloam. Then they’d be beaten into ashes with sticks and stone mallets and sieved to make sure they were fine enough. In olden days, one third would have been stored on the Temple Mount, one third on the Mount of Olives, the rest shared am
ong priests all over Eretz Yisrael. Till the Temple rose again, the priesthood was extinct. Would half stay here and half go to the Temple Mount?
What difference did it make? Rosie was dead. “Let go,” Chaim told the men who’d grabbed him. “I won’t do anything now.”
They did. They weren’t mean. They were just doing what they thought was right. That made no difference to Chaim.
The pyre blazed into his face. Nobody would pound Rosie’s remains into ashes right away. Despair and disgust filled Chaim. He’d been kept ritually pure all his life…for this? What a stupid, pointless waste!
He jumped off the concrete platform and ran. Behind him, Kupferman and the boys who’d spent their lives in ritual purity shouted. Chaim didn’t care. With one leap, he’d thrown that away. He was free now, free to be ordinary the rest of his life.
He ran downhill—that was easier. If he ran straight toward the graveyards there, so what? It didn’t matter any more. He was just a regular Jew now. And if that turned out not to be good enough, the ashes of a red heifer—of his friend—could purify him again.
Tears stung as he dodged among the headstones. Those Katyushas had knocked down many and blasted graves open. Chaim swore. Even regular Jews had no good word for terrorists.
“Shalom!” “Welcome!” “Here he is at last!”
Those voices again! Chaim looked around wildly. He didn’t see anybody…and then he did. What seemed a ghostly army gathered around him—if an army could include old men and women, children, even babies, as well as people in the prime of life.
They were there and they weren’t. He could see them. But he could also see through them. And when he heard them, he didn’t think he was hearing with his ears, or not just with his ears. Farther up the Mount of Olives, Rabbi Kupferman and the ritually pure boys and the men who’d held the oxen stared down at him. Could they see all this? When the TV camera swung his way, he decided they could.
Fear seized him then. He didn’t think of the spectral shapes as ghosts, but as the risen dead. Yes, he knew what this place was and what it meant. He knew—and he wanted no part of it. He fled into the Kidron Valley…and the dead streamed after him.
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