Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “How did you find me?”

  “In my travels, I slept upon the graves of many murdered men of our Order, and I asked questions of the Sar-ha Cholem. And I consulted the Sefer Ha-Goralot.”

  The Rider stared. The Sar-ha Cholem was the angel the Merkabah Riders consulted in the world of dreams. Sleeping on the graves of dead men was an old way of communing with the departed spirits, who visited the sleeper under the watchful eye of the Sar-ha Cholem. In this way, it was not considered necromantic divination, which was forbidden. The Sefer Ha-Goralot was the Book of Oracles, a divinatory text passed down by King David’s advisor Ahitophel.

  Still, who was this man really? His knowledge of the Order’s inner traditions was considerable, but so was Adon’s. Certainly this man was no Jew. Why would Adon send an African and tell him to claim he was of their Order? It didn’t make sense.

  He stiffened, and the old aches returned. He sank back down a little.

  “You’re not a Jew.”

  “I am Beta Y’srael,” said Kabede patiently. “My people are the children of Menelik, the son of King Solomon and Queen Mekeda.”

  The Rider smirked.

  “Who is Queen Mekeda?”

  “The Queen of Sheba,” Kabede said seriously.

  “Ah,” said the Rider. “You’re Falash Mura.” He had heard of these so-called “Ethiopian Jews’ who claimed descent from Solomon and kept some similar traditions but were entirely ignorant of most.

  “No, I told you, I am Beta Y’srael.”

  The Rider swallowed. The sensation was not entirely without discomfort. He personally had little regard for the theory among some scholars that the Falasha Mura were one of the lost tribes of Israel. Arguing with the beliefs of a man who had apparently come to his aide and now held him entirely at his mercy probably wasn’t prudent.

  “How did you join The Sons of the Essenes? There is no yeshiva in Ethiopia. Did you go to Israel?”

  “Mine is a special case. I did not go seeking them. They came looking for me. Just as they did you.”

  “To Ethiopia? And why would they do that?”

  Kabede leaned forward, and touched a finger to his lips. At first, the Rider thought the man was shushing him, but he held the tip of his finger there, above his upper lip and below his nose.

  “Because of this,” he said.

  The Rider narrowed his eyes. He didn’t understand what the man was getting at. Apparently his incomprehension showed on his face.

  “Surely you know of the angel Lailah?” said Kabede.

  The Rider thought back to the name. It was a story told in the Talmud. At conception, the soul of a child was said to be instructed in the knowledge of the full breadth of the universe, including the Torah and the regions of heaven. But prior to birth, the instructing angel, Lailah, touched the child’s lip with one finger, causing it to forget everything. One’s learning then, was not the attainment of new knowledge, but the act of remembering what had been forgotten. It was just a little bit of nonsense to answer a child’s question about the purpose of the philtrum, nothing more.

  Except Kabede had no philtrum. The infranasal depression was non existent. He had only a smooth flat space above his upper lip where it should have been.

  Kabede saw the flash of wonder that must have come to the Rider’s eyes, and he smiled.

  “I cannot say why the angel Lailah did not strike my lip, but I was born with all the knowledge of heaven. I could recite the Holy Orit—what you call the Torah—from the time I could speak. Even the Talmud, of which the Beta Y’srael have no knowledge, was known to me. My teacher came seeking me. I do not know whether he dreamed me or what, but he inducted me into the Order when I was six years old, and I became a yored merkabah when I was nine.”

  A yored merkabah. A yored merkabah was a Merkabah Rider who had attained the throne of glory and sat in the presence of God. Something the Rider himself, for all his accolades, had been unable to do.

  “You still do not believe me?” Kabede asked.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” he said tiredly, laying back down.

  “I will build a fire, we will eat, and you will tell me why.”

  “I can’t eat.”

  “You can. You have,” Kabede said. “We passed the Sanba adma’I together yesterday. You had broth.”

  The Rider blinked.

  “The Sabbath?”

  Kabede nodded.

  “It’s Sunday?”

  “It was Sunday,” Kabede said, glancing at the red sky and stooping to stack the dry kindling.

  That meant he slept nearly two days. But how? The fluttering in his ears was gone.

  “I haven’t been able to keep anything down in a month,” he whispered. “And I don’t remember the last time I slept.”

  “Yes I know. The ruahim. They surround you at all times. I think I can stop them. For now, the staff lets you sleep, and I can purify your food and drink with it.”

  It was only then that the Rider was aware of the rod sticking out of the ground behind his head where he lay. It was the one Kabede had used on the men at the café. It appeared to be some kind of African prayer staff or ceremonial stick. The wood was dark, perhaps almond, and the body of it was encircled with carved Hebrew letters. The inscription read ‘To the extent of God, let these things come to pass.’ The rod was capped by a good-sized knot that appeared to have once been a carving of some kind of animal, but had been defaced until it was nearly unrecognizable. The butt end was sharpened to a point.

  “What kind of magic is your staff?” the Rider asked warily.

  “No kind,” Kabede said.

  He had struck flint with his long, curved belt knife. He blew a fire to life, then rose and went to the staff, his eyes beaming.

  He pulled it out of the ground and held it lightly in his hands, speaking admiringly;

  “This rod was carved from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden when it was yet upon the earth. Adam took it with him into the land of Nod, and it was passed down to Shem, and Enoch left it on the earth when he was taken up into Paradise and became the angel Metatron.”

  He held the staff over his head, pointing to the sky, and the firelight danced on its dark surface as it did upon his smooth features, which were mesmerizing, seemingly as carved as the wood, but alive with twinkling, dynamic eyes. He looked like an ancient figure in his desert garb, a prophet, or a warlord calling forth his band from the desert to attack.

  The Rider felt once again a sense of timelessness-when had the sun gone down? He feared for a moment that Kabede would drive the sharpened end of the rod through him. Instead, he held the staff before him in both hands and softened, once more gentle, and leaned upon it, staring out into the darkening desert, at the jutting rises of naked stone and the clouds of bats flitting out of their cactus holes like dry leaves to find water.

  “The Patriarch Abraham tended his flock with it, and it was Isaac’s tent pole. Jacob bore it across the River Jordan. Joseph’s brothers used it for his binding pole,” he said, slipping it behind his back horizontally to demonstrate. “In Egypt, he carved the Ineffable Name of God into it.” He slipped it in front of him once more and traced the Hebrew letters etched into the staff with one finger. The Rider stared. That meant that the phrase ‘To the extent of God, let these things come to pass’ was acrostic. The first letter of each word spelled out one of the hidden names of God.

  “When Joseph died, the Egyptians carved the head of a cat upon it,” he said, tapping the marred knot on the end of it. “For nearly three hundred years they used it to work their magic. Jethro saw this, and he stole it, and planted it in his garden in Midian where it fed his crop and turned away the jackals. Only Moses was able to draw it out, and for this, Jethro gave him his daughter Zepporah. Moses and Aaron of course, used it to defeat Pharoah’s sorcerers, and to bring forth water in the wilderness. It turned the battle against the Amalekites. Joshua carried it into Israel, and Caleb took it with him to Judah and gave it to Othniel,
who used it to deliver Israel from Chushan-Rishathaim. It passed through the hands of the Judges until it was lost at Eben-Ezer. The boy David found it,” he said.

  Smiling, he knelt now beside the Rider and indicated two tiny holes near the knot. “He made a sling of it, and used it to slay Goliath. Solomon made it his scepter, and the Kings of Judah bore it as such until Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple. A pagan slave of Dahomey escaped with it to Great Zimbabwe and made himself king for a time. He sharpened it into a weapon and carried it the length and breadth of Africa, doing evil and good with it. Many years later it was acquired by a Christian adventurer who, it is said, died using it to defeat a great evil some two hundred years ago. Here, in this very land. I reclaimed it from his tomb in the cliffs, and struck away the image of the cat-headed god the Egyptians put upon it.”

  The Rider stared, in awe at the staff. Somehow, he knew at least, this part of Kabede’s story was true. And if it was true, then everything the man said must be true also. He seemed to feel the tramp of antiquity like a thudding in his chest even as he stared at it, took in each little nick and imperfection, the two thrilling holes Kabede had pointed out, and the name of God carved upon it. This was the staff of Moses. Its power had sustained him, cured his food and water. Its proximity, like a smoking candle repelling insects, had kept his demons at bay.

  Kabede seemed to read his thoughts.

  “It is lucky I found you when I did. The staff has kept you alive.”

  “Why were you looking for me?”

  “It is known that you are the last,” Kabede said. “We learned of your guilt and of your innocence, and of the Great Destruction of the American and European enclaves. I knew that to fight Adon and his traitors we must be united. I only took so long because I had to retrieve the staff first.”

  “How many are there in your enclave?”

  “Only four, including myself. And they remain hidden to watch over other secrets which Adon and his kind must not find.”

  Four. But only four tzadikim remained. That meant…

  “Then you are a tzadik?”

  “Yes,” Kabede admitted. “All of the Balankab Enclave are. We have no students at this time. But you know,” he shrugged, “it is only an honorary title.”

  There was a certain peace to Kabede though. There was something in him that caused the Rider to trust him the more he spoke. What if the old stories the students whispered were true, that the tzadikim of the Sons of the Essenes really were the true tzadikim? The Hidden Saints whose existence assured the continuance of the universe? Yes, some had died, but it was ordained that thirty six tzadikim always existed somewhere; new tzadikim arose in secret to replace the old. Death had no authority over the righteous. He had never felt that he had met a true tzadik. But this man…this strange young African…something was different about him. Perhaps it was the Rider’s near death state clouding his judgment. He must reassess the man when he had regained his own strength. It was written that the Nistarim Tzadikim were hidden even from themselves after all. He already claimed to have visited the Throne at the age of nine…

  “Then we are alone,” said the Rider.

  “How can two be alone?” Kabede said. “Now you must tell me what you know. We Balankab Sons have been cloistered in Aksum. The tzadikim of the Council of Yahad failed to contact us, and all that we have learned we learned from dreams. Tell me of Adon and what you know of him, and tell me of what you have learned since the Great Destruction.”

  The Rider, against all higher, supposedly better judgment, did. Somehow, he trusted the man. While Kabede boiled a simple stew over the fire with a pot from his kit and ladled it into bowls, the Rider told him of Adon’s secret teachings, his slow introduction of forbidden, non-Jewish knowledge into his curriculum during his time at the Order. He told Kabede of his vision of the armies of heaven and hell amassing for battle, and his decision to enlist in the Union Army, of his breaking with the Order. He told of his discovery of Adon’s betrayal, of the accusation by his German brothers of his having participated in the slaughter of the San Francisco enclave, of his defense at Ein Gedi before the Council of Yahad, and his expulsion.

  He told Kabede all about his long, fruitless search across Europe and the East, and his return to America, where he had begun hearing of the Hour of the Incursion and the Great Old Ones, and how Adon was a part of it somehow. He related his botched encounter with Lilith that had left him cursed, how she had shared his true name with her children…

  Here Kabede stopped him.

  “How did Lilith know your true name?”

  “She claimed to have followed my life since the cradle.”

  “No,” Kabede said. “That is not possible. Your father was an Ashkenazi Hasid from Poland and your mother’s people were Spanish Sephardim. When you were a boy you were sick. They performed the shinnui shem to delude Lilith, just as all traditional Jewish parents do with sickly infants by custom.”

  The Rider swallowed. It was true. He had heard the story from his mother how they had changed his name from Shlomo to Menasseh as a baby, when he had been struck with a bad bout of fever. The rebbe had opened the Torah and renamed him the first proper name he came across. Genesis 51. ‘And Joseph called the name of the first-born Manasseh: for God hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.’ The shinnui shem. It was an old ritual meant to divert evil spirits’ attention by confusing them as to the identity of the child.

  “How did you know that?” the Rider stammered.

  “I told you, I am the Keeper of the Book of Life for our Order. If your parents had not done this, the Order would never have allowed you to join.”

  He had never thought of it before, but the Sons of the Essenes probably wouldn’t have accepted him had he had such a basic weakness in his spiritual armor. It was a unique requirement even he had never considered. He wondered if the other Sons had also gone through the shinnui shem.

  But of course, he would never know now.

  “You say that Lilith claimed neutrality in this supposed conflict?” Kabede asked.

  “That was what she told me.”

  “She lied,” Kabede said. “Someone must have told her your true name. She could not have learned it otherwise.”

  “Adon,” the Rider said immediately. As the man who had brought him into the Essenes, he had known his name.

  “Yes, that is my thinking,” Kabede agreed. “That night, she was not searching for Adon for you, she was calling him to you. Had the brothel not burned and you escaped, he and his minions would no doubt have come for you.”

  “Why didn’t she set her demons on me earlier? Why a trap?”

  “Perhaps Adon wanted to kill you personally, and Lilith in her anger, defied him. But tell me again of this token the succubus gave you.”

  The Rider was reluctant to show it to Kabede. He felt again like a young student trying to explain one of his heathen talismans before one of the old teachers.

  Still, he took the wooden rosette brothel token from his pocket and showed it to Kabede.

  Kabede touched it and wrinkled his brow.

  “This is an infernal talisman of some sort. It bears the sigil of the Order of Nehemoth.”

  “It was Nehema herself who gave it to me.”

  “One of the Angels of Prostitution. Daughter to Lilith. Its protection must have some price. No infernally forged talisman can be entirely beneficial. You would do best to destroy it.” He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Why would she have given it to you?”

  “I know,” he said, taking it back and slipping it into his shirt pocket, “but it’s kept me alive.”

  “It’s kept you alive, but it’s also kept you blind and powerless.”

  “Nothing can prevent that,” the Rider said. “They know my name.”

  “I may be able to remedy that. But first, continue.”

  The Rider told Kabede then of his encounter with one of Adon’s new pupils, and Kabede was momentarily overcome by the man’s
audacity (“It is unthinkable that he taught our secrets to a heathen!” he raged), but his distress ebbed some when the Rider told him how he had killed Sheardown, or rather, how Gershom had. He lapsed into sad reflection on the Nazirite boy dead at Mazzamauriello’s hand, but he went on. He told of the scroll, and the book of Zylac, and Adon’s correspondence in the strange Tsath-Yo language.

  Kabede asked his permission to examine the scroll.

  “It is Egyptian” he said, when he had peered at it. “A magical text of some kind. I do not know all these characters.”

  Then the Rider told him of the Elder Sign and the invisible thing in the cave on Elk Mountain, and of Chaksusa and Shub-Niggurath, and Mauricio and the word of power, Shambla-

  Kabede put his hand to the Rider’s mouth and warned him.

  “Do not speak that word. It is detrimental for a man to speak the language of another universe in this one.”

  The Rider continued then, and in this narrative there came an outpouring of nearly hysterical confession. The Rider unburdened himself to Kabede what he had dared not admit to himself.

  “These things…they terrify me. How can they be? I don’t know what I believe anymore…my faith is smashed.”

  “Why?” Kabede asked innocently.

  The Rider stared, and waited. He had nothing else to say. He waited for words that would comfort him, renew him. He waited for Kabede to heal his mind and his faith as he had his body.

  “You are indeed Manasseh Maizel,” Kabede said after a bit. “The same man who stood before the Throne of Glory and doubted. I was told of a man so adept at our ways that he had taken the name “Rider’ forever for his own. A man I thought greater than myself.”

  “How could I be greater?” the Rider croaked miserably. “You’re a yored merkabah. You gained the Throne. Metatron turned me away. I wasn’t worthy.”

  “I was born already knowing the passages of heaven. I knew the hekhalots and the names and signs of the angels before ever I saw them. You attained the same heights with only your learning and your faith and your will. That is something I have often wondered if I could do. But still, you do not live up to the name you took. It is why Lilith has power over you now. You are not the Rider in your heart.” He slapped his own breast for emphasis.