Premonition

by R. S. Ingermanson

  “Who is this Mashiach ben Yoseph?” Ari said. “Mashiach is to be the son of David.”

  “But there are to be two Mashiachs,” Gamaliel said. “Everyone knows there will be two. Eliyahu the prophet will come first, announcing Mashiach ben Yoseph. He is the Servant spoken of in Isaiah, and he will suffer much for the sins of the people. He will arise from Galilee and battle the wicked King Armilus in Jerusalem, where he will be slain.”

  “Slain?” Ari looked at him suspiciously. “I have not heard Mashiach would be slain.”

  Gamaliel shrugged. “You are not looking for him. We who are looking for him know that Mashiach ben Yoseph will be slain, and then HaShem will raise him to life by the hand of Mashiach ben David.”

  Ari could think of nothing to say to this. These tales of Mashiach were not those he had learned as a boy. They were shards, broken bits of legend, signifying nothing.

  Gamaliel’s eyes glowed with zeal. “The birthpangs are upon us, Ari the Kazan. Be ready for the coming of Mashiach.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Rivka

  * * *

  RENEGADE SAUL WAS THE UGLIEST man Rivka had ever seen. He sat at a wooden table in a cell of the barracks in Caesarea, chained to a bored-looking Roman soldier. Mostly bald, Saul had the deeply weathered skin that Rivka had seen on street people back home in San Diego. The left side of his forehead was actually dented. And his left eye socket was empty.

  Rivka followed Gamaliel and Ari into the cell, which smelled of mold and sweaty feet.

  Saul stood at once, a brilliant smile lighting up his face.

  Rivka held her breath. She had wanted this meeting partly for herself—she’d been dreaming for the past two years of seeing Saul again. But she wanted it even more for Ari. Wanted him to see that Saul wasn’t the big bad wolf. Wanted him to know how Jewish Saul was. Wanted him to ... know Yeshua.

  “Gamaliel!” Saul said. “My heart was glad when I heard you had come!” He threw his arms around his nephew and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Rivka hadn’t remembered how short Saul was. She guessed he stood no taller than she did, an inch or two over five feet. Which was how he got his Greek name—Paulos. Little.

  “Uncle, I have brought a friend.” Gamaliel turned to Ari. “Please meet Ari the Kazan, who comes from a far country. He is a cohen, and his woman accompanies us. Ari is given to know the deep secrets of the universe.”

  Rivka pursed her lips. What was this? She didn’t even rate an introduction?

  Saul studied them both gravely. “Blessed be HaShem.” He nodded to Rivka. “I have seen you before, yes?”

  Rivka felt her breath taken away. “Yes,” she said faintly.

  “And what is your name called, my daughter?”

  “Rivka.” A whisper. Where had her courage gone?

  “A delight to meet you again, my child.”

  Warmth burst over Rivka’s heart like sunlight.

  Saul pointed to backless wooden benches around the table. “Sit, my children.”

  They all sat.

  Some small talk followed. Saul wanted to know how their trip had gone. Gamaliel said it went well, and asked if Saul was getting enough to eat. Saul said it was difficult, because the Romans were none too particular about buying his food from Jewish markets. Nor could he get a minyan of ten men for the prayers. He said his morning prayers alone, usually, but he would be glad if they could pray the Amidah together. Gamaliel said that they would. Then he asked about the hearing Saul would be having soon.

  Saul raised a pair of battered eyebrows. “Hearing? What hearing?”

  Gamaliel shot a look at Rivka, then muttered something about a mistake.

  Saul fixed his one good eye on Rivka. “Do you know something I do not, my daughter?”

  Rivka felt herself blushing fiercely. “There is to be a hearing before Governor Festus soon.”

  Saul frowned. “I have heard nothing about a hearing.” He looked up at the soldier behind him and fired a question at him in rapid street Greek. The soldier answered in the same language, which meant he was probably a Syrian auxiliary. A Roman would have spoken Latin.

  Saul tugged at his wispy gray beard. “He tells me there is to be a hearing in two days. How is it that you know of this and I do not?”

  Gamaliel pointed to Ari.

  Ari said, “My woman is given by HaShem to see some of what shall be.”

  Saul turned his penetrating gaze on her. “Do you have a word from HaShem for me?”

  Rivka had been waiting for this for months, and now her tongue felt like wood. “You will be taken before the governor and his consilium to answer charges brought by chief priests from Jerusalem. They wish you to go to Jerusalem to stand trial in the matter of the incident in the Temple two years ago.”

  Saul nodded pensively. “Another opportunity to go to Jerusalem.” He smiled. “This is good. I failed last time. I will not fail again.”

  Rivka gawked at him. Good? No, this was not good. “My father, with respect, you must not go to Jerusalem.”

  Saul shook his head. “This I have heard many times before I came to Judea. I came, and it turned out well. I was given to speak before the Sanhedrin. This is the work of HaShem.”

  Rivka felt like she was strangling. “My father, if you go to Jerusalem ... men from the chief priests will kill you on the road, and you will never speak before Caesar in Rome.”

  Saul’s one good eye probed her. “Do you mean that HaShem will make a way at last for me to speak before Caesar?”

  Rivka stared at him. Of course. Didn’t he know that? Panic gripped her heart. What should she tell and what should she not tell? Was she meddling again, like the eclipse thing? Or was she ... just a tool in the hand of HaShem to make happen what would happen?

  Saul leaned closer. “My daughter, you will tell me what HaShem has shown you, please.”

  So Rivka told him. The chief priests would try to convince Festus to yield Saul to their jurisdiction. Festus would make a counter proposal, retaining jurisdiction, but changing the venue to Jerusalem. The chief priests would agree to this.

  Saul tugged at his beard. “Very strange. I have never heard of such a thing, that a Roman governor would judge a trial in concert with the Sanhedrin. It is not done this way.”

  “When you see it, you will know it was foreknown by HaShem.” Rivka leaned forward. “If you wish to see Rome, you must appeal to Caesar.”

  Saul’s eye widened. “An extreme measure. Will Caesar set me free?”

  Rivka said nothing. Nobody knew the answer to that question. Some said Saul preached to Nero, then was freed and ultimately went to Spain. But most thought he was executed in Rome, without ever being freed. And yet he would make an impact there, one which could not be calculated. “My father, I am not given to know all ends, but if you go to Rome, you will testify before Caesar. Please ... think on it.”

  “Bless you, my daughter, I will pray on it.” Saul put a gnarled hand on hers and closed his eye. “I have a word from HaShem for you also.” Silence for a moment. “You will walk a hard road, and a dangerous, and a lonely, but you must persevere to the end, whether it is long or short, and you must not run faster than HaShem will lead you.”

  Tingling, Rivka committed the words to memory.

  “Now we will pray the Amidah together, yes?” Saul looked at each of them in turn.

  Rivka realized with a thrill that he meant to include ... her! Tears welled in her heart.

  Ari

  * * *

  That afternoon, Ari stood alone with Rivka on the beach at Caesarea, squinting out at the sea. The coastline here was a straight line, with no natural harbor. A U-shaped concrete breakwater extended out a hundred meters into the sea, forming a manmade harbor. Ari found it astounding that already a hundred years ago, King Herod’s engineers had known how to make concrete that could be poured underwater.

  “What do you think of Saul, now that you’ve met him?” Rivka said.

  Ari did not want to t
hink about Renegade Saul. “He is different than I expected.” An understatement. After praying the Amidah, they had all eaten together. Saul spoke much—of the life of Yeshua, of his death, of his appearance to Saul on the Damascus road. Of the work in Asia and Greece, of Jews and goyim receiving Saul’s doctrine of a suffering mashiach who returned from the dead and ascended to HaShem. Of opposition from those who wished to make Jews of the goyim or goyim of the Jews. Saul was a passionate man, and he could not hide his scorn for his opponents, nor his love for Torah, nor his desire for both Greek and Jew to live at peace under the rule of Mashiach ben David.

  “Is he the horrible man you read about in the history books?”

  “Rivka, nothing is as I read in the history books. Come, let us walk.” Ari took Rivka’s arm and guided her north along the waterline. “Your own Christian historians were also wrong about him, yes?”

  “Yes and no.” Rivka put her hand in Ari’s. “The book of Acts consistently shows him acting Jewish. It even quotes him calling himself a Pharisee—”

  “Then why does nobody take this seriously? I was led to believe that he was a man who renounced Judaism, ate pork, spat on Shabbat, and urged Jews to abandon circumcision.”

  “Ari, that’s what Christianity meant for Jews in Europe for sixteen or seventeen centuries. You came to Jesus, you dumped Moses—that was the rule. Getting baptized meant getting uncircumcised. But it wasn’t like that before Constantine. And it isn’t that way now. You know that’s true in our synagogue in Jerusalem. I’m telling you, it’s like that everywhere. Saul never dumped Moses, and he doesn’t teach other Jews to. He’s in trouble for not making goyim get circumcised and keep kosher.”

  “And you knew this? Before you came to this century?”

  “I think I tried to explain it to you that night in the café.”

  “You threw water in my face. A most unusual debating tactic.”

  “You deserved it.”

  Ari sighed. Yes, he had deserved it. But the shock of that water was nothing to the shock of meeting Renegade Saul today.

  The man was a Jew. A Jew as orthodox as Ari’s arrogant stepfather. Saul had a thick gray beard and wore the ritual fringes—the tzitzit—that marked the orthodox in Israel, in America, in every unenlightened shtetl in Russia for a thousand years. Saul put on tefillin and a tallit when he prayed. If you dressed him in black and put him on the streets of Meah Shearim in modern Jerusalem, nobody would look twice at him.

  Saul is a Jew, and I am not.

  That stung. Ari had grown up hearing of this man who created a goy religion, Christianity, a syncretistic mix of Jewish messianic prophecies and Persian avatar myths and Hellenistic dualism. A man who renounced the customs of the fathers.

  In fact, Saul had not. But Ari had. His own father, his real father, was a secular Israeli who despised ultra-orthodox foolishness. After he died on army reserve duty, Ari’s mother married a man of the Lubavitcher sect. Ari was nine years old, and much too old to believe in God. Pork tasted good, and Shabbat was no different from any other day. The customs of the fathers were quaint traditions, something you put on for a Pesach Seder or your wedding, and took off again the next day, because they signified precisely nothing. Or so he had thought.

  Saul is a Jew and I am not.

  It was some consolation that this real Saul—the orthodox Jew—who violated everything Ari knew, also violated everything the Christians knew. If they could see him now, they would refuse to believe the evidence of their eyes. The proof for that was evident. According to Rivka, the Christian New Testament spoke plainly of these things, and yet nobody believed it. The real Saul had never taken off Judaism, he had merely put on Jesus. The Saul of the history books was a sham, a concoction created by people who did not know the facts.

  Just as I am.

  Ari stopped walking. He had lived in this place and this time for two years, all the while living the customs and praying the prayers and being a fraud. He was not a Jew and never had been one. Not in the sense these people would recognize. He was a secular Jew, a cultural Jew, a ... phony Jew.

  He believed in HaShem, yes, but he did not follow the customs from his heart. He was the man he had always thought Saul was—a false Jew. And Saul was something different—a Pharisee, a Jew, a follower of Rabban Yeshua.

  “Ari ... what are you thinking?”

  Please, not now.

  Rivka was looking up at him, her eyes eager. “What did you think of what Saul said about ... Yeshua?”

  Ari’s heart began racing, and something hot boiled up inside his stomach. Jesus. Yes, he had thought about That Man. Many times. The name enraged him. Not the man—only the name. There had been a real man named Yeshua. Ari had been sure of that for two years now. A good man. A Rabban to his people. A prophet. A tsaddik. Believed by many to be Mashiach.

  But believing a thing did not make it true. Ari knew something that none of these people knew. Rabban Yeshua, good as he must have been, was not going to come back and be the Mashiach ben David. A suffering Mashiach, yes, perhaps, this dying Mashiach ben Yoseph that Gamaliel had spoken of. But Rabban Yeshua would not return as the Mashiach that all Jews everywhere looked for, to reign in power. It was an unfortunate fact, but no, he would not. Twenty centuries would come and go, and his people would sorely need a Mashiach many times. Yet he would not come.

  A rational man must conclude that Yeshua was not Mashiach ben David. Rather than saving his people, he would be their doom. Under the sign of his cross, millions of Jews would be murdered by the sword or the stake. Murdered by good, honest, Bible-believing, sincere, Jew-hating Christians. Christians who deeply believed that the whole Jewish nation had killed Christ, had taken corporate guilt for his death. Christians who knew beyond all doubt that Jews mixed the blood of Christian children in their Pesach matzah dough.

  For Baruch, for Saul, for Yaakov the tsaddik, none of this had happened. They could innocently believe in Yeshua the Mashiach and Ari found no fault in that belief. It was mistaken, but it was sincere and honest.

  Yet for him, he could not. Never, ever, ever. To believe in Jesus, after the six millions of the Holocaust, the uncounted millions of the pogroms, the Inquisition, the Crusades?

  No, never.

  Ari sat down in the sand. “Sit with me, Rivka.”

  She knelt beside him, snuggling up to him, her bright and shining eyes locked on him.

  Ari held her tight, felt her heart thumping against him. “Rivkaleh, I must tell you something.”

  Rivka

  * * *

  And that is why I cannot follow Jesus,” Ari said. “Not now. Not ever. But after speaking with Saul, I see plainly that I must make a decision. And this is my decision—I will follow Moshe. Today, I am a Jew. Not to make a joke of it, but today I am born again. Do you understand?”

  Rivka tried to catch her breath.

  Yes.

  No.

  I don’t know.

  She could not find words to tell Ari of the deep ache in her heart. And the deep joy. He had come so far. She wanted so badly for him to come the rest of the way. To be like her. To know Yeshua.

  And it wasn’t going to happen. Not today anyway. Maybe not ever. Ari was rejecting Jesus in the same way Baruch had rejected Dov—not on account of anything he had done, but on account of what someone else had done. Couldn’t he see how wrong that was?

  Rivka’s eyes blurred, and her chest ached, and her whole body burned with a longing she could not express. She threw her arms around Ari and kissed him. “No, I don’t understand. I’m trying to. I want to. I don’t. But even if I never understand you and you never understand me, I still love you. I’ll love you forever, Ari the Kazan.”

  And I’m going to pull you the rest of the way into Yeshua’s kingdom, even if it kills me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hanan ben Hanan

  * * *

  A WEEK AND A HALF after meeting Governor Festus, Hanan arrived in Caesarea to deal with the matter of the
apikoros. He brought six chief priests from Jerusalem, sound men of Sadducee families. Because the hearing would be in Greek, Ishmael ben Phiabi had declined to come. Hanan would make the case against Renegade Saul.

  Hanan hated this wretched city, Caesarea. The hot, humid weather. The streets swarming with goyim—Syrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, Egyptians, Cretans, and a dozen other nationalities. And Jews of the most vile sort, men who did daily business with goyim and were not particular about taking a ritual bath afterward. These Jews cared more for their stalls of merchandise or their tradecraft than they did for the customs. These Jews did not love the Temple.

  Hanan turned to his companions and raised his hands for silence. “Men, we are about to enter the palace known as the Praetorium. It was built by King Herod many years ago. I warn you that there are statues in this palace, so you will guard your eyes. Remember the commandments of the living God whom we serve.”

  The men all nodded.

  Hanan strode down the path and into the Praetorium. He had come here once before. Herod had built it on a small spit of land that projected into the water. The palace, surrounded on three sides by the sea, made him feel ill in the stomach.

  They entered the courtyard and marched past the pool—yes, there was a huge pool in the middle of the palace—and past the vile statues surrounding the pool. Herod had been a false Jew, an apikoros, a man who obeyed the commandments if he chose and ignored them if he chose. A man like Renegade Saul. Herod had rebuilt the Temple, an act of public piety that hid the fact that he did not love the Temple except as a place to glorify himself by pretending to glorify the living God. Just so, Renegade Saul pretended piety, the better to ingratiate himself with true Jews who loved the Temple.

  At the west end of the palace, they reached the hearing room, looking out to sea. Renegade Saul sat quietly between two Roman soldiers, his legs chained together, each arm chained to a soldier. He looked confident of success in today’s hearing. He would not be so confident if he knew Hanan’s strategy.