Birthright

by Alan Gold

  “For those Jews who do not believe in Jesus, death is an end with little but dust and decay. But we, the followers of Jesus, look forward to the joys of heaven for all of eternity. For us, and soon for you, life begins after death.”

  Abimelech stared at Abram for a long and uncomfortable moment. The words “soon for you” resonated in Abram’s mind, and for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, he was afraid. But in the moment of the stare, Abram took his chance and seized the seal from Abimelech and clutched it in his fist, moving his arm behind his back and out of reach.

  Abimelech smiled at the boy, a broad but considered smile, patted him on the shoulder, and turned his attention back to his meal.

  Abram made his way over to his corner of the one-room house with the seal still clutched tight in his fist. He settled down on the straw as Elisheva cleared the plates and began to blow out the lamps for the night. He lay down his head but kept his eyes on Abimelech as the man lifted up a heavy wooden plank at an angle to the door of the house to prevent anybody from entering at night. He slammed it home into place with a blow from his fist. But it was odd. In the time Abram had been in the village, he’d seen it as an open and welcoming community, and he’d never known Abimelech to bar the door. The man’s action made him nervous.

  Abimelech then turned to Abram. “It is time. Tomorrow, Abram, you shall become one of us. You will be baptized.”

  Then Abimelech blew out the last oil lamp and the home fell into darkness.

  • • •

  The night passed slowly for Abram as he lay awake, apprehensive of what the dawn would bring.

  Abimelech and his wife said very little to him when they woke and prepared to leave the house, only that they would take him to the river and the whole community would be there to see him reborn. The followers of Jesus had told him of the ceremony by the river, which they called baptism. It sounded exactly the same as that which his mother did by the river in his village of Peki’in when she’d finished her monthly bleed, and what his father did after he had enjoyed sex with Abram’s mother. So the youngster wasn’t particularly concerned about the ceremony of the Jews who called themselves after Jesus. After all, they were Jews, if strange ones who drank milk after eating meat and believed that God had a son and that a man could die and then live again.

  Abram was even looking forward to his immersion in the river. Since his illness, he hadn’t been able to wash properly, though in Peki’in, he’d been scrupulous about his cleanliness by bathing in the river when he could.

  What caused him doubt was that he was being told by Abimelech that the ceremony would enable him to be reborn. He was already born.

  Abram pondered the word “reborn” and all that it might entail. Reborn as a follower of Jesus? Would he still be Jewish? Abimelech had called it the “New Judaism,” and Abram wondered what that meant. The man had spoken of how many Jews were “converting” to be free of the control of the priests and their laws, but the very idea of “conversion” to something else appeared very foreign to the lad.

  Either you are or you are not. In the old days, when the Jews controlled their land, many people converted to being Jews, and their whole body was immersed in the water of the mikveh as the final act. But since the time of the Romans, nobody converted to being a Jew—who would want to? In turn, the priests and rabbis had no interest in converting anyone. Yet these followers of Jesus seemed passionate about the idea of changing who people were. Abram couldn’t work it out.

  Perhaps he should run away, as he’d run from the high priest’s house. But he was still weak from the illness, and these Jews had been kind to him. Perhaps the ceremony would benefit him, make him stronger, able to complete the task that Rabbi Shimon had sent him to Jerusalem to perform. Yes, he thought, he would go through the ceremony of baptism and see what happened afterward.

  It was at midday that Abram walked with Abimelech and Elisheva through the tiny village. They were slowly joined by other people from the community. No one spoke; they simply fell in beside and behind, walking with them toward the river.

  Abram was afraid. The seal was still clenched tight in his fist. He did not know what would happen at the baptism other than he would have to be covered by water and could not take the risk that the seal would be lost in the current.

  His eyes darted about him as the procession moved slowly out of the village and down the hill. He looked for a place to hide the seal, someplace safe he could secret it and return for it later, someplace marked that he could remember. Finally his eyes landed upon a large stone marker, a milestone etched in Roman numerals showing the distance of the road. The milestone had a collection of Roman letters that he could not read, but one stood out, an X, and Abram knew that this would be a mark he could remember.

  With quick thinking, and before they could pass by the milestone, Abram moved his right foot too far over in front of his left and forced himself to trip and stumble to his knees directly in front of the marker. He pushed his hand out in front of him to catch his fall; in that hand was the stone seal. With the weight of his fall, he pushed the seal as far into the sandy earth as he could.

  Almost immediately, Elisheva bowed to his side. “Are you all right, Abram? Are you hurt?”

  “No. I am fine. I just tripped,” Abram said softly, but it was loud enough for Abimelech to hear.

  “And so did our Lord Jesus trip and stumble as he carried the cross.” Abimelech reached down to help Abram up, but before he rose, the lad took one last opportunity to push the stone seal deeper into the sandy dirt at the foot of the milestone and offered a silent prayer that it was well hidden.

  Abimelech whispered into Abram’s ear, “It is the old ways that make you stumble, my son. You walk toward a new life and your old life still clings to you, wanting to drag you down. But we shall not let it.” He gripped Abram’s arm so hard his nails dug into his flesh. “You will be baptized. You will be one of us. It is the only way you can be saved.”

  They came upon the bank of the river and saw the water moving swiftly, in places bubbling over submerged rocks or tree trunks. It wasn’t the clear waters of mountain streams that Abram relished near his home but, rather, brown and opaque. As his feet entered the water, they immediately disappeared from view. The people from the village began to gather at the bank, forming a semicircle around Abimelech and Abram, now standing shin-deep in the river. They began to sing a rhythmic chant that Abram didn’t recognize.

  Abram surveyed the scene as his mind began to panic and look for a way out. This didn’t feel right. In his home, the water was clear and cold and sparkling; this water was brown, and the people looked at him in what Abram feared was a menacing way. He looked up at Abimelech and the man’s zealous expression frightened him even more. Why was he gripping his arm so tightly? Was it so that Abram didn’t run away? What was happening?

  The semicircle of onlookers appeared to him as a barricade of guards blocking his escape. Abimelech took him by the hand and led him out farther from the bank and into deeper water; the water was warm, like a broth, and it frightened the boy even more.

  Fear continued to rise higher and higher in Abram’s mind as the water grew deeper and the distance from the shore grew longer, and the prospect of escape receded. As the water level rose to his knees, and his feet sank deeper into the muddy bottom, he felt the pressure of the current and gripped Abimelech’s arm to keep from falling over.

  “Come deeper, my son. You must be submerged and cleansed and arise anew.”

  Abimelech led Abram deeper until the water came to his waist and the force of the current threatened to carry him away. The streams of the Galilee were not as deep; he was scared. Then the man put a firm hand on the back of Abram’s neck as he spoke to the crowd on the shore. Their chanting stopped.

  “Today,” shouted Abimelech, “we deliver another into the arms of God through His son, Jesus. The death of the old self and the rising of the new from the purifying waters . . .” Abimelech’s gaze turned to
Abram. “All your guilt, all your corruption, all the wrongs you have thought and done will be washed away.”

  Abram realized that the man was going to drown him. Was this what the Christians did to Jews? They drowned them?

  Abimelech lifted his other hand to place it over the face of Abram, almost smothering him as he raised his impassioned voice. “You will be saved as we have been saved. You will be welcomed into the next life when this life has passed . . .”

  Abram’s mind spun as he felt the water swirl around him. His mind raced for a way out. Abimelech was larger and stronger and held him fast. He could not escape from these strange Christians, who he realized meant to kill him like Jesus was killed, so that Abram could rise again. The words of the rabbi, “trust no one,” haunted him as he stood waiting to be pushed beneath the water, waiting to be drowned.

  “You will be with our Lord, the son of God, Jesus . . .”

  Abram heard these final words and then was forced down into the sluggish brown water by Abimelech’s powerful hands. As he was immersed, he felt the strong current try to carry him downstream to the sea. The moments felt like an eternity as the water filled his nose and his eyes. He tried to keep his mouth closed, but the sudden downward push had forced it open and water cascaded into his mouth and throat.

  Abimelech was going to drown him. And that meant he’d failed the rabbi. Was this the end? The stone seal lost in the dirt at the foot of a Roman milestone, never to be returned to the place it belonged so that God Almighty would save His people, Israel?

  Abram wanted so badly to live and not to fail. The task had given him purpose and meaning. His young life had been of no consequence until the moment the rabbi had entrusted him with the mission. Now a Christian was trying to drown him.

  And so Abram kicked.

  He kicked with all his might. He lashed out his legs, digging his heels into the muddy bed of the river. He kicked and pushed with all his strength and felt the deathly strong grip of Abimelech slip away from his neck and relinquish its hold on his arm. Abram kicked and pushed his body into the river, deeper into the current, held his breath, and let the rush of water sweep him away.

  Palestine

  1943

  IT HAD BEEN two years since Shalman’s father had been led away by the British, never to return. They knew he’d been taken to the fortress at Acre, but all they’d been told was that he’d died accidentally during interrogation; the British authorities said that he’d slipped and fallen down a flight of stone steps. They were sorry.

  Later, the story was that he’d been found guilty of terrorism and hanged. His family and friends had been dismissed, as though the rule of British law were nothing more than a joke.

  The people of the kibbutz didn’t speak about that day, and neither did Shalman’s mother, Devorah. On a kibbutz, everything was shared, and the community worked and cared for all. But one member of the kibbutz never recovered from the guilt of sending Shalman’s father to his death.

  Dov had honored Ari’s request and treated Shalman as one of his own, though as he grew into young manhood, Shalman never really felt close to Dov’s other six children. He saw his mother retreat into an increasingly thick shell now that her beloved Ari had been taken; she still cared for Shalman but no longer with the warmth and depth he’d known when he was part of a family, playing on the beaches as a young boy. As the months rolled away, Devorah became increasingly locked into her own world of perpetual despair, distant and cold, not just from Shalman but from everybody.

  Anger grew like a cancer in the young man’s breast. Every time the British army vehicles rolled past, or the people of the kibbutz were stopped at a checkpoint, Shalman felt anger. But it was anger that had no outlet until the day Dov handed him a small heavy package in an oil rag.

  Since the day Ari had been taken away, Dov—like Shalman’s mother—had changed. Where he had once been jovial and energetic, he became focused and solemn. And with his change in demeanor came a change in his activities. Dov was still the kibbutz’s resident thief, but as he trained others in the tasks at which he was so skilled, his activities took on a higher, more directed purpose, separate from the kibbutz, and he grew increasingly distant from his chaverim, friends he’d known for years.

  When Shalman unwrapped the package he found the heavy, shining, gunmetal-gray pistol he’d seen the day his father had been taken away.

  “You’re old enough now to use that,” said Dov. It wasn’t a statement of intent, just one of fact.

  Shalman weighed the pistol in his hand with ease, no longer fearful of dropping it as he had been a couple of years before.

  “If we’re to keep this land, we have to fight for it. We have to take it, Shalman.”

  The teenager looked at Dov, shifting his grip on the pistol into a position ready to draw and fire. But Dov said nothing more. Just squeezed his shoulder and walked away.

  Now, with the pistol, Shalman was a Jewish warrior. Weeks after giving him the gun, Dov introduced him to some people who seemed to like him. They bought him a beer, treated him like a man. On the second occasion, when he met with them in a café on the side streets of the northern port city of Haifa, they told him they were part of Palestine’s defense force. They were members of Lehi, the gang of anti-British freedom fighters created by Avraham Stern three years earlier. The British, who called Lehi “the Stern Gang,” hated the group, which was responsible for thefts of armaments and the assassination of British soldiers.

  Shalman was surprised that the people he was meeting were so pleasant. The chaverim on the kibbutz hated Lehi and disparaged them at every opportunity. They called Lehi members “animals.” It was because the founder, Avraham Stern, had tried to form an alliance with the Nazis of Germany and the Fascists of Italy against the British, even though everybody now knew about Hitler’s concentration camps, and even their death camps were becoming known. Stories were seeping out of Germany, so such an alliance would have been a pact with the devil himself.

  Stern had been shot dead by the British, and since then, for some reason, the leadership had turned to Stalin and Moscow for an alliance against the British.

  Dov made Shalman promise not to tell anybody on the kibbutz that he’d met with men from Lehi; within a month, the youngster agreed to join. He was trained in the use of a rifle and covert activity, and this night, the first in his life, he was lying on a rooftop, about to kill a human being. He thought back to the details of his training as he secured the rifle butt to his shoulder and aimed down the sight to the uniformed British officer in the distance.

  Shalman’s hands were sweating; he was trembling. He had to blink twice because the sweat on his brow was dripping into his eyes. Not that the weather was warm; it was a chilly night.

  In his mind he envisioned what would happen, what he must do. He imagined the bullet erupting from the barrel and flying at the speed of sound across the space to thud into the flesh of the British soldier. It would tear his uniform, puncture his skin, rip his muscles to shreds, and spill blood on the ground.

  Shalman felt sick.

  When he’d lain on his stomach in the training sessions and aimed at distant bottles, squeezed the trigger, and watched them explode into a million shards of glass, his hands hadn’t been shaking or sweating. So why now? Because it was dark? Because it was cold? Because he was alone? No, he’d been alone in the dark before he became a soldier with a rifle, on missions for Lehi, missions that were part of his training . . . now that he was sixteen, they’d told him to go out and get his first kill.

  Shalman, at Dov’s urging, was set to become a willing participant in the activities of the Stern Gang, relishing the sense of place and empowerment it gave him, helping to emancipate him from the haunting memories of his father being taken away.

  Focusing again on his target, Shalman saw the face of the British officer illuminated by a brief yellow glow as he lit another cigarette. Down the rifle sight, Shalman saw that face and felt a coldness within him that he
had never felt.

  He’d been told by the intelligence people in Lehi that this British officer worked in strategic command and that his removal would cause disruption. It was disruption that Lehi sought. British time in Palestine was limited, and the more disrupted it became, the shorter their stay would be. The British were already exhausted from fighting the war against the Nazis; a growing battlefront in Palestine wouldn’t be tolerated by the British public, and that should lead the Houses of Parliament in London to withdraw their troops.

  Shalman knew he had to pull the trigger, he knew he was a good marksman, and he knew he could hit the target when it was an empty bottle of beer. But still he could feel the sweat on his brow.

  Then a voice in bad Hebrew said, “What the hell you doing? Why not shoot? Why stop? What the fuck?”

  The voice came from a man sliding up on his belly in the dark to lie next to him. It was a distinctly Polish accent. The man had been assigned as Shalman’s supervisor and acted as lookout for the operation, though Shalman was yet to learn his name.

  “Fucking shoot or go away. If you can’t, I do.”

  “I’ll do it,” whispered Shalman defensively. “I’m just waiting for the right shot.”

  “Bullshit!” said the aggressive man. “You fucking coward. I been watching. Plenty shots. You scared. Yes?”

  Shalman turned his attention back to the gun sight.

  “You never kill man before. First kill difficult. Next kill easy. Now you do first kill.”

  Shalman shook his head.

  “Okay, give me rifle. I kill. You take credit. Then others don’t know how you coward. Tomorrow you grow balls. Tomorrow we talk. I teach you how to kill. Today we must act. Yes?”

  The man took the rifle from Shalman’s hands, aimed, and within moments, the quiet of the night was pierced by a sharp crack as the bullet tore out of the rifle and penetrated the officer’s chest. Before the body of the target had even hit the ground, the Polish man said, “Quick. We go. Now!”