by Alan Gold
Her oldest son, Raphael, suddenly lost his temper and sprang to his feet. “You leave me and my family alone. Go away. You’re not allowed to be in here and we don’t like you.” He ran at the first man and started to bang him with his fists, but the Zealot grabbed the ten-year-old by the lapels of his tunic and lifted him off the floor.
“Brave little bastard, aren’t you?” he said with a malicious sneer. “Shame your mother’s a Roman prostitute and your father licks the Roman backside. But your whole family isn’t worth my shit, so you’ll die just like the rest of them.”
“No!” screamed Lior, and left her hysterical children under the table. She stood and ran to the man in order to save her Raphael. But as she ran across the room, a second man raised his dagger and plunged it into Lior’s breast as she opened her arms to rescue her son. Raphael shouted for his mother as the first Zealot dropped him on the ground and kicked him mercilessly in the head. He then stomped on his neck and heard a satisfying crunch, which told him instantly that he’d killed the boy.
The other children under the table were frenzied and kicking their legs in their hysteria. Two men walked over and with a couple of light stabs with their Sicarii knives ended the children’s hysteria. The men, satisfied that Samuel’s family were all dead, left the room to search the rest of the house and find where the cowardly merchant was hiding.
But the Zealots couldn’t find him, and so they rampaged through his whole house, killing all of his servants and scrawling in Hebrew on his pristine white plaster walls “So end the lives of those who lay with the Romans.” And just so the Romans would understand that Jewish traitors would be killed for helping the invaders, a man wrote the same message in Latin: “Et ita finis vite iaceret Romanorum.”
When the Zealots were certain that all of the merchant’s family and servants were no longer a threat to Israel, a neighbor, hiding and fearing for his own life, ran to fetch Samuel.
The merchant rushed home, crying and wailing and tearing his clothes while he cradled his dead wife and children. Through his tears and cries, he heard a faint voice calling, “Abba . . .”
He looked around and saw his eldest son, Raphael, had crawled behind a tapestry and was lying there, dying. The boy was white from loss of blood and shock, and the wounds in the hair of his head and on his neck showed that he’d been kicked viciously by somebody. Desperate to save the sole remaining member of his family, in a flood of tears Samuel carried the boy to the house of the doctor, who’d recently returned from the captivity of the Zealots to his wife.
Abraham ben Zakkai was in the middle of saying a silent thanksgiving prayer to Adonai Elohim for keeping his family safe while he was abducted by the Zealots when Sarah, his wife of fifteen years, entered the room carrying a bowl of meat stew. It was the third such stew that week, unusual in that the family rarely ate meat more than once a week, despite the fact that he was a doctor and was quite able to afford it more often. But as he said a b’rucha over the wine, sipped it, and handed the cup around to his wife and his children to share in the Lord’s blessing of the grape, he found his voice breaking. He was so relieved to be home, so relieved to see his beautiful family again, that for the third time that week he was moved to tears.
When all had drunk from the cup of wine, he said a b’rucha over the bread, which he tore into portions and handed around to his family standing beside the table. Then they all bowed their heads in their shared heritage of being Jews in Israel, even an Israel under the heel of the Romans, even an Israel being torn apart by the murderous Zealots. Silently, piously, each said his own invocation to Adonai Elohim for his own special needs, and when they’d finished their prayers they sat to eat. Since Sarah’s entrance, the small room had filled with the delicious aroma of the stew, the herbs and spices and the freshly baked bread, which the children would use to mop up the divine juices.
Sarah watched the way her husband was pondering his food, gazing down into the wooden bowl and stirring it with his spoon instead of eating it eagerly as their children were. Since Abraham had returned from his abduction by the Zealots, since the massacre of the patriots, she had become increasingly worried about her husband. He’d been distant and withdrawn since he wandered back to their home in the middle of the night, emaciated, exhausted, filthy, and appearing as though all life and spirit had been drained out of him. He kissed her and his children regularly, played with them, read biblical scrolls to them, but she knew him well enough to know that his heart wasn’t in it. It was as though he had returned the same man but with part of his soul missing.
When she was certain the children were fast asleep later that night, Sarah sat on the floor at his knee while he rested in his chair. “Abraham, tell me what’s wrong. Is it still the thought of those Jews killed by the Romans in the Galilee?”
He smiled and stroked her hair. Shaking his head, he said softly, “No. They’re in heaven. But I think of all the other Jewish souls who will soon be killed by the Romans. We’re a proud people. Just as we survived the Babylonians and the Greeks, so we will fight to survive the Romans. We’ve lived in this land since my namesake, Abraham, first agreed to a covenant with Almighty God that we would be a light unto all the nations in this darkest of all worlds; that the sign of our covenant would be to circumcise our sons.
“Yet, our pride will soon lead us into the greatest disaster ever to befall our people. I can feel it in my very bones. I fear for the end of my people.”
Sarah looked up at him in surprise and shock. “The end? Of us Jews? No, it can’t be.”
He sighed and continued to stroke her hair. “Darling wife, I can sense the disaster about to befall us. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for years, but one day soon. It depends on whether the emperor in power is insane or just simply evil. Since Augustus, they’ve all been mad. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and now Nero is emperor and as mad as they come. And from what merchants and travelers tell me, he’s so alienated the knights and senators of Rome that there’ll be a revolt against him.”
“But that’s good, husband. If he’s replaced . . .”
“He may be replaced by somebody even more insane.”
“And that’s what is causing you such sadness. I see it in your eyes, your heart, even when you look at me and the children.”
“Sarah, my wife. When Father Abraham made his covenant, he couldn’t have foretold that a people like the Romans would arise out of nowhere and in the space of a few lifetimes control the entire world. Their power is nothing short of awesome.”
Sarah smiled and said softly, “They can’t kill a whole nation, Abraham.”
“Can’t they? That’s what the Britons and the Germans and the Gauls thought.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” she asked, but before he could answer, there was the slightest tap on the wooden door. It was barely audible, yet the house was quiet and both Sarah and Abraham gazed at each other in concern. Sarah rose to answer the door, but Abraham held her back. “Protect the children. If it’s trouble, escape out the back of the house.”
He opened the door a fraction and was surprised to see Samuel leaning on the doorpost in a state of exhaustion. Abraham immediately grew furious on seeing this man, the very merchant who’d trapped him, kidnapped him, and sent him for three months to the camp of the Zealots.
“You!” said Abraham. “How dare you come here! After what you did to me, you dare to come here, to my house?”
But the merchant was close to dropping in exhaustion. Instead of listening, he turned and lifted up a huge bundle of clothes off the floor. He was barely able to carry it, and Abraham was stunned when an arm sagged out of the bundle. He rushed forward and helped Samuel inside with the injured boy.
“My son,” he gasped. “The Zealots. They thought—”
He sank to the floor in exhaustion from carrying his son such a distance.
Abraham immediately said to Sarah, “Water. Boiling water. Quickly. And my bag with my medicines.”
It was fortunate that the lad was unconscious, because when Abraham cleansed the wounds and sewed them together with stitches, had the boy been awake, he’d have been screaming with pain. Abraham covered the stitches with the yellow sulfur powder from the Dead Sea and a salve to protect the wound. As it was, if the boy recovered and didn’t gain an infection in the wounds and if the bleeding stopped of its own accord, then the pain he’d experience from the operations would still be almost unbearable for one so young. Abraham would give him medicines to dull the pain, but he didn’t envy the young man.
“What happened?” he asked Samuel. The merchant was now sitting on a chair, refreshed by the hot lemon water that Sarah had given him. Samuel told him in simple, direct terms.
“But why would the Zealots . . .”
“My activities as a friend of the Zealots have been known to very few. Jonathan kept me very secret because my information was so valuable. So the others must have looked at me reveling with the enemy and thought I was a traitor to the Jews. The Zealots are going around killing everybody who they see as a friend of the Romans. And the Romans won’t tolerate this. They’ll bring in a dozen centuries and scour the city. It’ll be mass murder tonight and tomorrow and . . . I’ve been speaking with the head of their army and he told me that they’re prepared to kill every Israelite to quell this rebellion.”
“You fool of a man. You’ve brought this on your own head. You’ve created this,” Abraham said, pointing to the bandaged, unconscious body of Samuel’s son Raphael. “His blood is on your hands. Not the hands of the Romans. You’ve brought this pain on our people. And now, because of what you’ve done, we have to leave. All of us. Once the Romans begin to torture people, they will come to my house and arrest me and my family because for the past three months I’ve been with the Zealots. They’ll never believe I was forced. We have to leave. All of us. Now. Tonight.”
“But my son? My Raphael? Can he travel? My wife and my children. I have to bury them.” Samuel was ashen-faced.
“We must look after the living and the sick,” said Abraham. “We’ll pray for the souls of your wife and children. But now we must leave. All of us. Raphael is young and strong. He will survive.”
Samuel was disconsolate. “But the Romans are on all the gates. There’s a general alarm. All soldiers are out of their barracks and searching the streets for the Zealots who are doing these things.”
Abraham nodded. “There is a way. My father knew of it, as did my grandfather. In the days of King David of blessed memory, a tunnel was dug. It leads from the top of the hill on which the temple is built down into the very depths of the valley. Some old rabbis know of it, but few others. We can escape through there.”
* * *
November 6, 2007
The village of Peki’in, Northern Galilee
YAEL PARKED THE CAR in a tiny stone garage beneath a hillside shop, some distance from the house where Yaniv had secreted Bilal away. The house itself seemed almost derelict, with large cracks in the strangely leaning wall that made it seem as if it might topple over at any minute.
With her headscarf on, Yael walked the road from the hillside shop that meandered beneath the massive carob tree that for thousands of years had spread itself by new roots and growth over almost an entire hillside. Hidden within the hillside was the cave where Orthodox and spiritual Jews believed that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon, had spent thirteen years hiding from the Romans, living only off the fruit of the carob tree and water from the spring that still flowed into the center of the village. During their isolation from the ravages of the Roman destruction of Israel, the two rabbis supposedly wrote one of the great books of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, a central work in the Kabbalah, the body of Jewish spirituality.
Below where she walked on the steep hillside was the ancient synagogue of Peki’in, the oldest continuously used synagogue in the world. Yet, despite the important Jewish history that infused Peki’in, only a few elderly Jews still lived there, some of them claiming to trace their ancestry back to the priests of the temple of King Solomon.
But Jewish history and traditions were the last things on her mind as she walked as inconspicuously as possible toward the house. Yaniv was looking out of the window, and when he saw her, he immediately came out to meet her. Neither said anything as she stood in front of him. But then, much to her surprise, he opened his arms and embraced her. She’d never been so close to him before, but she felt the comfort of his muscular body.
“I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry” was all he said. “I know how much you loved your zaida. It was a terrible thing that happened.”
“It was them, wasn’t it?” she said. It wasn’t a question. “They killed him because of me.”
Yaniv didn’t answer but led her gently away from the street and up the hill to the shop and the small, disheveled house.
“Keep to the shadows when you walk down these narrow alleys,” Yaniv said. “Try not to expose yourself by walking in the middle of the street.”
She turned back to him. It was good not to think about her grandfather for a while. “Why? Snipers?”
“No, satellites.”
“Israeli satellites look at the borders, not tiny villages.”
“Spitzer has the power to point them anywhere he wants.”
She didn’t ask any other questions until they came to their house, but made sure she walked in the shadows.
When they entered the house, Yaniv bowed his head under the low lintel and walked into the room where Bilal was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The moment he saw them—saw Yael in Arabic dress and headscarf—he sat bolt upright. He looked as if he wanted to ask a thousand questions. Instead he stayed silent, just staring at Yael and Yaniv.
“Your parents have been told you’re dead, Bilal,” said Yael calmly.
Bilal gasped and for a moment Yael feared the young man’s reaction. “It was the only way to be sure they remain safe, and that we can protect you.”
“My mother . . .” Bilal began to ask, but couldn’t finish the question.
“You’re her son. She weeps like any mother would.”
Bilal took the news with a resigned nod as if it were strangely comforting.
Yaniv cut in, “And as expected, your imam was there. He must know you’re not dead, so there’s no doubt he’ll question Hassan about where you are.”
“But Hassan knows where I am,” said Bilal, close to a whisper. “I told him. So if he tells the imam . . .”
“And that’s what we want. That will bring them here.”
Beneath the head covering, Yael suddenly shuddered. What was she doing here? She was a doctor, not a secret agent. But if Bilal or Yaniv noticed, they said nothing.
“And the Jew? The Shin Bet man? With the white hair? What of him?” asked Bilal.
Yaniv hesitated to respond.
“He will come after me,” said the young Palestinian, fear suddenly inflecting his voice. “He will find me and kill me.”
“No, Bilal,” Yael said, trying to reassure him. “We won’t let that happen. The one thing he fears is exposure, and he knows that if he comes here, he’ll be exposed. Once we’ve dealt with the imam, we’ll deal with him.” But not even Yael thought that her answer was convincing. They were amateurs in this deadly game. Spitzer could hire any assassin he wanted, without even filling in any paperwork; the imam, too, could get anybody to come in his place. Both of these men could be sitting behind their desks in comfort while their minions did the deed. The risks she, Yaniv, and Bilal were taking were huge. But what choice did she and Yaniv have?
Bilal lay back down heavily on the bed. He was thinking about his future, if there was a future for him. “And when I am put back into prison, I will be killed by other prisoners. I am a dead man.” He closed his eyes.
Yael turned to Yaniv. “Can you give us a minute alone?”
Yaniv nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.
She hesitated, and saw the questioning look in his eyes. “Bilal, do you remember when I’d just operated on you in the Jerusalem hospital, and I was asking you all those questions about where you were born, about your mother and father and your relatives?”
He nodded again.
“Well, the reason was that your blood is very similar to mine. So close that we could be relatives, brother and sister, from way back in history. I went to see your mother, and she told me something . . . something about you and where you’re from. She told me about her religion today and about the religion her ancestors followed. Bilal, what I’m trying to tell you is that . . .”
* * *
70 CE
ABRAHAM LED THE WAY on his donkey and was followed by his wife, Sarah, and his children riding their mounts. Samuel rode on his donkey behind the youngest member of Abraham’s family, pleased to be in their company, glad that they’d reached an understanding. Raphael, though in great pain, was healing well, and Abraham was pleased that his wounds didn’t seem to have become hot through infection.
Though Abraham still harbored anger at the way he’d been abducted from his home and forced to join the Zealots, in the intervening traumatic period the disaster that was being wrought in Jerusalem was so overwhelming that any personal animosity was subsumed by the ordeals all Jews were suffering.
Because of Raphael, their progress was slow, and so they were often overtaken by people on horseback fleeing the havoc the Romans were wreaking. Some would spend the evening around the campfire that Abraham and Samuel made and tell their tales of the misadventure befalling Jerusalem.