Wings of Refuge

by Lynn Austin

Leah didn’t reply. She knew that she wasn’t ready.

  Two days later, Nathaniel and the others returned to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost. Master Reuben made the pilgrimage with them. Time passed too slowly for Leah after they were gone, like a very heavy cart moving uphill.

  The evening Reuben returned, Elizabeth ran into her father’s arms, crying, “Abba, Abba!” He lifted her high in the air, laughing with joy, then sat with her on his lap as he described Jerusalem and the celebration at the Temple. Even though she was too young to understand, Elizabeth loved listening to the sound of her father’s voice. But Leah listened to his words, and she recalled her own disappointing visit to the Temple and the many barriers in the women’s court that stood between her and God. She remembered the lamb she had helped raise, and how the priests had rejected him, just as they had rejected the perfect Lamb of God. Leah’s lamb had known the sound of her voice and had responded to her; as Yeshua had said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

  As she watched Master Reuben, a man of wealth and power, stooping low to allow his little daughter to rest in his arms, she saw a picture of her heavenly Father bending down to earth to draw her near to His heart. He was the God of David’s psalms, the God who had created the beauty of a child’s laughter, the tender shepherd who would lay down His life for His flock.

  “Master Reuben,” Leah said as he stood to carry his sleepy child to bed, “I would also like to be baptized.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE GOLANI HOTEL, ISRAEL—1999

  Blessed are those whose strength is in you, Abby read, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs. . . .

  She stopped when she noticed more strange marks in her Bible. The p in pass was underlined, the w and the e in weeping, the g and s in springs. She scribbled the letters in the margin of her journal, spelling them forward and backward, then tried to unscramble them like a puzzle. They made no sense. She had forgotten to ask Emily about them. Abby had been too enraged to remember anything after reading Emily’s last letter.

  Please don’t be mad, but Daddy is still living here at home, she had written. I overheard him talking to that woman on the phone and telling her that the affair was finished. He moved all of his stuff out of her apartment on Saturday, and so he has no place else to go. Mom, he has changed so much this summer. Wait until you see! My pastor invited Daddy and Greg to the Promise Keepers convention in Indianapolis next weekend, and Daddy agreed to go. . . .

  It was a little late for Mark to think about keeping his promises. And it was much too late to suddenly decide he wanted to move back home. Not her home! How could Abby possibly trust him after what he had done?Tell him he has to move out by the time I get back! she had written in reply. She would not share the house with him again for a single day.

  Abby could tell from their letters that Emily and Greg had reconciled with their father while she was away. It would be childish and wrong of her to expect their children to take her side against him. They loved him, and Abby was certain that Mark still loved them. But every time one of them mentioned Mark, her temper flared. She had hoped her anger would ease and maybe even disappear while she was in Israel as she slowly began to write him out of her life, but now she realized that she would never be allowed to forget him. She and Mark were linked together by their children. Like it or not, she would be confronted with him for the rest of her life. Her anger was a fire that was never going to be allowed to die. Instead, it would be stoked and fueled each time she saw him—at Greg’s and Emily’s college graduations, at their weddings, with future grandchildren. Hannah’s husband, Jake, had said “don’t hate,” but Abby needed to ask him how he managed to do that when he was forced to battle the same enemy again and again.

  Abby closed her Bible and hurried to get dressed, styling her short brown hair with a curling iron and putting on lipstick and a dress. The Sabbath began at sundown, and that meant a celebration dinner with candlelight and special foods as the Israelis welcomed the Sabbath like an honored guest.

  She happened to leave her bungalow the same moment Ari was leaving his, and they walked together to the dining room, talking about the day’s discoveries at the site. The change in him continued to amaze her, as his frosty facade finally thawed. She no longer dreaded being stuck alone with him, finding instead that they could talk comfortably. As soon as they entered the dining hall, Hannah motioned them over to her table.

  “We saved you both a place,” she said. “Abby, Ari, I’d like you to meet Moshe Richman, his wife, Judith, and their three children, Dan, Gabriel, and Ivana. Moshe manages this hotel and Judith does all the bookkeeping.”

  They were a striking yet somewhat somber couple in their early thirties, with coffee-colored eyes and thick, wavy brown hair, which their two oldest children had inherited. The youngest, Ivana, a little girl of about six, had a radiant head of hair the color of an Irish setter’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” Abby said. “Ivana and I have already met. She sometimes joins me for my walks around the hotel grounds in the evenings.”

  “I hope she has not been a bother to you,” Judith said with a worried frown.

  “Not at all. I enjoy her company. We don’t speak the same language, but we’ve become friends, just the same.”

  Hannah said something to Ivana in Hebrew. She nodded and gave Abby a shy smile. The two boys, about eight and ten years old, were as solemn as their parents.

  The Richmans accorded Hannah the honor of lighting the Sabbath candles. Abby listened appreciatively as the family recited the prayers and blessings in Hebrew. It surprised her that Ari prayed along with them after the skeptical comments he had made about religion when they’d visited Jerusalem. After a ritual hand washing, Judith uncovered two fragrant loaves of challah, and they began to eat. With Hannah translating, the children told Abby all about themselves and their activities at school. Judith explained how the adjoining kibbutz where they lived operated the resort hotel as a community venture.

  “Moshe, why don’t you tell Abby a little about yourself,” Hannah suggested when Judith finished. “Tell her how your family came to Israel.”

  Moshe spoke without looking up from his plate, cutting his meat into small pieces with deliberate concentration, his face growing even more somber. “My grandfather was born in Berlin. He was not much older than my son Dan when Hitler came to power. His family tried to escape, moving from Germany to Amsterdam, but of course the Holocaust caught up with them in the end. The Nazis arrested them and transported them to concentration camps.”

  He stopped cutting, gripping the knife and fork like weapons, as if forgetting that he still held them. “My grandmother and grandfather were the only members of their families to survive the death camps. They met each other after the liberation and were smuggled ashore together, past the British, on a beach near Netanya.”

  Abby glanced at Ari, remembering his words to her the night they had stood on that beach. The hardships the Jewish people had endured awed Abby, making her own trials pale in comparison. That they could survive such horrors and still trust in God’s unfailing love, as Jake would say, spoke volumes about their faith.

  “When my grandfather was in the death camp, Psalm 102 became his testimony,” Moshe continued. “‘My days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. . . . I am reduced to skin and bones. . . . All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse. For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears because of your great wrath.’ That was my grandfather’s experience. But the second half of the psalm was his hope, a hope that has now been fulfilled: ‘You will arise and have compassion on Zion. . . . For her stones are dear to your servants. . . . the Lord will rebuild Zion. . . . The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you.’”

  Moshe paused, and his gaze traveled briefly to each of his three
children. Abby saw his love for them in its softness. Then a fierce flame kindled briefly in his eyes, a fire that told her he would do everything in his power to protect them.

  “My father was born in Israel,” he continued, “the same year that our nation was born. I was born here, on the Golan Heights, after Israel won all this land where we are sitting in the Six-Day War. Israel is built upon the blood and the ashes of our ancestors. That is why we must never sacrifice one inch of territory that others have bled and died to win.”

  “Not even for the sake of peace?” Hannah asked.

  “There can be no peace until Israel fulfills her destiny to possess all of the territory that once belonged to King David and Solomon—from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

  Hannah broke her roll in half and began spreading it with margarine. “But what about all the Palestinians and Jordanians and Syrians who live in that territory?” she asked.

  “Israeli rule will improve their standard of living,” Moshe said, gesturing to the bountiful table spread before them.

  “At what price?” Hannah asked softly. “Surely you must realize that such a conquest would cause insurmountable problems. We can’t keep an entire population captive and expect them to be happy about it, no matter how many good things we provide for them. The Palestinians on the West Bank have taught us that lesson.”

  “If they don’t like it, they can move elsewhere. Let their brethren in Iraq or Saudi Arabia take them, as we have absorbed our own Jewish people from all over the world. This land is ours, and we will own all of it one day.”

  Abby glimpsed the passion of Moshe’s convictions in his reddening face, his tightly clenched hands.

  The table fell silent for a moment, then Moshe turned to Ari, who sat between Hannah and Abby. “I know what Hannah believes, but what about you, Ari? You must have fought in the last war . . . are you willing to trade our hard-won land for peace?”

  Ari stared at his empty plate for a moment, as if reluctant to speak his thoughts. He pushed it away from him before speaking. “Like you, I was also born in Israel—only I’m a third-generation Israeli. My ancestors were early Zionists who came here from Russia at the turn of the century. I have never known holocausts or pogroms. I have also never known peace. I grew up with the constant threat of Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights, and I slept in an underground bunker every night until I was twelve. When Israel won possession of the Heights, my village could sleep in safety for the first time. We must never give the Golan back, even for the sake of peace!”

  His words had become more and more passionate, and he paused for a moment to glance at Hannah, as if afraid he had offended her. Then he continued. “In 1973, three months after I graduated and began my military service, Israel was attacked again. It didn’t matter that I was a new recruit; every man was needed to fight, so I fought. After that it was the war in Lebanon, then the Intifada, then the Gulf War—and all that time the terrorism against our people has never stopped. I am tired of fighting. It is tragic that every Jewish child in Israel must learn to use a gun; horrifying that every child must live with the constant threat of terror—”

  He stopped abruptly. He had been looking at Ivana as he spoke the last sentence, but now he gazed down at his plate again, biting his bottom lip. When he finally looked up, his eyes met Moshe’s. “I don’t agree with you that we should go to war to win more land. I only want to live on the land my ancestors cleared and fought for and are buried on. It is the Palestinians who don’t want peace, the enemies all around us who want to possess what we’ve worked so hard to build. All the years I was growing up, they wanted to push every last Jew into the sea, wipe out the nation of Israel. They rejected partition, refused to recognize our existence, attacked us all over the world—even at peaceful events like the Olympics. And now they say peace. The world can hardly blame us for being suspicious. I will never believe that our enemies want peace.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, and for the remainder of the meal, Ari was silent and withdrawn. The gradual thawing of his emotions that had begun after Dr. Voss’s departure seemed to abruptly shift into reverse until Ari was frozen inside himself once again. Abby could understand his anger and bitterness—they were so much like her own. But what she couldn’t understand as she walked home that night with him and Hannah was why Ari’s heart had been hardened by his enemies, while Hannah’s remained untouched by hatred.

  TEL DEGANIA EXCAVATION—1999

  Abby knelt in the dirt, carefully shoveling one tirea full of it at a time into plastic buckets for Marwan to haul away. The Palestinian worker stood above her on the top of the balk, wiping the sweat from his dark face with his T-shirt.

  “You’re too efficient for me, Marwan,” Abby said, smiling up at him. “You’re hauling it faster than I can dig it.”

  “Perhaps that is because I am being paid and you are not,” he said with a grin.

  “Yes, or perhaps it’s because you’re ten years younger and in ten times better shape than I am!” she laughed. Abby had developed a warm friendship with Marwan Ashrawi as they had worked together for the past week, especially after discovering that he was also a high school teacher during the winter months. The stories he told about his students sounded remarkably similar to her own, regardless of the cultural differences. Marwan taught physical education, which explained his trim body and muscular build—not to mention his tireless endurance. His deep-set black eyes and thick black brows conveyed a wide range of expressions, from impish laughter as he joked with Abby about his students, to sullen withdrawal whenever Ari appeared.

  “Pah! You American women worry too much about getting fat,” Marwan said. “Palestinian men like their women to have a bit of meat on their bones.”

  “Yeah? Well, American men certainly don’t.” She couldn’t help thinking of Lindsey Cook, a slender blonde. Mark’s rejection had hurt Abby the most, as if he thought of her as a used car, easily traded in on a newer model. Abby hoped she had kept the bitterness out of her voice. “Hey, you can climb down here and help me dig, Marwan, if you’re tired of waiting,” she joked.

  The smile instantly disappeared from Marwan’s face. “Dr. Bazak would not like that. He would not trust me to do it correctly.”

  Abby wondered if the animosity between Ari and Marwan was personal or racial, but she was afraid to ask. She stood and passed the bucketful of dirt up to him, then watched him amble away with another wheelbarrow load. Abby was growing weary of dirt. She had it in every wrinkle and pore of her skin, in her hair, her eyes, her ears, and her throat. It mixed with her sweat and ran in muddy rivulets down her face as she labored without shade under the blazing Israeli sun. Hannah was right—archaeology certainly wasn’t as glamorous as Hollywood portrayed it.

  “Take a break, everyone,” Ari suddenly called. “Dr. Rahov wants to show you what we found over here.”

  Abby took a long drink of tepid water from her canteen before joining Hannah and her co-workers in another part of the rambling villa. As soon as Abby saw the small outer chamber, the short set of stairs leading down to a deep plastered hole, she recognized the now familiar shape. “Another mikveh?” she said aloud. “Is this the culture that coined the phrase, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’?”

  Hannah laughed. “We’ve seen our share of ritual baths, it’s true—but I’ll bet you’ve never seen this before! I know I haven’t!” She had somehow climbed all the way down into the chamber where people once immersed themselves. Now she stepped to one side, gesturing to a pile of rusty triangular-shaped metal wedges, about two or three inches long.

  “Those look like arrowheads,” one of the students said.

  “Good guess. That’s exactly what they are. Quite an arsenal of them, too, I would say. And do you see how there are several different sizes and shapes mixed together? That’s because the Romans used troops from all over their empire as archers.”

  “Why would the Romans hide arrows in the bathtub?” another student asked. Hannah ge
stured to Ari, allowing him to explain.

  “The Romans wouldn’t,” he said. “These weapons were probably stolen from the Romans and hidden here by Zealots.”

  “Were they like Palestinian terrorists, Dr. Bazak?” one of the students asked.

  Ari seemed thrown off balance by the question. When he didn’t reply, Hannah quickly said, “No, the Zealots were first-century Jews, freedom fighters who felt that only God should rule over the Jewish nation. Their ‘zeal’ was for the Lord. In fighting to overthrow the Romans, they saw their political resistance as a religious war, and they expected the promised Messiah to be a political leader. The movement started after the first Roman procurator in A.D. 6 held a census for taxation, inciting a rebellion. One of Jesus’ disciples was a Zealot, but Jesus wasn’t. He told Pilate, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ and He urged His followers to love their enemies.”

  At the breakfast break, Abby sought out Hannah and sat down beside her in the shade of the canvas canopy. She was surrounded by college students as usual, patiently answering their questions and listening as they told her about themselves. It was clear how very much Hannah enjoyed being with young people, and when Ari joined them, Abby recalled Hannah saying that he had been one of her first students.

  “Seriously, Dr. Rahov, what is with all these baths we keep finding?” one of the girls asked.

  Hannah smiled and set her paper plate on her lap. She always needed her hands free in order to talk. “According to the Law of Moses, ritual cleansing was necessary whenever something caused a person to become ‘unclean’—contact with a dead body, certain illnesses, and so forth. Religious Jews today still have ritual baths. And bathing is also necessary before worship. Remember the baths we saw below the Temple Mount?”

  Abby swallowed a bite of tomato and joined the discussion. “You know, there is an old custom in America of taking a Saturday night bath before Sunday morning church. I wonder if the mikveh is the origin of it?”