Wings of Refuge

by Lynn Austin

  “I don’t want to think about anything happening to you,” she said.

  “I know, Leah.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “This is just a precaution. Hopefully this is the last trip I’ll have to make to Caesarea. From now on we’ll live here quietly, just the three of us.”

  Pain shot through Leah’s heart like an arrow at his words. Reuben must have seen it in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry that I haven’t given you a son . . . to inherit all—”

  “Haven’t I told you, countless times, that it doesn’t matter?”

  “It matters to me. Why hasn’t God answered my prayers, Reuben? Why have I never become pregnant?”

  He lifted the jar from her hands and set it on the shelf behind him again so he could hold her close. “Listen to me,” he said. “We live in violent times. The sicarii dagger-men have been terrorizing Judea, committing murders and assassinations, kidnapping high officials and their sons. I couldn’t bear it if they kidnapped one of our children, and neither could you. The Holy One knows what’s best. Let’s trust Him, all right? He knows what our future holds—we don’t.”

  Leah rested her head on the curve of his chest, drawing comfort from its solidity and from the familiar scent of him. “Nathaniel thinks we’re living in the end times,” she said.

  “I think he’s right. We should be prepared for it as Yeshua warned. He said when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies the Temple would be destroyed, and times would be difficult for pregnant women and nursing mothers, remember? Maybe that’s why you . . .”

  “You’re right,” she said, “I’m sorry.” Then, remembering that tomorrow he would leave for Caesarea and be gone for two weeks, she held him even tighter. “I wish you would let me go with you.”

  “You know why that’s impossible, Leah. Travel is becoming much too dangerous these days. Besides, wouldn’t you prefer to watch the workers finish your floor?”

  Reuben had commissioned a new mosaic floor for the reception room as an anniversary present after Leah had admired a similar one in Sepphoris. It fascinated her to watch the artisans turn piles of multicolored stones into a magnificent design. There were rolling waves along the edge in shades of green and blue that reminded her of the waves that washed against the great breakwaters in Caesarea. Above them, in testimony to their faith, she had asked the artist to add the believers’ symbol of a fish and the Greek letters that stood for Yeshua the Messiah.

  “Will you be back in time to break bread for the Sabbath?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. You know I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  But the sun was setting two weeks later, the Sabbath was beginning, and Reuben still hadn’t returned from Caesarea. Wherever he was, Leah knew that he would now have to stay there an extra day, since travel wasn’t allowed on the Sabbath. Their fellow believers had all arrived for the service, which was held in the villa each week, but Leah remained in the doorway, watching for her husband.

  Miriam rested her hand on Leah’s shoulder. “It’s time to light the Sabbath candles.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She looked down the deserted street one last time, but Reuben’s traveling party was nowhere in sight. That meant another day of waiting, another night spent alone. Leah hated the lonely nights when Reuben was away. Disappointed, she finally closed the door and went inside.

  The others were already gathered around the table, seated on cushions on the newly completed floor. Everyone was admiring the mosaic, especially the fish symbols. Leah showed them where she had added Reuben’s name in one corner for a surprise. She couldn’t wait to show it to him.

  When it was time to read the Word of God, someone asked to hear the copy of the letter the apostle Peter had written to encourage believers in these difficult times. Usually Reuben was the one who read from the scrolls, but tonight Ehud stood to read, instead. Suddenly Leah felt the Holy Spirit’s nudge, making her sit up and take notice. This is important, He seemed to say. This is for you. The hair on her arms stood on end.

  “‘As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices . . . you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.’”

  The words seemed to be preparing Leah for something-she didn’t know what. They seemed to be describing the new temple God would build after the old one was destroyed, a new priesthood that she was to be part of, declaring His praises.

  Leah closed her eyes as the believers bowed for prayer. She tried to pray for Reuben, to pray that he was safe for the night somewhere, that he would return home safely tomorrow. But the peace she usually felt when she prayed never came. Instead, Leah felt a yawning emptiness and a fear that could not be measured.

  THE GOLANL HOTEL, ISRAEL—1999

  Abby was rinsing out her laundry in the bathroom sink one evening when the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver with dripping hands and recognized Hannah’s excited voice on the other end.

  “Abby, I found it! Remember I told you that name on the mosaic floor was familiar—Reuben ben Johanan? I figured out why! Come over if you’re free, and I’ll show you. It’s unbelievable!”

  Abby left the clothing to soak and hurried to Hannah’s bungalow. She smiled when she saw the mess Hannah had made with storage boxes, papers, and bound field reports strewn all over the room. Hannah seemed oblivious to the clutter as she waved a sheaf of papers in triumph.

  “I knew it had to be a first-century dig if it was the same Reuben, so I narrowed the search down to all the ones where we found first-century documents or inscriptions. That still left quite a few, but here it is! Gamla! We found a cache of documents belonging to Reuben ben Johanan during the excavation at Gamla in 1978! And wait until you hear this! One of the documents was a marriage contract between Reuben and a woman named Leah!”

  “Wow!” Abby exclaimed. “Do you suppose it could be our Leah?”

  “It’s just too incredible to be a coincidence. The contract says they were both from Degania.”

  Stunned, Abby searched in vain for a chair that wasn’t piled with papers, then finally sat on Hannah’s rumpled bed. “Where was this other dig? Is it near here?”

  “Yes. Gamla is here on the Golan Heights, only twenty kilometers or so from Degania. It was a well-fortified Jewish stronghold during the Roman invasion of A.D. 67, so whoever carried Reuben ben Johanan’s documents there probably fled to Gamla for refuge when the Romans attacked. Josephus describes Gamla in his book The Jewish War. I’ll let you borrow my copy if I can find it.” She rifled through the piles of books, searching as she talked. “Ah! Here it is.” She brandished a well-worn volume.

  “Josephus was a famous Jewish historian, wasn’t he?” Abby said as she accepted the book.

  “Or a famous Jewish traitor,” Hannah said, laughing. “It depends on who you ask. He was born Joseph ben Mattathias, the son of a wealthy priest. When the war with the Romans broke out, he was given command of all the Jewish forces in Galilee. Of course, the Romans slaughtered his army, but Joseph somehow managed to safely surrender, then he wormed his way into the Roman general’s favor. He was technically a prisoner when he began writing his eyewitness account of the war, including the battle at Gamla. He later changed his name to Josephus.”

  “When did you say you took part in that dig?”

  “I was there for three summers, from 1976 until 1978.” Hannah also searched for a place to sit, then finally scooped up the papers from one of the chairs and dumped them onto the floor. “I worked at Gamla at a very important time in my life,” she said, her voice growing soft and wistful. “That dig will always be very special to me. I almost gave up archaeology—almost gave up on life, in fact—until Gamla. . . .”

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL�
�OCTOBER 6, 1973

  Hannah sat in the synagogue pew with eight-year-old Rachel, trying to recite the prayers that were part of the ritual of Yom Kippur. Her eyes kept straying from the prayer book to her husband, Jake, seated on the raised platform in front. He had been chosen as one of the six men called to read the Torah on this, the holiest day of the year. To Hannah, he seemed even more handsome at age thirty-six than he had been when they’d met twelve years ago. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him. When Jake looked up and caught her gaze resting on him, Hannah winked. He tried to give her a stern look—she was outrageous to flirt with him during a holy ceremony—but she saw the corner of his mouth twitch as he looked away, suppressing a grin.

  Yom Kippur had begun the evening before at sundown. As with the Sabbath and all the other holidays, Jake took the celebration very seriously. This was a day of repentance, a twenty-four-hour fast in which worshipers searched their hearts before approaching God to confess their sins. A deep stillness had blanketed the city as the three of them had walked together to the synagogue on this holy day, a peace that Hannah felt to the very marrow of her bones.

  When the first interruption came—a messenger tiptoeing down the aisle to beckon to one of the men—Hannah thought little of it. But after four or five men had been interrupted while at prayer and handed notes, she began to wonder what on earth was going on. The atmosphere of solemnity cracked, then shattered as one by one, more and more men began to collect their families and leave. After one of the messages was brought to Daniel Ben-Ami, seated beside Jake on the platform, Jake also rose and strode down the aisle, motioning for Hannah and Rachel to follow him.

  “What’s going on?” Hannah asked as soon as they stepped outside onto the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out. I saw the papers they handed to Daniel. They were mobilization orders.”

  Hannah said no more, knowing that Jake would be reluctant to voice any fears or speculations in front of Rachel. As they hurried home, she tried to recall if anything had appeared in the news yesterday that might have prompted this. She could think of nothing except an incident involving Jews somewhere in Europe—certainly nothing that would require some of Israel’s reserve troops to be mobilized.

  “Abba, why are there so many cars on the street?” Rachel asked. “No one ever drives on Yom Kippur.”

  “I don’t kn—” Jake’s words were drowned out by the sudden screaming wail of an air raid siren. It was so close that Rachel shrieked and leaped into her father’s arms in fright. Hannah felt her own heart leaping in her chest as they stood frozen in shock on the sidewalk.

  “Do you suppose someone hit the wrong button by accident?” she shouted above the din. “They wouldn’t hold an air raid drill on Yom Kippur, would they?”

  Jake shook his head, bewildered. “It’s not just one siren. Listen—they’re going off all over the city!”

  He grabbed Hannah’s hand and they began to run, with Rachel still clinging to Jake for dear life. Hannah unlocked their apartment door with trembling fingers and raced inside to switch on the radio. Nothing. Stations didn’t broadcast on Yom Kippur.

  “We should go downstairs to the shelter,” Jake said, “just in case it’s a real air raid.”

  “Abba, I’m scared,” Rachel whimpered.

  “I know, love.”

  But by the time they reached the basement, the sirens stopped as abruptly as they had started. Hannah’s knees felt rubbery as she climbed the stairs again. She left the radio turned on, the static hissing like steam while they waited.

  “Are we going back to the synagogue?” Rachel asked.

  “No, I think we’d better stay here until we find out what the sirens were for. If everything is all right, we’ll go back this evening for Neilah, the closing.” He settled on the sofa to wait, and Rachel snuggled beside him.

  “I thought you were the best reader in the whole synagogue, Abba,” she said. “Mr. Ben-Ami mumbles.”

  Jake smiled as he smoothed his daughter’s dark hair, tangled from their wild run. “Why, that’s very kind of you to say so—but you wouldn’t be biased at all, would you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Playing favorites,” Hannah said irritably. She didn’t understand how Jake could sit there so serenely when it was obvious that something terrible was happening. She got up from her chair and started toward the kitchen, thinking she might keep busy by fixing something to eat, then she remembered that they were fasting. Jake gave her a pleading look when he caught her eye, shaking his head slightly, as if asking her to remain calm for Rachel’s sake. Hannah sat down again.

  “Did you understand what the passages meant that we were reading?” Jake asked Rachel a moment later.

  “Some of them. Not the part about those goats, though.”

  “Let me see if I can explain it.” Jake started to rake his fingers through his own hair, then stopped when he realized that he still wore his yarmulke on his head. “Every Yom Kippur we rehearse for the day when we will face God’s judgment. We think about death by fasting and denying ourselves all of the usual pleasures of life for twenty-four hours. Then we confess our sins and repent—which means we turn away from them—and we promise to live better by God’s strength.

  “During the time when there was a Temple, the priests would lay their hands on the two goats’ heads, symbolizing that the goats now carried all of the people’s sin. One goat was sacrificed and its blood was brought before God’s seat of mercy. The other one, the scapegoat, was set free in the Judean wilderness. By His grace, God allowed people to transfer their sins onto a sacrifice so they could be forgiven.”

  “Why don’t we do the part with the goats anymore?”

  “Because we no longer have a Temple.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “The Romans destroyed it in A.D. 70,” Hannah told her, “when they destroyed Jerusalem.” She rose again, too restless to stay seated, and peered out of the window at the street. There shouldn’t have been any traffic on Yom Kippur, but there was. More than when they had walked home from the synagogue.

  “Can’t we build another temple?” Rachel asked.

  “Not on the original site, sweetie,” Hannah said, sitting again. “The Muslims built the Dome of the Rock on our Temple Mount.” She didn’t realize how tense she was until the radio suddenly sprang to life, startling her.

  “This is a special bulletin. The sirens are not a false alarm. If they sound again, everyone must go to their shelters immediately.” The station began to play a recording of classical music—the slow, mournful strains of Beethoven.

  “Why? Tell us what is going on!” Hannah shook the radio as if it were a stubborn person who refused to talk.

  “Hannah . . .” Jake said gently.

  She heard Rachel draw a deep breath, then slowly exhale. “Abba, is it okay to miss the rest of the Yom Kippur service?” she asked. Like her father, Rachel would try to keep her fear at bay by talking of other things. “Will we still be forgiven, even though we left early?”

  “Yes, God knows if we’re really sorry for our sins, and He forgives us. Would you like me to read the part of the service that we’re missing? The Haftara, or prophetic portion for this afternoon, is the book of Jonah.”

  Hannah felt like screaming as she listened to Jake calmly read the story of the reluctant prophet who was swallowed by a great fish. But it had the desired effect of keeping Rachel soothed and occupied while they waited.

  “I never did understand why they always read the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur,” Hannah said irritably when he finished.

  “Because repentance and forgiveness aren’t just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles, as well,” Jake explained. “God said that all nations would be blessed through Abraham. Do you realize that Jonah was sent to preach to Israel’s bitterest enemy, Assyria? The story reminds us that God established His kingdom in His people so that we would bring His redemption to the whole earth—even to the peo
ple who hate us.”

  “Impossible,” Hannah said. “Our enemies don’t even want to admit we exist, much less listen to us.”

  At exactly 3:30, the music stopped and the radio crackled with another special bulletin. Hannah held her breath while she listened. “Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has been attacked by both Egypt and Syria. Partial mobilization has been ordered—”

  It was all she heard as the air raid sirens suddenly began to wail again. Jake scrambled to his feet, pulling Rachel with him. “Down to the shelter!” he yelled above the sound of the siren, rising and falling like a woman’s scream. Hannah grabbed the radio, yanking the plug from the wall. No one spoke as they huddled in the gloomy basement with their white-faced neighbors. Ten minutes later, the all-clear sounded.

  “This is nerve-wracking!” the man who lived across the hall from them groaned as they trudged back upstairs to their apartments. “When do you suppose we’ll find out what’s happening?”

  “You’d better keep your radio on,” Jake told him. “I imagine our communications are in chaos because of the holiday.”

  Outside their living room window, Hannah saw three vehicles packed with soldiers racing down the street. A news bulletin asked that all nonessential traffic keep off the main roads. Another announcement stated that an emergency hospital had been opened for military casualties. Hannah and Jake looked at each other. If there were military casualties, the situation must be very serious. Coded mobilization orders were being broadcast off and on, in between musical selections. The three of them huddled around the kitchen table in numb silence, waiting for the next news report, listening for Jake’s coded orders.

  After what seemed an eternity, there was another bulletin at 4:20. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are receiving reports of fierce fighting in the Sinai. The Egyptians have crossed the canal at several points and are on the East Bank. There is fighting on land and in the air.”