Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest

by Roger Herst

  Major Zabronski studied the exposed portion of the skull where the pathologist was poking a stainless steel scalpel. "The intake officer wrote that vultures led his tribesmen to find him. Any ballistics on the bullet yet?"

  "Absolutely. You're not going to like this, major. The slug was 9-mm, probably from an Uzi."

  "No, I don't like that at all," Zabronski answered. "Thank God we're not the only bad guys using Uzis these days. Cause of death?"

  "People don't usually die from a single bullet, especially if it hasn't entered a vital organ like the jaw. But they can go into shock and bleed to death."

  "You're certain he's Bedouin?"

  "His neck was wrapped with a white kafia. The braided 'agal is definitely Negev Bedouin. Look at the color of his skin. Alabaster white. Desert people never expose their torsos to direct sunlight. And his teeth are badly decayed for a young man. That means he had little contact with modern dentistry. When I finish my report, what should we do with the body?"

  Zabronski angled away from the table, saying, "My orders are to return it to his tribesmen. I can tell you, Doctor, I'm not looking forward to this. I must make an official condolence call. And there's nothing worse than sitting in a stuffy mag'ad accepting the hospitality of a Bedouin sheik. We all know they hate our guts, but their culture requires them to be hospitable and feed all visitors, including Jews, who they particularly despise. And for my part, I can't stand roasted sheep testicles and their syrupy coffee. The delivery of a body that should take a few minutes will take the better part of a day."

  "Will they help you find the killer?"

  "To an extent, but when we do, they won't want us to punish him. Bedouin have their own brand of vengeance. The minute I return this corpse, I'm setting into motion another killing. Who's exactly? That's never clear because it's not necessarily the original killer. And these days, their young stallions study in the universities and pass themselves off as city Arabs. Revenge can have a long-reach, far from the desert."

  "Can't you do anything to stop this?"

  "Not unless the government is willing to endure a Bedouin rebellion. These are proud people who know only one brand of justice—their own."

  "So you'll go slow tracking down the killer." The doctor flashed a conspiratorial smile in Zabronski's direction.

  The policeman started to reply but stopped himself, thinking it unwise to disclose his department's not-so-pretty law-enforcement practices in the Occupied Territory.

  From the morgue, Zabronski made a second official visit. Galya Bar Jehoshua, with the insignia of a colonel in the Israel Defense Force on her shoulders, met him in her Jerusalem office with a handshake as strong as his. The police officer noted her tiny, but somewhat heavy, figure, immediately accrediting her success in the IDF to brains rather than brawn. She dropped back into her chair and motioned for him to take a seat opposite her, removing a pair of reading glasses she had perched on her forehead. A young female enlistee brought coffee in fired clay mugs.

  Bar Jehoshua's uniform was pressed and starched. Though she outranked Zabronski, she conveyed a feminine softness as she steered the conversation to a report balanced in her hands as if she were testing it upon the scales of justice. "A lot going on out in the desert these days," she said, observing Zabronski. "I want to ask you about this dead Bedouin. Don't these people usually bury their dead quickly?"

  "Usually," Zabronski answered. "This fellow was probably a shepherd working some distance from his tribal encampment. My pathologist thinks he bled to death hours after being shot."

  Bar Jehoshua dropped the file to her desk and leaned forward before saying, "That's why I asked you to come here. The army and police don't always cooperate the way they should, but on this matter I'd like you to be in the loop. We think there's more to this than a simple murder. One of our photo analysts working on drone flyovers discovered a suspicious car in the Qumran area three days before this Bedouin youth was brought in. When we studied photos from the previous days, we found it was a Hyundai SUV hidden under camouflage netting. Unfortunately, by the time we realized what we were dealing with, it was gone. What does that suggest?"

  "Terrorists don't park their vehicles in the same place on consecutive nights. They like to move them around to confuse us. Perhaps the Hyundai belonged to an amateur archeologist scrounging around Qumran to get rich."

  "Possible," Bar Jehoshua said, “but I suspected terrorists, so I sent out a team with mountain climbing experience. My boys struck gold on the second day. An unexplored cave, only a half kilometer from where this victim was found."

  "I haven't read anything about a new cave at Qumran," Zabronski's voice betrayed his surprise.

  "And you won't. One word about this in the press and the desert will be swarming with treasure hunters. On their heels will follow legions of lawyers telling the IDF what it can do and what it can't. As soon as Orthodox members of the Cabinet learn about a new cave with archeological implications, they'll throw up barriers to all investigation. Then the prime minister's office will start issuing instructions to me."

  Like so many people who worked in the region, Zabronski was an amateur archeologist. "Nu? What's with this cave?"

  "Itamar Arad's people from the Antiquities Authority are working there as we speak. They're even more interested in keeping this secret than the army."

  "Any scrolls?" Zabronski pressed on with more than casual interest.

  "You know I can't answer that. What I can say is there was a tarpaulin camouflaging the entrance. And remains of a recent oil fire, so we know others were there before us. We discovered a hole in the tarp from a small-caliber bullet. We also found two slugs from an AK-47 and three from a 9-mm weapon embedded in the chalk wall. There might be a connection with your Bedouin."

  "Not my Bedouin, Galya. It's my job to investigate and I will, but I can tell you right now that I've got better things to do. These people don't enjoy us messing around in their business. Once I solved a homosexual murder in one of their camps. The tribe got hold of an Israeli lawyer and lodged a complaint with my superior officer. I was suspended for six months. I'm telling you, we're better off without this. These people don't need our help, thank you."

  "Have you no shame, Zvi?" she joked with an artificial grin. "Should it matter whether the victim is a Bedouin or a Jew? Isn't it our duty to bring all murderers to justice?"

  "Tell that to our Palestinian neighbors. And if I find the killer, will Arabs thank us for it?"

  "Perhaps not, but I'd like you to consider a link between the Qumran cave and your victim."

  "I will," he said and stood up to leave, thinking to himself that he had made no promise other than to roll the matter around in his mind. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he was finished with this case, the better.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHICAGO

  Silence. Nothing but blank silence, if that's what you call not receiving expected e-mail. Rabbi Gabrielle Lewyn stared at her computer screen with what had begun as hopeful waiting and dissolved over a period of three weeks into disappointment, frustration, and eventually, anger. On January 17, Tim Matternly had e-mailed her from Israel in a terse computerese he usually deplored. Normally, he insisted on using formal grammar, but this time he had abandoned such formalities, abbreviating whenever possible, as if in a great hurry. No capital letters or punctuation. His message said that he was pursuing the discovery of a lifetime and promised more details ASAP. But damned if nothing followed into the second week of February. Surely, she thought, he could have found a spare moment to tap out a few words. No one on the planet, even the president of the United States, is that busy. She wrote him daily, at first politely requesting and later demanding a response. He seldom refused what she asked, and his silence after announcing the discovery of a lifetime was particularly puzzling. A single explanation came to mind—Tim was in trouble.

  After several more days of frustration, feminine fears leached into her consciousness. Had he found another woman? That
was a major risk when living with a man without being married. Perhaps a younger lover had swept him off his feet. Such premonitions turned fearsome, then bitter. A half-dozen phone calls to Tim's apartment in Jerusalem produced no response, despite imploring messages left on his answering machine. Finally, the voice-mail ran out of memory. She resolved to wait another two days before taking the only course of action that promised a resolution, flying from Chicago to Israel.

  When Gabby Lewyn and Tim Matternly had first met as divinity students a dozen years before, they became secret lovers. Because at the time he was headed for a career in the Presbyterian ministry and she in the congregational rabbinate, they refused to let their relationship mature into a marital commitment. How time proved their thinking wrong! What they liked to remember as nothing more than a burst of hormonal puppy love continued off-and-on for seven years. They met secretly when they could, indulged themselves in wonderful lovemaking, fought, made love again, broke up, and then reunited, only to repeat the process. Each time they came together, they renewed a pledge: never, never to actually fall in love. Their game plan was for Gabby to find a Jewish husband and Tim, a Christian wife. When suitable new lovers arrived, a mere signal from the other would trigger an immediate end to their sexual relationship, if not their friendship. No hard feelings and no lingering sentimentalities. Just a treasure chest of wonderful memories.

  At the end of the seventh year, their resolve was tested in a Manhattan hotel. While waiting for Tim to arrive, Gabby brushed her teeth and blow dried her hair, which periodically required light coloring to refresh its natural brunette. During a previous rabbinical conference in St. Louis, she stole away from the meetings to shop in Union Station Mall. However out of character, she bought herself a diaphanous nightgown and see-through bra at Victoria’s Secret. Back in Washington, she tried them on before a full-length mirror, judging herself to look utterly ridiculous. It would take truckloads of seductive props to transform this self-conscious professional woman into anything resembling a sex kitten. But that night in New York, she wore them anyway.

  Tim Matternly saw things differently. "Ravishing," he declared once inside her room, as she revealed herself in see through lingerie. She stood high on her toes to kiss his bewhiskered chin. His arms interlocked with hers as she led him toward the bed where they sat.

  "When you called me on Wednesday, I was at dinner with a friend," Tim said.

  "If your friend is female, I don’t want to talk about her. I'll only get jealous."

  "A woman I’ve been dating for several months now."

  "Do you sleep with her? I wouldn’t like it, though I might be able to countenance a one night stand. But if you’re sleeping with her on a regular basis, I’ll find a bridge to jump off of. What are we talking about here in the Upper East Side? Queensboro? Or is it the Tri Boro? I always get them confused. So are you sleeping with her regularly, Tim?"

  He nodded to avoid actually saying that he was.

  Despite a determined effort to resist, Gabby's eyes glazed with tears. "She better be a great screw because I don’t want to give lessons."

  Tim’s voice dropped a half-octave and lost its customary joviality. "I've dreaded this moment. For all these years, I feared you making a similar speech to me. Once I had a nightmare that we were in a hotel room just like this, where you said how you had found a man who’s crazy about you, with a dick three inches longer than mine, someone rich, successful, and smarter than you, which is somewhere between a double and triple genius. In the nightmare, I’m the one looking for a bridge to jump off."

  Her eyes fell over painted toenails, then focused on the beginning of a bunion behind the big toe where her foot rubbed against the inside of her shoes.

  "But you don’t get off so easily," he continued. "You’ve managed to screw up every relationship I’ve had with other women. Each time I date someone and matriculate through the get to know you phase, I compare her with you and nobody matches up. So I invent excuses to end everything. What I always wanted was you and what I could never have has always been you. Sure, we make wonderful love. It’s always great until we separate. Then it feels like falling off a cliff. For years, I’ve known that if I couldn’t break this cycle, I’d have to commit myself to a loony bin. Sally’s my chance. I hope you understand that."

  She untangled her feet and rotated forward on her knees. Her nightgown fell open. With both hands, she held Tim’s head, drawing him close and caressing his eyes, once, twice, then smothering them with her lips. "Hey, sailor, what d’ya think of my new outfit?"

  "It barely covers the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known."

  "I appreciate that," she replied. "If I didn’t believe that we’d be in the same pickle a month from now, I’d strip off these shreds of nothing and jump you. But that would only make me cry and I don't want to. Timmy, you’re my witness to this extraordinary act of bravery. If anybody asks, tell them that Gabby Lewyn didn’t shed a single tear."

  He wanted to say something soothing, but nothing came to mind.

  "Forget about that bridge. When you leave, I’m going to sit on this bed until I fall asleep. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, I’m going get up and move on. No red eyes. No self pity."

  "We’ve prevented each other from finding new lovers; somebody will snap you up in an instant," Tim said, his eyes dropping to the bedspread.

  "Perhaps," she replied without conviction.

  Gabby let Tim walk out of her life, rationalizing that their romance had been destined to end the very moment it began. As the friend she promised to remain, she attended his wedding to Sally Goldsmith at the Central Presbyterian Church in New York City, hiding tears behind dark glasses. Two years later, by the time she learned that his marriage had floundered, she was herself a married woman.

  Eight years after their breakup—and after Gabby had lost her husband in an avoidable, and therefore thoroughly tragic, scuba diving accident at St. Lucia—she resigned as senior rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom in Washington D.C. and moved to Chicago. Her reentry into Tim Matternly's life caught him at a propitious moment, as if he had been waiting all the intervening years for her return. As in their past life together, she loved his humor in moments of stress, his passion for biblical history and, above all, his cooking. His artichokes, poached in hot, but not boiling, water to the perfect degree of tenderness, each leaf decoratively cut for easy pulling, and served with his secret mustard vinaigrette, sent her into culinary rapture. He, on the other hand, loved how her smile punched endearing dimples in her cheeks and how her eyes sparkled mischievously when she told tall stories. But mostly, he adored how she animated stagnant ideas and fashioned them into living adventures, always game to jump into situations way over her head.

  After enrolling in the department of biblical studies at the University of Chicago as a PhD candidate, she moved into his Hyde Park home with him, two blocks from Lake Michigan. When he was in Israel pursuing his research, she would travel to Jerusalem every other month to stay with him in a rented apartment on Ussishkin Street.

  While spiritual experiences drove fellow clerics into God's service, Gabby had entered rabbinical school not because she felt a calling, but because she wanted to help others. When she completed her studies six years later, the ministry she discovered waiting for her was not what she expected. Conducting an interminable parade of liturgy and officiating at what seemed to be an endless series of life-cycle events, from circumcisions and baby-namings to funerals, left her empty. Yet, however repetitive and exhausting this work, it proved a marvelous springboard into community service where her passion to help others was fulfilled. That was on the positive side. But wherever and whenever she ventured from her rabbinical duties into communal service, she found herself taking positions that many in her flock refused to support.

  When she first joined Congregation Ohav Shalom as the associate to Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Greer, her board of directors seemed pleased to have a dynamic female speaker on its pulpit, one willing to
say what was on her mind. A short honeymoon at Ohav Shalom ended abruptly when Rabbi Greer resigned and she was promptly promoted to his senior post. Soon after, she testified for an accused rapist in a trial that captured national attention. Most female members of her congregation were convinced the defendant was guilty as hell and that their rabbi had gone overboard to protect him, accusing her of a severe lack of judgment. Even friends in the feminist movement, to which she had been an ardent member, publicly denounced her.

  No sooner had people begun to forget when she was once again in the news, this time for leading the police in pursuit of a ring of gunrunners selling Saturday-night specials to high school kids in the District of Columbia. The Washington Post made her into a civic-minded hero, but the black community was outraged by a white do-gooder importing her values to their neighborhood. She might have survived these attacks had not a personal tragedy occurred. Her crusade ended in bloodshed when a close friend sacrificed his life to draw gunfire away from her. Despite Gabby's personal grief, the majority of her congregants felt that their rabbi had no business getting involved in law-enforcement. The accusation that she was ultimately responsible for the death of her friend was especially hurtful.

  In the wake of this tragedy, she turned her attentions to what she then believed to be the less controversial field of Jewish scholarship. Since her earliest days as a rabbinical student, she had been fascinated with the nature of prophetic revelation, the manner in which humans claim to communicate with God. Within a year, she was publishing articles in scholarly journals and newspapers, challenging the reliability of biblical texts. Her clerical colleagues, even the liberal ones in the rabbinate, reacted with public outrage, insisting that instead of helping the pious to understand what God sought of them, Rabbi Lewyn was undermining the authenticity of the Holy Writ.

  Controversy followed her from the pulpit to the halls of academia. On a televised panel of biblical experts, she struck out against Christian evangelicals who claimed to talk directly with God. "Anyone," she said in a quote that was widely disseminated in the press, "who says God talks to him or her personally is either lying or suffering from grand delusions."