Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest

by Roger Herst

  "It's not exactly my field, but I'm curious what inspired you to come up with that hypothesis."

  "It started when, as a rabbi, I suffered from the imposter syndrome. How could I purport to be an interpreter of God's will when I suspected major flaws in the mechanism by which He's supposed to communicate with His creatures?"

  Itamar's eyes focused on her with devoted concentration, entreating her to continue.

  "We don't understand how God, who is spiritual and non-corporeal, can talk with humans, who are just the opposite."

  "Sounds like heresy to me, Rabbi," he interrupted. "So where do you go with this?"

  Before she could answer, a waiter arrived with bread and dipping condiments rich in olive oil. Itamar refilled Gabby's wine glass.

  She had hoped to move him from the subject, but before she could, he said, "You mentioned in your article a school for prophets. That's a revolutionary notion if I ever heard one."

  "I don't think that people who claim to talk for God come out of the blue. If you study the lives of the Hebrew prophets, they seemed to have begun training for their missions early in life, like a student who attends an undergraduate academy, then goes on to a graduate school. In the Book of Samuel, prophets roam in clans and work in professional guilds. Guild members weren't born prophets. And prophecy didn't come to them like a thunderbolt in the night. Each prepared himself for a career interpreting God's will. Not all prophets studied the same curriculum but all had mentors who taught them their trade, so to speak. I'm working on this theme in my thesis."

  Itamar eased back in his chair and smiled with satisfaction. "It's hard to imagine that your rabbinical colleagues, to say nothing of countless mullahs and priests, will be thrilled with the idea."

  That's their problem, not mine," she giggled, succumbing to the effects of the alcohol. "I may not be popular in conventional circles, but I'm having a damn good time."

  "And so am I," he said. "Listening to you, I hear your passion, and I admire people with passion for their work."

  The conversation about prophets trailed off when the main course arrived. As they began eating, she observed how well he handled the cutlery and said, "South African table manners, I presume. Your mother must have trained you before coming to Israel."

  "We don't lose our identities here, you know."

  "Why did you make aliyah?" Gabby asked a question that she had found to provide insight into Israelis born in the Diaspora. Tzabras, native born Israelis, accepted Israel as their birthright and were, in that respect, less interesting than those who made an active choice to immigrate.

  "I had to," he said with a trace of remorse in his voice.

  "Did you leave your family in Africa?" "Only what was left of it. My sister had already moved to San Francisco and my eldest brother to Melbourne." "Is Arad your family name?" "I grew up as Stephen Kornfeld and changed it to Itamar a year after making aliyah."

  Gabby leaned forward, eager to ask more, but feared invading his privacy. Curiosity won the brief struggle.

  "Why did you leave?"

  Itamar absentmindedly stopped chewing and placed his fork on the edge of his plate as if to indicate that it was a long story. "When I was a kid, my father was in the clothing business in Joburg and operated a series of small shops located in the tribal areas of the Eastern Cape, catering exclusively to natives. He employed more than sixty indigenous people, mostly Xhosas. When I wasn't in school, I would travel around the countryside helping him. I loved the local languages and learned to speak reasonably good Tsi-Xhosa and a bit less fluently, Zulu."

  "A polyglot, along with your archeological skills, I see," Gabby said. "It must have made you quite valuable."

  "On the contrary. It was my downfall. When I was drafted into the army, I didn't want to serve in a stupid, ill-conceived border war in Angola. I made the mistake of letting my officers in the army know that I spoke Tsi-Xhosa and Zulu, hoping for a job as an interpreter. They transferred me to an intelligence company, which wasn't bad for the first few months. But I was later put into a special unit whose job was to stir up tribal conflict between Xhosa and Zulu. The government's policy was to divide and rule by keeping the tribes fighting each other, so they wouldn't band together to overthrow white rule. We did what you Americans call 'dirty tricks' to convert simple folks who were originally suspicious of each other into outright enemies."

  Gabby hid her dismay by saying, "I can't imagine you enjoyed that."

  "I hated it. So I leaked information about my unit to a Jewish classmate who worked with the Liberal Party in Johannesburg. This information got into the papers and my friend, Yacob, was imprisoned. His girlfriend told me she didn't know what Yacob revealed when interrogated, but if my name came up, I was certain to be arrested. I deserted the army, using my contacts in Dad's clothing business to make my way to Mozambique, and from there to Nairobi, where I went to the Israel embassy. Aliyah wasn't a choice. It was a necessity."

  "And your parents in Johannesburg?"

  "They came here later, but were too old to adjust, so they immigrated to Perth, Australia, where good friends owned a small restaurant and offered them partnership in the business. My father died four years ago. My mother's still in Perth." Gabby canted her head in a gesture of understanding, for the first time issuing a smile that was almost flirtatious. "You seem quite comfortable here. Had I not gone into the rabbinate, I might have been happy to make aliyah. But by the time it started to make sense, it was too late. There's no way for a female rabbi to make a living in this country."

  "You can get a job teaching. With your education, the field's open."

  "How about becoming an antiquities investigator?" she asked playfully.

  "It works for me. I stopped trying to become a famous archeologist and now protect the artifacts others discover. At one time, I wanted nothing more than to be part of an exploratory team, but I've made peace with an administrative role. The downside is that nobody likes a policeman. In the trade, I'm more feared than respected."

  She didn't feel like commenting on that observation, so asked, "And your family? Do they get as thrilled by the past as you?"

  Itamar's eyes abruptly dropped.

  When he failed to answer, she said, "I'm sorry for probing. It's none of my business."

  "That's not true," he said, lifting his eyes and snapping with a tone bordering on hostility. "Everything that happens in this country is everybody else's business. We're all caged here because our ancestors once lived on the same real estate. Immigrants with little hope of living normally in the Diaspora, survivors from the Holocaust, victims of the Arabs. The past has ensnared all of us."

  "This is the first resentment I've heard from you."

  "Sorry. Every morning when I look into the mirror shaving, I pledge not to become embittered. That would only compound one tragedy with another."

  "How wise," she commented.

  "Not wise, just practical. My wife, Becky, and my daughter, Gila, were guests at a Bar Mitzvah celebration at the Palace Hotel at Netanya. I was on business in Paris. Terrorists from Tulkarem blew themselves up in the middle of the dance floor. Gila was killed instantly. Becky died in the hospital a day after I rushed home to her bedside."

  This disclosure sent a chill of remorse through Gabby. She said what sounded to her to be feeble. "I'm so, so very sorry."

  "Don't be. We can't afford to feel sorry for ourselves. We're just disgusted. In South Africa, I learned that in such conflicts, everybody loses. No winners. Not a single one. Perhaps that's why I treasure the past. It's my refuge."

  Gabby did something that astonished her. She reached across the table and patted her hand on top of his to make physical contact. "Mine, too, Itamar," she said. "Sometimes I think that those of us who can't stomach the present live in the past."

  He laughed without humor. "A refuge for the emotionally crippled. No one with a sane mind would choose to live there."

  "Why is that?"

  "The good old times were a
s lousy as the present. No, they were worse."

  They were drinking coffee at the end of the meal when Itamar came around to questions he had wanted to ask her at the beginning, but had postponed. "Once I had breakfast with Tim in Jerusalem and we had lunch together in London. I have a hard time understanding what would make him into a thief, other than the usual explanation of greed. Enlighten me."

  "I can't," she said.

  "So why protect him? When I left you in the cave this morning, you had a choice to crawl into Chamber A on the left, or B on the right. Which did you choose?"

  She wondered where he was going with this, but answered, "I didn't want to miss anything so I went first into B, then A. Why do you ask?"

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and studied Gabby's eyes as if peering behind them into her brain. After an awkward silence, he said, "Did you notice on the floorboard of Tim's Hyundai a plastic Ziploc bag?"

  She wagged her head negatively, searching her pockets in which to bury her hands and counter the tremor that was certain to come.

  "We found a Ziploc like it in Chamber B and concluded that just as he had left a Ziploc in his car, he dropped one in the cave. That's damning evidence against him."

  She said nothing, trying to conceal alarm.

  "I had one of my team plant a replacement Ziploc in Chamber B for you to find. Why didn't you tell me about it?"

  "Isn't it obvious. I know it looks bad. And I can't explain what's happened. But I know something about Tim you apparently don't."

  "Neu? Tell me."

  "However terrible things look, Tim is no criminal. Someday you'll learn that I'm right."

  "Very noble, but stupid. Harboring a criminal is a serious crime in this country. Stealing historical artifacts as bad as high treason. You'd better start thinking of Gabrielle Lewyn and not Tim Matternly."

  "Easy for you to say."

  "No, God damn it, it isn't easy for me to say at all, Gabrielle. First, I'm going to lose my job over this, one of the few things in my life I've really enjoyed. But I'm pragmatic. Antiquities directors come and go, and I've had a good run at the job. You say it's easy. No, it isn't. I've lost my wife and child, the most precious people in my life. In my gut, there's an empty space that refuses to stop aching. And now I'm sitting here enjoying dinner with an attractive, accomplished woman, knowing that soon she's about to lose someone she loves. And I don't seem capable of preventing it. Make no mistake, friend, it isn't easy at all."

  To help settle their emotions, they took an after-dinner stroll through the medieval artisans' district of Yemin Moshe where streetlamps cast enchanting shadows on the walls of limestone apartments surrounded by flowering bougainvillea and oleander. For a brief moment, their differences succumbed to the charm of this mystical enclave. When they later arrived at the Ussishkin Street apartment, she thanked him for the dinner and more importantly, his concern for her, then turned to mount stairs to her front door. Itamar stopped her with a gentle tug, saying, "I can see how you worry."

  "Yes," she responded.

  "You have beautiful eyes that lie to me when you talk."

  She said nothing, embarrassed by her transparency.

  "I told you before that I must soon report on Qumran to my boss to set in motion my downfall. You can imagine how I dread this. Tomorrow morning Major Zabronski and I will meet an important government official. I'd like you to come along. It might put you into a more cooperative mood."

  "If I can be helpful," she said. "Are we seeing the prime minister?" she made a bad joke from nerves, not wit.

  "No," he said in a tone lacking all humor. "Before Ezra Raviv became prime minister, I pressed an antiquities indictment against his son. He's never forgiven me. Everybody knows that once on Raviv's shit list you stay there for life."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  From Jerusalem's Damascus Gate, it was an easy walk for Tim to the Orthodox district of Mea She'arim, a crowded cluster of dilapidated two and three-story apartment structures with facades of hand-chipped Jerusalem limestone. Its streets were crowded with thickly bearded Hasidim shuffling along in heavy dark coats and corpulent, unstylish women, many pushing baby carriages while pregnant. In Tim's imagination, this scene that could be from Eastern Europe, not modern Israel, belonged to the Seventeenth not the Twenty-First century. He followed Haneviim to Straus Street, praying that he would remember how to find Rabbi Zechariah Schreiber's apartment house. Since the publication of his book on fragments from the Dead Sea six years before, he had had no reason to visit the aging Talmud scholar. Suddenly, Rabbi Schreiber was once again essential.

  Tim's memory played games with him. One building in Mea She'arim looked like another. The old fascia blended into a continuum, clouding his recall. Still, he knew the exact address, 46 Haydam Street, Apartment Gimel. A question to a young yeshiva student, with an adolescent beard and a wide-brimmed homburg too large for his head, identified the street. Addresses were poorly marked, if at all. Tim had to backtrack to find number 46.

  After several knocks, he was about to give up. A final rap brought Zechariah Schreiber to the door. The old man cautiously opened it only a crack. It took him a few long moments to recognize Tim through moist eyes that could barely focus behind thick glasses. The door closed to free a chain bolt. In the doorway, Tim observed his old friend, dramatically aged over the intervening years. A warm smile lit up the bearded face as the rabbi tugged Tim's arm, ushering him into the vestibule heavy with stagnant air. When he failed to release his hold, it seemed at first a gesture of affection. But Tim soon realized the rabbi was relying upon him for balance. Schreiber led him through an apartment so crowded it was nearly impossible to move. Books were everywhere except on the floor, which, to a devout student of Torah, would have been sacrilegious. Tim also came to understand that Schreiber leaned on him for more than his balance. The man could barely see.

  A musty stench of mildew and book rot emanating from thousands of leather bound Talmudic commentaries filled Schreiber's five-room apartment. Awareness that the rabbi seemed to be decaying along with his books engendered in Tim a profound nostalgia. The scholar and his sacred volumes, probably older than he, were relics from a lost age few had reason to remember in modern times.

  The rabbi's soft voice was barely audible. While he admitted that his days were coming to an end, what life he had left he attributed to a gift from the Almighty. The death of his lifelong spouse, Micah, had dramatically altered his daily routine. His eldest son, Ariel, lived in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, but, in Schreiber's words, had abandoned the faith, which Tim assumed meant not that he had lost his belief in a heavenly power, but something more modest—that he had abandoned the strict observance of the Sabbath and a kosher diet. A daughter lived in Crown Heights, New York, and his youngest son, whom he had not seen for more than two decades, in Montevideo, halfway around the world. During Micah's decline before death, she had prevailed on Ariel to keep in touch with his father. For a few years, he made obligatory visits to the Schreiber residence, but after his mother's death, no longer bothered.

  Tim and Rav Schreiber had originally met nine years before. At the time, Tim had become bored with conducting seminars at the University and searched for a new challenge. He found this in the cult of the Essenes, left-wingers who abandoned life in Roman-occupied Judea for a simpler, purer existence in the nearby mountains.

  Whether Jesus was an actual member of this Essene society or simply an onlooker, the similarity between their philosophies could not be ignored. The collection of fragmentary material taken from Caves IV and V at Qumran in the mid-1950s and previously unstudied and untranslated provided just the challenge Tim was looking for. Unfortunately, these fragments and all copies of them were under lock and key in the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. The only scholars authorized to work on them were men in their mid-sixties, academics from a previous generation, by then lazy with tenure in their endowed university chairs. Those who controlled the documents were as adamant abou
t denying others access to their unstudied treasures as they were lethargic about their work.

  Tim, a computer geek since his first days as a Berkeley undergraduate, took advantage of something that other historians failed to appreciate. In exchange for taking the fragments out of circulation, the handful of privileged scholars agreed to have their material catalogued and organized into a concordance. That gave Tim just the opening he needed. With his computer skills, he could write code for a program to assemble and process these word fragments into readable form. If you could distinguish separate subjects and predicates, adverbs and adjectives, you could then reconstitute them into understandable phrases, and from phrases, you could build complete verses.

  From the outset, Tim had been brutally honest about lacking the linguistic skill sufficient for this gargantuan task. The key, he recognized was to find someone help him, someone who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic syntax.

  It took five trips to Israel to identify that Zechariah Schreiber was the man he was looking for. In terms of sheer knowledge, there were four potential candidates. But only one proved open-minded enough to work on material dealing with the Essenes, generally regarded by more conventional Talmudists as mshumadim, fallen Jews who had voluntarily rejected Judaism and therefore an unworthy subject for Jewish scholarship. Tim's boldness to tackle what had hitherto been an insuperable problem for Qumran scholarship intrigued Schreiber, then in his seventy-sixth year. For his invaluable contribution to Tim's book, he asked for nothing but absolute anonymity.

  Literate at the age of three, young Zechariah had escaped into the forest in December 1941 when an SS company decimated his family's shtetl in eastern Poland. Later captured with Polish partisans, he toiled as a slave laborer in a German brick factory, managing to conceal his Jewish identity, no easy task since, as a circumcised Jew, he could never bathe with his compatriots. When Soviet troops entered Germany four years later, he fled to Paris in hopes of getting to Palestine. Once in his people's ancestral land, he fought in the 1947-8 War of Independence, received ordination as a rabbi in the Great Jerusalem Yeshiva, then, without a single hour of formal instruction in Greek, earned a doctorate in classics at the Hebrew University. Books written in nine languages shaped both his professional and personal life.