Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (27 page)

Tim's academic colleagues organized a
memorial service in the University's Bond Chapel, remarkable for
its array of ornate stained-glass windows. In dark oaken pews, the
mourners meditated silently until Gabby stood up, inviting them to
recall memories of Tim. Many did. Clearly, he was well liked and
highly respected. Two professors spoke about his willingness to
leave the academic sanctuary and venture into the field, a very
dangerous place, as it turned out. Solemnly, they retired to the
department chairman's home to share more memories over coffee and
cake.

The following day, Gabby met again with
Professor Cross, who seemed to have been calmed by Tim's memorial,
but now expressed displeasure at her lack of progress. He
understood her emotional strain, but felt compelled to keep all his
PhD candidates under a tight rein.

After refreshing himself from a folder he
kept on her thesis, the professor said, "And are you still
comfortable with your hypothesis on the prophets? The
characterization you've sent me of early prophets is rather
conventional. Nobody will quarrel with that. But what you're
suggesting about prophets who followed them in the first century,
why that breaks new ground."

"I'm trying to show that the last generation
of prophets seemed to have prepared themselves to receive
revelation before they became God's spokesmen. And this may be true
of the big three as well: Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed lived roughly
twenty to thirty years before they began their ministries. During
these formative years, they seemed to have led acetic, scholarly
lives in training. I'm trying to show how biblical prophets put in
their time and punched the right tickets. Today, modern evangelists
sip orange juice and munch on donuts at a prayer breakfast in
church, then stand up to proclaim how they've just spoken with the
Lord. No preparation at all for this feat, except perhaps their raw
will to communicate with Heaven."

Cross clapped his palms together, then laced
his fingers with their manicured nails into a ball. "If you can
pull this off, Gabby, that would be a great contribution. But I
must caution you, the farther you go down this path, the more
slippery it will become. My colleagues have a history of being
tough with candidates who jump to conclusions they can't
substantiate."

"Are they jealous?"

"You bet they are. No member of a faculty
likes to admit that one of his students is either brighter or more
creative than he is. So the easiest thing is to embarrass someone
who thinks outside the box."

"Should I be worried?" she asked.

As he shifted his weight forward to signal
that the interview was coming to an end, he said, "Of course. But
knowing you, I very much doubt you will be. So to keep you from
getting into too much trouble, I expect bi-weekly emails with
detailed attachments. You're too promising a student to let fall
into the abyss."

Before leaving the Windy City, Gabby typed
out four e-mail messages to Itamar, one focusing on her family in
L.A., and another, her sadness at returning to the Chicago home she
shared with Tim. The third described the memorial service for Tim's
colleagues in Bond Chapel, and the last, her meeting with Dr.
Cross. None were sent. Instead, she placed them in a computer file,
stored in her private mailbox on the university's server, where she
could dispatch them on future dates.

She wanted to see Itamar upon returning to
Jerusalem, but didn't know how to resume their friendship without
revealing what she now knew about the contents of Cave XII. In the
end, she decided to let no one but Rav Zechariah Schreiber know
about her return. And that meant staying in a quiet hotel off the
beaten track and not entering her Ussishkin Street apartment. She
hoped to deceive Itamar by dispatching periodic e-mails from
Chicago.

Her whirlwind trip to the States ended with
an over-night El Al flight to Tel Aviv.

CHAPTER TEN

To remain anonymous while in Jerusalem, Gabby
booked a room at the American Colony Hotel in the predominately
Arab neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah. From a nearby café, she called
Rabbi Schreiber, but there was no answer. Three more calls that
evening and one in the morning also failed to connect. There was no
answering machine on his line, but she probably wouldn't have used
it anyway. Though she would have preferred to make contact with him
first by phone, there was no alternative but to venture into Mea
She'arim.

Dressed demurely, her arms and legs covered
in a manner acceptable to the Orthodox and her hair tucked inside a
gray beret, she set out for 46 Haydam Street. Knocks on the rabbi's
door elicited no response. After several minutes, she knocked
again, speculating that perhaps he was in the bathroom or, far
worse, his health had failed. She rapped on a neighbor's door. A
matronly woman in a faded bathrobe that had been washed too many
times, her head covered with what reminded Gabby of a Sikh turban,
opened the door but suspiciously closed it leaving only a crack
from which to peer over a chain lock.

"I'm looking for Rabbi Schreiber," Gabby
addressed her in Hebrew.

The woman failed to react and was about to
close the door entirely when Gabby took a chance and fibbed. "I'm a
relative from America."

"Brooklyn?" the neighbor said, taking the
bait. She closed the door to release the chain, then opened it
wider, but blocked the entrance with her body. "Rabbi Schreiber has
been taken to Sha-arey Zedek Hospital."

"I hope it isn't serious."

"At his age, everything is serious. He had a
stroke and fell on the street. I think he suffered a concussion.
How bad? That I couldn't tell you."

"May I ask, how long ago this
happened?"
"Shabbos afternoon."

"Will he recover?"
"I haven't visited him,
but my neighbor says he's lost movement in his legs. Has headaches.
He was lucky."

"Will he come home?”
"
Im
yirtzeh ha-Shem
, If God wills it," she replied, as though by
eliciting the Almighty's omnipotence, nothing more needed to be
said.

Gabby noted the woman's impatience and
thanked her, returning to the street to hail a taxi.

At Sha-arey Zedek Hospital, she found Zechariah
Schreiber in a four-bed ward, awkwardly propped on his elbow,
attempting to read a book of rabbinical commentaries with a large
magnifying glass. When he lifted his eyes from the lens, he
appeared genuinely happy to have a visitor, though he showed no
sign he recognized her. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she
was now clothed like an Orthodox woman. Or was it the effects of
sedation? When she whispered Tim's name near the old man's ear, he
twirled a bony finger in a circle to signify that he now
remembered.

He spoke about his injury dispassionately, as
though his fall had been in response to a command from Heaven
rather than a human error. "It's
ha-Shem
,
God, telling me to prepare," he declared in a voice loud enough for
the other patients to overhear.

"Are you going home?" Gabby asked.

"Nobody talks to me here. I don't want to go
to a place for sick people. I'd rather be with my books."

"Can you still read them?" she asked, her
tone empathetic.

"Not well, but that isn't important. I
already know what's in them," he said, smiling for the first time
and pointing to his head. "I feared that my thoughts would
disappear. They didn't.
Baruch ha-Shem
,
thank God."

"I'm interested in your work with Timothy.
Could you explain it to me?"

She noticed that he looked over his shoulder
to see if the patient in the next bed was eavesdropping. He wagged
his finger to caution against speaking loudly, then whispered,
"Fragments. Many fragments in his computer."

"Are you sure there were no original
documents. I can't imagine he wouldn't want to work from
originals."

"His copies weren't exactly on a computer,"
he replied, "but on two disks he carried in his pocket. He bought a
small computer in a shop nearby, then all the words and letters
showed up on the screen. These new machines. I don't know them.
Timothy told me to give you everything. All the fragments he put
into his computer. And a single scroll written in Greek, and a
letter for you."

She took note of the lone Greek scroll, but
at the moment was thinking more of Tim and said, "His work must not
be lost. He wrote me when I was in the States, saying how important
his discovery was. When you're feeling better, I'd like to see what
you've done together. Perhaps I can be helpful."

The idea seemed to elude him because he
asked, "Do you know why Timothy was murdered?”

"No. Do you?"

"Something to do with the Greek scroll.
Timothy and I translated it and learned a surprising thing."

Gabby's curiosity soared. Maybe this was what
Tim had alluded to with the
discovery of a
lifetime
. "What was so unusual?"

"It told about a yeshiva in the desert, far
south of the caves at Qumran. Timothy became excited and wanted to
visit the site, though he told me it was unlikely he'd find the
exact location. A cousin of mine let him use his Volkswagen. The
newspapers said Timothy was found in the Negev, but they were vague
about the exact location. It was near a spring west of the Dead Sea
with the ancient name of Ein Arugot."

"I know that the army found an abandoned
Volkswagen. Did they return it to your cousin?"

"No. When he learned that Tim had been
killed, he reported the loss. He owns the car but can't use it. The
police won't even tell him when he can get it back."

"I'm sorry. It's sounds most distressing. Did
Tim leave any maps?"

"I'm not sure. He had many papers."

"Have you shown the scroll to anyone?"

"Timothy and I agreed not to speak about this
work to others."

She wanted to make contact with the old man
by touching his hand, but, knowing the Orthodox prohibition against
physical contact with unmarried females, restrained herself. "Do
you have enough strength to continue with Tim’s work, I mean when
you're feeling better?"

"God willing," he responded as if the thought
of completing a scholarly task gave him a fresh sense of
purpose.

"If you'll permit me to return to the
hospital tomorrow, we'll get better acquainted. If God wills it,
perhaps you'll trust me to help."

When he failed to acknowledge her suggestion,
she took that to mean that he did not want her to come back. But
surprisingly, he whispered, "Rav Lewyn?" as though he were testing
the idea of her being a rabbi. She was about to leave when he said,
"It is not I who must trust you, Rav Lewyn, but you who must trust
me
."

An expression of puzzlement crossed her
face.

"Because I know the words and phrases from
these fragments," he said with a teasing glance, his eyes dancing
with youthful mirth. His index finger, gnarled with arthritis, rose
from the bed to wag. "How would you know if I make a mistake?"

***

It took eight days before Rav Schreiber was
released from Sha-arey Zedek and two more before he felt strong
enough to receive Gabby at home. She arrived heavily clothed to
avoid suspicion of sexual impropriety, even with an eighty-two year
old widower, nearly crippled by a fall on the street, and, most
probably at his advanced age, incontinent and impotent. When she
arrived, the rabbi was seated beside Tim’s HP laptop, connected by
a cable to a printer, exactly as Tim had left them before his fatal
journey.

A home health aide and housekeeper ordered by
the hospital's social worker had already come and gone, leaving
behind frozen kosher meals to heat in a small microwave oven, also
on loan from the hospital. Schreiber offered Gabby fresh peaches on
a cracked plate still dusted with crumbs from a previous meal. In
his kitchen, she made a pot of the strong Italian coffee he
preferred, then watched as he struggled to control an unsteady hand
while lifting a cup of it from the saucer to his lips.

At the first opportunity, Gabby searched for
a translation of the Greek scroll Schreiber believed was
responsible for Tim's death. The text was not easily found amid
reams of paper that had emerged from Tim’s printer. Schreiber
helped by rummaging through individual sheets, reading portions
then assigning them new homes atop different piles that reminded
Gabby of scattered tombstones. He tired before locating the scroll
and was forced to call a recess. In the meantime, she booted up
Tim’s laptop to learn what was stored on the C-drive. There were
more than three thousand entries, but Tim's proprietary software
blocked access to many.

When he awoke from his nap, Schreiber
discovered the modern Hebrew rendition of the Greek scroll, beside
which both he and Tim had penned English translations. Gabby read
first the English, then the Hebrew. Was this the
discovery of a lifetime?
Upon a second reading, she
came to the same conclusion that Tim had. Fearing the wrath of
foreign gods, Romans had usually refrained from interfering with
the religious customs of the peoples they governed. They asserted
their authority only when threatened or when their subjects refused
to pay taxes. Obviously, this remote yeshiva at Ein Arugot was no
ordinary school. And since the Greek scroll was found among other
Hebrew and Aramaic fragments, not at Ein Arugot but north at
Qumran, they were very likely related.

Gabby's reaction paralleled Tim's in another
way. Just as it had stirred his curiosity to visit the proposed
site, so it instilled the same passion in her, demanding she
revisit her earlier decision to keep Itamar Arad out of the loop.
While initially wishing to work with Rav Schreiber in secret, she
no longer felt that practical. The time had come to share with
Itamar contents of the Greek scroll.