Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (30 page)

"This is Zabronski's case. He knows the
region and its people. And besides, we know there were two deaths.
Can we be sure there was only one killer?"

Gabby and Itamar had early morning meetings,
so they stopped talking before midnight and said goodnight with
what was intended to be an affectionate hug. Before releasing each
other, his lips slipped over her cheek and pressed gently against
hers. She released him, pushing back long enough to recall Hamlet's
rebuke to his mother for not letting the bed sheets cool before
sleeping with her husband's brother. Was Tim's presence still too
fresh to feel physical affection for another man?

She stepped back, but returned a moment later
to touch her lips against his cheek. She wanted to curl into his
embrace but turned away and opened the door for him to leave.

***

When an ambulance and social worker returned
Rabbi Schreiber to his home three days later, he was eager to
resume work. Gabby suspected that, despite living a life under the
strictest sexual regimentation, he had always been something of a
ladies' man and that this inclination had not disappeared even in
his twilight years. When she would lean over his shoulder to speak
near his ear, he seemed to enjoy the physical closeness. Nor was it
unusual for him to grasp her arm and hold on while playfully
testing her knowledge of Torah.

Rather than invent a new modus operandi, she
purposely duplicated Tim's method of reading out phrases, then
individual words. Schreiber would listen attentively, often ask for
a spelling, scribble letters in Hebrew, then fall into silence
before providing a modern Hebrew rendition. At Tim's laptop, Gabby
would enter Schreiber's interpretation and commentary into the
unsecured existing database.

"You're faster than Timothy," he said
cautiously during a break, not wishing to lavish more praise than
due.

"I think I know more Hebrew and Aramaic than
he did," she said. "He was exceptionally talented with languages,
but he studied Hebrew and Aramaic late in life. I've been using
Hebrew since my bat mitzvah." When she mentioned this ceremony,
Schreiber registered his discomfort with an unabashed grunt. She
skirted the sexist focus of Orthodox rituals by continuing, "While
you were in the hospital, I've been experimenting with Tim's
software. I'm excited because I can now do preliminary sorting.
Merging the fragments is something different entirely."

Schreiber cut her off, "But you won't have a
clear picture until
all
the words and
phrases are entered."

"You're right, of course," Gabby conceded.
"Partial assemblies can be misleading. This is going to take
patience."

That evening, before the social worker
returned to serve Schreiber dinner and later to bathe him, he
pulled himself to his feet and managed to maintain an uneasy
balance. A whimsical smile expanded his lips, surrounded by thick,
gray whiskers. "But, Gabrielle, we don't have the original
fragments. So in the end, does it matter what we do here?"

The question took her by surprise, but she
rallied. "Matter? Why of course it matters. We've already confirmed
that there was a fire at Ein Arugot. Our fragments should tell us
more."

"But who will believe you? Won't
archeologists at the university question if the fragments from
Timothy's computer come from genuine documents? How can you prove
it?"
"Do you think Tim would have sacrificed his life for
counterfeits? Remember, whoever has the originals also believes
they're genuine."

"The people who ransacked your apartment,
perhaps?"

"Yes. Probably the same ones who killed
Tim."

"Then you're also in danger, yes?"

"They know I don't have what they want.
Nobody but you knows I'm here, and there's no reason to broadcast
it. Let's say you're now my guardian."

"But won't you want others to know about
these documents?"

"Of course, someday. How could I withhold
this historical record?" she said, putting on her coat and turning
to the door.

Before she left, he said, "Timothy refused to
tell me who has the originals. Do you know?"

"Of course not."

Since his latest hospital stay, Schreiber's naps had
become more frequent, giving Gabby time to work on Tim's code. It
was trial and error, mostly error. The smallest keystroke would
spell failure, and there was no way of knowing how close or how far
she was from assembling the words Schreiber had deciphered into
intelligible verses. As the database grew, she felt the goal
slipping away because, in the end, if you couldn't make sense of
the data, they were worthless.

There were times when she considered seeking
help from a software expert, but that notion had to be resisted. On
several occasions, Tim had conceded to her that his primary
contribution to
Fragments from the Dead Sea
Scrolls
had been his code not his scholarship, a code she
had come to believe would have tested even an experienced and
extremely talented software maven. But more importantly, how could
she ask a computer expert for help and still keep Rav Schreiber's
identity secret?

A breakthrough occurred unexpectedly. It happened at
the end of a long workday when Gabby felt particularly drained.
Instead of leaving Schreiber to join Itamar for dinner, she laid
her head on the desktop and let herself fall asleep, a habit she
had developed as an undergraduate studying in the University of
Michigan library. But remembering that she had planned to meet
Itamar at his office, she bolted awake, her eyes fixed on the
laptop screen. At that moment, it dawned on her that Tim would not
have taken a chance that he would forget an essential password. It
had to be hidden somewhere. But where?

The following morning, before Rav Schreiber
was ready to tackle more fragments, she found a way into Tim's
software, not through the program itself, but via its biography.
Now only one password blocked the final entry portal. The program
prompts provided a single clue, asking for eight numbers or
letters. That looked to her like a proper name, but MATTERNLY had
nine letters. She immediately experimented with the obvious: proper
names, initials, birthplaces and mother's maiden names. None
worked. She was convinced that the password had to be something
simple enough for Tim to remember, no matter what. And since he was
not particularly good at recalling people's names, she turned her
attention to places spelled with eight letters.

JERUSALEM possessed nine and CHICAGO only
seven. NEW BEDFORD, ten. She knew she was grasping for straws,
stabbing wildly until it occurred to her that Tim, a New Testament
scholar, would naturally gravitate to familiar and easily
remembered passages from the Gospels. To pursue this train of
thought, a chain-reference Bible with an index to the Scripture's
Atlas, proved invaluable. It helped her to see at a glance the
number of letters for each geographic location, ruling out
immediately GALILEE with seven characters and HEBRON with only six.
But NAZARETH possessed the correct number.

To save time, she punched NAZARETH into the
screen prompt and returned to survey the index for additional place
names that might work. There were also eight letters to PILIPPII
and TIBERIAS. She was about to replace NAZARETH with PILIPPII when
an unsolicited screen popped up, prompting her to move through two
supplementary screens. From then on, Tim had programmed into his
software explanatory notes, prompting a program to bring together
linguistic subjects, predicates, adverbs, adjectives and adverbs in
a logical order. Additional screens assembled the results into
clusters, according to their subject matter.

Rav Schreiber woke from a nap to share her
elation. Both felt as if everything they had done together had led
to this moment. Gabby was so exhilarated, she lost track of time,
forgetting that she had promised to call Itamar about dinner. In
order to see the first assemblage, she spoke with Schreiber about
staying through that evening and returning home later. But the
rabbi encouraged her to leave and return refreshed in the morning.
Their work could wait a few short hours longer.

Knowing that he was right, she phoned Itamar
with profuse apologies for not calling earlier.

He failed to conceal his exasperation,
saying, "At this hour, it's too late for dinner."

"Tim's software is working," she interrupted
him. "I'm sorry I forgot to call, but suddenly I broke through the
barrier. I'm now getting text that are readable."

"You're what?" he exclaimed, his shortness
succumbing to his astonishment.

"Yes, Iti. There's nothing readable yet. But
it's certain to come soon. I just got carried away."

"I'd say this calls for a celebration. I'll
meet you wherever you want for a drink. We'll find something to eat
later."

During the next three weeks, the process of entering
phrases and words into Tim's software accelerated at a frantic
pace. Single letters proved easy to enter, but unrewarding because
to place them into a word required an element of faith, not
scholarship. As they came close to assembling the early data, Gabby
asked Schreiber if he had a sense of where their work was
headed.

"Of course," he said, exuding his
characteristic confidence. He mumbled, as if a whisper would
maintain the secrecy of their enterprise. "Christians won't like
this. They already blame Jews for killing Christos; now they'll
hate us for murdering him a second time. They don't like us working
on documents they think belong to them."

The suggestion caught her off-guard, sounding
almost blasphemous. "Qumran was on the outskirts of Jewish
territory in the first century. The yeshiva at Ein Arugot was
definitely in eastern Judea. There's a good chance that all the
students there were Jews. How can Christians take umbrage when this
was unquestionably a discovery involving our ancestors?"

"Have you considered that one name on our
list may coincide with an important person?"

"Who's that?"

"The name of Yahonatan. It might refer to
John, the one who was known to baptize."

She had thought about the association between
Yahonatan and John the Baptist, but dismissed the idea. John was
known as a baptizer and that required water. But the school at Ein
Arugot was in the wilderness where water was scarce. It wasn't
customary for Schreiber to speculate on matters affecting
Christianity. Yet he had put an intriguing idea back on the
table.

***

Just when Schreiber and Gabby were making
excellent progress, the rabbi suffered a third stroke, this time
damaging his ability to speak. He could hear everything, but had
difficulty expressing his thoughts. The social worker wanted to
move him back to Sha-arey Zedek Hospital, but his physicians
thought there was nothing to be gained by removing him from his
home and beloved books. They assigned a nurse who served three
additional patients in the neighborhood to monitor his general
condition and administer a battery of medications.

Gabby's fear that Schreiber would never
recover sufficiently to resume their collaboration spurred her
impatience to assemble the incomplete database he and Tim had
created. Early the next morning, when he had yet to wake up for the
day, she implemented techniques learned when the rabbi had last
been in the hospital. "The smoke test," she repeatedly muttered
while Tim's software sorted and merged Schreiber's input to date.
Next came the question how much luck would it require duplicating
Tim's success with
Fragments from the Dead Sea
Scrolls
.

What emerged in the first assemblages
appeared to be little more than gibberish, a long and disconnected
string of orphan words. Disappointment got the best of her,
nurturing dark thoughts of defeat. But upon repeated analysis the
output showed that the software, while not producing miracles, had
at least fulfilled a portion of her expectations. After further
study, she realized that critical merging decisions had yet to be
made. It took four additional days to learn what they were and then
experiment with possible solutions. At each step, she explained
what she was doing to Rav Schreiber who nodded his head vertically
when he agreed, and from side to side when he didn't.

Then, late in the afternoon on the fourth
day, when her fingers seemed to take over from their exhausted
master, the first partial phrase appeared on the monitor, followed
an instant later by a partial verse. She printed what seemed to be
nine unconnected verses and placed the paper before Rav Schreiber,
who read with intense concentration. He waved his left hand,
imitating the motion of writing, a signal that he wanted a pen to
edit the printout.

Gabby returned twenty minutes later to find
the rabbi asleep, but the paper marked with a series of progressive
numbers. When she restructured the verse according to the sequence
he offered, the words took on meaning. Slowly, scraps of parchment
from Cave XII blossomed into a fresh view of life in the first
century. Her hypothesis that the proper names founded in the
fragments represented a roster of students was now confirmed by
what appeared to be a curriculum of study! And to accompany this
material, the following day’s text provided a code of conduct,
along with a description of the daily routine at the Ein Arugot
school.

When Rav Schreiber awoke, he appeared unmoved
by the magnitude of his scholarship. He had become accustomed to
the idea of a yeshiva operating near the Dead Sea, and the fact
that additional fragments confirmed this added little to his sense
of achievement. Knowing Schreiber's time was short, she looked upon
every hour she could keep him focused as a gift. A steady stream of
readable documents encouraged her to contemplate a press release to
share with the world a preliminary taste of Tim's discovery.