The Gates of Zion (35 page)

“Of much less value than the Old City, I presume?”

“It is but the whim of a poor scholar such as myself.” Akiva bowed his head humbly. “A small thing, of little interest to anyone else, and certainly of no importance whatsoever to the world.”

“In exchange for victory?” Haj Amin smiled slyly. “What can this small request be?”

“I find the photographs of the scroll quite intriguing, and the story of its discovery even more so. I would very much like to study this thing, to have it in my library for reference.”

Haj Amin coughed delicately into his handkerchief, then raised his chin to scrutinize the man sitting opposite him. “Perhaps. Perhaps we may accommodate your wishes.” He paused for full effect. “But at present, of course, we have some use for this item. Perhaps later, when it has served its purpose, we shall make it a gift to you.”

“What possible use could you have for such old scrolls of our prophets?” Akiva asked curiously.

Haj Amin’s face hardened as he sipped his coffee. “Is it not written in your own holy books that the Word of God draws men unto itself?”

PART III

THE GIFT

The promised redemption will come to

redeem not the Jewish people alone, but

all humanity. And the principal object of

this divine redemption, which will be

brought about by the Messiah, will be to

bring blessing and peace to the entire

world through the redemption of the

Jewish people.

Rabbi Avraham Hacohen Kook

Palestine’s Chief Rabbi

December, 1929

22

The Passover Hope

Late December, 1947

Ellie stared blankly into the developing tray as the rubble of the Semiramis Hotel magically began to appear on the photographic paper. Here, a rescue worker stood on a demolished wall. There, another carried a first-aid kit that would be of little use. Two other men pulled yet another body from the heap of stones and brick that marked the end of thirty innocent lives.

How,
Ellie wondered,
can one photograph hope to tell the whole story?

She was utterly exhausted. Since she had heard of Miriam’s death two afternoons before, she had not slept. Instead she had gone to the site with Moshe and wept as she repeatedly snapped the shutter of her camera, etching her own heartache permanently on film. The bells had begun their mournful tolling as she had photographed the rescue of a solitary little Arab girl, the lone survivor among a Christian family of thirteen.

Since that moment, the bells of the Old City churches had not ceased to toll out the lives of the dead in solemn, unbroken rhythm. From behind the thick walls of her darkroom, Ellie could hear them still.

The hills around Jerusalem, which only a few weeks before had echoed with the joyful call of the shofar, now reverberated with the death knell of reason and sanity.

From the minarets of the Arab Muslim Quarter, the muezzin shrilly called the faithful to prayer and to yet another sermon by the Mufti.

As the Christian Arabs began to dig graves and hastily bury their loved ones, those Muslims gathered in the courtyard of the Mosque of Omar and raised their fists with the frenzied cry of “Jihad! Jihad!

Jihad!”

Holy war.
Ellie looked down at the photograph once again. All pretense of detached professionalism evaporated. She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she cried aloud, “this can’t be what You want! I’ve got some kind of war going on inside me! God, I don’t want to fight against You anymore.

Miriam knew You. But she’s gone, and I’m still down here. And I don’t know where to look for You.”

Ellie felt so small and helpless, buried so far beneath the rubble that she could never dig herself out. “Help me!” Tasting the warm salt of her tears, she sank onto a stool and rested her head on the counter.

She closed her eyes, wishing the bells would stop ringing. “Find me,” she murmured. Then she sighed and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

***

The bells of the churches in the neighboring Christian Quarter tolled mournfully. Rabbi Lebowitz tucked his coat tighter around him and hurried up the Street of the Stairs toward the massive three-story structures of the Warsaw Compound.

Here he had walked as a young man. He had come to Jerusalem from the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw, Poland, to study the Torah; he had never returned. Instead he had grown old and bent here, teaching the new Polish Yeshiva students in the study rooms and synagogue that surrounded a large, peaceful courtyard. His beard had become gray, his hands gnarled from well over half a century of turning the pages of the holy books. Only the Warsaw Compound remained unchanged.

Many lifetimes before he had been born, the Jews of Poland had built it as a memorial to the God of their fathers within the gates of Zion. Generations had sent their sons to study here. Some, like Rabbi Lebowitz, had remained, but most had returned to the land of their birth.

Now there were no new Polish Yeshiva boys. They had died with their fathers in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto as a Nazi Panzer division had blasted their resistance to rubble.
They died fighting,
he thought
. Only this small corner of the world remains as a
memorial to what once was. Now we, too, are threatened with
extinction.
And all the empty promises of Rabbi Akiva and Haj Amin, the friend of Hitler, made no difference.

The Warsaw buildings stood on the corner of the two most exposed flanks of the Old City Jewish Quarter. The living quarters of the scholars had become like trenches and bomb shelters. Sandbags blocked the windows against gunfire. At night, upturned tables barricaded the doors. Three residents of the northeast corner of the Quarter had been wounded by sniper fire from minarets in the two days since the bombing of the hotel in the New City. Bullet holes marred the faces of several buildings. Members of the Haganah had been denied entrance into the Old City in exchange for Arab promises to Akiva that the Jewish Quarter would be spared. The few meager weapons had been confiscated by the British.

Now, it seemed, those promises had been lies calculated to delay the building of any defense whatsoever.
Perhaps Akiva believed the
lies,
Rabbi Lebowitz reasoned. Perhaps he had some other purpose for resisting the help of the Jewish defenders in the New City. Akiva cried out against the Zionists, but that was no longer the issue.

Everything had now focused down to the pinpoint of mere survival for the Jewish Quarter.

This morning ten rabbis from among the different sectors of the Quarter had been invited to an urgent meeting.
Come now, let us
reason together,
the old rabbi prayed silently.

The Warsaw building loomed ahead, yet for him, it seemed almost beyond reach. Pain welled up in his chest, and he staggered as he tried to catch his breath. His cough had grown worse over the past few weeks. Even in the brutal morning cold, beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. He leaned heavily on the side of a low, one-story structure and closed his eyes. “So, God, are You finished with this old man so soon?” He coughed, doubling up with the force. “A little more time, if you please. For Yacov.”

For a full five minutes Rabbi Lebowitz fought against the pain, feeling it gradually fade from a hot fire to a dull ache. He stood erect and shakily resumed his walk toward the Warsaw Compound, where the other nine members of the group waited to discuss survival. “We will survive,” he whispered, gazing at the only corner of the world where the Warsaw of his childhood still remained.

***

Moshe knocked softly on the door of Ellie’s darkroom.

“What is it?” came the muffled reply.

“Are you finished? May I open the door?” he asked kindly.

Ellie threw the door open to him, her eyes red and swollen. She sniffed and whirled around, plopping down on the stool once again with her back to him.

Moshe stood against the doorframe and gazed tenderly at the back of her head. “Don’t you need to sleep?”

“I was sleeping.” Ellie’s voice cracked. “You woke me up, and now I’m in the middle of a nightmare again.” She lowered her head and tears flowed silently down her face.

Moshe stepped forward and placed his strong hands on her shoulders. “Perhaps there is little comfort in my words, my little
shiksa
, but I know how your heart aches. My heart has been broken, too. For my family. For my people.”

“And when will it end, Moshe?” She sighed. “When? And how?”

She laid her cheek against his hand. “Miriam was … she had such a hope inside her. Why can’t I find hope inside me?”

“True hope,
real
hope,” Moshe said, groping for words, “comes from knowing the truth. It comes from seeing what is possible and believing that it will come to pass.”

“What are you saying, Moshe?” She turned to him with imploring eyes. “Please help me understand.”

“I am only beginning to understand myself. I can only tell you what my heart tells me is true―and my head also.”

“I feel so lost. So alone and confused by it all.”

“Then I will share my hopes with you.”

“There is nothing I want more.” Ellie squeezed his hand and then dropped it. She focused her gaze on him.

“Do you remember the day on the
Ave Maria
, when you talked about feeling God in your heart and knowing God with your mind?”

Ellie sat back, brushing away the tears. “Yes.”

“And we said that both are important? I will tell you what I know to be true. I cannot tell you what to feel.” He slid up onto the counter, facing Ellie. “The Holy Scripture says that man is sinful and imperfect in his heart because he has turned to do what is right in his own eyes. We have hardened our hearts against the love of God and against our fellow man. Is this true?”

“Of course. Look what they did to Miriam.” Ellie’s face clouded up again.

“I myself have hardened my heart against others.”

“You? Moshe, you are the most tender and―,” she objected.

“I have hardened my heart many times. Have you?” he persisted.

Ellie nodded, remembering the day that Miriam had chided her about the clothes in her closet and the hundreds of women refugees who did not even have a thin sweater to shield them against the cold. She remembered the surge of anger and jealousy she had felt toward Rachel.

“Then this much of what the Scripture says is true, is it not?” Moshe said with gentle understanding.

“Where is the hope in that?” Ellie asked dully. “I only wish I could be better. Wish I had done better and loved better. Wish I had never hurt anyone else.”

“But wishes are not hope. Hope is knowing the truth and acting on it.”

Confusion flickered across Ellie’s face. “Then tell me the truth, Moshe. Don’t talk riddles to me.”

Moshe closed his eyes and frowned. “In all our seeking and all our trying, there is no way we can ever reach God, Ellie. The Scripture says that
all our righteous acts are like filthy rags
. They don’t change the condition of our hearts or erase our past mistakes. Only God Himself can do that.”

“How?” Her voice was small and imploring.

“I am a Jew. You know this. And so I will tell you as I understand it.

I have not shared this with anyone,” he warned, “so stop me if it becomes confusing.”

“I will. Please, go on.”

“The prophets long ago wrote that there would be a Savior who would come to my people. Even to the Gentiles. We call Him the Messiah. Always we thought that He would be some kind of political leader. But I believe it is He who was meant to lead us back to God.

Do you understand?”

Ellie nodded.

“When I was a little boy, each year at Passover I would ask my father the question ‘What makes this night different from the rest?’

And he would tell me the story of how God delivered the Hebrew people out of the slavery of Egypt. In sorrow we would remember the Egyptian firstborn children who died in the last great plague before we left that land. They were no different from us, really. They were people, too. Why was it they died and we did not? I used to wonder this and ask God. Then my father told me that even some of the Egyptian firstborn lived because they obeyed the word of God and placed the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their doorposts. Then the angel of death passed over them as well. Those who believed God’s word were saved. They simply believed and accepted the sacrifice of the lamb.

“All these years I have tried to follow the Law, and I have watched men of the Law live unhappy lives, frantically striving to please God. More rules. More laws. They are all broken. And through it all, we looked for the Deliverer to save us from persecution and harm from Christian and Muslim nations. We look for the Messiah to deliver bodies while our souls are dying. All through the Scriptures He is mentioned. Then ancient commentaries speak of Him as the final sacrifice for all our sins and imperfections. They speak of His love and kindness and tell us that He alone is the one who can save us from the death that dwells in our hearts.”

“Who is He, Moshe? Where is He?”

“He died on the eve of Passover, nearly two thousand years ago.

Like the lamb of sacrifice, He took my sins and covered them with His blood. He was perfect and without blemish, and He died in my place like the prophets said He would. Then He conquered death.

Ellie, He came to life again and is living still, and He has made my heart alive in knowing Him. That is my hope. My belief in fact and truth.”

“Then you are a Christian?” Ellie asked quietly. “Like Miriam? Like Uncle Howard?”

“I am Moshe Sachar, and I am a Jew who believes that the one we call Yeshua is the Messiah. In this I hope with a hope that knows the truth: He will come again to my people, and they will know Him for who He is and find pardon and the joy of knowing Him as a loving and merciful Savior. And for you, dear Ellie, I hope that you will reach out to Him. For I know He cares so much for you.” His face was full of emotion as he stepped across to Ellie and wrapped his arms around her.