him.
“Jacqueline has not said something wrong?” Julie asked as simply as she could. The Sephardic community in Grantville was quite young and its rabbi was not much older. Rabbi Fonseca spoke many languages but English was still new to him.
“No,” Rabbi Fonseca smiled at Jacqueline and gently pulled the soft covered book from her hands and looked at it. “Cannot think English word…Chana…”
There was an exchange of Hebrew and when it was over Chana nodded and turned to Julie.
“The rabbi is amazed to hold in his hand a book to teach Hebrew that was written many centuries from now. It gives him hope that great things can be done. He asks me to thank you for the things you have helped to be done. The idea of having a special place in the…synagogue for non-Jews was a good idea. Such a thing has helped much in bringing all together. He cannot think of a place in the world where a Jew can walk so freely amongst those who are not Jews,” Chana translated.
“And the boy?” Rabbi Fonseca asked, with what little English knowledge he had, giving Jacqueline the book back.
“You didn’t check the book out of the library, did you?” Julie sighed, looking at Jacqueline.
“We were in a hurry and I meant to. I will, Julie. I am sorry.” Jacqueline clutched the book to her.
“The boy will be found,” Julie assured Rabbi Fonseca.
“He knows where to come at sunset,” Chana translated for the rabbi. “He is a good boy and will find his way here if he can. And the rabbi agrees with you, Julie. You should have been told and so should the boy. This might not have happened if the boy had been told. And he…”
There was a long pause.
“Chana?” Julie asked.
“He says…” Chana looked at Rabbi Fonseca for a long moment. “He says that he has sat in the library and contemplated that entry in the…encyclopedia. He says the knowledge, yes, knowledge should not have been withheld. It was wrong to let the boy discover this thing without those who love him around him. The boy is too smart, too full of his love of God, to be allowed to find this thing out by himself. He should have not been the object of…of…I do not know how to say. Loshon Hora, bad speech. The boy was looked at from the corner of the eye, whispered about. This should not have been done. I agree, too, Officer Julie Drahuta. Someone should talk to the boy’s father. Possibly you?”
“I certainly will consider…” It was the prayer that caught Julie’s attention.
“ Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam,” Rabbi Fonseca began the blessing. Julie had heard blessings like that before the Ring of Fire when she worked in Wheeling, north of Grantville when it was still in the twentieth century and in America, and here, in Grantville, in 1634.
Who would have thought an IOOF building would have become a synagogue? Who would have thought a False Messiah would be something a social worker would have to worry about? What would they have done if the Ring of Fire had dropped them onto, say, Jerusalem in the year ten or fifteen?
God, a fifteen-year-old son of God…
Julie turned in the direction Rabbi Fonseca was praying in and, for a moment, didn’t know whether to scream, cry or just remain silent.
“I know, I know, Mom, let me explain.” Joseph had his father’s impish smile. Julie found it hard not to smile back. “I locked up the house, Mom. Shabbethai said he was lost and needed to go to church and since he is a Jew I had to bring him here. He’s too young to be wandering around by himself. Honest, Mom. That’s why we left the house. I know you said to stay there until you got home, but there, I said it. It’s my fault.”
“I just translated into Greek,” Blaise said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“ Ha-gomel lahayavim tovot sheg’malani kol tov,” Rabbi Fonseca finished his prayer.
“Ah-men,” Chana added. Julie would find out later that this was the blessing for, amongst other things, surviving illness or danger.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Joseph, truly his father’s son, had no clue what he had done, only that he had done something. “We played some stick ball. Is Shab in trouble?”
“I think you are,” Sibylla whispered loudly.
“What did I do?” Joseph looked around, his eyes fixed on the chief of Grantville’s police department.
“See? Blaise is involved!” Press shouted. “Is that the boy?”
There was a burst of strong Hebrew from the boy in the crowd of Drahuta and Kubiak children.
“He says-” Chana was trying not to laugh. “Shabbethai says we should all be glad of the Shabbos, not arguing. He wishes all a good Sabbath and that we should go inside. He tells us it is almost time of the Sabbath.”
With that Shabbethai Zebi ben Mordecai led his friends into the former IOOF building which was now the first Sephardic synagogue of Grantville, though Julie heard the Portuguese Jews called it something else.
“And a little child shall lead them.” Julie shook her head. “Is that him?” Julie asked Jacqueline, who was hiding behind her.
“How does he do that? How does my brother get in the middle of everything? Yes, Julie, that is the boy.” Jacqueline nodded. “That is the False Messiah.”
“Let’s stick to Shabbethai Zebi for now, okay, Jackie?”
“Will come?” Rabbi Fonseca asked politely, indicating the front door with a smile.
“Certainly,” Julie smiled. “Would it break the Sabbath if I drove him back to Deborah after the service?”
“It would be better if you walked,” Rabbi Fonseca answered and Chana translated. “Or may he stay here for the night? There are certain laws to be followed, Julie.”
“I could put him up in the guest room.” Julie shrugged. “Would that tick off his father?”
“Yes.” Chana smiled. “Maybe it will teach the father not to lose his son. Yes, Julie, it would be good for the boy’s father to come to your house and speak to you about his son.”
“Don’t tell my father,” Blaise muttered as the sounds of the Sabbath service began inside the building. “He is still angry that I called Descartes a dinosaur. What will he think if he knew I went into a Jewish church?”
Royal Dutch Airlines
There is a King in the Low Countries
“His Majesty, Fernando I, King in the Low Countries wants us to come and visit,” Herr van Bradt said. He hid a snicker as best he could. Really, the clothing women were wearing these days!
“What?” Magdalena van de Passe asked, ignoring the snicker. She knew what it was about, since she’d heard it all before. She was wearing a pair of the new bloomers, long puffy pants that tightened up again at the ankles. Also a leather flight jacket and leather flight helmet with goggles pushed up on her head. It wasn’t a fashion statement. At least not an intentional one. The bloomers were warmer than the more common split skirt; the leather flight jacket was fur-lined and warm and the flight helmet kept her ears warm. None of that would be particularly necessary in one of the Jupiters, but the Neptune was another matter. The Neptune was a minimalist approach to carrying cargo, a two engine monoplane, with a seventy-foot wingspan. Like the Jupiters, they had a low air speed and a very good power-to-weight ratio. But they didn’t carry passengers. The Neptune carried packages; it had no amenities that could be avoided. Anything to save weight and it got darn cold in them, two miles up, in the winter in Germany.
“His Majesty wants us to visit. And he wants us to come in one of the Jupiters.”
“We can’t. The schedule is messed up as it is.”
“I know, but His Majesty insists and Frederik Hendrick added a note as well.” Van Bradt paused. “Magdalena, most of my investments are there. I can’t afford to have the two most powerful men in the Netherlands angry at me. The new engines are going to be ready in a month. Your young man already has the Jupiter Two and two Jupiter Threes sitting there waiting for them. This is politics. The schedule is just going to have to get a bit more out of whack.”
