stones piled up to immense height. The physical enormity and the weight of history gave the Wailing Wall an intangible spiritual aura. Lemmy thought of that early morning on June 5, 1967, when he had driven by this place, an eighteen-year-old IDF paratrooper, disguised in UN uniform, deep inside Jordanian East Jerusalem, tasked with blowing up the UN radar on Antenna Hill moments before every Israeli fighter jet took off for synchronized bombing raids against all of Egypt’s airfields.
Only now, as he sat here in view of the Wailing Wall, in the center of Israel’s modern capital, Lemmy realized that his own life’s meaning really came down to that sunny morning twenty-eight years ago, which had changed Jewish history and saved his people from a second Holocaust at the hands of the Arab armies that were prepared to destroy tiny Israel with the best Soviet weaponry. The realization put things in perspective for Lemmy. Yes, he must expose the reason behind Shin Bet’s illegal activities in Europe and protect Paula and Klaus Junior from the consequences of his secret life. But the current challenges were not beyond reach, considering what he had managed to achieve by age eighteen and the clandestine skills he had developed since then.
A notepad and a jar of pencils drew his attention. He tore off a piece of paper and scribbled: For Tanya’s recovery. He didn’t even know whether she was still alive, but he folded the note and stuck it in a crack between two stones. The wall was cooler than he expected, and he rested his forehead against it, closing his eyes. He thought of Tanya lying on the cobblestones in Amsterdam, looking up at him with eyes that were surprisingly peaceful. And he remembered her looking up at him almost three decades earlier, her black hair spread on a white pillow in the old house by the Jordanian border, her eyes not peaceful but burning with passion.
A man tapped Lemmy on the shoulder, startling him. “Are you Jewish?”
“ Excuse me?”
He gestured at a group of black hats nearby. “We only have nine. We need one more to complete the minyan quorum for prayer.”
“ Oh.”
“ So? Are you Jewish?”
After a brief hesitation, Lemmy nodded. “Yes. I am a Jew.” He accepted the prayer book and joined them in reciting the Hebrew words.
*
The previous night, the Shin Bet agents had brought the three of them to a top-floor apartment in Tel Aviv with enough bedrooms for everyone. It was quiet and peaceful, but Rabbi Gerster’s mind was stormy and he couldn’t sleep. He kept seeing Lemmy’s face-a grown man, yet so familiar. Had he understood that he must seek Benjamin in the old neighborhood? Would Benjamin keep his cool and know what to do?
At dawn Rabbi Gerster tiptoed to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked. A female voice came from a hidden speaker. “Can I help you?”
“Looking for the bathroom,” he said.
“That would be the little room with a toilet bowl. Down the hallway.”
Later in the morning, they congregated in the kitchen. A young man with dark, curly hair and brooding eyes joined them.
“ Gideon?” Elie glared at him. “Why are you here?”
“ Same reason you’re here.”
Agent Cohen entered the kitchen, all smiles. “Here are your administrative detention papers.” He tossed the documents in front of Elie, Itah, and Rabbi Gerster. The forms appeared genuine, with Ministry of Defense stamps and signatures at the bottom, authorizing Shin Bet to hold them without further proceedings and without a lawyer for up to ninety days.
The grandmotherly housekeeper cooked eggs to each person’s liking, which they ate with slices of grainy bread and bowls of Israeli salad.
“ Almost as good as the King David Hotel,” Agent Cohen said as he poured olive oil on his salad.
“ You’re playing with fire,” Elie said. A nurse had come in earlier and fitted him with a portable oxygen tank. A transparent plastic tube was held under his nose with a rubber strip that circled his head. “What has Freckles told you?”
“ Question is, what has he told you? ” Agent Cohen laughed and bit into a chunk of bread.
Rabbi Gerster wiped his lips and sat back in the chair. He had a hunch that the mutual antipathy between Elie and Shin Bet somehow involved Lemmy, but how? He sighed. Despite the bright light from the floor-to-ceiling windows and the endless span of the glistening blue Mediterranean, he was in the dark.
*
The synagogue was full of Neturay Karta men engaged in afternoon prayers. Lemmy’s blue baseball hat and windbreaker stood out among the homogeneous black coats and hats. His clean-shaven face felt bare among the uniformly bearded men.
He sat in the rear and hoped that they would take him for another curious tourist who had wandered into the Meah Shearim neighborhood for its narrow alleys, old stone houses, and quaint inhabitants.
When the prayers ended, the men went back to studying. They swayed over open books of Talmud, arguing with each other, puffing on cigarettes. He felt a swell of longing, drawn to join them, even for a few minutes of reliving his youth. Their immersion in the study of Talmud was unlike any other scholarly endeavor-reciting, discussing, pondering, and debating every word and every subtlety in the sages’ conflicting positions on every subject imaginable. Like their ancestors over countless generations, the men of Neturay Karta dedicated their lives to the study of Talmud as the ultimate way to glorify the Creator. At eighteen, Lemmy had broken away from the long chain of tradition. Until now, he had never doubted that decision.
But here, as the old synagogue enveloped him in the smells and sounds of his boyhood, with the palpable warmth and sense of purpose, with the joy of intellectual fencing in the worship of Adonai, the one God who had chosen us to receive His word, Lemmy was struck by an overwhelming sense of loss, as if all the years of his adult life had been wasted away from his true destiny- from his true self!
With great mental effort, Lemmy shunned those nostalgic misgivings and focused his mind on the task at hand. One of these men was Benjamin-not the young and cheerful youth he remembered, but an older Benjamin, a man of forty-six with dark eyes and a laughter that was likely less explosive, yet still contagious.
Lemmy got up and paced along the book-lined side wall in order to better see their faces. Some of the men resembled what he imagined Benjamin would look like, but up close, none of them turned out to be his childhood friend and study-companion. Lemmy walked down the other side, examining more bearded faces, none of them Benjamin’s.
Disappointment descended on him. Why had Father yelled Benjamin’s name? Had Benjamin left Neturay Karta? Perhaps one of these men knew where Benjamin Mashash lived now?
Before he could ask, someone pounded on the lectern three times. Lemmy realized the lecture of the day was about to begin. He returned to the bench in the rear.
Rabbi Gerster’s daily lectures had been the main event of each day of study, exposing novel, complex interpretations that none of the men had managed to reach independently. Superior intellect had long been the engine of rabbinical leadership, perhaps because Jews had lived in exile for two thousand years, lacking a political structure in which ambition alone could float a meritless man up to leadership. For Orthodox Jews, Talmudic scholarship had always been the sole criteria for prominence. And in the Neturay Karta of Lemmy’s youth, his father, Rabbi Abraham Gerster, had reigned supreme with his incisive mind and powers of persuasion.
One of the men stepped up onto the dais and stood by the lectern, his eyes on the open book in front of him. “Two men grip a prayer shawl. Each one claims full ownership.” His voice was soft and pleasant, intoning the words. He swayed back and forth, playing with his spiraling payos. “Talmud says that each one must take an oath that he owns at least half of the prayer shawl and shall accordingly receive one-half.”
Lemmy raised his hand. “You call this justice?”
Many of the men turned their heads to see who spoke.
“One of them must be lying,” he continued. “To split the prayer shawl between them means that the honest owner loses half. Is that fair?”
A man in a front bench responded, “These are not the original owners. They found the shawl in the street.”
“Even then,” Lemmy said, “the dispute is factual, not legal. One of them was the first to find it, and he’s deprived of half of his new property while the other one walks away with plunder.”
