The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

“Where is he?!” I demand.

“In the micvah. Murca Benjamin is being married.”

“What….now? It was to be tomorrow. It must be long after midnight. And it’s still the Sabbath!”

He whispers, “To fool the Christians, the wedding has been changed to tonight.”

We walk together to the courtyard. Father Carlos comes out to meet us. He, Didi, Diego, Farid and I stand by the stump of our felled lemon tree. I say, “I must confront Rabbi Losa, make sure he’s got nothing to do with this. I’ll be back soon.”

Everyone begins to raise their voices against me. “It’s too dangerous for Jews to meet together in ritual,” Diego concludes, speaking for all of them. “What if the Christians find you?!”

My distrust of Losa is so complete that I cannot resist the urge to confront him. “Even so,” I say, “I must go. Besides, there is nothing we can do about Queen Esther and Zerubbabel in the night. At dawn, I will begin to draw them out of hiding.”

I leave my friends for the micvah and Murca Benjamin’s marriage ceremony. As a childless widow, she has been obliged by the law of Levirite marriage to wed her late husband’s elder brother now that he has chosen to take her as his bride.

A weedy man whose face is hidden in a cowl guards the bathhouse door. “May I go in?” I ask. “I’m a friend of Murca’s.”

“Hurry.”

The stairs are lit by wall torches. A small gallery of witnesses draped in cloaks of fluttering shadow and light is assembled in the central chamber, men in front, women behind. But as I descend, I notice that something is amiss. Rabbi Losa sits at the center of a tribunal of five judges. He starts as if burned when he spots me. His wicked eyes show cold dread. Rage presses into my groin, hot and demanding.

And yet, what is happening? Murca stands opposite her brother-in-law, Efraim. Her hair has been gathered up under a burlap headscarf. Her face is drawn, hopeless, and her hands are trembling. A black ceramic plate rests on the ground between them. The halizah! Oh God, when will Thy mercy ever reach us? After the riot against the Jews, Efraim must have reneged on his agreement to marry. We are well along in the ceremony that will free him from this duty. As for Murca, she, too, will be liberated. But into what future? With little dowry and half the Jewish youths of Lisbon gone to ash, her chances of finding the happiness she deserves are slim.

Efraim announces his refusal to marry Murca in a judgmental voice. In quivering, hesitant syllables, Murca replies in Hebrew, “Me’en yeba-mi lehakim leahiv shem beyisrael lo aba yabmi,” then repeats her words in Portuguese so all may understand: “My husband’s brother has refused to establish a name in Israel for his brother and does not wish to marry me in the Levirite marriage.” A sigh comes from deep in her gut as she finishes.

“Do you understand what she said?” Rabbi Losa asks Efraim.

“Yes.”

The judges rise. Murca trudges toward Efraim, crouches, and with her right hand alone begins to undo the leather sandal straps circled three times around his right calf. Her agonized breaths scrape the air. When the laces finally dangle free, she raises his foot and slips off his shoe. Lifting herself up, she reaches back for leverage and throws the sandal to the ground between Efraim and the judges.

Rabbi Sabah nudges Losa and whispers in his ear; the traitorous lout has forgotten his place in the ceremony because of his fear of me. In a rushed voice, he says to Efraim, “Take a look at the spittle which is coming out of her mouth until it reaches the ground.”

Murca trembles, manages with great effort to lean over and spit into the black plate to symbolically humiliate her brother-in-law for refusing to give her children.

Defiant, Efraim retrieves his sandal and hands it to Rabbi Losa as if serving a summons. All five judges intone in unison: “May it be God’s will that the daughters of Israel will never come to need the halizah or the Levirite marriage.”

The ceremony over, Murca melts to the floor. As the women rush to her, Losa breaks for the stairs. All rabbis know how to kill like a shohet! I think. He was the one blackmailing Uncle’s smugglers. That is why God meant for me to attend this halizah!

I push past the men of the gallery, rush up after him. Outside, I spot him lumbering toward his house. In a moment, I have reached him. My hands form fists around the silk of his collar. When I shove him against the wall of Samir’s house, I say, “A great scholar and rabbi of rabbis like you should not be in such a hurry to leave.”

He pushes back at me. “Let me pass, you little catamite.”

“You mistake me for Farid, a lover of men whose name you are unequal even to pronounce.”

“Would you beat me right in the street in front of everyone?” He looks around to force me to consider the small crowd that has gathered.

“I might,” I say. “I care not what the others think of me. But I will be fair. I will not kill you for your crimes against your people, only if I find you murdered my uncle.”

“Murdered your uncle? Me?!”

“Is that so astounding? You betrayed him! You dare deny it? You took out your shohet’s blade and slit his throat!”

“I do indeed deny it. Of course, we disliked each other. But there is a Red Sea between hate and murder. And I have not crossed it.”

“Where were you the Sunday of the riot?” I demand.

“In my home praying. One of my daughters is ill.”

“To God or to the Devil?”

“May a wild boar press its tongue into…”

I knock his head against the whitewashed wall. He shrieks, groans. “And witnesses?!” I ask.

“Both my daughters were there with me!”

“All day?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did the Dominicans spare you?”

He shouts, “I work for the Church now, you fool!”

“Are your daughters at home?”

“Don’t you dare…”

A week of little sleep and food is beginning to take its toll on my reasoning and balance. I tug the terrified rabbi down the Rua de Sao Pedro toward his house. A retreating part of me realizes that I have let my desperation get the better of me. Am I afraid to see the truth, to string all the clues together into an easily understood verse? They are all safely placed in my Torah memory: White Maimon of the Two Mouths; Diego’s stoning; the shohet’s slashing cut across my uncle’s neck; the letters from Tu Bisvat. If they were citations from Torah or kabbalah, I could weave them together into a sensible commentary, an answer. Am I simply afraid to end the journey toward vengeance and pass through the final Gate of Emptiness beyond my master’s death?

Chapter XVIII

According to kabbalah, honey has one-sixtieth the sweetness of manna; dream one-sixtieth the power of prophesy; the Sabbath one-sixtieth the glory of the world to come.

And the sleep of sickness, what is its fraction of death?

Rachel, Rabbi Losa’s youngest daughter, lies under a woolen blanket, on her side, the back of her hand curled like a flipper over her forehead as if she is seeking protection from an ogre. Her eyes are closed, but every few seconds she shudders, seeming to cast away an inner damp. Esther-Maria, her older sister, sits vigil at the end of the bed with the worry-reddened eyes of failing resolve. A chaplet threads through her fingers. She nods up at me as those beyond speech do, acknowledging kinship yet distance.

I consider the failure of the child’s body as if aligned to Efraim’s denial of Murca. The broken promises of