how and why the humanity we have been sold is wrong. That the Gods we worship don’t exist and don’t care. That the systems we have been forced to exist in are destroying us. In the same way that Christ supposedly sacrificed himself for our sins, sins that are a natural part of our humanity, as natural as breathing and eating, sins such as love and sex and choice, Ben Zion sacrificed himself for our belief in the Christ story, and for all the stories like it, stories that enslave us, and oppress us, and destroy us. If we realize Ben Zion was right, and if we learn from what he taught us, we have a chance to save ourselves. I don’t, however, believe we will take it. He was prophetic in that he knew the end was coming. He was Moshiach in how he showed us how to avoid it. He showed us we are all asleep. He screamed, and he kept screaming it until it led to his death. We have a chance if we remember that scream, if we listen to it. I don’t, however, believe we will take the chance. It will all end.
And while I believe what I believe, there is doubt, there is always doubt, and there has to be doubt. Was Ben Zion just a man? Was he a child poisoned by religion and convinced to believe in ancient prophecies that will never come true? Did he become what he became because he was told he would? Was he mentally ill? Did his epilepsy destroy his sanity? Was he a criminal who deserved what he received? Was he an egomaniac serving his own self- need? Was he delusional and sick and dangerous? I allow myself to ask the questions, because when I think about the man I knew, and the life he lived, and the words he spoke, and the example he gave, and the miracles he performed, and the love he shared, and the sacrifice he made, the answer, to all of the questions I ask myself, is no. Or the answer is no to all the questions but one. He was dangerous. He was absolutely dangerous. Dangerous because if we listen to him we will wake up. If we listen to him, we will stop buying the bad goods that are sold to us, and we will stop falling for the cons of preachers, popes, and presidents, and the disease of religion will be cured, and the lies of politicians will no longer be believed, and everything that has been built, all of the sick, diseased institutions that rule us and control us, and deceive us, will crumble, and they will fall. He was absolutely dangerous. And they killed him.
After he left, after his kiss with Jeremiah and after Jacob beat him, and after he turned our water to wine, the priority became finding him again. When Jacob saw the wine, he immediately believed he had made a mistake, a major mistake, an irreparable mistake. He ran from our house into the street, but saw nothing. He got into his car and drove around the surrounding streets, but saw nothing. He went into local churches, believing that might be where Ben Zion would seek refuge, but saw nothing. He called the local precincts and hospitals, but nobody had seen anything. He searched for days, and when he wasn’t searching, he was on his knees praying at the church, or talking with Pastor Luke, who, after meeting Ben Zion and hearing him speak and witnessing his miracle, was convinced that Ben Zion was Christ reborn. Jacob did not find him, or even any sign of him, and Ben Zion did not come back, or offer any clue as to his whereabouts, or contact us in any way. After Jacob realized Ben Zion was really gone, he started disbelieving what he had seen and claiming that Ben Zion had kissed Jeremiah only to upset, and had hid a bottle of wine somewhere in the house, knowing that he might get an opportunity to replace the water with it when he was alone in our dining room. He also started to become angry and say that Ben Zion had mocked him, and mocked God, and that what Ben Zion knew, the languages and the holy books, was something anyone could know if they studied long enough, which was what he must have done. When Ben Zion’s court dates were coming up and he did not appear, thus jeopardizing both our home and the church, Jacob became enraged. He restarted his search for Ben Zion, and with greater vigor, and he also started screaming at, and eventually abusing, our mother, whom he believed knew where Ben Zion was living. Our mother knew nothing. As had always been the case, she became the focus of Jacob’s rage. He screamed at her. He spit on her. He took all of her money and refused to give her any food. He would push her into our front closet and lock the door and spend time kicking it, and whispering through the door to her that she was the mother of the Devil, and telling her that our father had never loved her and regretted marrying her. Eventually he threw her out of the house. He let her leave with the clothes on her back and nothing more. She tried to go to other church members for aid, for they were the only people for years that she had interacted with, but they would not help her. She went back to Brooklyn, where we had lived as Jews, but the people we had known there would not forgive her for forsaking them. She lived in a shelter until her time there ran out. She went to another one. After a couple of months, she ended up on the streets, begging, hoping each day to get enough money for a meal. I tried to help her. I would bring her small amounts of money, blankets, clothes. Jacob caught me and beat me, breaking three of my ribs and three of my fingers, and quoted Ecclesiasticus 26:25, A shameless woman shall be counted as a dog; but she that is shamefaced will fear the Lord, after he was finished beating me. He told me if I did it again, he would beat me worse, and throw me out as well.
As the days went on, and Jacob became more desperate, and our mother became more desperate, I also became desperate. At the time I believed in the church, in Jesus Christ, and in the Heavenly Father as depicted in the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible. I knew nothing else. I had never been given the chance to learn anything or believe anything else. I did not want Jacob’s church to fall apart, or to be taken by the government. Obviously I did not want to lose our home, as it was the only thing of value that my family owned. I started looking for Ben Zion on my own. I asked Jacob’s permission before I started, and he initially said no. After Pastor Luke left, saying he could no longer reconcile his belief in Jesus Christ with what he had witnessed in Ben Zion, and he could no longer preach a gospel that he did not feel in his heart, Jacob granted me permission. Not only was he in danger of losing the physical building that held his church, but the congregation was losing members, as people felt the chaos, and saw the instability in the leadership, and started going to other churches.
I started by asking my mother, but she knew nothing. I went to the Bronx, where Ben had been living before his accident, before he came back to us, but no one would speak to me, and one large man recommended that I leave, that no one there would tell me anything, and some might hurt me if they thought I would hurt Ben Zion, who they knew only as Ben. I went to the construction site where he had worked, but the workers there had not seen Ben Zion, and the foreman of the site would not see me. I went to the jail and tried to speak to some of the people who had been in the tunnels with him. I saw three men and one woman. As soon as I told them who I was, they stood and walked away without speaking a word to me. I did what Jacob did, called police precincts and hospitals and homeless shelters. I went to the hospital where I had found Ben, but the doctor was not available. I went back to my mother, hoping maybe Ben Zion had contacted her, but I couldn’t find her. I went everywhere she had been, or where I knew she had been, but she was nowhere to be found. I stayed home and at church for two days and prayed, and still nothing. On the third day, I decided not to go to church and not to pray. I was tired, and I did not like being around Jacob, who was becoming increasingly desperate and irritable and rageful. I stayed home. I listened to the radio. I put on a station that was not a Christian station, which would most likely have resulted in a beating had Jacob known or come home and discovered it. I listened to a pop station, like a normal girl my age might have done, like normal girls my age all over New York City were probably doing at exactly the same moment. I heard songs about falling in love, about being in love, about going to parties and dancing, and about losing love and mourning love. I heard songs about beautiful kisses and songs about sex. I heard songs about big dreams and people going after them and sometimes losing them and sometimes finding them. I had never known any of these things. I had never experienced anything like them. My life had been church and prayer and school at home and Bible study. What boys I knew were off-limits until marriage, and contact between us was strictly controlled and supervised. I had never walked out the door of our house knowing I was going to see a boy, a boy who might like me, who might kiss me, who I might fall in love with and laugh with and dance with, a boy who would make me happy. I loved the songs I heard, and they made me smile. And they made me hope. And they made me dream. I had dreams I had only dreamed of having. Maybe someday I would know something real about them. Maybe someday some of them would come true. After two hours of songs and dreams and smiles and some awkward dancing, the phone rang. Jacob answered the phone when he was home, and it was my job to answer it while he was out, though no one ever called for me. I immediately turned off the radio, assuming it was someone for Jacob, and knowing that if they heard the radio, I would pay for it later. I picked up and said hello, and a man asked me if I knew Ruth Avrohom. I told him she was my mother. He said he was a social worker from a hospital in Brooklyn, and that my mother was there, and that they needed someone to sign some forms related to her. I asked him what had happened, and he said he could not share details, but that he would discuss it if I came to the hospital. I asked him if she was okay, and he said she was in critical condition. I got the address and hung up.
Without thinking, or without thinking of the potential repercussions, I left immediately. I took the subway and found the hospital. It was in a poor section of Brooklyn, and I was the only white person there, at least among the patients and visitors. I asked a woman where to find my mother. She sent me to the critical care unit. When I got there, I had to speak to another woman, who gave me my mother’s room number, but told me I had to wait for a doctor to speak to me. I sat down and I waited.
