accountant, meetings that would annoy him with their pursuit of bother-some details and the embarrassment of intimate questions. Worse still, Joseph had been unable to make contact with Yoel since he had left Rebecca and the boys, left home.
On the third morning of his new life, Joseph was cutting slices from a loaf of bread when the seven o’clock news began. He was pouring boiling water from a kettle over powdered coffee and a half teaspoon of sugar during the first item, about a foiled terrorist attack in central Jerusalem, and by the third he was reaching, bent at the waist over the tiny refrigerator, for an open carton of milk. Popular Jerusalem rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig was found dead in a pool of blood and glass in an apartment in the Old City before dawn this morning. No details are being released but police have opened a full-scale investigation. Rabbi Rosenzweig, thirty-five, was born and educated in the capital. His lectures, writings, and televised weekly Torah portion lesson drew a very large following. The day and hour of the funeral will be announced upon completion of the police investigation.
The carton landed upright with only a splash of milk beside it. Joseph landed upright, too, on his knees, his legs suddenly unable to support him. The radio announcer droned on, the refrigerator hummed and clanked as before, but Joseph heard a heavy door of thick metal slam shut some-where. After a while—a few minutes? an hour? —he crawled across the floor to his sofa bed, dragged himself up onto it, and stayed there, curled on his side, for most of the day.
In the first terrible days that followed it was all he could do to make himself continue living. He had no appetite but he took tiny bites of dry crackers with cottage cheese. He had no desire to breathe fresh air or see other human beings but he made himself take a walk around his new city block each evening at dusk. His whole being had gone numb, his voice fell into disuse, and he was surprised to find himself whole and healthy each morning as the sun screamed through his curtainless windows.
Three days later, on a Friday morning, Joseph’s father came to find him. It was hot and dry that day, the sun lolling in a bed of burning haze. Joseph did not rise from his bed at the sound of knocking, but he had not locked the door in days and his father entered on his own. Joseph had not changed clothes or shaved or washed since hearing the news of Yoel’s death, and he rolled toward the wall at the arrival of this dreaded visitor.
Manfred stood in the middle of the room saying nothing at first, his full attention on his only son’s spartan apartment. He moved to the window, which overlooked a parking lot, and spoke from there, as if in time with a metronome. “Well, I see you’ve done quite well for yourself here. But it’s time to come home, while we’ll still have you.”
In the days that seemed like months since he had come to Tel Aviv, decimated by loneliness and fear, terrified by a choice gone wrong, strangled by the silence and unmeasured time that were now his, Joseph’s fevered mind had again and again carried him back to Sde Hirsch. He knew he could rouse him-self from this bed, step out into the land of sun and shade and people and life, and board a bus for his moshav. He knew his wife would accept him back without words, bruised but not broken. His father would greet him without comment. His boys would whoop and gather around him, all eager to be the first hugged. He could resume his life, sleep in his bed again, stroll in the citrus groves of his youth, smell the scent of fresh hanging laundry as it snapped in the sea breeze from the west. He could look forward to pomegranates ripening into full blush under pointed crowns, their bloodred seeds eager to spill into the impending new year. It was all there for him to choose, a life waiting for his selection like a closet of clothes to be worn one day at a time until his death.
And only then, for
On the third morning of his new life, Joseph was cutting slices from a loaf of bread when the seven o’clock news began. He was pouring boiling water from a kettle over powdered coffee and a half teaspoon of sugar during the first item, about a foiled terrorist attack in central Jerusalem, and by the third he was reaching, bent at the waist over the tiny refrigerator, for an open carton of milk. Popular Jerusalem rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig was found dead in a pool of blood and glass in an apartment in the Old City before dawn this morning. No details are being released but police have opened a full-scale investigation. Rabbi Rosenzweig, thirty-five, was born and educated in the capital. His lectures, writings, and televised weekly Torah portion lesson drew a very large following. The day and hour of the funeral will be announced upon completion of the police investigation.
The carton landed upright with only a splash of milk beside it. Joseph landed upright, too, on his knees, his legs suddenly unable to support him. The radio announcer droned on, the refrigerator hummed and clanked as before, but Joseph heard a heavy door of thick metal slam shut some-where. After a while—a few minutes? an hour? —he crawled across the floor to his sofa bed, dragged himself up onto it, and stayed there, curled on his side, for most of the day.
In the first terrible days that followed it was all he could do to make himself continue living. He had no appetite but he took tiny bites of dry crackers with cottage cheese. He had no desire to breathe fresh air or see other human beings but he made himself take a walk around his new city block each evening at dusk. His whole being had gone numb, his voice fell into disuse, and he was surprised to find himself whole and healthy each morning as the sun screamed through his curtainless windows.
Three days later, on a Friday morning, Joseph’s father came to find him. It was hot and dry that day, the sun lolling in a bed of burning haze. Joseph did not rise from his bed at the sound of knocking, but he had not locked the door in days and his father entered on his own. Joseph had not changed clothes or shaved or washed since hearing the news of Yoel’s death, and he rolled toward the wall at the arrival of this dreaded visitor.
Manfred stood in the middle of the room saying nothing at first, his full attention on his only son’s spartan apartment. He moved to the window, which overlooked a parking lot, and spoke from there, as if in time with a metronome. “Well, I see you’ve done quite well for yourself here. But it’s time to come home, while we’ll still have you.”
In the days that seemed like months since he had come to Tel Aviv, decimated by loneliness and fear, terrified by a choice gone wrong, strangled by the silence and unmeasured time that were now his, Joseph’s fevered mind had again and again carried him back to Sde Hirsch. He knew he could rouse him-self from this bed, step out into the land of sun and shade and people and life, and board a bus for his moshav. He knew his wife would accept him back without words, bruised but not broken. His father would greet him without comment. His boys would whoop and gather around him, all eager to be the first hugged. He could resume his life, sleep in his bed again, stroll in the citrus groves of his youth, smell the scent of fresh hanging laundry as it snapped in the sea breeze from the west. He could look forward to pomegranates ripening into full blush under pointed crowns, their bloodred seeds eager to spill into the impending new year. It was all there for him to choose, a life waiting for his selection like a closet of clothes to be worn one day at a time until his death.
And only then, for
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