Phobos: Mayan Fear by Steve Alten Page A
Authors: Steve Alten
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Science-Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Thrillers, End of the world
Ads: Link
of the holy man who blessed the site with his presence more than two thousand years ago.
This year, they will have to wait.
As sundown approaches, orange security signs appear, indicating the holy site will be shut down at 5 p.m. The roads leading up the mountain are closed, with police posted along the foot trails. Skirmishes break out between local security forces and disappointed visitors. The mayor of Peki’in assures the masses the holy site will reopen tomorrow morning at seven in time for the Lag b’Omer holiday. When pressed for an explanation he mumbles something about a security threat.
Having received 75,000 US dollars to seal off access to the cave from sunset to sunrise, the Arab mayor has no qualm in dealing with a few hundred disgruntled Jews.
The forty-nine days of the Omer that immediately follow Passover correspond to the period of time 3,400 years ago that followed the Israelites’ physical emancipation from Egypt and Moses’s descent from Mount Sinai. The seven weeks of Omer are considered dark days, a time when the Israelites’ uncertainty about God had cost them the gift of immortality, condemning an entire generation to wander the desert for forty years.
The thirty-third day of Omer commemorates two important historical events, both involving great spiritual sages that lived fourteen centuries after Sinai, when the Holy Land was ruled by Rome and harsh laws were enacted that strictly forbid the study of the Torah.
Akiva ben Yosef held no interest in studying the Torah. Born the son of a Jewish convert, Akiva was a poor shepherd who fell in love with the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Israel. Faced with being disinherited should she marry the shepherd, Rachel rebuked her father and accepted Akiva’s proposal, but only if he agreed to learn the Torah—no easy feat for an illiterate forty-year-old man.
Keeping his word, Akiva left his bride to study outside Roman jurisdiction. When he returned twelve years later, he was an ordained rabbi with a large following. With Rachel’s blessing he would continue his studies for another twelve years, becoming a great sage whose students numbered twenty-four thousand.
In 132 CE, a Jewish leader by the name of Shimon bar Kokhba led a revolt against the Holy Land’s Roman oppressors, the movement supported by Kokhba’s spiritual advisor, Rabbi Akiva. When the dark judgment days of the Omer came, they arrived with a plague that killed all but five of Rabbi Akiva’s students. Sages interpreted this epidemic to be a result of the students’ growing egos and lack of respect for one another while studying the Torah.
The devastation from the plague finally ended on the thirty-third day of Omer.
Despite the horror of his losses and in direct violation of Roman law, Rabbi Akiva continued to teach his surviving students. The Bar Kokhba revolt would fail: 580,000 Jews massacred. Three years later Rabbi Akiva was captured and skinned alive in front of his people, dying a martyr’s death. Before he perished, he revealed to his favorite student, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, that the Torah was encrypted with a hidden wisdom that was, in essence, the instruction manual of our existence.
Fleeing Roman persecution, Rabbi Shimon and his son, Rabbi Elazar, escaped to a cave in the mountains of Peki’in. Sustained by the fruit of a carob tree and water from a spring, the two holy men devoted themselves to unraveling the Torat HaSod, an ancient wisdom that Rabbi Akiva claimed had been secretly encrypted in the arrangement of the Aramaic letters in the Torah. Each morning the two men would remove their clothing to preserve the cloth, then bury themselves neck-deep in the sand, channeling the prophet Elijah to aid them in their quest.
For thirteen years father and son remained hidden, until they learned of the Roman governor’s death. When they returned to civilization, they carried with them a secret knowledge they would later transcribe into the book of
This year, they will have to wait.
As sundown approaches, orange security signs appear, indicating the holy site will be shut down at 5 p.m. The roads leading up the mountain are closed, with police posted along the foot trails. Skirmishes break out between local security forces and disappointed visitors. The mayor of Peki’in assures the masses the holy site will reopen tomorrow morning at seven in time for the Lag b’Omer holiday. When pressed for an explanation he mumbles something about a security threat.
Having received 75,000 US dollars to seal off access to the cave from sunset to sunrise, the Arab mayor has no qualm in dealing with a few hundred disgruntled Jews.
The forty-nine days of the Omer that immediately follow Passover correspond to the period of time 3,400 years ago that followed the Israelites’ physical emancipation from Egypt and Moses’s descent from Mount Sinai. The seven weeks of Omer are considered dark days, a time when the Israelites’ uncertainty about God had cost them the gift of immortality, condemning an entire generation to wander the desert for forty years.
The thirty-third day of Omer commemorates two important historical events, both involving great spiritual sages that lived fourteen centuries after Sinai, when the Holy Land was ruled by Rome and harsh laws were enacted that strictly forbid the study of the Torah.
Akiva ben Yosef held no interest in studying the Torah. Born the son of a Jewish convert, Akiva was a poor shepherd who fell in love with the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Israel. Faced with being disinherited should she marry the shepherd, Rachel rebuked her father and accepted Akiva’s proposal, but only if he agreed to learn the Torah—no easy feat for an illiterate forty-year-old man.
Keeping his word, Akiva left his bride to study outside Roman jurisdiction. When he returned twelve years later, he was an ordained rabbi with a large following. With Rachel’s blessing he would continue his studies for another twelve years, becoming a great sage whose students numbered twenty-four thousand.
In 132 CE, a Jewish leader by the name of Shimon bar Kokhba led a revolt against the Holy Land’s Roman oppressors, the movement supported by Kokhba’s spiritual advisor, Rabbi Akiva. When the dark judgment days of the Omer came, they arrived with a plague that killed all but five of Rabbi Akiva’s students. Sages interpreted this epidemic to be a result of the students’ growing egos and lack of respect for one another while studying the Torah.
The devastation from the plague finally ended on the thirty-third day of Omer.
Despite the horror of his losses and in direct violation of Roman law, Rabbi Akiva continued to teach his surviving students. The Bar Kokhba revolt would fail: 580,000 Jews massacred. Three years later Rabbi Akiva was captured and skinned alive in front of his people, dying a martyr’s death. Before he perished, he revealed to his favorite student, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, that the Torah was encrypted with a hidden wisdom that was, in essence, the instruction manual of our existence.
Fleeing Roman persecution, Rabbi Shimon and his son, Rabbi Elazar, escaped to a cave in the mountains of Peki’in. Sustained by the fruit of a carob tree and water from a spring, the two holy men devoted themselves to unraveling the Torat HaSod, an ancient wisdom that Rabbi Akiva claimed had been secretly encrypted in the arrangement of the Aramaic letters in the Torah. Each morning the two men would remove their clothing to preserve the cloth, then bury themselves neck-deep in the sand, channeling the prophet Elijah to aid them in their quest.
For thirteen years father and son remained hidden, until they learned of the Roman governor’s death. When they returned to civilization, they carried with them a secret knowledge they would later transcribe into the book of
Similar Books
