The Kabbalist (23 page)

Luria opened his mouth
to say something, but Srur raised his hand. “Not another word,” he growled.
“You have talked more than enough for one day. Now, get out of here and be sure
to remember every word I said.”

Luria stood up, picked
his briefcase and walked out.

Luria stopped to
receive his gun from the Armani guy. On his way out, he passed by the reception
desk. It was quite late, but Ronit was still sitting there, working diligently.

She raised her eyes.
“Good night, Mr. Luria.”

“Good night,” he said quietly,
keeping his head down, trying to avoid eye contact.

P
rofessor Yeshayahu
Orlev’s house in Jerusalem was a little one-story Jerusalem-stone structure.
Its entrance was concealed by an overgrown bougainvillea bush, which threatened
to swallow the whole building. Luria rang the bell and the door was opened by a
small, scrawny man, whose age Luria estimated to be close to eighty. His halo of
white, thin and feathery hair was blowing in the slight wind, giving him the look
of a Christian saint. An eagle-like beak of a nose and a pair of huge brown eyes
gave him an owl-like appearance.

“Professor Orlev?” inquired
Luria politely.

“Yeshayahu Orlev,
please enter.” The man smiled and gestured them inside.

Luria and Jeanne
entered a living room, which could easily be mistaken for a library. The walls
were surrounded by book cabinets and shelves, which climbed all the way to the
ceiling. In the wall to their left, a large window opened to a small garden.

Luria introduced Jeanne
and himself.

“It is very nice to
meet you.” The old man spoke fluent English with a trace of an Israeli accent.
“So you are Aryeh’s cousin.”

“Yes, indeed, Aryeh
recommended you to us as the world’s leading expert in ancient Jewish history
and Kabbalah.”

“Aryeh has a knack for
exaggeration,” commented Orlev, but it was obvious he enjoyed the compliment.
“He helps me occasionally with my research, and I have high regard for his
capacities and willing to help. I was glad to respond to his request to meet
you.” He fell silent for a moment and then looked startled, as if he had just
remembered something. “But my manners… you are still standing...”

He walked them to a low
coffee table, around which stood a few old couches, apparently originating from
different furniture sets, but nevertheless comfortable-looking. “Sit down please,
what can I get you to drink?”

“There is really no
need...” Luria was beginning to say.

“Oh, but I insist!” The
professor turned to Jeanne. “What can I offer you, my beautiful lady? Liquor?
Or may I suggest an excellent tea that I manually brew, using herbs from my
garden?”

“I will go for your
tea, of course.” Jeanne smiled at him, and Luria saw that the old man was already
smitten by her magic. “I will also love a cup of tea,” he said.

“Excellent.” Orlev rubbed
his hands in satisfaction. “Well, then, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be
back soon.” He disappeared into the kitchen and a minute later they saw him
through the window in the small garden, plucking leaves from a few bushes and
pruning some herbs.

Jeanne smiled. “What a
nice man. I have no doubt his tea is going to be really special.”

Orlev returned,
carrying a tray with a glass teapot on a glass base heated by candles. He laid
the tray down carefully and put a small plate with a slice of cake in front of
each of them. Then, he placed three glasses in silvery metal sheaths upon the
table. He proceeded to pour a fragrant greenish liquid into the glasses, and a
strong, pungent aroma filled the room, aggressively puncturing the air, like repetitive
boxer’s knockout blows. Jeanne sniffed the air with apparent delight while Luria
found the intricate ritual quite amusing. Finally, Orlev laid the pot down, sat
on his couch, and waited impatiently for his guests to taste his potion and
comment on it.

“Professor Orlev,” said
Jeanne, having sipped from her glass, “this is definitely the best tea I have
ever tasted. How do you make it?”

Luria thought this was
one of the most transparent acts of flattery he had ever witnessed but noted
with admiration that Jeanne sounded absolutely sincere.

The old man was
enthusiastic like a little child. “This is my own recipe. I use five different
herbs from my garden. I find it more refreshing and more stimulating than any
cup of coffee.”

“Extraordinary indeed,”
Luria was quick to follow, having destroyed any remnant of the original taste
with three spoonfuls of sugar.

For a while, they
sipped their tea in silence. Luria could not help noticing that the professor
was looking intensely at Jeanne. Jeanne noticed this too. Orlev felt
embarrassed.

“I am sorry,” he said.
“It is just that you remind me so much of somebody I once knew… forgive me, my
dear.” He placed his glass delicately on the table. “So what is it that I can I
do for you?”

“Well…” said Jeanne.
“This is a complex story. I got hold of a written correspondence, regarding a
relative of mine, Pascal de Charney. He was here with the French forces in
1799. We wanted to hear your opinion about some aspects of this
correspondence.”

The old man raised an
eyebrow. “1799? He must have served in Napoleon’s expedition.”

“Indeed he did,” Jeanne
acknowledged. “We wondered if you could take a look at these letters.”

“With pleasure,” beamed
Orlev.

Jeanne passed him the copies
of the three letters and the professor frowned. “English translations? Don’t
you have the originals? Or at least photocopies?”

“I am sorry,”
apologized Jeanne. “I thought it was too valuable information to travel with …
I know this is silly of me.”

“Never mind.” The
professor was visibly annoyed but started reading. When he finished, he put the
papers down and looked at Jeanne. “Remarkable,” he said. It seemed to Luria
that the old man was trying to downplay his excitement.

“We can understand from
these letters,” said Luria, “that Pascal had been assigned a task by his
father, and that he ultimately accomplished it by getting hold of some old scrolls
in Safed.”

“We were wondering what
type of documents these were. There is, of course, a clue indicating a
Christian context…” said Jeanne.

“What clue?”

Jeanne pointed to the
professor the paragraph in Pascal’s letter referring to Philippe de Charney. “We
had a few Templars knights and officials in our family,” she explained. “It
seems that the task assigned to Pascal had something to do with this Templar
heritage.”

Orlev sat up on his
couch. “Aha!” he cried. “The famous Templar treasure! The Holy Grail! The
ultimate secret of Christianity!”

The two looked
startled.

The old man let out a
strange laugh, which sounded like the cooing of a pigeon. “My young friends,”
he explained, “the legend of the Templar’s treasure has by now become a theme
for popular fiction. Quite a few authors got rich from fairy tales about this
treasure, which may have never existed. But this is really not my specialty. If
you are looking for an expert on the crusades, Professor Bennet may be your
man.” There was an apparent coldness in the way he uttered the name.

“Professor Bennet?”
Luria repeated the name.

“Professor Jonathan
Bennet, an ex-student and colleague of mine at the Hebrew University. He and I
have our differences, but he certainly is an expert in the history of the
crusades.”

“Professor Bennet… I
think I have heard his name before,” said Jeanne. “Isn’t he also an expert in
early Christian History?”

This innocent question
must have hit a sensitive nerve. “An expert in early Christian History…” the
professor was indignant as if Jeanne had said something rude. “Well, he
certainly considers himself one, but he is wrong and misleading, and he is
stuck with some misguided ideas.”

Jeanne and Luria were
baffled by the sudden fury of the kind old man.

“For fairness and due
diligence,” continued the professor, “I must tell you that Professor Bennet and
I have published together a few papers about that tumultuous period of the first-century
AD, and about the interrelationships between Judaism and Christianity. But, you
see, Jonathan Bennet is a devout Evangelical Christian.” Orlev now raised his
voice. “And when I realized that his beliefs were biasing his academic
judgment, I broke off academic contact with him.”

Luria and Jeanne
exchanged glances, realizing they had inadvertently stumbled into the minefield
of academic rivalry.

“Madam.” The old
Professor seemed reluctant to let go of the subject. “Since you have asked the
question, can you define what you mean by ‘early Christianity’?”

Jeanne thought this out
for a moment. “I guess that means the movement that started with Jesus Christ
and his apostles.”

“Ms. de Charney, had
you said Paul and his followers, I would have accepted it. But if you mean
Joshua son of Joseph aka Jesus, then you are way off target.”

“What do you mean? Do
you deny the existence of Jesus?” Jeanne was puzzled.

“Nothing of the sort,
Ms. de Charney, this is not what I meant at all. Jesus was real, all right, but
he was a devout Jew. He preached to Jews about Jewish matters and never meant
to address anybody beyond this audience. He developed his ideas gradually,
thriving on currents that existed in the Judaism of his time, and his known
sermons were hardly original. The one who transformed Christianity from a
secondary undercurrent of Judaism into a new, full-blown religion, was a man
named Saul of Tarsus, aka Paul, who never knew Jesus personally, nor understood
him.”

Jeanne was going to say
something, but Luria quickly intervened, trying to rescue the conversation
which was fast escalating in an unexpected direction. “Just a moment,” he interjected
hurriedly. “We have another interesting clue regarding the Safedi documents,
one which you may find intriguing.”

He succeeded. The
professor now forgot his heated words and stared at him inquisitively with
those big eyes of his.

Luria let a few seconds
pass for effect. “Well, we started this investigation by looking for sources
that could corroborate the story of the French officer and the Jewish girl from
1799. We managed to find a source, who claims to have in his possession a
journal of an inhabitant of Safed of that time. This source referred to an
artifact that had been kept in Safed and disappeared during the events of
1799.”

The professor was
impressed. “Now I
am
curious. Do you have a clue as to what this
artifact might have been?”

“A short paragraph in
this journal mentioned
‘Or Haganuz’
, which had disappeared from the
synagogue of the Holy Ari in Safed. I know this is not much.”

The old man was now
excited. “
‘Or Haganuz’
? Who is this source?”

“As I said, he is the
owner of an authentic journal from that time.”

“I have never heard of
such a journal,” said Orlev suspiciously. “Can I see it?”

“I do not have this
document in my possession,” replied Luria. “I was informed about it through a
third party.”

“I would be extremely
interested in seeing it.” Orlev sipped from his tea in an attempt to wet his
throat. “Am I wrong to assume that you have arrived at this source through Aryeh?”

“I am sorry but I
cannot reveal my sources at this stage,” said Luria awkwardly and hurried to
steer the conversation back on track. “What is
‘Or Haganuz’
?”

“
’Or Haganuz’
is, of course, Hebrew for ‘hidden light’. It’s a Kabbalistic term.”

“Kabbalistic?”

“Yes. According to the book
of Genesis, light was the first element to have been created in this world. ‘
And
God said, let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the
light was good.
’ The light created during the days of Genesis is sometimes
referred to as
’Or Haganuz’
. The Babylonian Talmud says it is a
supernatural light, which will show the way to the righteous at the end of
time. This term is associated with Kabbalah.”

“Could
‘Or Haganuz’
refer to a lost Kabbalistic scripture, then? Do you know of any?”

The professor sank into
his couch, lost in thought, and closed his eyes. About a minute later, he
opened them. “Well…,” he explained, “
’Or Haganuz’
may indeed refer to a Kabbalistic
script. Do I know of such missing script? Well… I can think of a few original
scripts that any Kabbalah scholar would kill to lay his eyes upon, so to
speak.”

“Excuse me, Professor,”
said Jeanne. “Can I ask you something?”

Yeshayahu Orlev shook
himself free of his reflections and smiled at her absently. “Yes, my dear, of
course.”

“What is Kabbalah
exactly? I mean, I have heard of it… everybody has… it has even become a trendy
item these days, but… would it be too insolent of me to ask you to explain to me,
in a nutshell, what it is all about?”

The old man’s eyes lit
up. “I will be happy to explain it to you.”

Jeanne smiled
thankfully.

“Naturally, my short
explanation will be a drop in the sea. But I always say that a good teacher can
explain anything in ten minutes.” The professor gladly seized the opportunity
to talk about his favorite subject.

Luria hardly managed to
conceal a sigh of despair.

“Let us start with a common expression,” opened the professor. “
‘
Love
thy neighbor as thyself’
is
a proverb
from
the Torah, Leviticus 19, 18,
which represents a fundamental
element of Kabbalah.
This verse has become a basic
Mitzvah
in
Judaism and was borrowed by Christianity, which made it a cornerstone of its
ethics. It is a phrase any child can understand at face value. The level of
face value interpretation is called in Jewish terminology ‘
Peshat’
,
derived from the Hebrew word for ‘simple’. However, this ‘simple’
interpretation of
‘Love thy neighbor
‘, is but the tip of the iceberg. We
shall return to this later.”

The professor paused to
sip some tea while watching his students’ faces. Jeanne was sitting upright on
her couch, attentive, and Orlev was delighted. “Around the first-century BC, at
the time of the Hasmonean or Maccabean dynasty, Jewish scholars started moving
toward ‘
Derash
’, a term derived from a Hebrew word meaning ‘inquire’ or
‘seek’. Jews stopped accepting the Torah at face value only, and tried to find
extra, hidden meanings in the biblical texts. The people who dealt with this type
of interpretations called themselves ‘
Prushim
’ - Pharisees. They
introduced new concepts, like the belief in the immortality of the soul, reward
and punishment in the afterlife, etc. In time, they produced a huge volume of
interpretational literature known as the ‘Oral Torah’, which later evolved into
the Talmud. In their eyes, these interpretations were no less important than
the written scripture. This movement grew and grew, until it overwhelmed all
other Jewish undercurrents of the time.”