Acts of Faith (24 page)

“Don’t think we’re just being nosy,” Boaz explained. “We are, of course, but we have rules—anyone who visits the kibbutz for more than two nights is obliged to do his share of work.”

Tim answered instantly, “What would you like me to do?”

“Are you any good with cows?”

“I’m afraid not,” he apologized. “But back in America I did some gardening. I’d be happy to work in the fields.”

“That’s fine,” said Boaz. “Only wear a broad-brimmed hat and
shmeer
yourself with lotion. Otherwise you’ll get red as a tomato, and they’ll pick you by mistake.”

Tim was assigned to a bungalow with two Australian volunteers. But everyone knew that this was just pro forma.

Deborah had been sharing her new
srif
with Hannah Yavetz, who, by happy coincidence, was off doing her annual thirty-day stint in the Signal Corps. For their brief time together, the lovers had a private place to call their own.

Each day they worked side by side in the fields—the first opportunity they had to talk and get to know each other without the pressure of a clock racing toward twelve on a Sabbath eve.

With each night they spent in each other’s arms, the notion that their lovemaking could possibly be sinful vanished like the early morning haze upon the lake.

They were already married in a way no earthly force could ever separate. Why could they not remain this way forever?

Indeed, that was the real question burning in Deborah’s mind.

Could she ask
him
to stay?

Would he ask
her
to go?

Deborah wanted to share every one of Tim’s feelings. Overriding his objection that the only thing that mattered was being together for these precious days, she obtained permission to take him to see the holy sites of his religion.

Supported by a month’s advance in Deborah’s pocket money, they planned to set forth like pious pilgrims to trace the footsteps of Timothy’s Messiah.

By unspoken agreement, they did not—dared not—talk about the future. They lived merely from day to day. But each circle of the sun brought them inexorably nearer to the moment when difficult decisions could no longer be avoided.

Yet were they not in a land where Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still—and had it not obeyed him?

Late one afternoon, Deborah was walking along the lake shore, asking herself a million answerless questions, when she came upon Boaz, who was reading quietly on a grassy bank.

She knew that he sometimes went there to escape the burden of his leadership (“Two hundred kibbutzniks—two hundred opinions”) and intended to leave him in peace. But even from afar, he could sense her need to talk and beckoned to her.

He dispensed with cordiality and went to the heart of the matter. “How much longer?”

“I don’t know.” Deborah shrugged.

“Of course you do,” he said paternally. “You know to the very hour—the very minute maybe.”

“We’re leaving to drive around the country tomorrow,” she offered.

“But you’re not going like Moses for forty years in the desert,” he answered. “He has to be back in Jerusalem—when?”

“On the fifteenth,” she replied tonelessly.

“Well,” he said quietly, “that gives you five days.”

“You mean for one of us to make up his mind?” she asked hopefully.

“No, Deborah,” Boaz replied as gently as he could. “Neither of you can change what you are. The five days are for you to get used to the idea.”

The next morning Deborah and Tim climbed into a beat-up sedan for what they both knew—but neither said—would be a journey of separation.

Deborah took one last look at the
srif
, as Tim put his suitcase into the trunk. He was taking all his belongings. Everything. There was nothing left of him she could come back to.

The next few days were all a blur. Long sun-filled expeditions with guidebooks in Nazareth, Caesarea, Megiddo, Hebron, Bethlehem.

Then in the evenings, they would check uneasily into modest hotels, feeling self-conscious—although dozens of other young couples were doing the same.

Finally, there was Jerusalem, a city fraught with passion for them both. Not merely for their faiths, but for their lives.

They did their best to stave off sadness. Deborah even joked that their inn was a mere ten minutes from Mea Shearim, and playfully threatened to take Timothy to meet the Schiffmans.

They walked everywhere—visiting the Old City, now united physically yet still divided into tiny spiritual fragments.

As they passed through the narrow streets, they rubbed shoulders with priests from the Armenian, Greek Orthodox, and Ethiopian churches, mullahs from the Arab mosques—and
frummers
who seemed carbon copies of Deborah’s neighbors back in Brooklyn.

At last Deborah brought Timothy to the ridge atop the Wailing Wall, pointing out where her “sinful voice” had caused a riot.

“I don’t believe it,” Tim declared. “They look too pious. They’re so rapt in prayer.”

“I promise you, some of them would still recognize
me, so I couldn’t even pray in the fenced-off area. But you—my blond, Irish friend—would be embraced with open arms.”

She whispered something in his ear.

“No,” he protested, smiling, “that’d be a sacrilege.”

“Not unless you make it one,” she countered.

“But I don’t have a skullcap.”

“Don’t worry, my darling, just give them a quick burst of Yiddish and watch how fast you get the accoutrements.”

Tim shrugged, and reverently started toward the crowd of worshipers.

Suddenly, a handful of young men began to point to him.

“Look, look,” they called in Yiddish, “here comes a soul to save.”

They rushed forward, surrounding him with bonhomie.

“Do you speak Yiddish?” one inquired.

“Yo, a bissel,”
Timothy replied.

Their excitement mounted, as they continued in their catechism.

“Do you know how to
daven
?”

“Well, I know some prayers.”

“Come, we’ll help you.”

Almost magically a skullcap appeared on Tim’s head as they affectionately led him to the front, where he could touch the holy stones.

Timothy was immensely moved and they could see it.

“Pray,” one of them urged, thrusting a book into his hand. “You can read Hebrew, can’t you?”

“A little.”

Another began to leaf through the Psalms.

“Can I choose my own?” asked Tim.

“Of course,” their leader said enthusiastically. “Which one?”

“The very last—one hundred and fifty,” Tim answered.

“Wonderful,” they all responded joyfully.

Timothy recited what he had been taught was the “grandest symphony of praise to God ever composed on earth,” a song which began and ended with Hallelujah (“Praise ye the Lord”) and had the selfsame word in every line.

The spiritual recruiters were overwhelmed. “Why don’t you come with us to meet our rebbe?” they urged.

For a moment, Tim was lost. For these young men, unlike the joyless fundamentalists Deborah had described to him, were passionately infused with the love of God.

Suddenly, he thought of the only logical excuse.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized in Yiddish, “I already have a spiritual leader.”

Then he rejoined the rabbi’s daughter and began to follow the fourteen Stations of the Cross.

The last five stations—which included the site of the Crucifixion at Calvary and Christ’s Tomb—were enshrined in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a solemn place shared by six sects, the Greek Orthodox faith, the Roman Catholics, as well as the Copts, Armenians, Syrians, and Abyssinians.

As Tim stared speechless at this stark memorial of his Savior’s Passion, Deborah sensed that he was not even aware of her presence.

He was silent for nearly half an hour, and even then had difficulty speaking.

“What would you like to do now?” she asked hesitantly.

“Deborah,” he answered, his voice quavering slightly, “would you mind if we took a walk?”

“No, of course not.”

“On second thought, it’s pretty far. We can take a bus.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “We’ll walk wherever you want to go.”

“I want to see Bethlehem one more time.”

She nodded, and took his hand as they turned to begin the long hike.

It was late afternoon when, parched and covered with dust, they entered the Church of the Nativity, built more than a thousand years earlier, above the place where Christ was born.

They emerged from a passageway into the Catholic Church of St. Catherine, where Timothy knelt in the last pew and began to pray. Deborah stood beside him, unsure of what to do.

Suddenly she heard him gasp. “Oh my God.” And then in a furious whisper he ordered, “Kneel down, Deborah.
Kneel!
”

Sensing his terror, she quickly obeyed.

He whispered another command. “Lower your head—and
pray
.”

Moments later, two worshipers from the front pew rose, moved to the aisle, genuflected and crossed themselves, then turned to leave. They were wearing black jackets and white shirts, open at the neck.

As they approached, Tim could see what he had suspected from afar—that they were indeed George Cavanagh and Patrick Grady.

“Are you sure they didn’t notice you?” Deborah asked later as they stood in the shadows waiting for the bus to Jerusalem.

“I don’t know,” he answered, unable to control his panic. “They might have and just didn’t say anything.”

“If they did, do you think they’d tell anyone?” she asked, fully sharing his anxiety.

“I’m pretty sure Cavanagh would,” he said bitterly.

“But how will you ever know—?”

“That’s just it,” he cut her off, shaking his head in anguish. “I never will.”

They sat on a low stone wall at the top of the Mount of Olives. Neither spoke. In less than an hour, Deborah would leave him to return to the kibbutz.

A part of his life would be over.

They gazed at the valley below and the Old City beyond
it almost in silhouette, reflecting occasional sparkles of gold from the setting sun.

Finally, Tim broke what was almost a monastic silence.

“We could live here,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Here, this city—Jerusalem. If you look at it, you can almost see all religions come together—the spirit of God sort of hovering in concentric circles above the Old City. This is everybody’s home.”

“Spiritual home,” she corrected him.

“I mean it, Deborah. This is a place where we both could live. Together.”

“Tim,” she said in desperation, “you want to be a priest. All your life you’ve wanted to serve God—”

“I could still do that without taking Holy Orders,” he replied, trying to convince himself as well. “I’m sure one of the Christian schools would let me teach.…” His voice trailed off.

He looked at her. She knew full well the implications of his words and loved him too much to pretend otherwise.

“Timothy,” she began, “in my heart of hearts, we’re already married. But, in the real world, it would never work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t forget my religion—and neither can you. Nothing—not all the holy water in the world—could wash away the essence of what we are.”

“You mean you’re still afraid of your father?” he demanded.

“No, I don’t feel I owe him anything. I meant the Father of the Universe.”

“But don’t we all serve Him in the end?”

“Yes, Timothy. But we serve Him each in our own way
until
the end.”

“But when the Messiah comes again—”

He did not have to finish his sentence.

Although they both believed with perfect faith that
the Messiah would ultimately appear, they also knew the world they lived in was far too flawed to receive Him.

The Messiah would not come—not in their lifetime anyway.

T
hey parted at the Jerusalem bus station. As Deborah climbed onto the first step, he impulsively pulled her back for one last embrace.

He could not let her go. He loved her with a fire so intense it would have burned all his resolve had Deborah allowed it.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she protested weakly. “Your friends, I mean the ones who saw us—”

“I don’t care—I don’t care about anything but you.”

“That’s not true—”

“I swear to God, I love you more.”

“No, Tim, you really don’t know how you feel.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I don’t know myself.”

She tried to break away, not only because his priesthood was at risk but because, for her own sake, she had to leave now or never. And she did not want him to remember her face streaming with tears.

Yet as they stood in one another’s arms, she could feel the sobs he, too, was struggling to suppress.

Their parting words were the very same—and spoken almost in unison. Each told the other, “God bless you.” And turned away.