Tamar was five years old the first time her grandfather held her small, dark, soft palm to what until then she assumed was just a decorative wall molding. Instead, it opened to reveal a cavernous library behind her grandfather’s modest sitting room. Later he took her around the old city of Jerusalem and showed her other doors, hatches, gates, and trapdoors that she could open just with her palm, no key required. It was a fairly useless skill to have, because she was absolutely forbidden from ever using her special door-opening ability to open any space that was actually in use. However, it so happens that the old city of Jerusalem is full of doors and gates that lead nowhere: cellar doors that lead to empty dugouts, worn and disused gates that lead to empty courtyards and doors that cannot not be identified as such by any but the most discerning eye and lead into the brick walls of structures that have centuries since replaced the original buildings that stood here. Tamar had some fun discovering and opening those doors, though there was no point in this at all. Some of the other “peculiarities” that were a product of her “special blood,” as her grandfather put it, were more useful. For example, her body was oddly resistant to the effects of sun, heat, and dehydration. Also, she possessed the ability to disappear into the background of people’s lives and make herself functionally invisible, as long as she remained within the old city walls.
Tamar is twenty-three years old now. Her grandfather, Moshe Ben Yehoshua HaYerushalmi, the stern and implacable patriarch of her family, is ninety years old and rarely leaves the house. But he still sits in the library with the special door and reads. Whenever she wants to feel as though time is standing still, she goes to see him. She opens the door that needs no handle, the door that responds to her “special” blood. She goes inside, quiet as a shadow, not wanting to disturb; and, if she is honest, not wanting to be the first to speak, so that she can check whether her grandfather could still feel her presence. He always hears her. “Talitha? Is that you? Come! How many times do I have to tell you! Don’t sneak around here like a thief!” Talitha means “little girl” in Aramaic. Because it is associated with the New Testament, this term of endearment is not in favor with the Jewish community. But Moshe Ben Yehoshua always does things his own way.
Tamar finds it amusing how much her grandfather, if you know nothing of him and just look in on him when he is sitting there among his books, resembles a Sephardic Rabbi. But Sephardic Rabbis are not usually in the habit of having granddaughters who share co-ed apartments with four roommates in Tel Aviv, and it is certainly not their custom to be pouring over the Koran, translating Homer from the Greek, or chuckling over seditious Russian literature from the Soviet era. Still, the Talmud has a place of honor on his bookshelves and in his heart. If Tamar tries to sneak in while her grandfather is praying (he prays often, not only during the normal times), he doesn’t acknowledge her beyond letting her know that her efforts at furtiveness have failed. He goes back to the very beginning of the prayer she has interrupted and starts over without lifting his eyes away from the Sidur, the Jewish book of prayers. He then prays the full prayer in a hoarse, rhythmic, semi-audible rumble, and only once he is done, does he look up. The more he ages the more he looks like the people of the desert, Tamar thinks. His face is dark, sun-scorched, and heavily lined. He is thin and gaunt, and his dark features are distinctly Middle Eastern He likes to wear long tunics. On his head he wears a white full-head kippah embroidered with intricate Hebrew script around the rim. Sometimes she dreams of a man walking away from her into the desert in a cloud of wind-stirred sand, and before disappearing altogether, he turns to look at her and he has her grandfather’s face.
When Tamar was young, it was her grandfather who told her the story of their family and of her special blood. It was her grandfather who forced her parents, aunts, and uncles to send all the siblings and cousins who were of appropriate age to his library after school on most school nights so they could do two more hours of work when everyone else played. It was he who made her sit behind her brothers and male cousins in his “class,” but still demanded no less of her than he did of them and snapped a ruler on her wrist if her performance was not satisfactory. He taught them history in intricate detail — not the “abridged” stuff they teach in schools, he would say. He also taught them Aramaic and Arabic, and sometimes he would take them out to the Shuk. There, he would make them speak Arabic to the Arab vendors until they could speak not only with perfect grammar, but also with an impeccable Jerusalem accent. He taught them to understand Talmudic arguments and once they became skilled enough, he would slam newspapers on the desks in front of them and have them apply Talmudic discourse to discuss one or another modern-day drama that the papers were screaming about.
When Tamar’s male kin grew older and one by one deserted their grandfather’s library in favor of other pursuits, Tamar experienced a secret and vindictive joy. There! No one left to be forced to sit behind; she was the only pupil left. She didn’t know what drew her to her grandfather, yet she continued to come diligently at least thrice each week all the way through high school. But years have passed since then.
Tamar is in college now, in Tel Aviv. But this being the Elul, the last month of the Jewish calendar, she has returned to Jerusalem for the High Holidays. She has arrived only a few hours ago, has gone home to her parents and left her stuff there. Her parents don’t live in the old city. Very few secular families do. Most families like Tamar’s live in the neighborhoods just outside the city walls, where life is more modern. But the pulse of the ancient city can still be heard clearly, like a bugle call. Now, in the few hours remaining before dark, she is wandering through the ancient streets of the city, taking a very long route to her grandfather’s house. She always needs a couple of good hours of wandering to readjust the internal mechanism of her body to the city’s feverish frequency. “Jerusalem fever” they call it. The air of Jerusalem that makes people imagine themselves prophets, martyrs, messiahs. An air that makes many ill with a sort of delirium that cannot be picked up by any medical test — only by the ears of their interlocutors.
One manifestation of her “special blood,” something her grandfather had been especially adamant that she should never use maliciously, is Tamar’s ability to become a shadow and remain unseen, if she so chooses. Her grandfather is the only person who can detect her presence if she doesn’t want to be detected, and Tamar uses this power to its fullest when she goes on her wanderings. Remaining entirely unnoticed, she weaves her way in and out of ancient cobblestone alleyways and courtyards, occasionally touching the white stones with her slender, dark fingers. She wanders in places where a young Jewish woman dressed in shorts should certainly not be: the Arab quarter, for instance, or the square in front of the Western Wall, where men only are allowed to pray.
Tamar enjoys people-watching. Sometimes she wanders into the Greek Orthodox Church and watches the brothers pray and chant, some fervently, some resolutely and blindly. When the call to prayer sounds, she likes to be in the Arab quarter. She particularly likes witnessing the unwavering abandon with which some men and women drop what they had been doing and prostrate themselves right in the narrow streets, right on the ancient flagstones. She likes to watch the tourists as well. There is something precious and pitiful in the way they walk about in groups, completely awed and confused by everything they see. Tamar is especially amused by blond people from Europe, their fair skin red and sweaty, devotional headscarves on their heads, and clutching little amulets and crosses in their hands to be blessed with holy water in the Church of the Resurrection. Tamar has people-watched so many times and so keenly that she can tell easily who among the faithful is actually full of faith and who treats Jerusalem as a Bible Disney Land. Her grandfather forbade her in all manner of forbidding to ever make fun of anyone praying a true prayer; but secretly, she can’t help but find the European pale people a little funny, no matter how earnest they are. She told her young cousin once that the difference between tourists from Russia and the white Jerusalem stone is that the stone doesn’t turn red after a day in the sun.
There is something else Tamar likes to do that would horrify her grandfather. Tamar likes to go and stand by the Gate of Mercey, the blocked gate, the gate of the Messiah. This gate leads to the Temple Mount, a place she prefers not to visit, even though she wouldn’t be seen. No, she likes to walk around the walls outside the City and stand by the gate from without. Then she sometimes does the thing that would so horrify her grandfather: She places her flat palm to the gate as she does with the library door in her grandfather’s house and other hidden doors all over the city. This is enough to open the library, but the Gate of Mercy remains closed. Then she whispers: “I am Tamar, daughter of Yoav and Meital,” but the Gate of Mercy remains closed. Then she continues: “This city is my blood, for never has the city been without blood of my blood since my most ancient ancestors were brought here to build the first Temple by King Solomon himself.” Still, the Gate of Mercy remains closed. Finally, Tamar says the Shema, the Jewish proclamation of faith and the prayer that is placed inside the mezuzah on the doorframes of Jewish homes. This is her way of saying she is sorry for her presumption and her blasphemy. If her grandfather knew that she had ever done this and still continues to do this, he would hit her with a ruler again, even though she is now a grown woman.
The day she returns to Jerusalem for the High Holidays Tamar has no intention of going anywhere near the Gate of Mercy. All she wants to do is walk around a bit, stop by a small shop that she knows sells excellent dried fruit and bring some to her grandfather. And yet, her legs carry her farther and farther away from her grandfather’s house, through Dung Gate, out of the City, and around the walls. And there she is – standing by the Gate of Mercy.
In the Ancient City there are always people everywhere. Not all places are as crowded as the major churches and monuments, of course, but few places are completely empty of people, since pretty much every stone here either killed or saved someone, and a person of great historical import was either born, or died, or at least trod in every alley. Today, however, Tamar is shocked to discover that not a single person is praying, ogling, admiring, or photographing the view. It seems as though the Gate of Mercy and the Arab cemetery adjacent to it are deserted.
Tamar stands silent and reverent among the weathered tomb stones of the Bab Al-Rahmah cemetery that lies right underneath the Gate. She doesn’t even feel herself come to the decision to try and open the gate again when she realizes that her palm is upon the warm, ancient bricks, and she is whispering the familiar words. Of course she doesn’t think the gate will open, and of course it doesn’t. Jews everywhere face east, toward Temple Mount, when they say the Shema, the prayer declaring faith in the one God. Tamar is facing there now as she stands, her palm golden against the white Jerusalem masonry and the westering sun setting the Golden Dome of Al-Aqsa ablaze just overhead, just beyond the gate that is so resolutely blocked. But she turns away from the Gate to pray and, covering her eyes with her right hand, says the Shema facing the Mount of Olives, rising beyond the Kidron Valley just underneath her. When the prayer is over, she uncovers her eyes and looks out over the valley.
To call this scenery magnificent, beautiful, stately, majestic — any superlative at all —seems inappropriate. Too much happened here, or is believed to have happened. When Tamar stands here, she always feels oddly empty: too much is going on outside, nothing left for her to experience internally. But Tamar does often have one thought. It occurs to her in an academic, detached sort of way, as though she has had a dream and is now trying to remember and analyze it for what it is, a silly, muddled little glimmer of some unconscious fantasy devoid of meaning or sense. She thinks: “Suppose the Gate opened for me. I would walk through it onto Temple Mount and that would make me the Messiah. What then? Then, I would hope no one saw me and I would tell no one about this and I would seal the gate again, because I don’t want the Temple rebuilt and I don’t want things to change. I want things to stay as they are and I don’t want the world as I know it to end. I want the world to go on and I don’t want any dead to walk among us again and I don’t want the rules of nature to turn on us. I would seal the gate back up and I would tell no one what I had done and I would hope the world goes on. No! More than that! I would be the Messiah, wouldn’t I? So, I would will it – I would command it to go on!” Normally, a thought like this would make Tamar laugh, but not here. Here the world feels just unhinged enough that one could calmly analyze a daydream about possibly being the Messiah and not laugh at all.
Just then, Tamar sees an old man approaching. He seems to come from nowhere. Maybe he was visiting a grave, she thinks. But standing by the gate puts her in the highest point of the cemetery and she should have seen him from afar, but she didn’t. The man approaches her slowly. She thinks at first that he is walking slowly because of old age, but as he comes nearer, she can plainly feel that, though he is certainly old, he is capable of walking much more briskly. He must be moving slowly for her sake. Perhaps he saw that she had been praying and decided to give her space out of respect.
When he is within earshot he stops, raises his hand in greeting, and addresses her in Arabic: “As-salamu-alaykum, Tamar bint Yoav”.
“Wa alaykum as-salam,” Tamar replies reflexively. She is sure she has never met this man before. They continue in Arabic:
“Greetings to the granddaughter of Moshe Ben Yehoshua Ha Yerushalmi. Is your grandfather well?”
“Thank you. He is well. Are you a friend of my grandfather?” At this the old man makes a face that hints to Tamar that this man may not like her grandfather very much.
“No. I am not his friend. But I am an honorable man and I have a thing that belongs to your grandfather. I would now return it and ask that you deliver it to him, and tell him that I wish him peace. Also, you might tell him from me that he might consider taking better care of his descendants, that they should not walk alone at night in places where they best not be. It is not safe.”
He looks at her pointedly when he says this. Then he adds: “You might remind him: Did the keepers of this city not promise that they should not use the special properties of their blood to spy, harass, or intrude in places where they were not invited?”
Tamar does not like the direction this conversation is going, but her curiosity gets the better of her. Choosing to ignore the obvious reproach, she says: “Esteemed father, it seems that if you come to send a message of peace to my grandfather and wish to return an item that belongs to him, I am sure that my grandfather would scold me harshly if I did not offer to show you the way to his house so that you may be his guest and eat and drink with him tonight.”
Hearing this the old man smiles his first smile, and it turned out to be a warm, if somewhat stilted one.
“Habibti, I too can walk in many places and I do not need young Tamar to show me to Rabbi Moshe’s house. But the gate to the city is closed.” he says waving his sinuous, leathery hand in the direction of the Gate of Mercy. “And I respect the old rules. No. I shall not be a guest in your house tonight and I ask that you, Tamar of Jerusalem, give this to your grandfather.”
Saying this he pulls something from the inner folds of his robe and stretches out his hand so that Tamar might take it. Tamar approaches and their fingers brush briefly when she receives from him an old, rusted wrought iron key on an equally rusty ring. In the brief moment of physical contact, a strange feeling washes over her that this surely must be a dream.
“Esteemed father, I will do as you ask and give this key to my grandfather. Forgive me, but what name shall I give?”
At this the old man makes a sound like a chuckle and says: “Name? No need, no need. Just please hurry home and give him the key.” With that, he bows stiffly, turns around, and begins walking away, his robes billowing. But before he disappears down the valley he stops, turns around, raises his hands to his mouth megaphone-like and adds, “Oh, and tell your grandfather that Baruch Ben David Mizrakhi was a crazy Jew!” Then he is gone — disappearing faster than Tamar expected.
Now alone again, Tamar takes stock of recent events: She is strangely alone at close of day in Bab Al-Rahmah Cemetery by the Gate of Mercy, where she came to try to be the Messiah. In her hand, she is holding an ancient-looking key given to her by an old man who appeared and disappeared too quickly, like the desert sun, and who seemed to know an awful lot about her though she is quite sure she had never met him before. Along with the key, he wanted Tamar to give her grandfather a cryptic message that someone or other was a “crazy Jew.” And to think that only yesterday she had woken up in a modern apartment in Tel Aviv to the smell of coffee and the sound of two of her roommates arguing about dirty dishes.
***
The look of absolute shock on her grandfather’s face startles Tamar. In all the years she had known him — all the years of her life — he had never let on that he was confused, scared, or unsure of anything. One might say that this is not a virtue, but she had always known him to be a man who, if he doesn’t know something, can at least pretend that he does. Now he looks completely bewildered and remains silent for a long while, during which time he takes control of each of his features one by one and bends them back into submission. Once his face regains its regal equanimity, he asks Tamar to repeat again, slowly, everything from the beginning. She does, omitting only the part about unruly “descendants” wandering where they shouldn’t. Then she hands him the key.
Tamar’s grandfather sighs a heavy sigh. He closes his fingers around Tamar’s fingers and lets the key with its ring rattle in the many-fingered cage their joint palms form. Then he gently separates his hand from hers and the key remains resting in his palm. He turns it over this way and that, and Tamar realizes that, while the story she has told is strange to him, this key is not. He plays with it as with a familiar, long-lost plaything. Tamar lets the silence drag on until she can no longer bear it and then presses: “So…do you know anything about this, Saba? Whose key do you think this is?”
“Do I know whose key this is? It is obvious, isn’t it? This is Baruch Mizrachi’s key. But really, you could say that it is also mine.”
“What?”
Tamar’s memory is populated with many characters from many stories that her grandfather had told her over the years, but the name of Baruch Mizrachi? Oh, there is a dim flicker of recognition, as though she had heard or saw that name once long ago, but no story is associated with it.
“Yes, yes. Baruch Mizrachi. What’s the use of telling you things if you don’t listen?”
Tamar feels the familiar sting of indignation. She did listen, and she is sure that he never told her this story.
But her grandfather goes on: “You know HaNevl street? Think! Don’t you remember? There is a commemorative plaque there. Think!”
Tamar thinks hard and she remembers. She knows the street and indeed, there is an old, dusty plaque there. She can’t be sure that she ever really read it, but she had glanced at it when she passed. How could it be that she never bothered to read it? She, who prided herself on her talent for observation?
Having apparently tracked the progress of Tamar’s internal process, her grandfather continues: “You don’t remember what it says. I’ll tell you what it says. It says that one Baruch Mizrachi immigrated to Jerusalem in the year 1621 and here he bought five houses. Not only did he buy his family houses, but he left a very peculiar will to his children, and his children’s children. Yes, very peculiar. Many people, Talitha, they thought he was crazy. You see, Mr. Mizrachi, he forbade his descendants from ever selling the five houses so that when he comes back to Jerusalem with the resurrected dead after the arrival of the Messiah, he might have a place to live. His descendants, Hashem bless them, made all conceivable efforts to abide by this will. They held on to the houses generation after generation and did not abandon them even when conditions in the city became such that many other Jewish families left. When eventually, Baruch’s descendants did move out of the old city and settled in Jewish neighborhoods just outside the old city walls, they still did not renounce their claim to Baruch’s houses, but rather leased them to an Arab family. When the Jordanian army conquered Jerusalem in 1948, the Arab family continued to live in the houses. Eventually, Jerusalem was recaptured and Baruch’s descendants were able to return, but the Jewish neighborhoods were war-scarred and damaged, and the Israeli government decided to demolish some old buildings to make space for new neighborhoods. They offered Baruch’s descendants money for their houses. But do you think they took it? No! They certainly did not. Instead, they demanded assurances that when the Messiah, and along with him their many-times-removed grandfather, returns to Jerusalem, the title to the land where his houses once stood will revert to him. That alone, many thought, was insane. But do you know what, Talitha? Several successive mayors of Jerusalem actually agreed to make the promise that Baruch Mizrachi would be able to claim his land should he come for it. And that is what the plaque says!”
“That is crazy!” Tamar exclaims.
“Oh, yes! Yes, it is! What did the man say? That Baruch was a crazy Jew?”
“But the key!” Tamar remembers. “What does the key have to do with all of this?”
“The key…” Tamar’s grandfather bounces it slightly in his palm, his eyes unfocused. “This, Talitha, is the original key to Baruch’s house. Not the key they used in recent centuries. Don’t be daft. No one keeps a lock from the fifteen hundreds. No. This is the original key. Oh yes. My grandfather, may his memory be a blessing, he used to carry it on a leather cord around his neck. I was the youngest of all my brothers and sisters, and my grandfather was not a young man already when I was born. And when we went to the synagogue, and I was only a small thing and could hardly follow the prayers, my grandfather would take this key off his neck and give it to me to entertain me. My father would say, ‘Let him learn to focus. Don’t indulge him.’ But my Saba, he did it anyway.”
“I don’t understand”, says Tamar. “If this is Baruch’s key, then how did your grandfather come by it? And why did this man in Bab Al-Rahmah have it?”
“Don’t you understand? We are keepers! We have always been here and we will always return! Didn’t I teach you anything? Baruch’s children had the title and the new keys, the keys that they needed to open doors. We don’t need keys to open doors, but we keep the old things, the memories. And old things and memories always come to us. Who needs a rusty old key? No one. But the memory of a Jew of Jerusalem who believed so deeply that his faith endured through centuries…We keep that. Do you understand now? But I thought the key lost… ”
Tamar’s grandfather continues, but his voice sounds softer now, more distant. He sounds like he is talking to his own memories. “This is how I will speak of him one day many years from now,” thinks Tamar.
“…My grandfather, he was born in this house, and his father was born here before him. And he grew up on these streets and knew many people in this city, Jews as well as non-Jews. And one of his good friends, he was called… Abu Yaseen was how my Saba called him. They knew each other from the time they were little boys, and Abu Yaseen’s family was also very ancient and their roots in this place are as deep perhaps as ours. But then, Talitha, then the troubles came. It is hard to remain good friends when your people are suffering and you are on opposite sides of the barricade. In 1941 a big pogrom happened in Iraq, and by 1948 the Jewish community that endured for over two thousand years was no more. By 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced from their homes all across the Arab world and fled to Israel. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Arabs were displaced from their homes here. We were about even. One of theirs for each one of ours. How can you have a friendship like this, I ask you? How? But they were friends since they were little, since a time when they didn’t know what was what and who was who, so they still continued to talk sometimes. I remember. I was a small boy and people would talk about my Saba and Abu Yaseen. When the War for Independence broke out, all the Jews fled Jerusalem, and even our family fled. I remember how my mother cried, but my father told her that we are keepers and we always return. I remember that on the last day I slept in my own bed, Abu Yaseen came. My Saba talked to him alone briefly and I remember that before he stepped out into the street they embraced. When we were fleeing, I noticed that the key was no longer around my grandfather’s neck, but when I asked him he snapped at me. Said I shouldn’t bother him with questions. Where did it go? I never found out… Did he give it to Abu Yaseen that day? That’s what I always thought, but I never found out. And then he passed away, my grandfather… He didn’t return home with us…”
Tamar’s grandfather stares at the key transfixed. His eyes are glazed over with memories and dreams and with the cobwebs of doomed friendships. He continues saying something but the beginnings and ends of his next few sentences are lost under his breath. Tamar hears something about brothers, men and women, new times ahead. Then, as though at the conclusion of a difficult internal debate, his mind is made up. He looks up at Tamar and stretches out his hand to her. “Take it. It is yours. It came to you.”
“But…!” He cuts her off.
“And there is something else. I have long been thinking. This house has passed from father to son for generations. I too have sons and I thought that one of them should live here after me. But your uncle Zeev, may Hashem have mercy on him, has no wife, no children… and your uncle Avinatan, he has four boys, God bless them, but he lives in America now, his wife is a doctor there. She will never permit them to come back here. Baruch Hashem (Thank God), at least he still remembers how to pray. So, then I thought, my daughter Meital, your mother. She married a good man. I thought they would be more traditional, but still… I had high hopes for your brothers, I must admit. But I see now. The world is changing, Talitha. I must change too. Yes, I’m sure of it. It is you. It always was you. You are the one who is meant to come back and have this house after I am gone. I will never be able to tell you who this person was that gave you this key. And also, if I started speaking about what I thought when you told me the story … I don’t think it is a good idea, Talitha. I think there comes a time when it is wise to remain quiet. But I think I know why he gave it to you. It is your destiny. Take it. It is yours.”
Tamar is stunned. Her entire childhood was spent waiting for her grandfather to finally see this very thing. Even her mother said something to this effect once. But her childhood is now behind her and the world did indeed change very much and old enchantments are all frayed and worn. There was a time when little Tamar dreamed of old Jerusalem. There was a time when she told her parents that she will one day become the first female Dayan (a judge in a Jewish Rabbinical court). But those days are over, and present-day Tamar is studying Law at the University of Tel Aviv. But that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is that she was accepted into a Masters program in Public Policy at Princeton University. She has one more year left and then she, too, will be going to America. Her uncle Avinatan and her cousins are very excited about this. They promised to help her settle in, so she is not as scared to go.
“You have to tell your Saba,” Her mother says.
“No, not yet. There is still time.”
“When will you tell him?”
“Not now. It’s his birthday. Why should I bring it up now? There is still time.”
“It will not get any easier, Tamar. You ought to tell him.”
“I will tell him when I see him for the Hagim (holidays).”
And she was meaning to tell him. But then, during her long walk, she got to thinking that there are so many months yet before her departure. Why should she mar everyone’s holidays with her announcement. But now she has no choice. She cannot accept the key and it is not her destiny. Not anymore.
“Going to America?” The old man’s face grows stiff. “And when were you going to tell me, ai, Tamar? When did you think that you should tell me? Call me from the airport?”
Tamar notices that he called her by her given name. How painful to hear her name spoken like this.
“I’m so sorry, Saba! I’m so sorry!” Her eyes are filled with tears. “The program is only two years, anyway,” she says feebly, a last ditch effort to placate him.
“Two years only! Pha! What, do you think I am stupid? Avinatan also told me that he was on a two-year contract. That was seven years ago. And why are you crying? What’s the point of crying? Did I make you go to America? Huh? Are you compelled to go to America, I ask you? No? Then why are you crying? What’s the point in crying? That’s why I don’t trust girls! Girls, they do things and then they start crying like it’s someone else’s fault!”
Tamar does not see her grandfather for Rosh Ha’Shanna. Her brothers come back from their visits with him and tell her that perhaps she may want to wait this out just a little bit longer.
“He really is very upset,” they tell her.
Her mother and father speak to him as well and come back from their visit quite flustered. Her father is unmistakably angry.
“Don’t take this to heart, Tamar. I know how much you love him, but the old man is quite out of touch. Never could live with the fact that the days of patriarchy are over. We are so proud of you, my sweet. Princeton! It’s an amazing achievement! We will all miss you terribly of course, but we are so proud of you! He should be too.”
Tamar knows that her father is not her grandfather’s biggest fan. Now that she is an adult she marvels, really, that her father was able to keep the peace as well as he did all these years, considering that her grandfather did, if truth be told, try to run his household for him.
A week later, just when Tamar and her family are finishing the Seudah Mafseket, the last meal before the fast of Yom Kippur that lasts for twenty-five hours, there is a knock at the door. It is her grandfather, who so rarely leaves his house these days.
A little ripple of confused activity passes through the apartment as everyone gets up and tries to do something that would make sense. Tamar’s mother ushers her father to the table and offers him her seat, but he gently shakes her off. He approaches Tamar, who is standing awkwardly by her own plate.
“Here, Talitha. Take it.” He stretches out his arm and, in his palm lies the key. “It came to you.” Tamar notices that the key, which previously had only a rusty ring, now has a brand-new leather cord threaded through its ornate bow. She bends her head, tears in her eyes, and lets her grandfather put the cord around her neck.
They never speak of any of this again. Not the key and not Tamar’s impending departure. Tamar visits Jerusalem several times in the winter and spring and a few more times in the summer. Only during her last visit in August, right before she is meant to leave, does her grandfather say suddenly, “You have the key, yes?”
“Yes, Saba. Of course.”
“Keep it safe. I worry, Talitha, that you may have need of it one way or another.”
“Don’t worry. You know that I will keep it safe”.
“I know. I know. But I worry. I do worry. How can I not worry? Oh, not for the key, but I worry…” He allows himself to be melancholy only for one short minute, and then his tone changes.
“You do remember how to pray, yes, Talitha? All the studying we did, it wasn’t for nothing?”
“I remember”
“The high holidays are coming. I still do not understand why you cannot be here for them, but since you say you cannot, then promise me that you will pray in temple. Promise me.”
“I promise, Saba.”
***
After the Simchat Torah service, Tamar volunteers to help with some cleanup. Then, on the morning of October 7th, 2023, Tamar wakes up late and sees 23 missed messages on her phone. “Saba died!” is her first thought. Then she learns what really happened. In the first hours after she learns this, she cannot digest it at all. She keeps repeating to herself, stupidly and dully, “it’s okay. It’s okay. Saba is alive.” But after a few hours she starts understanding and part of her wishes that she could go on being in a stupor indefinitely, just keep being happy that, though many hundreds of people were murdered, her own grandfather was alive. Tamar pulls out Baruch’s key, the key of blind faith, and runs her fingers along its ridges rather harshly, trying to cause pain. She does it every time she reads another social media post about how those who were murdered “deserved it” because they never belonged in the Holly Land at all and were merely colonizers. Tamar speaks to her parents and brothers, to all her friends back home. “I will be on the first flight home I can get tickets for” she promises.
In between phone calls and tears, Tamar thinks that she has changed her mind about what she would do if she could open the Gate of Mercy and walk through it. No longer does she think that she wants no resurrections and that she wants nothing in the world to change. No, if she could walk through the Gate of Mercy, she would bring all of them back.
Copyright © 2025 Anna Braverman