“Any printing of mine has a letter of recommendation. As it is, people fear that the press is an invention of the sitra achra”

Midday and they are all weary from riding in the heat. Eliyahu worries for Yannai, who seems to fade with each passing day, but as their horses trot along the pathway up to Jerusalem, they all seem to breathe deeper and as their lungs fill, a new strength pulses through them.

Even from a distance, they see signs of construction: great stacks of rock lashed to a wooden wagon and pulled by a team of donkeys. As the wagon passes, Yannai fixes his eyes on it. He pulls the reins for his horse to idle and pronounces, “Baruch Atah… Boneh b’rachamav Yerushalayim.”
“Amen,” the chaburah answer.

The guards call a halt.

“None of this!” the chief shouts. His black hair streams behind him so that he looks like a messenger from another world. He threads his horse through theirs, singling each of them out for his message. “In Jerusalem, there is not a word about anything but the magnificence of the Sultan. Between Jews, between Moslems, it matters not. Come here and start talking about the Final Redemption and that will be the end of all of you.”

Yannai shrugs. The chief approaches him, catches his horse’s bridle with his hands, and looks Yannai in the eye. “We go not in a fever of Redemption but in a measured spirit of goodwill and readiness to work for the good of the Ottoman Empire. They have been good for the Jews and for the land, have they not?

“Look at all of you, finding refuge here after Europe became a furnace for you. It was the magnanimity of the Sultan that gave you a home. Look at this place now. Good roads. Businesses. Law and order. None of the chaos of the Mamluks.”

Yannai and the men around him nod.

The chief continues. “Suleiman believes in good cheer. Remember his words:

‘Come, don’t let

The army of sorrow

Crush the heart’s soldiers.’

“We are the heart’s soldiers, in his eyes. Let us not be sorrowful, nor exultant. Good cheer and readiness. Now let us ride.”