“Who’s Zecharya Karsh?”

Nachum began reading from the paper: “Jerusalem has been rocked by the recent thefts of two high-profile menorahs, both created by renowned silversmith Zecharya Karsh. Karsh, who passed away three years ago on Chanukah, was a beloved but enigmatic resident of Tzfat. His pieces, which according to collectors were suffused with deep kabbalistic symbolism, could be purchased only by visiting the tiny attic above his home, which doubled as his workshop. Even then, buyers who made the trek to his residence would have to earn Karsh’s approval before he would agree to sell them his artwork. He also refused to allow pictures of his work to be published, citing the Talmudic passage that blessing is found only in something hidden from the eye. In his later years, Karsh’s workshop was also known as a haven for wayward teens, many of whom returned to Torah and mitzvah observance under Karsh’s gentle influence. He is survived by his only child, Chaim, a pharmacist — Blah, blah, not relevant, I’m skipping a bit, Rosen — Upon his passing, the distribution of his estate became the subject of a not insignificant controversy; in a manner befitting the artist himself, the whereabouts of his more valuable pieces remain shrouded in secrecy.” Nachum looked up from the paper. “Well, what do you say about that, Rosen?”

“I’m not sure I understand how Benny Butler fits into all of this.”

“You will soon, Rosen, all in good time. In the meantime, let’s call Akiva and find out about the picture.” Akiva Rabin was one of the paper’s chief editors. He and Nachum had a close working relationship after my roommate helped the Jerusalem Post break the story about the Knesset computer hacker (the one who made all of the computers in the Knesset play Naftali Kempeh kumzitz songs on an endless loop; see podcast episode #20).

I could see Nachum’s long fingers already dialing.

“Akiva? I’m sorry to bother.”

“Never a bother,” said a faint voice on the other end.

“I’m putting you on speaker. Aryeh’s here.”

“B’seder gamur.”

“Tell me about the front page Karsh picture.”

“What can I tell you about it? It’s a beautiful menorah, isn’t it?”

“Stunning. How did you get a picture of it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll check in with my photo editor and get back to you.”

About three minutes later, Nachum’s phone rang.

“It was emailed in,” Akiva began.

“By whom?”

“That’s where things get a little fuzzy.”

“Ah,” said Nachum, “there was no sender address, I presume? Must have been sent through a virtual private network.”

“Oh.”

“You weren’t concerned to use an unauthorized photo on your cover?”

Akiva’s several seconds of hesitation before responding made me think he was at least a little concerned now. “I see your point, Nachum, but you know how quickly decisions are made in the news industry. I don’t think my editor gave it too much thought. Besides, the picture is just breathtaking.”

“That it is,” Nachum concurred.

“You know, this is the first time I’m seeing Karsh’s work. What a genius. They say he learned Kabbalah while he worked. They say people looked at his stuff and it just blew their minds. There are stories of people who actually fainted from the impact of seeing his art. They couldn’t speak for days.”

Nachum laughed a little. “Do they say that? Interesting. Very interesting. Akiva, if you can’t tell me who sent the picture, can you at least tell me when they sent it?”

“Hang on. I’ll call my editor back.”

“Why did you laugh, Nachum?” I asked while we waited. “Do you think that could be the reason people keep falling asleep? The kabbalistic power of the menorah makes their systems shut down?”

Nachum looked amused. “I think your imagination has gotten—”

The phone rang.

“Yes?”

“The pictures came into my editor’s inbox on Sunday morning, December 14th.”

“Sunday morning? That can’t be,” Nachum said firmly.

“That’s what she said.”

“Call her back.”

We waited another minute.

“She insists it was sent Sunday morning. She even sent me a screenshot of her inbox. 9:02 a.m. on December 14th.”

“But the first theft was Sunday night. How do you figure that one out, Akiva?”

“You tell me, Nachum. Aren’t you Jerusalem’s most famous detective? Hold on. I’m getting another call. Let me know if you need my help with anything else.”

He hung up and Nachum began wheeling his chair back and forth across our mirpesset. “I think,” he said at last, “that this whole case hinges on 9:02 a.m. on December 14th.”

“Because it points you to the culprit, Nachum?”

“No, Rosen, because it points me to the motive. I’ve been looking at things all wrong. In short, I had the sibah and the totza’ah of this case completely mixed up.”

“Translation, please.”

“It’s a classic mussar vaad exercise. You think you were late because you were stuck in traffic, but you were actually stuck in traffic because you had to be late.”

“I’m really not following you, Sparks.”

Nachum looked up at me and the shining blue of his eyes nearly matched the blue of the Jerusalem sky. “It’s like this, Rosen: The Jerusalem Post article wasn’t written because the menorah was stolen; the menorah was stolen so that the article would be written.”

Tuesday evening, December 16th, the 3rd night of Chanukah

N

achum and I lit and began learning Maseches Nedarim when we were interrupted by his ringtone — the opening notes to Beethoven’s Fifth.

“Where this time?” said Nachum, and I knew it was Eliad, Jerusalem’s chief police inspector, on the line.

“Okay, send him over,” said my roommate. “He’s feeling up to it?” I could hear rapid Hebrew on the line.

“The Israel Museum,” Nachum said to me as he put his phone down on the table. “Three nights of Chanukah. Three thefts. Three different locations. Three stolen menorahs. And our third client is on his way.”

Our third client was a bald British man in a blue tweed suit who introduced himself as Isaac Coopersmith, director of the Israel Museum.

“Please sit. Make yourself comfortable.” My roommate gestured to the armchair. “You look a bit pale. Can I offer you a drink? A doughnut?”

“No, no thank you. I’m only a bit shaken from the night’s events.”

“Can you please recount them for us?” Nachum asked, his chin resting on the triangle formed by his pressed fingertips.

“Certainly. We were hosting a small Chanukah party for our staff and several very important donors.”

“The time of the event, please.”

“We called it for seven.”

“And what were you busy with in the hours before the event?”

“Preparing, ordering the food,”—Isaac held up a finger for each new item— “dealing with maintenance workers who came.”

“All seemed normal?”

“As normal as a day can be at the Israel Museum, but yes.”

“So when did things go awry?”

“The guests started arriving at seven. We lit the menorah, which we placed at the center of the table. I got up to speak — just a couple of short prepared remarks — and then one by one I noticed the heads of our guests beginning to droop. Now, I’m no — I’m not exactly Winston Churchill—”

My roommate laughed. “Not many of us are.”

“—But I am unaccustomed to putting my audience straight to sleep. Soon I myself began to feel a bit dizzy, and the next thing I knew, I was clutching the table for support and resting my head on the tablecloth. When I woke up—”

“The menorah was gone,” Nachum finished.

“Precisely.”

“And what did you do next?”

“I called the police straightaway.”

“What time did they arrive?”

“I looked at my watch — I’m very British in that regard. It was seven thirty-six.”

“Tell us about the menorah, Isaac.”

“Where to even begin?” he replied, with the passion and polish you would expect from someone who speaks about valuable art professionally. “It was handcrafted out of sterling silver, 40.70 centimeters in height, 33.07 centimeters in width, with a cup diameter of 12 millimeters. Each arm of the menorah was fashioned to resemble the root of a cypress tree, and the cups were etched with feathery leaves. On the base was a small engraving of a Hebrew word.” I saw Nachum reach for his permanent marker.

“And what was that word?” he asked.

“Yemini.”

“Spelled yud-mem-yud-nun-yud?”

“Yes, precisely.” Isaac watched with a cocked head as my roommate wrote out the letters on his cast.

“Now tell me a bit more about your relationship with Zecharya Karsh.”

Something in Isaac’s bearing shifted. His shoulders dropped, and he let his arms dangle down off the sides of the armchair. “Ah, Zecharya… there was no one like him. I wish I could do him justice but we’d be here all night.”

“I have no other engagements,” Nachum said gently. “Please speak for as long as you wish.”

“Then I’ll start at the beginning: I met Zecharya when he was still Zack Karsh. We both came to Israel for a summer program when we were teenagers, he from Connecticut and I from London. Since we were both interested in art, we decided to go together to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.” Nachum nodded his recognition. “Zack was the best student to walk through the doors of the college and would have continued to make a name for himself in the secular art world, but a chance meeting changed his whole life’s trajectory.”

“He met his wife?” Nachum asked.

“No,” Isaac said with a smile, “he had a yechidus with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. One fifteen-minute conversation, and he was a changed man: He wanted to learn more about Judaism, he wanted to use his artistic skills to ‘sanctify G-d’s name in the world’ ”— Isaac used air quotes to indicate his friend’s words—“and he wanted to learn how to make Judaica. I guess I’ll just mention that I was supposed to be at the meeting, too, but I missed the train from Providence to New York. Zack would say that had I only made it to that meeting I would have become the gadol hador — it was one of the many long-standing jokes between us—” His voice tapered off and it seemed to me that his eyes had gotten a little misty.

“So eventually he found his way back to Israel, then?” Nachum prompted.

“Yes, he learned a bit in the States — that was when he met his wife Miriam — and together they moved to Tzfat. They gave birth to Chaim. Sweet kid. Very sweet kid. I got a brachah under his chuppah. He has his own two — or is it three? — kids now, I don’t recall.”

“And Zecharya’s art took off immediately when he got to Israel?”

“No, not immediately. He had certain — well, I guess you could call them idiosyncrasies — when it came to selling his work: no pictures, customers had to come see everything in person.‘Like a groom needs to see the bride before the wedding,’ he would tell me, ‘a person needs to see art before buying it.’ But his work was so brilliant that as much as he wanted to stay under the radar, I knew — I always knew — it was only a matter of time before he would be discovered.”

“Did you yourself own any of his pieces?”

“No, actually not, until… not until he passed away.”

“But not before then?” my roommate inquired.

“We talked about it a lot — I as director of the galleries at the Israel Museum, he as a famous artist — but we always hit an impasse since I insisted on paying, and he refused to accept my payment. But when he passed away”—Isaac made a sound that was both a laugh and a sigh—“I paid an arm and a leg. It was worth it to me, though. I had always wanted one of his menorahs to keep in my office.”

“Who sold it to you?”

“Benny Butler — who else? I’m sure you know all about that.”

“Just a little,” said my roommate airily, “but perhaps you’ll fill in the blanks.”

“Well, it was getting too hard for Zack to handle the stampede of buyers at his door, so he began employing Benny to be a go-between: arranging customer meetings, handling invoices, all the technical pieces. You have to understand that when he wasn’t working, Zack was learning Kabbalah. He was also a magnet for some of the troubled youth in the area: delinquents, drop-outs, those sorts. They buzzed around him like bees to honey. He had such a way with them. He would sit and listen for hours. So he didn’t have time — nor, frankly, did he have the interest — in dealing with the business side of things. But when he passed away, Benny claimed ownership over most of the pieces. He said it was in his contract. I told Chaim to take him to court, but if you met Chaim, you’d understand — he’s just like his father. And he kept telling me, ‘Abba wouldn’t want machloket.’ So I bought the menorah from Benny, even though every penny I paid went to the wrong pocket.”

Isaac slumped even lower in the armchair, as if deflated from the effort and emotion of telling over his story. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Quite a night you’ve had,” observed Nachum. “Let me get you a hot drink.”

“Would you? I think — yes — that’s just what I need.”

I watched my roommate wheel himself over to his coffee machine and make quite a noisy job of emptying out old coffee grounds and adding in fresh beans. Why wasn’t he showing off his fancy train contraption, I wondered to myself? As a spoon clanged noisily on our mirpesset floor, I contemplated offering my help, but I had a sense that Nachum preferred I not interfere.

“You’re humming, Isaac,” Nachum noted, wheeling his chair with one hand and handing Isaac a steaming mug with the other.

“Am I?” Isaac’s head turned slowly away from the Jerusalem skyline to face Nachum. “I didn’t notice.”

“Do you know what you were humming?”

“No, not a clue.”

“You were humming Maoz Tzur,” said Nachum.

“Maoz Tzur,” Isaac whispered slowly. “Maoz Tzur was Zack’s all-time favorite song.”

Wednesday morning, December 17th, the 3rd day of Chanukah

“SO,you agreed to yet another courtesy date, Rosen?”

I had just walked into our living room after completing what I thought was a private phone call with the shadchan, but apparently there was nowhere in the dirah to go to escape the glare of Nachum’s deductive faculties.

“Come on, Rosen, it didn’t take that much detective work,” Nachum said, reading my thoughts. “You talk in the kitchen only when you’re speaking to the shadchan. Your good dates clock in at around two-and-a-half to three hours, but the date on Monday night was only an hour and a half, subtracting travel time, so we can assume that, at least from your point of view, it was a one-and-done. But ever since you’ve gotten off the phone, you’ve been twisting your tzitzis strings around your finger as you do when you’re nervous about something”—I immediately released the strings and let them unravel—“so I see that the matter is not settled at all: She wanted to go out again and you’re too much of a gentleman to say no. Honestly, Rosen,” Nachum said with a huge, annoying grin, “with such sterling middos, can you blame her for being interested?” I was spared having to respond by the knock at the door, which I could at least now identify as belonging to Mrs. Pessin.

Our landlady was holding a floral notebook, and her glasses were sitting lower down on her nose than usual, both signs that she was in event-planning mode.

“Hello, boys. Nachum, here’s more folded laundry for you.”

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Pessin,” he said with a conciliatory tone that made him sound a bit like a chipmunk. “I’m sorry again about the… err… snail collection.”

“I see you’ve cleaned up the trails on the floor,” she replied approvingly, as her eyes darted across the living room. “It’s looking more habitable in here, thank goodness. Also, I brought you both some leftovers from my grandson’s chalakah last night.”

She handed Nachum his laundry and gave me the bag of food.

“What else?” She peered down at her notebook. “Ah, yes. I wanted to invite you boys to our annual building Chanukah party on Zos Chanukah. I’m calling it for eight.”

Nachum gave her a wide smile reminiscent of his Rav Kav picture. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.

“Also, we’re having a routine inspection of our heating system tomorrow because of the drop in temperature. The technicians will be coming to your dirah between nine and ten. Will you two be home?” Nachum and I both nodded. “Excellent. There was one more thing, just a minute. Let me look at my list. Ah, yes. I bumped into Rebbetzin Braunstein at Osher Ad yesterday and she said she’s been sending you a shidduch résumé for several weeks now with no response, Nachum. She knows you live in my building so she asked me to check in.”

“Has she been sending it to our agency account by any chance?” I interjected. “Because personal messages need to go to his personal account.” I didn’t mean to come off sounding so indignant.

“Oh.” Her pursed lips formed a little heart. “I’ll tell her. Would you just write the correct address down for me, Nachum?” (I imagined the whole thing was likely moot since Nachum was still on a dating break after his broken engagement, but in the wake of the snail fiasco, far be it from either of us to disappoint the likes of Mrs. Sarah Pessin.)

“One more thing I should mention, boys.” She turned her head back as she reached for the doorknob. “Your latest podcast episode about the Kohein Club? I couldn’t stop. My grandkids are coming over today to bake sugar cookies and we’re going to listen to it again. It’s so good for their English — I’m thrilled.”

Nachum gave me an amused sort of smile as the door closed.

“Solving crime and helping Anglo-Israeli kids practice their English — what a public service the two of us provide. Now let’s wash on these leftover bagels, Rosen, and get in an Al Hanissim.”

When I returned to the dirah after my last day of yeshivah before Chanukah vacation, Nachum was — where else? — on the mirpesset.

“Come quick, Rosen,” he called. “Naftali Freudlich is opening his Bimba!”

Indeed, the Freudlich family was on the mirpesset standing behind the little redhead and singing “Hayom Yom Huledet” as pieces of wrapping paper flew in the air like confetti. We watched the birthday boy whiz back and forth on his new set of wheels so fast he was like a little flash of crimson in the pre-sunset sky. I peered further down at the Rubanowitz yechidah and noted with some pride that even I could detect the smell of burning latkes.

“It’s a good thing the chassan got that fire extinguisher from Home Center last week,” Nachum muttered under his breath as we heard, in quick succession, the sound of frantic shouts, loud spraying, a clang of a pot, and the creak of a window being opened. It wasn’t long before a red fire truck with wailing sirens pulled up in front of the building.

From his excited shrieks of “kaba’im!” it was clear that Naftali’s birthday party had just gotten even better. We, too, watched the Sammy HaKabai-meets-shanah rishonah-cooking-show until it was time for candlelighting, and then, by the glow of the twinkling flames, we devoured and rated our chocolate-glazed doughnuts with caramel filling from Brooklyn Bakery.

“Nothing like overindulging in physical pleasures when you’re about to learn Maseches Nazir,” Nachum said to me with a hand on his stomach.

“At least it’s all in the name of science,” I sighed, pulling my shirt loose so it wouldn’t feel so snug around my waist.

The pair of us learned shtark until we got to the end of the fifth perek.

“The thief is taking his time tonight,” I observed. Nachum glanced at his phone uneasily.

“Hmm…” he said, his eyes already flitting back to the Gemara.

Several hours passed, and still no word from Eliad. My candles had long gone out, and even the dancing flames in Nachum’s super-sized oil cups had shrunk down to mere flickers. The letters of the Gemara were beginning to swim together on the page.

“I think we should go to sleep, Sparks,” I said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a theft tonight.”

“I suppose you’re right, Rosen. It’s odd, though. There were thefts on three consecutive nights of Chanukah, but tonight the menorah thief took a break? Why? Doesn’t that strike you as a…”

“A discordant note?” I offered, closing my Gemara.

“Hah, yes, very good, Rosen. I see I’m slowly getting somewhere with you. Yes, it’s discordant. It’s off-key. Perhaps — perhaps the fourth menorah is not where the thief expected it to be.” His eyes traveled to the corner of the room, where Myron’s menorah still lay forlornly in its box.

“Or perhaps there will be only three thefts,” I suggested. “Third time’s the charm, right — isn’t that how the saying goes? Three, and he decided to call it a day?”

Nachum looked down at his cast. “You’re wrong about that, Rosen. There will almost definitely be a fourth theft — possibly a fifth — but definitely a fourth, and if I’d have to guess, I’d say it’s going to take place tomorrow night. After all, you know what’s special about the fifth night of Chanukah, don’t you?”

“It can never fall on Shabbos? It’s Erev Rosh Chodesh?”

“Both true,” said Nachum. “But if you’ve ever heard the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe about the fifth night of Chanukah, you’d know that it’s also the first time more of the menorah is lit than unlit.”

“So?”

“So, Rosen, on nights one through four there’s progression, but the fifth night”—he gave his cast a little tap—“the fifth night of Chanukah is the tipping point.”

Thursday morning, December 18th, the fourth day of Chanukah

I

may have been on Chanukah vacation, but I woke up Thursday morning with a vague sense of unease, the phrase “the tipping point” ringing in my ears. I raced from minyan to be back in time for the gas technicians who, naturally, couldn’t get started with their work until they had coffee and cigarettes on our mirpesset. Once they were gone, Nachum needed my help setting up the mats and dreidels for his chug later that afternoon.

“We’re going to do a tournament today,” he informed me. “Best of four spins advances to the next round. Also, Rosen, do you mind picking up the sufganiyot? I already placed the order at Nougatine. And while you’re there, could you swing by the pharmacy and pick up my prescription?” He handed me his orange Meuhedet card.

“Since when is there a pharmacy next to the bakery?” I wondered aloud. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Rosen, and it’s also the year 2025. You live in a country called Israel. It was founded in nineteen-forty-eigh–”

“I get it, I get it, Sparks. I just never noticed the pharmacy there,” I said, slipping my coat on and heading for the door. “Four more days until you get your cast off and I’m no longer your indentured servant,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What was that, Rosen? You want to know if there are any other errands you can run for an incapacitated, pain-ridden friend who has been stuck at home for weeks? No, I can’t think of anything right now, but I’ll be sure to call if I do.”

“Please do,” I said through gritted teeth.

The bakery pickup was smooth and, not surprisingly, the pharmacy was exactly where Nachum had said it would be. Though the pharmacist had Nachum’s order ready, it was not well-sealed, and when I tried to slip it into my coat pocket, it fell from my hands. Out spilled an N95 mask (an alarming sign that Nachum was likely planning to test the rate of mold growth on decomposing dairy products again, in which case I had half a mind to go back to the pharmacy and get myself one, too); prescription hand cream (Nachum’s hands got so dry in the winter they would bleed); and a jar of caffeine pills (leave it to my roommate to already be preparing for Asarah b’Teves on Chanukah).

When I returned to 221 Rechov Ofeh, I found Nachum drawing lines between the words on his cast like it was a giant connect-the-dot.

“I think I’ve nearly got this case solved, Rosen,” he informed me. “I should try mapping out cases more often. The visual aid keeps everything organized, don’t you agree?”

Organized was the last word I would have used to describe Nachum’s chaotic-looking word web. To be perfectly honest, the more I looked at his cast, the more confused I felt about “The Mystery of the Missing Menorahs,” as Nachum had told me to name it on our Substack. But I knew it was useless asking Nachum to already detangle the threads of the web for me, since he was reluctant to discuss his theories about a case until he had proven them.

As hard as it was, I knew I would just have to wait and see.

We lit the fifth Chanukah licht, sang, and began diving into the Nougatine doughnuts I had picked up that morning when such a wave of extreme fatigue came over me that my mouth nearly froze mid-bite.

Nachum’s head was beginning to lower as well.

“Aryeh,” he said to me. “We’re inhaling a very potent sleep-inducing drug. Try to turn away from the menorah.” I tried but found that my neck was as stiff as marble. “Your mind is much stronger than you realize, Rosen. Tell your mind you’re not really tired,” Nachum ordered from across the table. “Overcome it.” I had the vague sense that there were moving shadows behind me.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I thought, but the words came out slurred and slow from my heavy tongue. I could now definitely hear the breathing of someone behind me.

“Don’t fall asleep!” yelled my roommate, but the fatigue was like fingers pressing, pressing down on my eyelids. I tried to scream, “Nachum, call the police! We’re being robbed!” — but my lips were numb and the words got stuck in my throat.

“I’m counting on you not to fall aslee–” Nachum’s voice stopped mid-word as his head slumped forward in his wheelchair.

That’s when it registered: Nachum was out cold, the menorah thief was in the room, and I couldn’t move.

The next thing I knew, the room went black.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1090)