Papa is working the press when he notices the man. He pulls the platen down onto a large sheet of paper, and a hollow boom sounds through the barn. From her perch all the way across the room, she senses his displeasure. She looks up, then down again, afraid that he will feel her stare and notice her.

But she must observe him, still. The way his eyes look first this way and then that. The way something pulses in his jaw. The way anger spreads… the room is still, but it comes at her like the wind, past the rafters, sweeping the wooden floor, gusting toward her. Bilhah pushes herself deeper into the shadows. She hopes that this man will not whip her father into a fury. The skin on her arms prickles. Why did he have to come today, when she is stuck here?

She picks up a clean pebble and wraps her fingers around it. It is cold and solid and round. As long as she does not let go of the pebble, she will be safe.

Papa throws off his leather apron and plunges his large hands into a pail of water. He mutters to himself as he dries them on a rag and then treads toward the man. It is like a great oak standing next to a sapling.

“What do you want?” Papa asks the man.

“I come on a two-fold mission.”

The man speaks Lashon Hakodesh, but he sounds like he is singing, so he must come from Spain or Portugal. Papa will not like that. She presses the pebble hard between both palms.

“What have you got there?” Papa points to the bundle in the man’s hands.

The man walks over to a table and spreads it out.

“A few derashot that will give strength and guidance to our enfeebled nation.”

Papa picks it up. “Name?”

The man hesitates. “Shlomo. Shlomo Molcho.”

Papa stares. His forehead creases like he is trying to remember something.

“In past times I was known as Diogo Pires. But since then I have merited…”

“Shlomo Molcho.” Papa’s ears are attuned to words, nuances. “Molcho. So you think you could be our king, do you?” He gives a laugh. “And Shlomo… also a name of kingship. Well, I wish you good fortune, for are we not a cantankerous, stubborn, grieving people?” His stubby, ink-stained finger stabs halfway down the second page. “Ah. You have written your name here, an acrostic. Chosen pesukim from Tehillim, I see.” He cocks his head to the side. “That will find favor in people’s eyes, even if it is a tired device.”

She lets the pebble drop out of her hand. The anger is gone, replaced by curiosity. She feels her chest fill with air again.

Papa flips through to the last page. He reads out loud: “Author’s apology. For more than two years I have wanted to publish this work. and I was in turmoil, confused and unsure of whether I should publish or not, my heart said, Why are you sleeping. Rise up, call out… like a shofar.”

He pauses and looks up. “Do not call out like a shofar. Trumpet. Trumpet like a shofar.”

“Is not trumpet a tone of triumph?” the rav asks.

“Is it not a triumph to publish your thoughts?”

“It is the fulfillment of an obligation. To my Creator. The triumph is His.”

“But you are His mouthpiece, surely?”

Rav Molcho passes a hand over his forehead. “I do not know. It is what I strive for, surely.”

“Well.” Papa picks up a pen, dips it into ink and makes a mark on the parchment.

Rav Molcho nods gently. “I acquiesce. For you are but a messenger of the Divine, and so I understand that this is His will.”

Papa walks over to the printer and pulls his fingers through the box of metal type. “Understand what you like. I will print this for you, if you have the money to pay for it.”

“I do.” The man starts to pace up and down, his robe flowing out after him. “I wish to finance a printing of the Zohar.”

Papa stares.

“Those who learn the secrets of the Torah will merit to bring the Redemption. At present, those who want to learn the secrets of the Torah must search among the sages and the wealthy to find a handwritten parchment. If we make these secrets available to everyone, then the Final Redemption will be hastened.”

“Says who?”

The man chants: “Eliyahu Hanavi said to Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, ‘How privileged are you! Through your book, elevated people will be sustained. It will be revealed in the last generation, the end of days. Through the book of the Zohar, they will go out from exile.’ ”

Papa stands over the man, legs planted apart, arms wrapped around him. Bilhah picks up the pebble and presses it hard.

“Ah. So this is the meaning of all this Melech business. Listen here. We will go out of exile when the Almighty decides we’ve had enough.”

The man’s face is suffused in a pleasant smile but there is fire on his lips. “But how can we not have had enough? Do you know the suffering of our people?” He takes a deep breath. “Salonika. It is a Garden of Eden. Where else do you find everyone speaking the holy tongue in the streets? Where else do you find such a concentration of Torah scholars, of learning and prayer? Where else has the whole Talmud been printed? It is a place where Hashem has sent His hanhagah of comfort.

“But look elsewhere. Jews are slaves in Africa. They are penniless in Syria and the Holy Land. The roadways of Europe are marked by their graves. And you tell me that we do not need this? This longing for the Messiah?”

Papa stomps across the room and adjusts the paper in the printer before he turns around again and addresses the stranger. “What do you know? What are you, after all? Who are you? Just another converso.”

“And yet, G-d has chosen me. And perhaps even more important, I have chosen Him. This is what counts, now. It is not that my ancestors were scholars, and it is not wealth, and it is not that I have lived in a village or community for a thousand years. It is that I have lit a fire inside myself, a fire for the Almighty.”

The man’s voice quivers as if it is filled with tears. “Please understand. We always thought that we simply had to wait, wait and Hashem would bring us out of exile. And now there is something that we understand.”

“What?” Papa’s voice is curt.

The man steps back. Bilhah might feel sorry for him, if she were not worried about herself. Any moment now, she can feel it, Papa is going to storm. It is building up inside him, she knows.

“That everything we believed is upside down. We always thought that we are in exile and the Almighty must redeem us. But now we know that it is the Shechinah that is in exile, and its Redemption is in our hands.”

Papa’s voice is guarded. “And how is this Redemption achieved?”

“Tefillot and tikkunim. Through special intentions when we pray. Through finding and liberating the nitzotzot of holiness. Through learning the Zohar.” His voice pulses with excitement. “Which is why we must print the Zohar, too. So that Yehudim can learn it.”

“And what will happen when Mashiach comes?”

Papa’s voice has a dangerous edge to it, but the rav does not notice. If Papa gets angry, she could go to the ezrat nashim of the beit knesset. She could hide in the barn of old widow Mazaltov. It is hard to breathe in there, from the smell of the animals, but she would get used to it after a while. If the weather were better, she could hide in the woods, but everyone is talking about the harsh winter, with wind and rain and even sleet. The barn or the beit knesset. Those are the best choices.

“There are many opinions, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But there is one that says… when the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Almighty, the Jewish People will pass from the shemittah of din to the shemittah of chesed. The lower waters will rise and cover the whole mundane world and only Eretz Yisrael will remain, and its borders will be 400 leagues by 400 leagues, and it will float upon the water like the ark of Noach and go close to the Garden of Eden. And the tzaddikim will plunge into the Dinur River and thereby enter the Great Shabbos, standing in the Garden of Eden, and they will finally be together with the Shechinah.”

Bilhah stares. Her heart lifts, floats, flutters somewhere above her, above the barn, above the trees. Waters. A river. The Garden of Eden. She closes her eyes and imagines a garden filled with trees that are covered in leaves of silver and gold. A bird flies by, its feathers tipped with rubies. The Final Redemption…

“So the Shechinah will no longer be suffering?”

“The Shechinah will return from its exile. And to do this”—the man closes his eyes and rocks back and forth—“we must reunite both parts of the Torah, the hidden and the revealed, that which is open and that which hides deep, deep, deep within the tent. This union will bring about the union between the Creator and His children, Heaven and Earth. The bark of each tree will once again taste like its fruit, and the moon will grow in size until the night itself will dazzle us with its shimmering, luminous beauty.”

“You are a man of words. But I am no fool. I also lived in Spain, though I left as a little boy, with the exiles.” Papa takes a deep breath and then bellows. “If you think I want to be reunited with the Shechinah, then you are a fool. I live my life and do my job and care for my daughter, and if you think I want the Almighty involving Himself in my business, you are mistaken. Until He decides to redeem us, let Him stay in Heaven. I do well enough without Him here on Earth.”

The heat is stifling, but Bilhah pulls her blanket around herself, tight, tight, tighter. She tries to breathe but finds that stuck in her throat is a sob. Her face is wet with tears.

Rav Shlomo Molcho. Come to bring the Redemption. And her father had slung him out of the workshop. But still. For a little girl in the shadows, he had strung beads of light in the dark sky of winter. Until… Until…

In the sweltering heat of the palace, her head thumps, and she cannot think clearly, only that she might go to Jerusalem, she might, and that there is this wall, this wall around Jerusalem that Yasemin thinks could be the harbinger of the Redemption, as if their suffering is not enough, as if being tossed around the world in G-d’s slingshot is not enough.

But her father’s words. “Let Him stay in Heaven. I do well enough without Him here on Earth.”

She sits up and rocks back and forth. Through the confusion, one thought flutters out and lands on her hand, a butterfly of a thought, delicate, poised to fly away.

If you despise Papa, why have you taken his belief into your heart?

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 816)