The Devil in Jerusalem (25 page)

When this happened, Rabbi Kaban could no longer stay silent, admonishing his star pupil, “These works of practical kabbalah are not meant for someone your age. Leave it before you bring evil into your life.”

But Menachem simply looked at him with the same unblinking stare that had so unnerved his father and teachers, his eyes arrogant, his lips tightly stretched into a small, secret smile.

He refused to obey.

It was then that the stories began. How he had opened the door of a locked
mikvah
by using the names of angels. How he had used an incantation to grow money between the pages of a book. How he had driven a car with no gas all the way to the graves of the saints in Meron.

His reputation spread.

Rabbi Kaban, perturbed, decided that what his star pupil needed was greater stability in life. He resolved that it was time for Menachem to marry. And so when a rich merchant came to him for advice about a monetary matter, the rabbi asked him instead if he had any marriageable daughters. As luck would have it, he had two.

The eldest, Ruth, was a pretty, pale, docile girl of eighteen who had just graduated Beit Yaakov Seminar and hoped to teach. The father, whose heart had been set on an Ashkenazi Talmud scholar, was less than enthusiastic at first about this short, dark, Sephardi boy. He was finally won over by the rabbi's and his own daughter's endless entreaties.

Ruth had never met anyone like Menachem. She was stunned, enthralled, captivated, her mind dizzy with possibilities. He was so wise! So learned! He knew things even the greatest scholars didn't dare delve into. He was going to be a leader in the Torah world, and she would be his wife, an important rebbetzin. It was everything a devout haredi girl dreamed of.

A lavish wedding was held in a large catering hall. The entire yeshiva attended. Menachem was set up financially by his father-in-law, although not in the luxurious manner he had expected and felt he deserved: a small attached cottage in a far out suburb, an hour's drive from Jerusalem. He received a small monthly stipend from his father-in-law but not enough to cover all his expenses. Resentfully, he had no choice but to continue giving lessons, while he learned kabbalah deep into the night.

Eventually, even more outrageous stories of Menachem's miraculous use of the names of angels and the holy tongue reached Rabbi Kaban. At that point, the good-hearted old teacher finally felt compelled to act: he ordered his pupil to put aside his dangerous dabbling in the forbidden knowledge once and for all: “If you use their names to call them, they bring demons with them, and before you know it, you are at their command and not the opposite.”

“What do you know, old man?” Menachem answered in contempt, turning his back and slamming the door to the study hall. Only then did a shocked Rabbi Kaban fully realize the depth of his mistake, and that it was beyond his power to correct it. He cut off all ties with Menachem Shem Tov and forbade his students any contact with him.

Menachem set up his own yeshiva nearby, in one of the poorly attended synagogues of a dying congregation that was only too happy to allow him to fill its run-down premises during the day with the sound of students learning the sacred texts. Some starstruck students from Rabbi Kaban's yeshiva followed him, and others came from all over, drawn to his growing reputation as a kabbalist and holy man.

But he never had more than ten students at any given time. Whether this was his choice, or because people who admired him soon found their admiration outweighed by their fears, is hard to know. In any case, there was a constant flow of those who came and those who left, never to return. He always maintained that this didn't bother him. On the contrary, he claimed he wanted only those willing to submit to him completely, that the others were worthless to him and to themselves. They were weak, vacillating, undependable, and thus unworthy of learning the sacred secrets of the universe that he had to offer. Only those exhibiting the tremendous discipline he demanded would be able to reach the highest spiritual level, he said. The others were of no use to him and the sacred knowledge, being vessels too weak to hold the great light.

Soon a loyal, handpicked cadre surrounded him, willing to do his bidding mindlessly in return for sharing his powerful secrets. These men came with him to pray at the graves of saints, conducted secret rituals under the full moon in the thick forests that surround Jerusalem, daily witnessing Menachem Shem Tov's miraculous secret powers. Or so they swore.

If any one of them veered even slightly in an independent direction, ceasing to be “faithful servants,” he immediately withdrew his light from them, turning his face away. Those who didn't immediately make amends were mercilessly beaten in the forests, then secretly dropped off at the emergency rooms in various Jerusalem hospitals. When they healed, they either willingly returned to a double dose of light or were no longer part of the group.

Those that left never spoke to anyone about what they had been through, terrified of Shem Tov's mystical powers to harm them. Those who remained spoke in awed whispers of the dire punishments that had befallen those who had dared to speak out against their mentor and teacher and their loved ones: how their kidneys failed, their virility vanished, and cancerous growths sprouted like summer weeds. They went on and on, feeding each other tales of destruction and retribution that filled all listeners with fear.

They swore they had seen him change all the traffic lights to green, that he had commanded the wind to pick him up and carry him, that he had thrown dice and predicted the numbers again and again and again, that people who wanted money were asked, “In which pocket, left or right?” And according to their answer, that pocket would fill with money. They swore they had seen him submerge his head underwater for forty minutes. They swore he had put his hand on the stomach of a man's father and removed his illness. They swore Aaron Shem Tov had announced to the fifteen known kabbalah masters in Jerusalem, “Here is my son, a new wonder worker.” And the masters had risen to welcome him. And in the dark crowded alleyways of the place near the shuk where little yeshivot blossomed and wilted like wildflowers, everyone swore these tales were true.

People said they had witnessed these things or at least heard about them from very reliable sources. Because to those with faith, hearing about something was the exact same thing as seeing it with one's own eyes, was it not? They swore it was true and believed it was true, the way they believed the Torah was true and God existed. They made it all part of the same faith, inseparable. And it was, at least among the handpicked people with whom Menachem Shem Tov surrounded himself.

Soon after his marriage, Menachem arranged a match between his wife's sister and Shmaya Hod, one of his devoted followers. But the girl had her doubts: “He spends all his time with Menachem in the yeshiva. All day and all night. It's not the kind of life I want,” she told her sister Ruth in confidence. Ruth immediately told her husband. The day before the
vort
to seal the engagement, Menachem instructed Shmaya Hod to call it off, causing his wife's family untold humiliation.

While his father-in-law cut all ties with the young kabbalist, Ruth Shem Tov was loyal to her husband to the point of obsession, refusing any contact with her parents and family for years. It is hard to know if she bitterly regretted her actions later, when Menachem lost interest in her and her love turned to abject fear. By then, there was very little left of who she had once been.

Then came a time of turmoil. A plot was uncovered and thwarted by the Israeli Secret Service among yeshiva students who planned to fire an RPG missile at the Al-Aqsa mosque to create chaos and usher in an all-out war of Gog and Magog, which the Talmud says will precede the coming of the Messiah.

At first, the students kept silent, but later, after sitting in jail for years, they would claim that Rav Menachem Shem Tov had put them up to it. But by then the statute of limitations had run out and as the crime had not taken place, and there were those who had been tried, convicted, and punished for it, police did not pursue it.

Other kabbalah masters also began to complain. “We, who truly know the magic incantations, would never dare use them.” But not all agreed. They told stories of the great kabbalah master the Baba Sali, who during a
hilulah
ran out of arak. He reached under his flowing robe and pulled out a bottle from which flowed an endless supply, enough to quench the thirst of the hundreds of disciples who had come. Others argued that it was a well-accepted tradition to use practical kabbalah to heal the sick or to match the unwed with marriage partners. But even they agreed that if a person misused his power there would be a terrible price to pay.

While some would later call Menachem Shem Tov a classic psychopath, there were those who would argue that his behavior proved that the demons he had summoned to do his bidding had taken up residence within him, and now it was he who did theirs. Either theory would do concerning the events that followed his introduction into the lives of Shlomie and Daniella Goodman.

 

23

Just when Bina and Morris had despaired of getting Hod or Goldschmidt to talk, a local law enforcement officer in the Galilee got assigned a call from someone who spoke Hebrew with an accent so American they thought he was speaking English. Actually, it was a mixture of the two languages. What he said was, “
Ani ausiti
citizen's arrest.
Bo
quick!”

When the officer arrived forty minutes later, he and his partner found two Hassidic types going at it, one all in white and the other all in black, each with long payot and beards, both of whom looked worse for the wear. The one in black had two black eyes and a bloody nose and was lying on the ground, as the one in white, his face scratched, shoved his shoe into his opponent's stomach after kicking him a few more times in the behind.

After separating them and handcuffing them both, police shoved them into a squad car and took them down to the station, the one in white protesting all the way. His name, he claimed, was Shlomie Goodman, and this man was responsible for injuring his children in Jerusalem and was wanted by the police. The one in black, on the other hand, claimed to be the aggrieved party and demanded to be released.

To their surprise, the one in white had actually been telling the truth.

“You're never going to believe it, Bina,” Morris exulted. “They've arrested Kuni Batlan up in Karmiel.”

“However did they find him?”

“Get this! Shlomie Goodman became Superman. He found him, beat the crap out of him, then called the cops.”

Her eyes widened. Would wonders never cease? She was in a strange way displeased. The father's sudden attack of conscience would now force her to change her opinion of him. Perhaps he really was as unbelievably naïve as he seemed. That was the only innocent explanation for what he had allowed to happen to his children, and one she was loathe to adopt because it meant letting him off the hook.

Everything he had done, except this, went against all her ideas about a man's responsibility to protect his wife and children, to nurture and care for them. Could it possibly be that Shlomie Goodman deserved the benefit of the doubt?

“When is Batlan being brought in?”

“As soon as the traffic on Highway Six allows.”

“Traffic? Tell them to put the sirens on all the way!”

*   *   *

To her surprise, Kuni Batlan was nothing like either Hod or Goldschmidt. Tall, slim, in an expensive tailored black suit, he was neatly shaven, his long side curls tucked up into his expensive Borsalino hat so that they were hardly visible. Also, unlike the others, he was visibly shaken, like a branch from a young tree not accustomed to storms, ready to crack from the gentlest breeze. There was no need to be harsh. All she needed was to blow on him like a birthday candle, she thought.

“So, that's quite a shiner you have there.” She smiled sympathetically.

He seemed surprised at the friendliness of her tone. He studied her. “I'm an Israeli citizen. Shlomie Goodman assaulted me. He should be arrested.”

“Absolutely, Mr. Batlan. I'll see to it. Please don't worry about it. If you cooperate, I will personally see to it that you are treated the way you deserve.”

“So, you'll let me go?”

“Let's not run ahead of ourselves. But as I said, if you give us something valuable we can use … So, let's start by my asking you a few questions, that is, if you don't mind?” She smiled once more.

“Of course. I'm happy to help.”

“You know, the children of Mr. Goodman have been injured and we're investigating. If you could tell me anything useful about that, I can guarantee the police would be very grateful,” she began.

He nodded. “I understand there was a fire—”

“No,” she cut him off briskly. “We've established that there was never any fire. The child was held against a spiral heater until his skin peeled off, and then someone rubbed salt and alcohol on his wounds and forced his feet into his shoes.”

“It wasn't me! I would never do such a thing! I would never—”

“We already have evidence that you were involved with Menchie Goodman.”

He began to shake so hard, she thought he would come apart.

“Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Please,” he said. He could hardly hold the glass, the water swishing in waves, spilling over the top of the glass on either side until he finally emptied some of it into his mouth. He swallowed, noticeably, as if he were trying to get down a giant pill, then put the glass down carefully on the desk, as if cognizant that one false move would herald disaster.

“Whatever they tell you, none of it was my idea. I would never do anything like that on my own!”

“Anything like what, Mr. Batlan?”

“Like what they say I did to Menchie … and the others.”