In the Name of God
Stephen J. Gordon
Apprentice House
Loyola University Maryland
Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013 by Stephen J. Gordon
978-1-934074-62-6 Paperback
978-1-934074-63-3 Hardcover
978-1-934074-98-5 E-Book
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, updated
Book Design by Andrew Zaleski
Published by Apprentice House
Apprentice House
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Loyola University Maryland
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To my wife Becky, and to AJ and Esty,
Michal and Avrohom, Jeff, Alana, and Sophie —
you keep my world in balance and give me much to smile about.
1
I stood in the bathroom of the synagogue and stared at the tears silently running down my face. The weeping had come on suddenly. I had just washed my hands, looked in the mirror, and started to cry. Uncontrollably. There was no warning. There never was.
On the other side of the door and down the hall was a banquet, and I had a date waiting for me at our table. She was absolutely great: intelligent, attractive, fun.
I wasn’t ready. But this wasn’t the first time Alli and I had gone out, and I thought these paroxysms were all but gone. Sometimes, though, sometimes I could be driving down the street, I could be sitting in a restaurant, I could be thinking of a moment a thousand miles away and I would be overwhelmed by tears.
Applause filtered up the hallway and through the door. I washed and dried my face before anyone could come in, paused for a final look in the mirror, then headed out. The paneled hallway led to the main hall, where I found my seat at Alli’s table, which was blessedly along the right-hand wall. I sat down as invisibly as I could and looked around.
What was I doing here? As peaceful darkness covered the city of Baltimore, I was attending, of all places, the annual banquet of Beit Shalom Synagogue. The fact that I was in a synagogue — albeit the social hall — was laughable, because I was, to put it mildly, pissed off at God. But I didn’t want to go there; it took too much out of me. So the fact that I was at this banquet had more to do with Alli and the guest speaker, Eitan Lev, than anything else. Alli had heard of the banquet through a friend and thought the guest would interest me. She was right.
Eitan Lev was the latest candidate for Prime Minister of Israel. He was a former general, a war hero in Israel — a war criminal in the Arab countries — and the most popular Israeli politician in recent memory. He was an unstoppable general who placed the lives of his countrymen above all else. He was eloquent, plus had a political savvy that impressed Washington and London.
I looked at Alli on my left. She was bright as well as stunning, with beautiful shoulder-length dark-blonde hair and cerulean eyes. She was a graduate student at University of Maryland in physical therapy. Allison was fit and athletic; originally she had wanted to go into phys. ed., but her parents thought she’d be wasting her intellect. Physical Therapy, then, was a natural alternative, she had explained. It was okay with me. If it’s physical, it must be therapy.
“Look at all the security,” Alli said, looking around the room, interrupting my thoughts of her.
Indeed. The social hall was a modest-sized rectangle of a room with a mirrored wall behind the head table and elegant flowered green wallpaper on either side. The lighting from the chandeliers was subdued, yet I had spotted the security people the moment I had walked in. There were two small, but solid-looking men standing to either side of the head table, plus one standing below the raised dais. Then another man — this one taller and thinner — stood at the double doors to the kitchen, and a fifth, an older fellow, near the main entrance. They were all Shin Bet, Israeli security. I knew the type. These guys were not local law enforcement — there was a distinctive hard, youthful Middle-Eastern look about them. This last fellow, the older man at the main door, seemed more out of place. He was probably in his late thirties/early forties, while the others were in their early twenties. The younger men all had full heads of hair; his was thinning and his eyes had more than a few wrinkles at the corners. Additionally, he wore stylish small black wire-rimmed glasses, so he no longer had the perfect vision of younger agents. It also wasn’t lost on me that from where he stood he could see everything — and I bet he had seen plenty in his day. He was the boss.
“I’m glad I left my knife at home,” I muttered to myself.
“What?” Alli looked at me, eyes wide.
“Just kidding.”
Actually, I wasn’t. I always carried a folding knife. My current one was a three and a half inch Benchmade ATS 34, combo blade — half straight edge, half serrated. I knew there’d be security here with a metal detector as part of it, so bringing a knife would have been a bad move, to say the least.
I scanned the room again. In addition to the Shin Bet, there were also some Baltimore cops, but I knew they just didn’t have the same experience as the Israelis. Fact of life.
We had just finished our main course — stuffed capon in a decent orange sauce, some kind of funky potatoes and broccoli — when Mr. Lev began speaking. He had received a standing ovation as he approached the podium, and then, when the audience quieted down, he stood at the mic and thanked his hosts. The room was packed. In addition to the capacity crowd sitting at tables, there was a contingent of press with their omnipresent video cams, plus local, state, and national dignitaries.
Mr. Lev began talking about the situation in the Middle East...how fragile life is for everyone, the security needs, the monetary needs, and the importance of American moral support. The former general spoke eloquently. His English was quite good. Impressive actually.
My mind began to wander and I continued to look around the room. Except for Alli and one or two others — adult students of mine — I didn’t know anyone. I enjoyed the anonymity. For a moment or two, I watched the security guys watch the audience. Then I scanned the group myself. Nothing unusual struck me. I shifted my gaze to the waiters and waitresses. When Mr. Lev had started his address, the caterer’s crew mostly headed into the kitchen. A small group stayed out in the social hall, leaning against a back wall, to listen to his remarks. There were three men and two women. All were dressed in matching black dinner jackets and pants. They were mixed in age, from a woman in her forties with red hair to a young man in his late teens. The teenager had close-cut black hair and was watching the guest speaker with interest. Actually, they all were watching Mr. Lev with interest.
“Will you stop playing with your food,” the woman next to Alli said to her husband, breaking into my thoughts.
“Give me a break, Eileen, I’m not playing with my food. I’m rearranging it on my plate.”
Eileen