“‘But is it faith, Gurion, anyway, that will bring the messiah? It doesn’t seem like it to me. Acts of faith, maybe. But faith itself? When has faith itself ever served us? And how often has faith been used against people? For just as there are acts of faith, there are non-acts of faith, no? Most tyrants don’t get assassinated, let alone trampled to death by mobs to whom they’ve been unjust. Why not? Often because crooked or misled clerics urge faith and its non-acts on the faithful is why not. And that is what makes us different, no? That is why our religion is good. We are not taught to abide injustice through our faith; we are not taught to wait for Adonai to reach a hand down and save us. We are taught to faithfully destroy injustice; we are taught that to do so will force His hand. Taught that, at least, by you.
“‘And so in the end, what’s in a scholar’s heart should only matter to us inasmuch as how it leads him to act. In other words: what’s in a scholar’s heart doesn’t matter as long as he acts as if it’s faith. That said, if you teach us faith is irrelevant, Gurion, how can we know how to act? And why should we listen to you? Maybe you say, “I will tell you how to act, Emmanuel, and you should listen to me because I’m the strongest and wisest of all of us.” And that works if you become the messiah, Rabbi. Of course it does. And in that case, and only in that case, is the first potential pitfall successfully dodged.’
“And then I’d have gone on to discuss the second pitfall, which would take fewer words since, having gotten worked up, I’d probably abandon all subtlety and just form a string of rhetorical questions, like, ‘What if the thing we must do to set the messiah’s potential in motion is call him ‘messiah’? What if the words need to come first? What if it must be written before it can be done? What if he must be said to be before he can become? Is that not how the universe became, Gurion? Is it so crazy to think that the final chapter might end as began the first? So crazy to think we’ll create truth by speaking it? Why should that seem crazy? Because it would be perfect?’
“In any case, I decided that all went without saying,” said Emmanuel, “and had you not leaned forward at so acute an angle when first I began to say it, it would have remained unsaid, but you leaned forward, and I got going, so now that it’s said, what do you say?”
I’d become so engrossed in listening to him — somewhere in the middle of his remarks on the first pitfall, I got this highly familiar rush I couldn’t place just then — that when he asked that last question, it took me a second to realize it wasn’t the hypothetical Gurion who was supposed to answer, but me.
“Rabbi?” he said.
I think you’re the most talented scholar I know, I said.
“That’s good to hear. I think maybe when you spoke of this Eliyahu of Brooklyn, I became a little jealous, and I thought that was shallow of me, and wanted to prove — I don’t know. Let’s not get tender, shall we? What I was going to say, originally I mean, was that I’m troubled by this instruction to ‘lay low’ because I assume that ‘laying low’ means, at least for the most part, not telling our parents we were here.”
Yeah, I said, that’s what it means.
“But if telling them we’ve been here is not the right thing to do, then how can we be honoring them? That is: if we have, through our disobedience of them, honored them, then why should we be dishonest about it?”
Would it be dishonest if they didn’t ask where you were, and you didn’t tell them?
“No.”
Would it be dishonest, if they did ask, to tell them you’ve been with Samuel discussing Judaism?
“In a certain light: no. That is one of the things I’ve been doing, discussing Judaism with Samuel. However, that account would not exactly be forthcoming.”
Who says you always have to be forthcoming? I said.
Emmanuel squinted = “This sounds demagogic.”
I said, ‘Always’ as in ‘at all times.’ You weren’t originally gonna tell me you were jealous about Eliyahu, right?
“That’s true, but then I did tell you.”
Because the time was right, I said.
“Okay,” he said. “But when will the time be right to tell my parents we’re friends again?”
Not before I deliver my scripture, I said.
“So you’ll still deliver it.”
Yes.
“When?”
After I write it, I said.
“I thought you already wrote it.”
So did I, I said. But listen — are you still troubled?
“Not about laying low,” he said.
I said, Good enough. I said, Go home.
A genius of bundling, a worried mother’s wildest dream, Emmanuel covered his face to the eyes with his scarf like a ninja. Then he jumped from the top of our five-step back stoop, exploding a half-frozen puddle.
Up in my room, I read ten of the scholars’ emails, each equally and sufficiently representative of the rest (I’ve since examined all 365). Some of the emails mentioned Emmanuel’s email — the one where he told them that he and the other three would contact me in order to find out for everyone if contacting me was transgressive. The authors of these emails explained that despite their initial willingness to do nothing til after Emmanuel reported on my ruling, they’d since reasoned that contact, at least as it seemed to be defined by my “New Scripture” email, was a two-way street, and that therefore to write to me was not, in itself, a form of contact—not unless I chose to read what they’d written — and that if contacting me did turn out to be transgressive, they reasoned, then I wouldn’t read what they’d written, for I was the last teacher in the world who’d ever lead them to transgression, and so there was no danger in writing to me. Other emails didn’t mention Emmanuel’s. Apart from that, any variance among them was little more than grammatical. They were all signed “your student,” they all wished a speedy recovery for my father, they all contained blessings on “this red-haired girl you love,” and every single one requested further instructions.
I was in the middle of the tenth when my parents came home. I didn’t click any more envelope icons, but I didn’t rush to the door either. I didn’t want the conversation I’d have with my father to be compromised by his good manners — Flowers was still reading in our living room, waiting to give them the babysitting report.
I shut off my light and looked out the window, and a couple minutes later the Volvo tweeted. Flowers got in and I headed for the stairway.
Distracted by Emmanuel’s close reading of my teachings, then tempted by my overloading inbox, I hadn’t, as I’d planned to, bolstered myself with focused recollections of the courthouse-steps imagery, but it turned out that would’ve been unnecessary anyway.
Halfway down the stairs, I could hear them in the kitchen; my father saying I was probably asleep, my mother that she’d promised to wake me if I was. The scrape of metal against flint. I stealthed to where the wall became banister, leaned long and downward and watched them through the bars.