Detailed, painstaking preparations were being made day after day, year after year. Nothing was being left to chance. Nothing was being overlooked. This, too, was a group entirely committed to rebuilding the Temple, and were preparing for that moment. They, too, believed that the Hebrew prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel foretold of an even more dazzling Holy Temple to be built in the last days. And this, too, was good.
But in his heart, Akiva Ben David refused to accept that simply educating and preparing were good enough. They weren't good enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted to force the hand of God.
It was time to rebuild the Temple now, not a hundred or a thousand years from now. So under the radar — unseen by the Israeli authorities — he'd begun secretly recruiting a political movement who agreed. As time passed, his patience grew thinner and his convictions grew stronger. Somewhere, somehow, the dream of seeing ancient prophecies fulfilled became an obses sion. He would take matters into his own hands, and he began scanning the horrizon for anyone that might be willing to help. Through his own modest Web site, Ben David gathered names of people who signed up to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter. It was an e-mail he personally researched, wrote, and edited. They were short, punchy. They were provocative and chock-full of the latest news and information from the Promised Land regarding war, peace, religion and the preparations for building the Third Temple.
But what made these e-mails different from his religious competitors was their nuance, their sense of urgency and edge of militancy. They didn't quite call on Jews to storm the Temple Mount and seize it by force, not overtly,
But over time, people who read them got the message. Muslims were desecrating Judaism's holiest site, he argued. They were destroying the religious and archeological artifacts on the site. They were weakening its physical base, threatening to cause the Temple Mount to collapse under the weight of a quarter million Muslims praying each week at the Al Aqsa mosque. They were also preventing Jews from even entering the site. But their time was running out.
Originally, Ben David hoped he could sign up a few hundred interested souls. He hoped to find some kindred spirits who might, in time, be willing to help him with the funding necessary to go on an international speaking tour to spread the word about the Temple's importance in human history, and the need to reclaim the Temple's rightful place on earth. And then something happened.
A fellow rabbi back in Akiva Ben David's native Brooklyn became one of the first subscribers. He loved the weekly reports, and began a little e-mail correspondence. He affectionately dubbed Ben David's electronic missives "the kosher equivalent of Chinese water torture," slowly persuading the world—"week by week, drip by drip" — of the need to rebuild the Temple.
Soon, the rabbi began forwarding Ben David's e-mails to members of his congregation. They hit a nerve. They tapped into a deeply held but seldom articulated sense that modern Orthodox Judaism was so focused on other issues they were indeed neglecting the centrality of the Temple in Jewish life.
Without the Temple, there was no Holy of Holies. There was no place for the Almighty to reside on earth. Nor was there a gathering point for Jews to worship and pray the way they had in the days of King Solomon or even the Roman occupation.
Sure, there was the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, for all the tears that had been shed there after the destruction of Herod's Temple by the Romans. But whatever you called it, wasn't it still just a wall? Wasn't it just a remnant of something greater and far more profound? How could modern Judaism have gotten so distracted that it sent millions of people to pray at a mere wall, as though this was the pinnacle of the Jewish experience? Didn't the Prophets speak of something more important than a wall? Hadn't Jewish heroes fought and died for something more eternal than a wall? Didn't the Jewish people deserve something better? Of course they did.
But even more important, the readers of Ben David's e-mails began to consider another fundamental premise. Without the Temple, there was no place for animal sacrifices. The Torah — the Hebrew Scriptures — was emphatic on that point. No sacrifices could be done anywhere but in the Holy Temple, and without such sacrifices, there could be no ritual shedding of blood. Without the shedding of blood, there could be no forgiveness of sin. Without the forgiveness of sin, how could one truly become holy? How could one truly be spiritually pure enough to enter the presence of a pure and perfect and holy God? How could one enter heaven at all without the Temple? How could one truly be saved from the fires of hell? These were no trifling little theological questions. They were matters of eternal security or damnation. Why were so few people wrestling with them? So much was at stake.
Ben David had never thought of himself as a particularly persuasive speaker or writer. Nevertheless, the passion of his heart came through loud and clear. People began forwarding his e-mails to family and friends and business associates throughout the United States, and then in the U.K., across the European continent, to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Soon people were getting the e-mails forwarded back to themselves from people they'd never heard of. And in just a few months, the little Temple Mount Battalion list grew to more than fifteen thousand names.
Speaking invitations came in by the hundreds. Then financial donations began pouring in through a secure, on-line credit card program he had installed on the Web site. The average monthly tax-deductible gift per person was a mere $39 U.S. But multiplied by fifteen thousand people over the course of an entire year, Akiva Ben David was raking in serious cash. Something was happening, something he needed to figure out and get ahead of, and fast. So much money was going to attract government attention soon, if it hadn't already. He needed a plan, something to invest the funds in, or spend it on. And then a plan was conceived. Over the past few months it had quickly grown and taken shape. It was a plan about to be baptized by fire.
Bennett tossed and turned.
It was hard to believe that only seventy-two hours earlier he'd been driving his forest green Jaguar XJR through the streets of Georgetown on Christmas Eve, actually feeling relaxed for the first time in a long time. Traffic was light. He pulled under the portico of the Four Seasons Hotel and stopped in front of the main doors. A bellhop agreed to watch his car for a moment, and he went into the lobby, picked up a phone, and dialed, There was no answer. Perhaps she was already on her way down. Normally, he'd be anxious. Typically, he'd be pacing. He hated to be late, almost as much as the president did. But tonight, for some reason, he wasn't worried at all. He was going to the White House staff Christmas party, and he was going with the prettiest girl in Washington.
It wasn't a date. Not exactly. He hadn't described it that way when he'd asked if they could go together. Each of them was going anyway. It was a command performance, of sorts. And though Bennett wasn't much for staff parties of any kind, this one might actually be fun, all the more if the two of them were going together. And now they were. He poked around the gift shop, flipped through some newsmagazines, bought some Rolaids and popped two in his mouth. An elevator bell rang. He turned as the doors opened, and saw her coming around the corner.
Bennett had never seen Erin McCoy look as beautiful as she did that night — a simple yet elegant black dress, black shoulder wrap, and black pumps, accented by pearl earrings and a gorgeous string of pearls around her neck. A few minutes later, they were flashing their new White House badges to the uniformed Secret Service officer manning the bulletproof guard booth at the Northwest Gate and pulling into Bennett's exclusive new parking spot on West Executive Avenue.