Return to Me by Lynn Austin

decision as impossible as the one he wrestled with.
    “Zechariah . . . Zechariah!” His study partner elbowed him in the ribs. How long had he been calling his name?
    “Huh? . . . Sorry . . .”
    “What’s wrong with you today? You were a long way from here—and not even pretending to listen to this Torah passage.”
    “Sorry,” he said again. “I haven’t slept all week. I keep having these weird dreams.”
    “What kind of dreams?”
    They were nothing like Saba’s nightmares, but they still alarmed and confused Zechariah. “I don’t know . . . galloping horses and Torah scrolls that fly through the air like birds. Last night I dreamed about workmen measuring the foundations of Jerusalem as they got ready to build.” And one dream that he didn’t want to share had been about Yael. She was lost, and he’d searched everywhere for her only to discover that the Babylonian sorceress had hidden her inside a large storage basket. He awoke from these dreams drenched with sweat, wondering what they meant. If God had sent them as signs or as an answer to his dilemma, Zechariah had no idea how to interpret them.
    “Well, we’d better finish studying this passage, or the rebbe will give us both nightmares. He always seems to know when we aren’t prepared.”
    Zechariah bent over the scroll again, forcing himself to concentrate. Every morning and evening when he’d gone to the house of assembly to pray with his grandfather, Zechariah asked the Holy One whether he should stay in Babylon or go to Jerusalem. Nothing ever happened. No voice called down to him from the clouds, no answer leapt off the page of the Torah, no burning bushes appeared. And every day as the time of departure drew closer, Zechariah felt more and more pressure to choose.
    This was too hard, he decided as he looked around at the other students again. How could he concentrate on his studies? Tomorrow was his bar mitzvah. He would go up to read the Torah for the first time, and from that day forward he would be considered a man in the Almighty One’s sight. He would haveto make difficult decisions like this for the rest of his life. Was it always going to be this hard?
    Somehow, Zechariah got through the rest of his studies that morning. Thankfully, the rebbe called on every student but him that afternoon, as if aware that Zechariah’s mind was elsewhere on the day before his bar mitzvah.
    “So, Zechariah. Have you decided what you will do?” his grandfather asked as they walked home from prayers later that evening. It was the first time that Saba had mentioned the decision since telling him he had a choice a week ago. Abba hadn’t asked him about it either, but Zechariah had caught his parents gazing at him as they ate together as if he were a stranger.
    “No,” he told his grandfather. “My heart says to stay here with my parents.”
    “You are a man now, not a child.”
    “Even so . . .” Zechariah’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of never feeling his mother’s arms around him again or seeing Abba smile at him in pride. “How will I know for sure if the Holy One is speaking to me?”
    “His answer will be unmistakable. In the meantime, you can’t trust your emotions if you want to do what God is telling you to do.”
    They walked side by side in silence the rest of the way, but Saba stopped when they reached home, pausing just outside the gate to their courtyard. “Tomorrow will be a joyful occasion for all of us as we celebrate with you. But you must be careful not to let your parents or me or anyone else pressure you into choosing what they want you to do. It must be what the Holy One tells you to do.”
    Zechariah barely slept, tossing on his mat all night. He walked to the house of assembly with his family the next morning with the new prayer shawl they had given him draped around his shoulders. Abba hired musicians with flutes and cymbals anddrums to accompany his procession, making music as their