Zealot by Donna Lettow Page A

run, then trickle from his father’s throat. He was
     numb. Completely numb. Beyond pain. Beyond grief. Numb. He stared at the knife in his hand, watching the patterns the red
     fluid made against the iron blade, his Deborah’s blood mingling with the blood of his father.
    Finally, he managed to rouse himself, his task still unfinished. He opened the wooden box that housed their possessions and
     removed the few pieces of pottery and glass inside. With all his strength, all his anger, all his grief, he hurled the bowls,
     the cups, and Deborah’s cooking pots at the wall, shattering them, until nothing remained that the Romans could use. The rest
     of their meager possessions—their clothing, a few wooden implements, some cloth—he placed in the wooden box and moved it near
     the oven. He emptied the last of the lamp oil on the box and set it alight with the wick of a lamp.
    He was still staring wide-eyed into the flames when Eleazar came for him. His commander was covered with blood, like a demon
     butcher, and his face was haunted with the horror of his deeds.
    “Avram.”
    Avram turned to look at his commander, haunted by his own demons. “I killed them.” The anguish in his soul manifested in his
     voice. “God forgive me, I killed them,” he wailed.
    “He will, Avram. You know He will.”
    Avram nodded numbly. He moved to the sleeping mat, lay down beside the body of his wife. He put one arm around her lovingly,
     protectively, then looked to Eleazar. “Now,” he said. Avram closed his eyes and prayed as Eleazar’s sword drove into his heart.
    Masada: 14 Nisan, The Present
    Avram opened his eyes and wiped away an escaping tear with a shrug of his shoulder. Nearly two thousand years had passed,
     yet the memory stayed with him, as sharp as if it had happened only yesterday. He could still feel the pain, not of Eleazar’s
     sword, but of his heart as it broke when he awoke to discover that he had failed, that he could not die. That he could never
     be with Deborah.
    Today was the anniversary of her death, of all their deaths. He had faithfully kept the anniversary ever since, in the decadent
     villas of Rome, the tiny Russian
shtetls
, the teeming cities of Eastern Europe, wherever his life had taken him. With the liberation of Israel, he’d finally been
     able to return to the rock, to this tiny room where they had loved, to the room where he had killed her.
    Avram knelt by the clay oven, bowed his head, and began to recite softly, so softly only he and God could hear. “Extolled
     and hallowed be the name of God in that world which He is to create anew, and to revive the dead and to raise them to an everlasting
     life. Then will the city of Jerusalem be rebuilt, the Temple be erected there, the worship of idols be ,erased from the land,
     and the Holy One, Blessed be He, will reign in His Kingdom in majestic glory. May this happen in your lifetime and in your
     days, and in the lifetime of the whole house of Israel, speedily and near in time, and let us say, Amen.”
    The words were in Aramaic, the language of his childhood, a language nearly forgotten, but which gave him great comfort. It
     made him think of his father, who had drilled him in his prayers from the day little Avram started to speak, confident that
     his son was smarter and quicker than all the other boys. One of the hardest parts of being Immortal for Avram had been learning
     that Mordecai ben Enoch and his wife were not his natural parents, that Mordecai had adopted a foundling child to be his only
     son. At first he was devastated, but as time passed Avram came to realize that no father could ever have loved a son of his
     loins more than his father had loved him. He remembered the beaming look of pride on his father’s face the first time he’d
     read aloud from the Torah in front of the other men of the synagogue. After all these centuries, he hoped his father would
     still be proud.
    “Let His great name be blessed forever and to