After the cool reason and cooler climes of Brother William’s quiet home, the unforgiving heat of a Texas afternoon seemed especially cruel. Jeremiah’s cab sped off behind him, but he kept a respectful distance from the cluster of women who were gathered by the tall, barbed-wire-topped fences that surrounded the vast complex. He hoped that when their service was over, someone would recognize him.
“For the dying, we sing,” the leader began again.
“We sing a song for our mothers, each of them prisoners in their time. Abraham let Sarah be taken by the Pharaoh for his harem. Rachel and Leah were kept prisoners at their father’s side while Jacob slaved 14 years at their father’s land. Tamar and Rahab were whores, and Miriam was born a slave. Ruth was a foreigner and an alien - a woman born outside mercy and the law.”
“Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah receive your souls and guide you into light,” several women said together.
“You must be Jeremiah,” a woman’s voice whispered behind him.
He nodded and turned. The woman was tall with large eyes. Her face looked serious, although she seemed to be younger than even he was.
“Brother Jeremiah,” she said, “I’m Squire Martha of the Remnant Knights of St. George.” She named her alliance as if it were a matter of great importance, but she seemed to both relish and loathe the title of squire.
“My Knight is Sibyl Jones of the Last Watch Cabal in New Orleans.”
“Amen!” In the distance the gathered women responded to a prayer he could not understand. They stood in silence, then a few began to sing. Squire Martha sighed and stood by to watch the proceedings. ‘‘I suppose I should welcome you to hell,” she added. “Worst place in the world for a mentor’s exchange. There’s nothing to do, nothing to think about doing and more heat every day. I wanted my mentor to send me somewhere exciting, no luck.” She paused. Eventually the women stopped. They did not linger or talk. When they finished their silent prayers, they wandered away. “So you want to meet the Rebbe? I’ll introduce you.”
All but one woman had gone, and she turned to them as they approached. She had a way of carrying herself that made her seem taller than she was, and she seemed to emit a steady, sad warmth. She wore a gray tee shirt, worn jeans and old roper boots. Her hair was cropped short, dark and graying on the sides, and she was pulling a long rainbow-colored stole from her shoulders slowly.
“Jeremiah,” Martha said, “This is Rabbi Deborah Levin.” She took a step back as if she’d escorted him to a formal introduction at court.
This, he suddenly realized, was Deborah Levin, the “Rebbe,” the Teacher that William Rathman had sent him to look for because she was one of the few remaining Chorus Masters on Earth.
She reached out and took both of his shoulders, looked into his eyes a moment and, with her soft, quiet and distinctively Texan voice said, “Welcome, Jeremiah.
May the One come with you.”
In the car on the way home, Martha stretched out in the back seat, looking like she was dozing. Jeremiah sat in front with the Deb - she had forbidden him to ever call her Rabbi Levin.
Jeremiah watched the compound walls disappear in the distance. “What was that place?” he asked her finally.
“It’s a prison -The Texas Federal Women’s Medical Center. Martha says the whole of Fort Worth, Texas is a hell. If so, that place is hell’s fuckin’ heart.”
“Maximum security?”
The rabbi snorted. “They convict a woman on minor charges - drug possessions mostly - and if she’s too ill for a normal minimum security place, the Board of Prisons sends her here to the hospital. The prisoners, the judges, the families... they don’t have a choice. Family doctors aren’t allowed to see them.
Some report going six months with everything from cancer to gangrene to meningitis and never seeing a medic, never receiving any treatment. The staff confiscates medicines, ignores doctor’s recommendations, shackles minimum security prisoners to beds, performs surgery on the wrong body parts, restricts a family’s access to the dying. You know a woman can get raped one day, turn to drugs, get busted and end up spending more time here than her rapist spent in a state penitentiary?”
Jeremiah didn’t say anything for several minutes. ‘‘I’m the Jewish chaplain, but I’m too noisy. They keep threatening to fire me.”
“Sounds awful,” he finally ventured.
“It is. I don’t like it one bit, but you should try being one of the women who doesn’t get to leave at the end of the day. First lesson, Jeremiah: The One never asks, the One only calls. This place is like a nasty piece of string, all twisted and knotted up on itself, and somehow I’ve gotten knottedup in it. It needs to be unraveled.
I can cut myself loose and go, but if I do that, the knot still stays behind.
“Second: When the One calls you, your options never include walking away. Never simply assume the One’s too lofty above all of us normal people and abandon reality-that-is for a life way in the middle of the air. There are some people called to do that, but there are some who just do it because it’s too hard to keep caring and keep fighting. Status quo’s the biggest demon ever lived, and if we want to see the hundred other possibilities come to life, then we never walk away from challenging reality. And this is the third thing. Before you have change - what the other Traditions call ‘magic’ - you have to have hope. You have to know that the One so far surpasses everything else that eventually, in spite of all the evidence, what’s right is what will become.” ARD Rachel showed him to his room, let out another sigh and started to tell him more about her life with the knights in New Orleans as he unpacked. She probed him for details about his life with Brother William at the same time. “I hoped when she sent me to study with another mentor I would get to go work with the Varghese survivors in India or the Michaelites in Brazil, but instead she sent me here....”
The sound of someone coming up the stairs hushed Martha, and an older woman with frizzy blond hair, broader hips and broader shoulders, appeared in the hall. Martha stopped and introduced Jeremiah to “Sister” Susannah who greeted him with a wide grin and a short laugh.
“Newest exchange, eh?” she said. “Welcome, get comfortable. I’m from the Fool’s Feast Cabal in Providence. My mentor is a member of the Silver Moon Clan, which I’m sure you’ve never heard of.’’ Susannah was a beautiful woman, and Jeremiah caught himself grinning, at a complete loss for words.
You, too, oh squirrelly one. Get moving!” She winked laughed and headed downstairs. Martha shrugged, grimaced and followed. Jeremiah watched after them a few minutes, finished unpacking and went down the stairs as well.
Sundown had come late in the southern summer, and Jeremiah was tired from his trip and the heat by the time the Sabbath arrived. He assisted Deb with preparations as best he could.
“Hardly seems a day of rest if you have to run around so much to get ready for it,” she had laughed to him. She lit the candles as the sun started to set. When it was gone, the Sabbath started. Jeremiah barely had time to catch the name of Deb’s oldest student, Muriel, who looked East Indian but had a vaguely European accent.
“Blessed are you Lord our God, ruler of the universe who has sanctified our lives through wisdom, commanding us to kindle the Sabbath lights.”
Deborah paused and covered her eyes three times.
The other students mimicked her motions. She paused, said something in Hebrew, then spoke in English.
“The light of the sun is gone. The Sabbath has come. We are a people set apart, this is a time set apart.
We close our eyes to the cold and harsh light of the reality we are told is there. We open them to the gentle flame of the One to see the hundred worlds we know to be possible. We are told that work and success are the gods that run our lives. We are told to not stop, not rest, not reflect, only run. We close our eyes, ourselves, to those demands. We open our eyes to the One in whom our work finds its success. May the One give us rest, the One give us peace, the One refresh us. May the Holy One bring us to unending bliss.”
“May the One be blessed forever,” they answered.
Martha spoke half a beat off from the others.
Deb spoke the words of the service in Hebrew and repeated them in English. She stopped every now and again to offer commentary and explanation. When she came to the part of the service where the parents of a traditional family would have blessed their non-adult children, she leaned over and whispered some words to each of her students, resting a hand on their heads as she did so. Martha was third, and as Deb whispered to her, he could swear the younger woman rolled her eyes.
Then Deb turned to Jeremiah, placing her hands over his head. For a moment she said nothing, then nodded and whispered in his ear. “May the One make you, Jeremiah, like the fire of a candle. May the One make you, Jeremiah, not like the sons of Joseph, but like your namesake, like the sons of the prophets. May you be a light by which people may see truthfully.
“Ya see, kiddos 0’ mine,” she said after a pause.
“The first thing you have to learn is hope. In the face of all the little factoids, you have to still know that the One