Read Online Escape by Robert K. Tanenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

entered the lobby from the temple, but other than a curious glance or two, they paid no attention to him. Allah has made me invisible so that I can walk into their temple to serve his purpose! he thought. Truly God has spoken to me.
    He'd heard stories of similar miracles from visiting "freedom fighters" who'd come to the mosque from Muslim countries to raise money. They talked about mujahideen in Afghanistan and Iraq who had walked through clouds of bullets, or emerged from homes destroyed by cruise missiles, without injury.
    "The warrior who has given his life to Allah is invincible," they claimed. "Only when Allah is ready to reward their faith can they be killed so that they can enter Paradise."
    Their voices and stories filled Khalifa's mind as he found himself standing in front of the door leading into the temple. He had few regrets. He'd never been to Mecca on the hajj and, in fact, had rarely ever left the island of Manhattan. His son would not have a father, his young wife would be a widow. But these were inconsequential in the face of eternity. He was ready.
    Pulling open the door, he stepped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior, but when they did, he saw perhaps as many as fifty men sitting in the pews. They were facing away from him, their heads nodding in cadence as they recited their prayers. He was reminded of the faithful praying in the mosque. The thought that the two scenes were similar was disconcerting.
    With sweat now running in rivulets down his body, he forced himself to dwell on the differences, such as the strange little round caps the Jews wore and the shawls draped across their shoulders. Some had what appeared to be small boxes strapped to their foreheads, and others wore girlish curls instead of sideburns.
    The temple hummed with their prayers, and he became aware of a presence that could not be seen or understood. His knees nearly buckled. "All of Islam will know your name," he whispered to give himself strength.
    A strange affliction seemed to be taking over his eyes, as if he were looking down a glass-walled tunnel. He was aware of images to either side, but all that he could see clearly was what was straight in front of him, and what he saw now was a young man walking toward him. The man wore a beard and was smiling, but there was a wary look in his eyes.
     
    When Rabbi Greg Romberg saw the young black man enter the temple, he thought at first that the stranger was one of the city's many homeless. The beard was long and scraggly and the long wool coat too warm for such a hot day. The man looked like he had not slept well in several days and might have been hoping for a pew to curl up on.
    Then the thought occurred to him that the stranger might also be a black Jew. A surprisingly large community of them lived in New York, though he'd been largely unaware of them until he was in rabbinical school. The newcomer was not wearing a yarmulke, or kippah, on his head, but that didn't necessarily mean he was not a Jew. Though some Jews believed that Talmudic law commanded them to cover their heads in the temple, it was actually more of a custom than a religious requirement—a reminder that God was above them. Still, he didn't know if that was also the custom of black Jewish communities.
    The synagogue on Third Avenue billed itself as Modem Orthodox, but even within Modem Orthodoxy there was a lot of diversity in personal styles of worship. For instance, some members wore the phylacteries , sometimes called tefillin —small boxes containing portions of the Torah—during Shacharit, the morning prayer service. Others thought this was too old-fashioned and didn't bother. However, nearly all wore the tallit, the prayer shawl, which was a reminder of the tents the Israelites had lived in when they had wandered in the desert with Moses.
    Romberg was a modem rabbi who respected all the different variations of Judaism. He saw them as reminders of all that Jews had been