Israel Museum—Jerusalem—present day.
"Father, where are you taking me?”
The old man
turned shakily upon his cane, paused at the top step and looked toward
his daughter while still panting to catch his breath. Despite the
wrinkles that had lately etched their way across his face, she could
still recognize the sly smile that always signaled his toying with her.
“Why, Hadassah, this is the Shrine of the Book. You’ve been here a dozen times.”
“Of course, Poppa. I know that.”
As if to
punctuate her statement, she glanced about the monument. Her gaze rose
into the cobalt blue Judean sky where the Shrine’s celebrated dome
thrust its odd, milky white swirl. She noted again its fluid shape,
meant to evoke the ancient jar lids that once sealed the beloved
scrolls now housed inside. Just beyond, her gaze settled briefly on a
jutting slab of ink black basalt—the famous architectural apposition of
Darkness against Light. “Ideological structure,” her ninth grade
teacher had called it years ago, just before using the term in a test
question.
Ideological structure: designing a building for a symbolic as well as a functional purpose....
“But why today?”
Hadassah continued the conversation in the modern Hebrew with which she
had grown up, though she also spoke fluent English. “With the wedding
just a few days away? This is no time for sightseeing, Poppa.”
He smiled again, indulgently this time, and waved her on up. “My child, have you ever known me to waste your time?”
It was an odd
question to pose so flippantly, but she pondered it nevertheless while
she scrambled up the steps after him. In fact, he had always been a
quiet, mild-mannered father, and she had to admit after consideration
that he had never been one to yank her about on useless errands.
She reached him,
and he laid his arm upon her shoulders. “Just follow me,” he said with
a smile that grew wider and more inscrutable by the second.
Still locked in
their amiable stalemate, they entered the lobby where tourists waited
in line to see the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls. For the first time
her father did not approach the counter for a ticket but merely waved
at the cashier and received a solemn nod in return. They walked through
the entrance passage with its smooth, rounded walls intended to emulate
the cave at Qumran, site of the scrolls’ discovery. And then,
presumably like the young shepherd who had found them half a century
earlier, they emerged into a cool, vaulted space: the main hall.
Despite both her
bewilderment and her familiarity with the room, Hadassah could not help
but glance around. One of the wonders of modern architecture, the
luminous inner hall of the Shrine of the Book never failed to seize her
imagination. Overhead, the curved underside of the dome shone with
countless horizontal grooves, each one capturing a different hue in the
sunlight that filtered from a window at its apex. Rising from the
floor, just beneath this aperture, stood a huge scroll handle—as though
someone had half-buried a giant Torah upright in the floor.
A hush overtook
the pair as they entered the chamber, as both its acoustics and the
solemnity of its contents discouraged noise. But her father was not
here today to peruse the softly lit parchment tables. He crossed the
room and immediately started down a nearly hidden stairway that led
into shadow below.
“Poppa?” she asked.
She saw only the
back of his hand motioning her to follow, then disappearing into the
gloom. Hadassah shook her head and frowned, then followed him. A door
opened into soft half-light. She followed him through it into a
carpeted hallway that branched off into three additional corridors.
And there, smiling in anticipation, stood—
Aunt Rose? “What
are you doing here?” Hadassah asked, incredulous. Aunt Rose lived in
America. The two had not seen each other for four years. Rose was
indeed flying over for the wedding, but Hadassah was sure she was not
due for another few days.
Rose leaned
toward her with a knowing smile and simply engulfed her in a hug. And
that was when, over her aunt’s ample shoulder, she saw the rest of the
women. Standing in a corner, strangely quiet and still, were Grandma
Grossman, Great-Aunt Pauline, Aunt Connie and two more elderly matrons
she only faintly recognized, yet all were facing her with intent and
shining eyes.
As soon as she
disengaged from Aunt Rose, the women converged on their youngest
descendant en masse, crying softly and creating a tumult of greetings
and congratulations. Although she responded in pleasure and surprise,
this gathering, on this day and in this place, filled her with an
intense curiosity and even a sharp sense of foreboding.
What in the world is going on here? She pulled away and shot her father a questioning glance.
“My dear, I
brought you here to maintain an ancient tradition,” he said as though
he’d read her mind. He turned to the group while jerking his thumb
dismissively in her direction. “Ladies, Missy here did not even want to
come today. I practically had to drag her over—I thought she’d call a
nursing home to haul me away before I could get her in here.”
The women all
laughed knowingly, which did not help the bride-to-be’s disposition.
Her father faced her again, and this time his expression had changed
completely; she could even see a surprising gleam of tears in his eyes.
“Your mother
would have brought you here herself, were she still with us,” he said
huskily, then paused a moment. “And, of course, I wondered if I would
last long enough to see you actually find your beloved.”
It was true. She
had been picky, taking her time to find the one she would want to wake
up with every morning for the rest of her life.
Now her father
was off again, hobbling down the center hallway with his cane, the line
of old women in tow. She shrugged and followed. He paused before a
large metal door recessed into the wall. Then he stopped and took a
maddeningly long time to extract first a folded piece of paper from his
pocket, then his glasses with which to read it. He looked up, punched
one of the buttons in a wall-mounted keypad, then glanced down for the
next. The whole process took several minutes. Finally the door clicked
open with a whoosh of compressed air. The group filed in without a
pause, as though they had gone through many times before.
A vast
underground room sprawled before them. Subdued lighting emanated from
somewhere under glass-covered table rows. A stout woman of about fifty
wearing a museum uniform and a world-weary smile stood in front of them
with her hands clasped before her.
Hadassah had
always known that most of the Shrine’s workings were underground. She
also knew that the Dead Sea Scrolls were periodically rotated from
public areas to subterranean chambers in order to reduce their exposure
to light. But she had never known of this chamber or any reason her
relatives might have for congregating here.
“You are members of the family?” the uniformed hostess asked in a smooth voice.
“Yes, we are,” her father said loudly.
“And who is today’s bride?”
Her father turned back to her and motioned. “Hadassah.”
The woman smiled
knowingly. “A most apt name.” Then she stepped forward, gave another
reassuring grin and shook Hadassah’s hand before leading her toward one
of the waist-high tables.
“Please, Hadassah. Step forward and sign.”
“What am I signing?” she asked.
The museum
staffer looked sharply at her father. “So she has been told nothing.”
It sounded like a statement but was actually a stern question.
Rather than
answering the woman, her father turned to Hadassah. “My dear, I
apologize for all the secrecy and uncertainty. But you must understand.
For nearly three thousand years the mothers of our family have been
keeping these pages a secret until a bride’s wedding week.”
“What pages?”
He sighed heavily, as he always did when she showed impatience, and swept his arm toward the display.
“These tables
hold the remains of a private family parchment. In more recent times,
the government has been kind enough to safeguard it for us because of
its enormous historical value, but it belongs to the family and is
completely private, for our individual use. It is our single copy of a
letter written, in a way, just for you—given by someone very special to
your grandmother nearly one hundred times removed.”
“Okay. Who gave it to her?”
“Queen Esther.”
“Queen Esther—of the Tanakh?”
“No. Queen Esther
from the corner bakery.” He reached out and touched her hand to show he
had meant no offense. “Yes. The Esther of old. It is a memoir she wrote
in her later years to a younger Jewish girl also chosen as a candidate
for Queen of Persia, just as she had once been. Tradition has it she
never wanted these words to end up in public, framed in some Palace
museum, but she wanted its message reserved privately for every bride
of royal standing descended from its recipient for time everlasting.”
He bit his lower lip, and a thick tear rolled down his cheek, which he
quickly swiped away. “Now you know why your mother insisted so strongly
that you learn to read Hebrew fluently.”
“So, would you
care to sign here at the end?” repeated the museum attendant, with the
faintest hint of insistence. She pointed to the left, as Hadassah would
have expected since the document was written in Hebrew—from right to
left.
Then she realized what she was being asked to do and recoiled. “You mean—actually sign the end of the document itself?”
The woman nodded and almost smiled. “This is a piece of living history. And you are its latest addition.”
Hadassah exhaled
forcefully. She could feel her mind reel under an unfurling stretch of
antiquity suddenly far more colorful and vibrant than any she had
contemplated before. To think that she—modern, busy, disorganized
Hadassah—led a life linked to a saga stretching back nearly three
thousand years ... that her everyday existence was now connected to a
story she had known only upon the printed page or in tales of
rabbinical legend on synagogue scrolls ... It made her heart pound. She
was truly becoming a part of its history.
Feeling almost
dizzy, she followed the staffer to where the long table ended, where a
length of the ancient parchment now lay shockingly exposed to the
elements. A gold fountain pen rested beside the manuscript, waiting.
She stopped for a moment.
Just above a
blank space near the end of the scroll stretched a long array of
signatures in an endless variety of feminine handwriting. Some of the
scripts flowed, some were meticulously squared, some thick and strong,
others wispy and ethereal with their inks fading under the onslaught of
time.
She bent down and
peered at the names. The first almost assaulted her with its immediacy,
for it was the signature of her own mother. Strangely, the sight of
such familiar handwriting in this place startled her, caused her heart
to skip a beat and her eyes to moisten. It seemed for a moment that
Momma was not dead and buried in some faraway grave but standing beside
her, steadying herself with that fragile hand she had laid upon
Hadassah’s shoulder so many times in her later years.
The museum attendant cleared her throat and shifted her feet from side to side.
Hadassah ignored
her, wiped her eyes and started to read the names above her mother’s.
Ruth Sarason, her grandmother’s maiden name. Elizabeth Prensky, her
great-grandmother’s. On and on: aunts, cousins. Names she did not know
but which sounded distantly, vaguely familiar. She blinked away more
tears and looked even farther—the parchment was now growing crowded
with increasingly faded and ancient names. She became overpowered by
the feeling that she was some impudent interloper getting ready to
deface an item of infinite value and age.
She looked even
farther and saw where the signatures began and the actual text
ended—faded and barely discernible, archaic Hebrew script traced in a
sure and graceful hand.
“We bring you
here to honor the tradition,” her grandmother said, breaking the spell
with her trembling voice. “But we also have a modern Hebrew translation
of this letter printed in book form for you to take home.”
Her father had bent over and now struggled to hold up a richly embossed, thick leather tome.
“Do I have to read it now?”
The women
laughed. “No, dear,” her father answered, cradling the volume in his
arms. “Just take it home and read it over a few days like you would any
good book. Like the others did whose signatures you see.”
She thought for a
long moment and then turned to the whole group, her voice sounding weak
and small to her own ears. “Am I a royal bride?”
Aunt Rose answered. “You are, sweetie. We took a vote,” she said kindly. “You are a bride fit for a king.”
Hadassah turned
away, as much to hide her tears as anything else, and started to cross
the room back toward where the document, under its glass protection,
ended.
“Men of our
family have died to preserve this,” her father said beside her in a
voice still thick with emotion. “My father missed his boat to America
so he could take the time to store it in a basement in Amsterdam.”
She kissed him on
the cheek, remembering her grandfather’s death at the Nazi camp
Treblinka, then looked down at the first line.
“Just sign,” he
said softly, his face now quivering freely. He struck the book’s cover
with a dull tap. “Then you can read it all.”
She nodded,
handed the box with it precious medallion to her father and sat down
before the faded document. She lifted the pen with trembling fingers,
bent toward the glass, took a deep breath and signed.
Hadassah Kesselman.
* * *
Dear Candidate for Bride of the King,
I am sure this
letter will come as a great surprise, as I have never actually spoken
to you, let alone given any indication that I wished private
communication between us. However, the truth is that I have much
information of the highest importance to share with you.
Please do not
tell anyone of this letter. Certainly tell none of the other girls. The
only one you can trust in your harem is the one who gave you this: the
King’s chief eunuch. You know him as the Chamberlain. If you cannot
read, he will read it for you, and he is trustworthy beyond life
itself. I should know.
But I write you, my dear girl, on the eve of your own time in history, with vital information to impart.
I saw something
in you when you first appeared at the harem, something that others must
have seen in me almost thirty years ago.
Even among the
crowd of young women I noticed a peculiar gleam in the eye, a regal
hold of the head, an uprightness of posture, an unusual poise and
self-possession.
Now, I know that
such qualities are mere features of one’s outward appearance. And even
less significant perhaps—they can be mere habits of disposition. But
what they appear to say about you, about your character, is far more
profound. I believe I discerned an integrity, a depth, in you that set
you apart from the other young, beautiful maidens brought in from the
provinces for the King.
More important
still, I spotted you praying in the Palace orchard yesterday morning,
and besides reminding me indelibly of myself, it sealed one thing for
me. From the manner of your prayer I’m convinced you must be a follower
of YHWH, like me. That you are a Jewess and follow the living Gd is the
supreme factor in my decision to contact you in this manner. (You will
notice throughout this memoir I use the traditional Hebrew abbreviated
forms in referring to Deity out of reverence for the Almighty One.)
What I have to
tell you can be introduced this way. Some years ago I was exactly where
you are now. I, too, was a royal concubine in training. I, too,
possessed certain qualities that gained me favor with those in
authority. But you do not seem to have what I had and sorely relied on:
a godly mentor.
I would be that for you: if you will heed my words.
I will start by
saying this. Shortly you will be ushered into the King’s bedroom, and
potentially into his life. In all likelihood, you will never come this
close again to such an opportunity for this kind of power and
influence. You must treat this time with him as the most precious and
pivotal hours you will ever spend. You have no idea what all could
result from that one night. I myself, despite spending a year in its
preparation, tended to undervalue that time as mere competition, never
fully understanding at that time how my success or failure could change
the course of history.
Danger often
lurks where destiny beckons. That is why the right approach demands
even more than just prudence or solemnity. It calls for Gd’s anointing
and a healthy dose of wisdom gleaned from the Sacred Texts. There is,
in fact, a specific protocol to approaching the King’s presence. Most
who come to him never know this, and this ignorance dooms their most
valuable time in his company to insignificance. I would teach you this
protocol, for it is both simple and a great source of inspiration and
blessing. And besides, I want you to be the Queen. I want my former
place of influence occupied by another child of YHWH, someone who will
stand for righteousness and mercy in the Empire when times call for it.
I want your night with the King to prove as successful and providential
as my own.
I have no idea
how much you know of my story or the events that surrounded it. I can
only hope that you know me as more than the slightly stooped figure who
waved at your group the morning of your arrival at the harem. If you’ve
been blessed with some schooling or you come from an observant Jewish
family, as I believe you do, then you may know me as the legendary
past-Queen. I was once a most powerful figure at court.
But do you know
my story? My whole story? The whole breathtaking account of what the Gd
of my fathers wrought through the events of my life?
I do not ask this
because of some old woman’s penchant for storytelling or recognition. I
ask you this because telling my story may be the only way of impressing
upon you the utter importance of what lies ahead for you.
There are parts
of my story that I did not know at the time they were occurring. The
historical background with which I begin my tale is found in the Sacred
Texts. I have only been able to reconstruct the whole over much time
and many conversations with those who were there—or those who knew
someone who was there.
Horrible deaths
occurred while my story unfolded. Our whole people could have been
wiped out forever had I not listened to the voice of Gd and those He
sent to counsel me in preparation for my night with the King. In fact,
you yourself would not be alive if I had not heeded the sage advice of
my own mentor, along with the inner voice of Gd’s Spirit.
I have no idea
whether your evening with the King will involve as much intrigue, as
incredibly high stakes, as mine did. I hope for your sake it is more
peaceful.
But I do know one truth for certain.
One night with the King changes everything.
About the Authors
Tommy
Tenney is the author of many bestselling books. He spent ten years as a
pastor and over 20 years in itinerant ministry, preaching in more than
40 countries around the world. He and his family reside in Louisiana.
Visit www.tommytenney.com
Mark Andrew Olsen is a talented writer whose screenplays and other
writings have provided a wealth of experience from which to collaborate
with Tenney on this novel. He and his family make their home in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Haddassah: One Night With the King by Tommy Tenney with Mark Andrew Olson
