CHAPTER 99

CHAPTER 99

RABBI YOUSEF BEN YESHUA, for the first time in his long existence, smiled as he contemplated the Dome of the Rock, the famous mosque that was built exactly where the Temple of Solomon once stood, now constituting an insurmountable obstacle, or rather, apparently insurmountable, to that which was the Jewish dream of rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem.

Yeshua closed his eyes as if he were seeing the invisible, instead of the mosque he admired the magnificent and imposing construction that would soon be there.

God's wisdom is infinite — he thought — Emperor Titus, a Roman, destroyed the temple, and another Roman, or at least recognized as such by the Christians, will rebuild it.

Main representative of the most radical of ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, Yeshua dreamed of the Greater Israel, the return of the borders of his country to the same limits of the once glorious kingdoms of David and Solomon. Immersed in his reflections, Yeshua remembered with emotion the meeting he had still in the thirties in Prague with the revered Rabbi Apraham Boyle. The dark clouds of Nazism began to manifest themselves throughout the European continent, causing apprehension and anguish to sprout in the soul of a Jewish youth still full of dreams.

— Rabbi, why do all peoples hate us? — Asked the young Yeshua just entered puberty.

Apraham Boyle then turned to the frail young man who could see himself gripped with uneasiness.

— Come and sit here beside me — said the elderly rabbi, as he slowly closed an ancient Torah scroll in Aramaic.

Timidly Yeshua stood in respectful silence beside the old man.

Apraham Boyle took off his glasses and smiled at the young man beside him.

— A long time ago, when Israel did not yet form a people, being just a large family of descendants of our father, Abraham, there was a young man named Joseph, the only son of his father and the woman he loved very much. His brothers on his father's side were annoyed by the different treatment he received from the old patriarch. This young man, restless and dreamy, one day was imprudent enough to tell his brothers about a dream he had had. According to the dream, the sun, moon and eleven stars bowed down to him. His brothers, who were eleven in number, annoyed him to the extreme when they were seized by an uncontrollable envy, for they said among themselves:

— Are we, our father and mother, going to bow down to that brat?

— One day when they were in the field, because they were all shepherds, they decided to kill him. One of his brothers, called Ruben, touched by the boy's fate, dissuaded the others from this attempt, convincing them to throw the young man into a pit, with the intention of later returning him to his father. As Ruben moved away, the others came up with the idea of selling him to a caravan of merchants heading for Egypt. There, after a certain time as a slave, this young man became the most powerful man in Egypt, second only to the pharaoh himself. This short story is a summary of what is known as the story of Joseph in Egypt.

Yeshua looked at him with obvious curiosity.

— Well then, continued the old rabbi, the story of Joseph is a kind of stigma that represents the history of the Jewish people itself. We are the people of promise, just like Joseph, who had been chosen by God to, through his own vicissitudes of misunderstanding and envy of his brothers, bring the deliverance of his family members. We were chosen by the Almighty to establish his kingdom of peace for all men on earth. Thus, Joseph's brothers hated him for not understanding God's glorious plan in his life for deliverance from a terrible drought that had hit the world at that time. So the peoples cannot understand the divine election of the Jewish people for the establishment of the infinite kingdom of peace on Earth. Just as Joseph was hated, we are hated. As through Joseph's momentary disgrace the world received deliverance at that time; so the world, for not understanding the extent of the mission that falls to the nation of Israel, hates us, but even so, they will be blessed through us.

— Do we have a mission? — The boy was surprised.

Yes, we have a mission — replied the old rabbi — A glorious mission!