By: Philip Graubart

Rabbi Judith Adler wrapped her damp palm around the gun barrel. She was surprised at how easily the pistol fit in her hand, somehow accommodating her exact lines and fissures, as if the deadly thing had been custom-manufactured for her grip. Ari leaned closer to her and gently moved her left hand so it supported her right. He kept his reassuring fingers on her knuckles for perhaps a beat too long. He nodded, his olive eyes locked on her face, his expression neutral, which Judith understood as a smile. She took in a quick breath, focused on the target 120 feet away, and squeezed the trigger. She hopped just as the bullet exploded out of the gun, not from any recoil but maybe from the infernal noise, or just the strange circumstance of her actually firing a deadly weapon. Of course, she missed the target entirely. Ari reeled in the bizarre picture of a man – Judith’s victim – and pointed at the face, chest, legs, head, arms, hands. “No bullet holes anywhere,” he said, with just a slight Israeli accent. Ari had been in the country already for seven years. “Not even a fingernail,” he said. “God knows where the bullet ended up.”

Judith studied the target as if the bullet might actually be there somewhere, hiding. “Don’t tell Charlie,” she said. Charlie Carmel was the synagogue president. He was also the most active volunteer, and by far the biggest donor. This combination of roles had never happened before at Judith’s Laguna Beach synagogue. Judith always listened to Charlie, even when she disagreed. As it happened, she agreed with him that the schul needed to “up its game, security-wise.” After several synagogue shootings all over the world, who could argue, especially since he agreed to pay for the whole project? She only briefly resisted one tiny detail in a twenty-point plan. That she learn how to shoot. But she lost that argument.

“I will certainly not tell Charlie,” Ari said, his eyes tightly squinted, as if the act of seeing caused him pain. This was his normal grimace, the face that greeted Judith not only at every shooting lesson, but, since he was the contractor, at every 8AM security committee meeting. The group met each morning, Monday through Friday, after minyan. “It would embarrass me to tell him,” Ari said. “My student seems to shoot backwards. Or straight up in the air. No one can find the bullet after she shoots. Does it land on the ceiling, in the dust on the floor, in the wall, in her foot? No one can guess.”

She turned to him grinning. Her finger was still on the trigger, but the barrel was pointed down, aimed at the ground. “Is it wise to mock someone who’s holding a gun?” she asked.

He laughed. It was a bell, three quick notes on a xylophone, a song. The first time Judith heard that sound coming from him, she was surprised, not just that he occasionally laughed – she’d never met anyone before with such a steady, severe gaze – but that the light melodic laugh was so charming, so musical.  After a few weeks of committee meetings, she noticed that he reserved the laugh for her. With everyone else it was crisp corrections, quiet scolding, grunts, and the all-business scowl.

Judith shot five more bullets. She missed the target each time.

She invited Ari to her house for coffee after the lesson. He readily agreed, and taught her how to make Turkish coffee. “Water, sugar, coffee, easy,” he said lining up the ingredients, stirring them into a muddy mixture. “Then boil stop, boil stop, boil stop. See? Five times.” His hands, so skilled and formidable at the shooting range, showed equal prowess on her stove top. He flicked the gas light off, just before the brown liquid overflowed, then on, then off, staring intently at the dial, like he was piloting a particularly sensitive vessel.

He handed Judith a cup of disconcertingly thick liquid. She tasted it, and the sweet, sharp flavor quickly overcame the obvious and unpleasant sensation of swallowing mud. They sat at the kitchen table, side by side, facing the front door, not each other. “Turkish Coffee and guns,” Judith said, taking another slow sip. “You Israelis.”

Ari nodded. He sipped even shallower than Judith, savoring the microdose. “Coffee and guns. Yes exactly. Israelis. Those are our obsessions. And also, well, for me at least, not all Israelis, Shakespeare. Bruce Springsteen. Irish folkdance. Oh, and basketball.”

“How about Judaism?”

He shrugged. “Judaism? Well, rabbis, I like. I mean women rabbis. This woman rabbi.”

Judith took that in. She was in the midst of interpreting the words in dozens of different ways, when her eighteen-year-old daughter Hannah burst through the door, as if there had been an emergency and she’d been locked out. It was how Hannah moved through life since early childhood – fast, purposeful, and also heedless. As she approached high school graduation and moving to Evanston, her nervous rushing only increased, both in velocity and volume. She took one look at Ari and Judith and shook her head. “Really, Mom? Really? One week after the divorce? One week?”

Ari blushed, then scowled. He apologized quickly, first in fast Hebrew, then English. He grabbed his gun holster, nodded at Judith and fled.  Judith glared at her daughter. “He’s my gun instructor,” she said. “And besides. . .”

“Oh, come on, Mom. Your cheeks were bright red. You were drinking coffee together. It was a date.”

A date, Judith thought. Is that what it was? “It wasn’t a date,” she said. “He needed – he wanted to teach me how to make Turkish coffee.”

“Ah,” Hannah said. “He needed to?”

“Hannah, you know your father and I have been apart for much longer than a week. It’s been months, almost a year. . .”

Hannah rushed up the stairs. It sounded like five running backs on a steps drill. Or a herd of elephants. “I’m spending Shabbat with Dad,” she yelled.

Judith was about to scream something back – she wasn’t sure what, just that it would be loud – when she remembered her next appointment: the bat mitzvah lesson. “I love you,” she called up the stairs, then hurried to her car.

She used her fob to open the parking lot gate, a different fob to gain access to the outer courtyard, the same fob to unlock the synagogue side entrance and finally her key to open her office door. Marco the security guard was off that day – it was Christmas eve – so there was no one to check her briefcase, or wand her, or guide her through the metal detector. Judith insisted on enduring whatever security precautions other staff or visitors endured. She wanted everyone to feel the inconvenience, especially herself. In her office, she buzzed Sara and her mother in through the parking lot, courtyard and entrance, and opened her office door with a wide smile and equally wide arms. Judith didn’t make it a habit of embracing her bar/bat mitzvah students, but Sara, not quite thirteen, idolized Judith, as if she was the rabid fan, and the rabbi was her personal Taylor Swift. Sara wore her tallit like Judith – tightly wrapped around her throat like a scarf. She successfully mimicked Judith’s low, nasal singing voice. She affected the same facial expression – eyes half closed, looking up as if praying directly to the Lord of the Sky. Like Judith, she conducted her own Torah chanting with a right thumb and forefinger baton. At each of their sessions, Sara peppered Judith with question about the job of rabbi. What’s your day like, she’d ask, taking out her phone to record the answers. Judith emphasized the moments of grace – blessing new babies, solving problems for married couples, discovering magical new insights in the Torah. She left out fights with her board, the crushing hours that had likely ruined her marriage, the impossibility of pleasing everyone, or even, often, anyone. She didn’t want to discourage the budding young woman, and, anyway, Judith lover her job. Guiding an enthusiastic teen leader was one of the grace notes that kept her going. During their last session the week before, Sara asked Judith if she could read out loud her essay applying to rabbinical school. Judith pointed out that it would be at least ten years before she could apply to any rabbinic program. Sara smiled – a grin that reminded Judith of her own reflection in the mirror. “I just like to be ready, all the time,” Sara said. “Like you.”

Sara chanted her haftarah in an eerily familiar voice. Judith was, as always, astonished to hear her own exact adolescent warble in Sara’s cantillating. Suddenly, Judith heard clomping footsteps from the hallway. At first, it signified nothing. Most days the office was alive with all sorts of human noises – chatting, coughing, whistling, slurping, printers and copiers humming, doors slamming. And of course, walking. But today everyone was off. And no one could enter the campus without Judith buzzing them in. So who was striding toward them in the cadence of a military march? Judith lightly touched Sara’s shoulder, then put her finger to her mouth. They both listened as the steps moved closer. Judith thought of her new gun, safely locked away in her bedroom safe – of no use now. Sara and Judith stared at the door, paralyzed as they watched the nob turn by itself. “They can’t get in,” Judith whispered. “Door’s locked.”

But the door slowly opened. Sara gasped and squeezed Judith’s fingers. Judith was about to holler for help. She saw the arm, then the leg. Then, the face. She exhaled forcefully and was surprised to feel sweat all over her body, particularly under her arms. It was Ari. He was scowling.

After the bat mitzva lesson, Ari took Judith through all the real and potential security lapses. He showed her how a simple credit card unlocked her office door, how he easily matched the frequency of her two fobs with his cell phone, and finally how he’d scaled the parking lot fence and threw a tallit over the courtyard security camera. Judith couldn’t help but admire the bulky muscles in his arms and legs as he easily hopped halfway up the outer fence, then, legs like a gymnast, swung his prone body over the top. He touched down firmly on the grass, feet together, sticking the landing. From his rare grin, Judith could tell he was showing off.

“Charlie will be furious,” Judith said.

“At me. At me he will be furious. This is my job. Time to get to work, no? Go over my plans. Christmas. This is not our holiday.”

She considered carefully what she was about to say. Finally, it was just one word. “Coffee?”

He nodded his head slowly, brow scrunched, as if considering an important and complex security matter. “Not at your place,” he said.

“And not Turkish,” she said.

Judith returned to her house at 6AM, hoping for a quick nap, coffee, then a shower. But her ex-husband Peter was waiting for her at the kitchen island. She hadn’t seen him in three days, and the brown stubble on his face told her he hadn’t shaved in all that time. His jewfro hair was puffy and unwashed, like he’d pushed it up with his fingers and left it at that. He held a weird stringed instrument in his lap, cradling it, as if it were a baby. “My Tonkoro,” he said, lifting a wooden, dagger shaped violin. For a sleepy instant, Judith thought it was a real knife. “Forgot to take it with me.” Peter said. He leaned back and smiled, relaxed and ready, as if he and Judith had a 6AM appointment and he was waiting for her to start.

She walked around him into the kitchen and scooped coffee into the French press. She made enough for her ex. “Hannah could have picked up the instrument,” Judith said, her back to Peter.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“At six in the morning?”

“You’re an early riser,” he said. “So am I.”

Judith turned, and faced him full on for the first time in the visit. “God, we didn’t used to be.” She remembered in their early sex-filled days, sleeping until 10, 11, noon, 1.

Peter smiled. “Ever since Hannah. Awake with the sun.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Hannah says he’s Israeli. A security guard.”

“Not a guard,” Hannah said quickly. For some reason it became momentarily imperative to stress that he owned the security company and hired the guards. But she caught herself. “That’s what you want to talk about? It’s none of your business.”

Peter nodded quickly, conceding the point. “I want to talk about the gun. That you brought in to our house.” Judith flashed a look.  “Sorry, your house. It’s hard to get used to. Anyway, Hannah lives here – my daughter. And you brought a gun into her house?”

Why, Judith thought, was she so suddenly enraged? That Peter had shown up to her place first thing in the morning? That he hadn’t shaved in days or cut his hair in months? That sipping morning coffee together in the kitchen created the illusion of a normal marriage, while their marriage was anything but normal and was no longer a marriage? None of those explained the fury that coursed through her veins. It must be the gun. “You’ve heard of Pittsburg?” she said. “Poway? Bondi? Boulder? Every responsible Jewish organization has to take steps. . .”

“But Hannah. . .”

“Hannah’s leaving. In less than a year. And the gun’s in a safe. Hannah doesn’t know the combination. I’m taking gun lessons. I know how to. . .” she stopped for a moment. Shoot? But actually, she didn’t. She still didn’t know how to shoot. “I’m learning gun safety,” she said.

She must have raised her voice because Peter was leaning back, with his brown eyes wide open. They stared at each other – neither hostile, nor loving – just a stare, curious, cautious. Peter nodded. “I saw Sara Hansen and her mother at the Feldstein bat mitzvah last Shabbat. God, she even wears her hair like you. And the tallit?”

Judith smiled. “Somehow, she found the exact model. I guess she likes me.”

“More like worships you. Idolizes you.”

Judith tilted her head at him. Was he accusing her of something? He wore his guileless smile. But Judith had learned over the past year that there was plenty of guile behind that innocent smile. She was about to push back at “idolizes,” when she reminded herself that Peter’s subtle put-downs were no longer her problem. She held his gaze for a few seconds, then got up, signaling that it was time for him to leave. He caressed his weird string instrument, petting it as if it were a cat on his lap, then rose. Taller than Ari, Judith thought. Not what she would have guessed.

“Hannah and I are coming to the lighting tomorrow night,” Peter said at the door. “We’ll see you then.”

“Candle lighting!” Judith said. “Oh my gosh, I forgot to set up the menorah.” She looked at her watch, then did some quick schedule calculations in her head. “I can switch the Berger’s to tomorrow morning,” she said, clearly talking to herself, not to Peter. “Or, I can just do it tonight after my class.”

“Tonight’s the synagogue sleepover,” Peter said. “For the youth group. I’m trying to convince Hannah to go.”

“Good luck with that,” Judith said, taking Peter’s arm and leading him to the door. She ducked away from his attempt to kiss her on the cheek.

The synagogue menorah was a ten-foot tall, twelve-foot wide, nine-branched candelabra, each cup holding kerosene oil and a wick. A local well-known artist had designed and manufactured it, then, without solicitation, donated it to the synagogue. Every year it had to be assembled anew, with smaller pipes fitting into larger ones, each cup screwed into its base, and the whole monstrosity schlepped to the courtyard. The hardest, grossest part of the job was filling the cups with kerosene. It took more than the miraculous eight days for the smell to wear off. Judith referred to it as the Monster Menorah, first just to herself and family, and now, a decade later, to anyone who asked about it or brought it up in conversation. Every year Judith desperately searched for congregants to take on the task of setting up the monster. Judith suspected that the kerosene odor lingered on her hands for so long, the smell of it – possibly permanent – dissuaded any volunteer from stepping forward.

She started by dragging the bigger stainless-steel pipes from the dark closet into the social hall. Then, already covered with sweat from her exertions, and hallucinating the smell of kerosene – she hadn’t yet dragged up the vials from the basement – she sat on the floor and started screwing parts A into parts B. Her headphones played Hanukkah songs, which she quickly switched to Leonard Cohen; his wintery voice seemed more appropriate to the unpleasant task.

She’d completed 3 of the nine pipes when she heard the footsteps, loud clomping – running or fast walking – coming from the courtyard, just outside the social hall doors. Teens, she thought. The youth group sleepover. But the schul had recently remodeled the youth lounge. It had been transformed into a decent place for adolescent hang out, with couches, foosball, VR goggles, dozens of AI games loaded into thirty laptops, a ping pong table. Besides, the instructions for the counselors and the kids were clear: no roaming the synagogue campus.

Suddenly, more clomping. This time from the roof, directly overhead. An animal? But these were heavy, loud, fast. It would have to be a dear or a moose, and how would any large animal make it to the roof? Then, again, clomping, banging, stomping from the courtyard, just a few yards away. Boots, she thought. Running.

Ari. The name popped into her brain, banishing thoughts of catastrophic attacks. She smiled. The guy never quits, she thought. She imagined the scolding she’d receive. Even with kids around, he’d say, scowling or maybe smiling. He’d tour her through ten or twelve or 100 weak spots he’d discovered. She took a deep breath and stood up. She needed a break. Suddenly anxious – dangerously eager – to see Ari, she fast walked to the edge of the room and opened the door to the courtyard. That’s when she heard the shots. Boom! Then, louder, BOOM!. Judith recognized the demonic noise right away. No mistaking gun shots for firecrackers for Judith; she was a veteran of the gun world.

She froze with fear. She’d never felt her heart beat so loudly, so quickly, as if it would pump itself right out of her body. The phantom kerosene smell turned into real, sharp, flop sweat. It coated her forehead and soaked her underarms. Her eyes roamed involuntarily, left, right, left, right. And finally holding on left. She saw the leg first. Jeans. Ari’s jeans. Then the blood, pooling around his ankle. She stepped out of the social hall and saw him, lying flat on his back, blood pouring out of his left leg. With his right hand, he pushed at the air, urging her back into the social hall. She twisted her head. Somehow, without noticing, she’d run four, maybe five steps outside, toward Ari. She ran back to the social hall. And heard her name. “Rabbi Judith!” a young voice cried. Adolescent, Judith thought. A girl. A teen. A teenage girl inexplicably dressed like her. “Rabbi Judith!” she called.

She saw her young twin running desperately to Ari. Oh no, Judith thought. No, no. Oh fucking no. “Sara!” she cried out, begging God to give voice to her scream. It worked; she was loud. “Honey, no! Sara! SARA!!”