The day before leaving for Israel, Epstein attended a small event with Mahmoud Abbas, hosted by the Center for Middle East Peace at the Plaza Hotel. Some fifty people representing the American Jewish leadership had been invited to sit down with the president of the Palestinian Authority, who was in town to address the UN Security Council, and had agreed to quell their Jewish fears over a three-course meal. Once Epstein would have leaped at the invitation. Would have gone barreling in and thrown around his weight. But where could it get him now? What could the square-hewn man from Safed tell him that he didn’t know already? He was tired of it all—tired of the hot air and lip service, his own and other people’s. He, too, wanted peace. Only at the last minute did Epstein change his mind, firing off a text to Sharon, who had to scramble to snatch back his place from a late-joining delegation from the State Department. He had given up much, but he had not yet lost his curiosity. Anyway, he was going to be around the corner at the office of the bank’s lawyers beforehand, signing documents—despite Schloss’s pleas—for the loan against his apartment.
And yet as soon as Epstein was seated at the long table shoulder to shoulder with the banner carriers of his people busily loading chive butter onto their rolls while the soft-spoken Palestinian spoke of the end of conflict and the end of claims, he regretted his change of heart. The room was tiny; there was no way out. Once he would have done it. At a state dinner honoring Shimon Peres at the White House only last year, he’d gotten up to take a piss halfway through Itzhak Perlman’s rendition of Tempo di Minuetto—how many hours total of his life had he spent listening to Perlman? A solid week? The Secret Service had convulsed toward him; after the president was seated, no one was allowed to leave the room. But when the call of nature comes, all men are equal. “It’s an emergency, gentlemen,” he’d said, pushing past the dark suits. Something gave, as it had always given for Epstein; he was escorted past the brass-buttoned military guards to the restroom. But the need to assert himself had gone out of Epstein.
The Caesar salad was served, the floor opened, and Dershowitz’s sonorous voice—“My old friend, Abu Mazen”—was carrying. To Epstein’s right, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia was fiddling with the cordless microphone, at a loss for how it worked. Across the table, Madeleine Albright sat heavy-lidded like a lizard in the sun, radiating an inward intelligence; she too was no longer really there, having moved on to matters of a metaphysical nature, or so it seemed to Epstein, who was struck by the desire to take her aside and discuss these deeper concerns. He patted his inside pocket for the small book bound in worn green cloth that Maya had given him for his birthday, and which he had carried with him everywhere for the last month. But it wasn’t there; he must have left it in his coat.
It was then, removing his hand from his pocket, that Epstein first noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the tall, bearded man in a dark suit and large black skullcap standing at the edge of the group, not distinguished enough to have been granted a seat at the table. The little smile on his lips brought out the crinkles around his eyes, and his arms were folded across his chest as if he were bracing a restless energy. But Epstein sensed it was not self-control in the service of humility at work in him, but something else.
The American Jewish leadership went on unspooling their questionless questions; the salad dishes were removed by the Indian waiters and replaced with poached salmon. At last it came Epstein’s turn to speak. He leaned forward and flipped the switch on the mic. There was a loud pop of static that made the Saudi Arabian ambassador jump. In the silence that followed, Epstein looked around at the faces turned expectantly toward him. He had not given any thought to what he wanted to say, and now his mind, which had always honed in on its target like a drone, drifted leisurely. He looked slowly around the table. The faces of the others, at a loss for how to respond to his silence, suddenly fascinated him. Their discomfort fascinated him. Had he once been immune to the discomfort of others? No, immune was too strong a word. But he had not paid it much attention. Now he watched them look down at their plates and shift uncomfortably in their seats until finally the moderator broke in. “If Jules—Mr. Epstein—has nothing to add, we’ll move on to—” but the moderator was forced to swivel around just then, being interrupted by a voice behind her.
“If he doesn’t want his turn, I’ll take it.”
Searching for where the intrusion had come from, Epstein met the keen eyes of the large man in the black knitted skullcap. He was about to answer when the man cut in again.
“President Abbas, thank you for coming today. Forgive me: like my colleagues, I don’t have a question for you; just something to say.”
A ripple of relieved laughter rolled through the room. His voice carried easily, making the use of the microphones seem fussy.
“My name is Rabbi Menachem Klausner. I’ve lived in Israel twenty-five years. I’m the founder of Gilgul, a program that brings Americans to Safed to study Jewish mysticism. I invite all of you to look us up, perhaps even to join us on one of our retreats—we’re up to fifteen a year now, and growing. President Abbas, it would be an honor to welcome you, though of course you know the elevations of Safed better than most of us.”
The rabbi paused and rubbed his glossy beard.
“As I stand here listening to my friends, I’m reminded of a story. A lesson, actually, that the rabbi once taught us in school. A real tzadik, one of the best teachers I had—had it not been for him, my life would have turned out differently. He used to read aloud to us from the Torah. That day it was Genesis, and when he got to the line, ‘On the seventh day God finished his work,’ he stopped and looked up. Did we notice anything strange? he wants to know. We scratch our heads. Everyone knows that the seventh day is the Sabbath, so what was so strange?
“ ‘Aha!’ the rabbi says, leaping up from his seat, as he does whenever he’s excited. But it doesn’t say that God rested on the seventh day! It says that he finished his work. How many days did it take to create the heavens and the earth? he asks us. Six, we say. So why doesn’t it say God finished then? Finished on the sixth, and on the seventh rested?”
Epstein glanced around, and wondered where all of this was going.
“Well, the rabbi tells us that when the ancient sages convened to puzzle over this problem, they concluded that there must have been an act of creation on the seventh day, too. But what? The sea and the land already existed. The sun and the moon. Plants and trees, animals, and birds. Even Man. What could it be that the universe still lacked? the ancient sages asked. At last a grizzled old scholar who always sat alone in the corner of the room opened his mouth. ‘Menucha,’ he said. ‘What?’ the others asked. ‘Speak up, we can’t hear you.’ ‘With the Sabbath, God created menucha,’ the old scholar said, ‘and then the world was complete.’”