The 13th Tablet

‘Amazing. What about other continents? Africa, for example?’

‘In Africa, Bantus believe that a genie called Nzondo first provoked a terrible flood, at the origin of river Zair, and then disappeared. Should I go on Jack?’

‘OK. But if everyone has a primordial flood story, obviously some global physical disaster must have that triggered it? Was it a destructive comet?’

‘Maybe it is the mythical expression of the end of the Ice Age and the coming of global warming.’

‘I see what you mean… the amount of melted ice must have caused tremendous floods all over the planet.’

‘Who knows? The Sumerians, Hebrews and the Native Americans saw the flood as a punishment for human wickedness, but for others, it marks the unavoidable end of a Golden Age and the passage to darker times.’

‘Thank you Professor.’

‘You’re welcome, young man. What I don’t understand is what Oberon told me before he… he…’

It was no use, she burst into tears again. Jack stopped the car on the side road. He unbuckled his seat belt, turned towards her and stroked her hair as he spoke to her in a deep and soothing voice.

‘Hey. You’ll be alright. Just focus on one thing — you’re still alive. You beat him.’

He gave her a tissue to dab her lip, which had started bleeding again.

‘Mina, what were you saying before? What didn’t you understand?’

She breathed in deeply and said ‘Why a Chinese text would mention the existence of five tablets from Mesopotamia.’

He thought about it for a moment, ‘It beats me. We should ask a specialist when we are back to the US.’

As they drove higher in the foothills, Jack slowed down considerably, because the rain had transformed into sleet, and visibility was much worse than at the outset of their trip. Including their half-hour stop, they had already added an hour and a half to the route.

‘We should be getting quite close to Safed now,’ Jack said eventually. ‘I hope the sky will clear. I’ve visited the north a few years ago with a friend. I’m sure that from the top of this hill you can see the Golan Heights to the East and Mount Hermon to the North — you know people ski there, but it would probably be cheaper for Israelis to fly to Switzerland.’

‘I didn’t know about Mount Hermon. Around here, what you can see for sure is Mount Meron, the burial place of Shimon Bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar, the mystical book of the Jews.’

‘The what? I thought their sacred book was the Bible? The Torah?’

‘The Zohar is a mystical book and central to the study of Kabbalah. It is said that people who aren’t trained long enough in the study of the Torah and try to read and understand the Zohar, will lose their mind in the process. It’s a dangerous book.’

‘Come on, Mina. We’re grown ups. That’s a bedtime story.’

‘I’m not joking. This is what I’ve read. I don’t know much about Kabbalah but it seems that this saintly man, Bar Yochai, was fleeing the Romans in the 1st century C.E. He hid himself in a cave. He eventually emerged enlightened and wrote this magical book. Well, that’s the story anyway. Some scholars think Bar Yochai was a bit like Homer with the Iliad and the Odyssey; you know, a sort of mythical writer ascribed to a book that is actually multi-layered and written over a long period of time by many authors.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve heard this magical stuff all over the planet; India, South America and even back home with the Mormons and their golden plates. I simply don’t buy it.’

‘Well, you’d better buy it fast because we’re almost in Safed, kingdom of Kabbalah. And it isn’t popstar Kabbalah either. It’s the real deal.’

After twenty more minutes of driving, they finally saw Safed’s hill. As they approached, they were gradually entranced by the calm atmosphere of this ‘magic’ mountain. How better to describe a place which rises almost 3,000 feet above sea level, surrounded by forests and the purest of air, so conducive to meditation and clear thinking? By this time, the entire city was covered in a white mantle of snow. Mina thought of the kabbalists’ belief that the Schechina or the Manifest Presence of God rested above the city. With so little water in the Promised Land, this vision of purity must have felt to some like a divine presence. After all, did not certain sages believe that the Messiah would appear first in Safed before travelling to Jerusalem?

Chapter 17

December 9th, 2004. Safed