Desert Prayer

By Gail F. Nalven

A young boy is abducted by his father and brought to the headquarters of a cult, but with the help of local citizens, his own intelligence, and Cantor Shoshana Goldberg, he lives to see his Bar Mitzvah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gail F. Nalven
• Release date: Jun 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301507283

Gail F. Nalven

Gail F. Nalven is a Jewish educator and an alumna of JTS, just like Cantor Shoshana Goldberg. She has directed and taught in Hebrew schools across the denominations, and is the author of the blog Adventures in Tefillah (http://[e-mail]). She lives in New York City. Patricia S. Rudden is Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. She has worked as a lay cantor in various settings for nearly two decades. She is an alumna of Hunter College, like the late Myra Bloom and Cantor Goldberg’s mother, and wishes she could grow up to be Cantor Goldberg. She too lives in New York City.

Book preview

Desert Prayer

A Cantor Shoshana Goldberg Mystery

by

Gail F. Nalven and Patricia S. Rudden

Copyright 2013 Gail F. Nalven and Patricia S. Rudden

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

"And I tell you, brothers. I tell you we have children out there who need our fatherly wisdom, our fatherly hand. Amen, God tells us to teach our children in the way they should go, halleluyah! And some of us, brothers, have lost that right. We can no longer do as we’re commanded by the Lord because of custody arrangements and other ways that our children have been stolen from us. Now, we all know—we all know this, don’t we?—that some of us have walked away from these children. Some of us walked away from pregnant women before our children were born. Ah yes, we did, we did. Lord, You know, and we acknowledge our sin. And some of us walked away from women who were pregnant and we didn’t even know it! And some of us knew it and counseled he women to abort the child rather than stay and take responsibility and fulfill our fatherly role. Yes, Lord, we acknowledge our sin. We repent of it.

"If our children are alive, we have an obligation to find them and bring them to the truth. And this is especially so for the children who are living among Christ-deniers, atheists, Muslims, Jews. If your child is in captivity, your God-ordained task right now is to find your child and bring your child to the light. Bring your child here. Here where these precious children can be saved, where the coming tribulations will not harm them. Go get your children and bring them here. Go now, brothers . . ."

He sat there and listened and thought about his son, who he knew was getting ready for his bar mitzvah. He did not need to be told twice.

* * *

Okay, Shaun. Good work today! You’re right on track and very solid, said Cantor Shoshana Goldberg. Are you feeling solid? It was always a pleasure to conclude a bar mitzvah lesson with a student who was always prepared and who was genuinely interested in studying for the big day and even beyond.

Shaun Smith looked Cantor Goldberg in the eye and smiled. I guess so. I didn’t think I would be when I started, but it’s feeling really good.

We’re a couple of months away and I think you’re on target. And you haven’t just learned the minimum. These past few months you’ve explored Jewish history, some different Jewish cultures, some philosophy, even some areas of the liturgy, adding mentally that a lot of b’nei mitzvah never look into, let alone learn, anything more than the basics. You’ll have a lot of good stuff in your Jewish repertoire for the rest of your life. You’ll be starting adulthood with a good tool kit! The cantor smiled. This is great! She liked this kid. He hadn’t asked for a tape of his parasha or haftarah, preferring from the beginning to learn the trope systems themselves in order, he said, to be able to read different things later on. He was musical enough to pick up both with no trouble. He was reading two sections, the cantor was reading five unless the uncle from out of town took one, and he was leading part of the morning service.

Shaun Smith’s wavy red hair was only a shade or two lighter than Cantor Goldberg’s, and when they put their heads together over the Torah one day in the sanctuary the rabbi remarked that they could have passed for mother and son. And Shosh thought it would be a fine thing to have a smart, handsome, sweet boy like Shaun some day. Not that there were any immediate prospects of such a thing happening. But still, it would be nice. Some day.

Cantor Goldberg was in her first year at Congregation Rodeph Shalom, one of the Conservative synagogues in the Southwest that were willing to break with tradition and hire a female cantor. She was fresh from the Jewish Theological Seminary’s cantorial school, and this was about as far from 122nd Street and Broadway as she could get. Born and bred in Brooklyn Heights, she often felt that the culture and climate of where she had landed her first job was as alien as another planet. Her parents still had trouble remembering what time zone she was in, and she knew when the phone rang too early it was usually not an emergency but merely an East Coast mistake.

In this town, the only other Jewish game was the Reform Temple Beit Shemesh, a relatively new institution with a magnificent new building about a mile away. The locals called it Desert Temple,