The Chava Diamond Chronicles: “The Pebble”

By Eva Fischer-Dixon

“Chava, I expect you to keep your promise,” said my mother. I promised her that I would return a pebble that I illegally took from the historic Israeli fortress called Masada. I did not suspect that my second trip there held surprises of biblical proportion for me. After being invited into the home of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Rebbe Fleischmann told me the story of his marriage, and of his first-born son, Emanuel, who was running for Governor of Pennsylvania. At the Rebbe’s request, my friend Angela and I contacted Emanuel in Bethlehem, PA, who then took me into his confidence. Emanuel performed a miracle on live TV, and it woke the Vatican’s curiosity. The Pope took Emanuel and I with him to Jerusalem, where the Pope asked him to perform a test. After passing the test, Emanuel began to receive multiple threats from drug cartels, opposing his war against them. After a vicious attack, it was confirmed that Emanuel’s life was in imminent danger, but somehow a person from my past managed to intercept the first attackers. Was Emanuel truly the person he claimed to be or was he an impostor? What about the miracles he performed? Never in a million years did I think what followed, something so extraordinary, that humankind needed to take an inventory on their faith in a Higher Power, and a deep look inside their soul to find forgiveness for doubting Emanuel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664111714

Eva Fischer-Dixon

I came into this troubled world during the early morning hours of June 17, 1950, in the city of Budapest, Hungary. I was the first and last child of my 41-year-old mother and my father who was 45 years old at the time of my birth. As I did not know any better, I could not possibly understand that we were living in poverty, as I was growing up with loving parents and there was always a bite to eat. My childhood was poor and saddened with tragedies. As a six-year-old child I witnessed the bloody 1956 revolution and received the first taste of true prejudice by those of whom I thought liked us, yet turned against my family. That tragedy did not match the untimely death of my beloved father when I was not yet seven years old, on February 14, 1957. My mother remarried in 1959 and our financial situation was upgraded from poverty to poor. After finishing elementary school I made a decision to earn money as soon as possible to ease our financial situation and I enrolled in a two-year business college (high school diploma was not required). I received my Associate Degree in 1966 and I began to work as a 16-year-old certified secretary/bookkeeper. During the same period I began my high-school education, which I completed while working full-time and attending night school. I discovered my love for writing when I was 11 years old after a movie that my childhood friend and I saw in the movie theater. We were not pleased with the ending and Steven suggested that I should write a different ending that we both liked. Voila, a writer was born. With my family’s encouragement, I entered a writing contest given by a youth oriented magazine and to my genuine surprise, I won second price. My desire to live in a free country and to improve my life was so great, that in 1972, leaving everything, including my aging parents behind, I managed to escape from Hungary during a tour to Austria, (then) Yugoslavia and Italy. I spent almost nine long months in a rat infested refugee camp, located Capua, Italy, while I waited for official permission to immigrate to the country of my dreams, to the USA. In 1975 I met and married a wonderful man, my husband Guy. Thanks to his everlasting patience, he assisted me in my task of learning the English language. He is truly my partner for life and I remain forever grateful to him for standing by me in some tough times. It is difficult for me to describe my love for writing. I cannot think of a bigger emotional joy for an author than to see a published novel in somebody’s hand and to see a story come alive on the screen. I yearn to experience that joy.

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Copyright © 2021 by Eva Fischer-Dixon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 10/27/2021

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Contents

Who I am and What I Do?

Prologue - - - Another Journey

The Pebble

The Brief Story of Masada (Metsada)

Returning of the Pebble

At the Rebbe’s Home

The Shabbat

Saturday Night Fever

The Rebbe’s Story, Part One

The Rebbe’s Story, Part Two

The Rebbe’s Story, Part Three

Old Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Syndrome and the Gate of Mercy

The Fleischmanns’ Story

The Dossier, Part One

The Dossier, Part Two

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Emanuel, Part One

Emanuel, Part Two

The Summon

The Inquisition

Pope James I.

At the Hotel

Return to Jerusalem

The Aftermath of the Election

The Unexpected

Heaven

The Flight Back Home

The Strange Weather

The Happenings

Epilogue

About the author

Guy Clifford Dixon 02/11/1948 – 06/19/2020

May your memory be a blessing.

Who I am and What I Do?

My name is Chava Diamond, and I am a writer. From what you are about to read, some things were already mentioned under this chapter title in the first, second and even in the third book of the planned four books bearing my name. They were: The Chava Diamond Chronicles: The Shades of Love and Hate, also in "The Chava Diamond Chronicles: The Ghostwriter and The Chava Diamond Chronicles: A Song to Remember". This book is the fourth, the last one in the promised series.

I mostly write suspense and romance novels; however, I write just about anything that gets my imagination going. One thing is for certain; I indeed love to tell stories. Someday, when I am ready to meet my maker up in the colorful sky, I hope that I’ll be found sitting by my computer, my eyes staring at the screen with my hands resting on the keyboard while the screen flashes the words, The End.

Just in case you do not know my biography, the short version is that I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and I immigrated (yes, legally) to the United States. It had always been a dream of mine. While my parents could not understand my obsession with the United States of America, they had to agree that this great country that I now proudly claim as my own, would give me a better opportunity to become a writer, my life’s ambition. Of course, to accomplish that was not so simple. When I arrived in this country, I spoke the following words, yes, no, thank you and Elvis Presley. Not in any particular order.

Many things have changed after I met my husband, Army Colonel Matthew Roberts. At the time of our marriage, he was only a Lieutenant on the fast track on the ladder of promotions. Matthew being in the military, as we Army wives used to say, we not only married the man, but we also married the Army. The Army entailed frequent relocations; we were not an exception either. Eventually, Matthew, who was a member of the Special Forces, and I were divorced, if for no other reason, Matthew just simply did not want to be married anymore. So, he said. He claimed that he still loved me, and he assured me that there was no other woman in the picture; he just wanted to be free of marital obligations. Whatever!

After recovering from the initial shock of the unexpected divorce, I once again began doing what I did during his long absences due to his military duties; I began to take writing more seriously. I have never been published, and I admit it was not always smooth sailing. Once somebody told me that my writing style and my English grammar were not the best, but at the same time, I was assured that I was a wonderful storyteller. After a while someone discovered one of my books, and soon my other books also became sought after.

When this story took place, my ex-husband, Colonel Matthew Roberts was still very much alive, but we had not spoken for over three years, basically since our divorce.

Sadly, yes, sadly, he died during his third tour of duty in Iraq after being shot by a sniper, just six months after I had returned from Mexico. To my surprise, he left everything to me; I must say a substantial amount, which I donated to various charitable organizations in his name.

These stories, that I am writing under the primary title that bears my name, The Chava Diamond Chronicles, took place between the time frame of my divorce from Matthew, and my marriage a few years later to the bravest, best looking, and kindest guy in the universe, a former Israeli Special Forces Colonel, Avi Ben-Yishan. But we are not going to talk about him at all at this time, as our courtship was written about in detail in the book titled, The Discovery.

There were so many things, some bad, some good, and some in between that happened to me while I was researching my books. Some people may find my stories perhaps amazing; some may find them bizarre, and even impossible. I can tell you one thing for certain, there was never a dull moment in my life. It will be up to you to believe what you are reading.

My travels took me to many countries, and so many places that I lost count. While the locations I visited are important, I mostly focused on my encounters with individuals who made my life either joyful, or a living hell, literally and/or physically. Of course, as always, I survived so I can tell the stories to the willing readers. I sincerely hope that you like it. So, it begins…

Prologue - - - Another Journey

I love to travel, and there has never been a question about that fact. However, there are a few things I never liked. My main dislikes in traveling were for getting to my destination and returning from it. Indeed, I seriously dislike sitting at airports and being inside an airplane for hours to travel. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could travel without moving? No, I am serious. Have you ever read Frank Herbert’s Dune, or seen the movie with Kyle McLachlan? I first heard of that concept when I watched that movie in which traveling through the galaxies without moving was possible. I would like that. Why can’t someone discover how to make that possible? Okay, I know you understand what I meant by just waiting and waiting some more at airports and on flights, but it is necessary and complaining about it would not make the waiting, or the flight any shorter.

I was on my fourth visit to Budapest, Hungary that year. It was not what I necessarily wanted to do, it was something that I had to do, because someone whom I loved with all my heart lived there. I still had friends there too who I am surely going to visit, albeit only briefly, because basically the purpose of my visit was to spend time with my aging mother. I wished, oh, how I wished that she stayed with me in Sausalito, California, where I lived. She only visited there once and never took that long journey again. It was not the lack of her wanting to see me in my environment; it was her age and her painful joints that prevented her from long traveling again and again.

And yes, I pleaded awfully hard with her to remain in California with me, as she had nobody to go back to. My father died years earlier, and my mother spent most of her time alone. Having childhood friends who lived near to her home helped, they visited as frequently as their time permitted. If my friend or her husband were unable to visit my mother, their children would stop by and stay for an hour or so, to entertain her with their stories or vice versa.

My mother was not entirely helpless; she could still go shopping in the neighborhood’s grocery store that was located just around the corner of her high-rise apartment complex. She loved the Friday Flea Market as well, but it took a streetcar to get there and later it became too much for her. After a while, during one of my visits, I managed to enroll her in the Meals on Wheels kind of program. They not only brought her two meals a day, lunch, and dinner, but upon her request, they would also go grocery shopping for her on the following day.

If she had to go to a doctor, she would either take a taxi or my girlfriend’s husband would drive her. In other words, even though she was on my mind all the time, I did not have to worry about her feeling abandoned, starved, or not cared for. However, it was still not the same as if I were there to take care of her. While I did not worry about her everyday necessities, I never ceased to worry about her general physical and mental health. My constant nagging and pleading with her to move to the United States so I could take care of her, fell on deaf ears. She plain and simply told me that she was born in Hungary, and she wanted to die in Hungary.

It took me many years to realize that she was right, that I needed her more than she probably needed me. For my part was the guilty conscious that at gnawed on me for leaving her and my father alone to their old ages. I was a late child and the 41 years of age difference between my mother, and I was just too much to bridge. I also realized that my expectation that she would live with me was unrealistic, because now I know for myself that I would not want to start a new life in a strange country at an advanced age without speaking the country’s language, and not have anybody but one person to talk to.

So, eventually, many years later when I got older and wiser, I realized that my mother was right, again. I tried to keep my promise of visiting her as often as I could, and I did that, more when I was not as popular as I became. With popularity came personal and professional responsibility to participate on talk shows, public appearances, being on movie sets when I wrote the screenplay, and of course, when I become even busier writing one book after another. No matter what, I tried to visit her at least every 3-4 months. On that unusual trip when those incredible things happened to me was one of those visits.

The Pebble

A promise is a promise that you supposed to keep. Mother said, even though I objected to what I indeed promised her to do a long time ago. Okay, so I took something that did not belong to me, and I promised her that I would return it someday. Eventually. It was not something that cost any money to anyone and yet, the guilty conscious was hanging over me like a bucket of icy water on a narrow string. I had no choice but to compromise and gave in to her stubborn demand that I thought was nothing but righteous.

You are probably wondering what in the world did I steal. What was it that my mother, for the first time in my life, so desperately wanted me to return to its rightful place or owner? Fine, I’ll you, but first I must ask you a question. Have you ever been in an archeological dig? If not, you certainly would not understand what I am getting at, but if you did, then you’ll know what I am talking about.

I am talking about signs around an archeological dig that remind the visitors not to take any souvenirs by picking up rocks and findings of any kind, because they may have been part of a bigger picture or puzzle. Shame on me, as despite all the signs that I noticed and read, I promptly ignored them. Yes, I did it; I took a tiny pebble from an archeological excavation and tourist site at the mountain top fortress called Masada.

I must say a few things before I will get to the story of what happened to me.

Although, in my family we never talked about religion, I always suspected that my mother was Jewish. Sounds strange, right? In our small apartment where I grew up, I never saw any religious symbols, a crucifix, a Star of David, nothing at all. Yes, I have seen my mother read a prayer book; but I never been curious enough to check what kind of prayer book was she reading. My mother and my stepfather (I will call him my father from now on), to the best of my recollection, never went to a church service, or visited any Synagogues.

While I did not grow up in a religious household, my faith in God never faltered and I lived by the words of my mother that "a house of worship was only a location, because "God was everywhere".

She told me stories about my family whom I did not have a chance to meet due to their executions in various concentration camps where they were taken by the German and Hungarian Nazis, called Arrow Cross (Nyilasok). They vividly remained in my mind and heart, even on this day when I am writing these words. What my mother, whose name was Ilona, managed to implant in my head was the curiosity about the religion that I did not select but was born into, and about my ancestry that I did not have a chance to get to know.

From my large family, my mother had fourteen brothers and sisters, and on my father’s side there were twelve siblings, only six survived World War II. Not only the male adults perished in gas chambers or by bullets, but their families, including their children and their spouses did as well. All those atrocities that were committed against my family should have a clear indication that they were Jewish by religion, but my mother refused to acknowledge that fact one way or another, neither did my father who just shrugged when I asked him about it. The stories that my mother told me were fascinating, but she could not go back with her stories more than a few generations. So, where did my family originate from? Have you ever wondered about yours? You must have if you like to read and if you like to learn.

While I still lived on Hungary, I tried to find out more, but during World War Two, many records were destroyed by fire, by bombs and by men who hated the Jews or anyone who was different than they were. After failing to discover anything substantial about my family, I began to focus on finding out about the country where Jews originated from, the Holy Land, also known as Israel.

Many years had to pass before I finally managed to legally immigrate to the United States, to become a proud American citizen and have financial security when I was able to travel anywhere, I wanted to. I made it to Israel for the first time in 1987 and fell in love with the country that was not only unique, but that was also the place where Christianity was born.

On that first trip I booked a tour to visit the mountain top fortress called Masada, or also called Metsada. I have learned a great deal from the legacy of those who lived and died there. I wrote the brief history of Masada in the next chapter. And now, back to my thievery.

As my tour group stepped out of the cable car at the mountain top and walked the short distance to the entrance of Masada, the tour guide stopped our group and explained the following. Masada is a place where we must respect the past and obey the request that we must not remove any displayed artifacts. Also, we were not supposed to pick up any rocks, not even a tiny pebble. That pebble could be the missing piece of a larger rock that was used to build homes, shops, barracks, or a house of worship.

Years later, when I showed off my photo album of my visits to foreign countries, I always displayed tiny rocks or pebbles from ancient or just old places that I have been. I never felt much guilt about taking them, until my mother visited me for the first and last time in California. I proudly showed her my albums where in small see-through bags; artfully arranged and labeled, I displayed my rock, sand, and pebble collection.

She loved the pictures, but she kept going back to the rocks, sand, and pebbles. My mother finally pointed at the pebble that I removed from Masada, and she softly, but firmly said to me, You must take it back.

After a few minutes of disagreement, I could never win an argument with my mother; I promised her that someday, when I return to Israel, I would take the pebble back. For argument’s sake, I asked her why she did not want me to take back the other rocks and pebbles, she replied. Masada was the most special of all of those places you have visited.

What else could I do, I had to agree. Of course, it would not have been me if I did not ask her to do something for me too. I wanted her to accompany me back to Israel to which she at first agreed, but sometime later, her health deteriorated to such a level that she would not have enjoyed any part of that trip and it might have even caused her further pain and discomfort. I had no choice; I had to make the trip by myself, not to mention that I planned to book a day trip at a local travel agency in Tel Aviv, to visit Masada, again.

The Brief Story of

Masada (Metsada)

The following information was obtained from various sources during my research and combined to shorten the story of Masada itself. This book’s original storyline has little to do with the place itself, other than I did a re-visit and met the people who will be introduced in the next chapter. The words describing the areas are mine, but the facts are historically correct. All comments and thoughts about what happened in Masada are strictly my own.

First and foremost, it would be an understatement to declare that Masada is a very special historical place without first knowing what happened there. Yet, in my point of view, without a doubt, it is a fascinating place itself. Built by Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BCE for himself, he ordered the place fortified to such level that it was extremely hard to reach it’s top. Masada is located on an isolated plateau of rocks, located at the eastern edge of the Judean Desert. Masada also fabulously overlooked the Dead Sea and Judea itself.

According to the famous historian/writer named Josephus, the 968 people, mostly Sicarii fighters/splinters zealots and their families, committed a mass suicide rather than be taken alive during the First Jewish-Roman War. Their leader, Eleazor ben Ya’ir was determined not to be taken alive and killed, or worse, to be turned into a slave, a fate that surely weighed on all of those who lived at Masada at the time of the war. His stubbornness only matched General Lucius Flavius Silva’s, who at the time of his siege of Masada also served as the Governor of Judaea. It was said that upon finding the body of Eleazor ben Ya’ir, he commented that he believed that he and Ya’ir could have been friends if not for the circumstances.

The siege lasted over a year and the last part of that time, the Roman legion, the X Fretensis which had over 10,000 fighting men, began to experience shortages of food and water because the areas where the supplies were available were way too far to transfer on a regular basis. As it happened, they did receive food and water now and then, but not on a regular basis as was needed for the soldiers and number of auxiliary units, not to mention at least 15,000 Jewish prisoners of war who slowly began to die from thirst and hunger, mostly of latter, but the soldiers were also beginning to suffer. Silva knew that sooner than later, he had to make, or at least try to do everything in his power to destroy Masada’s defenders.

Despite the high temperatures, the zealots in Masada had plenty of water that they smartly collected and kept in cisterns, and there was never a waste of any food or water among them. Of course, while water was plenty, the food had to be rationed to last through the siege which no one could predict how long would it last. The cisterns, there were 12 of them, and one major cistern that was able hold 40,000 gallons of water. The food supplies were secured in several storage areas and as I mentioned, there was no shortage of that either, besides, there were some already cultivated parcels that the residents used to grow their crops.

The zealot Jews at Masada knew that they only had two options, to be killed by the Roman invaders or commit mass suicide. No doubt their leader, Eleazor ben Ya’ir made some passionate speeches,