The Property of Blood: Shmuley Myers Novels, #3

THe

Property

of

Blood

Sol Sharp

Copyright © 2023 Sol Sharp. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without

the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any people, living or dead, or locations or incidents, are entirely coincidental and unintended.

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-0-9726017-5-7

Printed in the United States of America. First printing, 2023

Design by YOTE Design.com

Acknowledgments

This novel couldn’t have come this far without the help of my community of authors, the White Gold Wielders group (Paige, Mike, Victor, Tom, Jim, Elizabeth: I’m looking at you). Thanks to my editor, Robin Seavill, who waded through all the Yiddish, while Gudrun Jobst at YOTE Design did a fantastic job with the cover design and interior layout. Kudos go to all, errors are all mine.

Titles by Sol Sharp

A Day at the Zoo

A Question of Allegiance

Upline (short story)

Table of Contents

Sunday (4/3)

Monday (4/4)

Tuesday (4/5)

Wednesday (4/6)

Thursday (4/7)

Friday/Shabbes (4/8-9)

Sunday (4/10)

Monday (4/11)

Tuesday (4/12)

Wednesday (4/13)

Thursday (4/14)

Friday (4/15)

Shabbes / Peysach (4/16)

Sunday (4/17)

Monday, (4/18)

Sunday (4/3)

Lamb’s Sacrifice

The scene, from where I stood on the steps of the Followers of Faith Christian Church, looked like the petting zoo of a serial killer. As a Haredi—ultra-Orthodox Jew raised in a Yiddish-speaking neighborhood—this was like watching aliens land. But for an APD homicide detective, the overtime pay was enough to buy a whole week of food. So, keeping peace at a church event was something I would suffer. Hopefully, no one would give me work for mine real job: homicide detective.

On top of the church, at mine back, flew a flag, green and gold in four quarters on a shield, with three purple lambs going across it at a diagonal. Didn’t see this before in the church. You should have it on a flag or something. Like an American flag at a used car dealership it waved, so big it was. Like the church building itself big.

Families disgorged from cars at the far side of a long oval driveway, which circled a bright green grass lawn, each in clothing fancy, as if for services. Not Subsid clothing could I see in the mass.

People walked from there to a fenced pen. Dozens of baby sheep inside it wandered in a broken chorus, crying for their mothers. When not eating the lawn. Their last supper. The smell of manure came and went on the breeze. Already there must have been five thousand people. The event, as listed, said they expected ten. Where outside all those people would fit I wasn’t sure. Certainly not on the grass, which into quarters was split, with clear spaces between for ambulances or police vehicles to quickly get inside the crowd.

A main street ran beyond the driveway. All around the church were low, sooty cement Subsid apartments. All alike, except only with different graffiti on them. The bright spring morning only showed the buildings off with more squalor. Mine grandparents told us stories of before the Amendment, when the president was Nixon. When families could be as small as they wanted. Before being pregnant and not having a baby was murder. Before, when people had things to take or use so as not more babies to bring into the world. Before Subsid became living a life when not enough for people there were jobs. Before the Preborn Investigation Bureau—the PIB—and its investigations of what was in sewers to tell of pregnancy. Before GodMother inquisitions for miscarriage. PIBniks, fech.

The church was like an egg in a nest of sticks. A colossal bubble rising, with columns like Greek temple columns all around it. Below the flag, a cross bloomed at the dome’s crown. Fancier by far than the State Capitol building. Almost exactly like a British royal orb it looked. Only greenish, from the copper roof. And tinged with the soot that covered everything, eventually.

Many of the men in the in the crowded swirl were dressed in white, thin robes with a fabric strip to tie it shut. Exactly like our Jewish kittels. Only on some holidays we wore them—and were in them buried, instead of in a coffin.

I adjusted mine police hat, then tugged at mine service belt. A little tight on me it was. Tight enough to keep mine equipment from falling down. As a detective sergeant in APD’s homicide squad, this for me wasn’t mine usual dress.

Bored, Shmuley?

Lieutenant JJ Dawson above me towered by a foot. Mine uniform was just tight; his was custom for him fit. On his face a smile flickered. Dawson was for us detectives the mother hen. Also, our slave driver—and the backup we needed sometimes against the Austin Police Department’s bureaucracy.

This uniform makes me itch, I said. Thanks to the Religious Freedom Act, mine usual uniform was more traditional: black felt hat with a hatband (no feather, please), black jacket, pants, and shoes. And a white shirt, collar open. Under mine hat a black fabric yarmulke. And under mine shirt a fringed undershirt. Both reminders that we were, from other religions different and held to a high standard. The penguin suit, mine mostly charming squad mates called it.

Welcome to my world. Lieutenants wore mostly dress uniforms. For all their important meetings to go to. After a moment, down the steps he went to make a circuit. He, like me, was for overtime pay working, so it wasn’t like now he was mine boss.

In the line of parishioners, the men in the families passed money or Subsid vouchers to a man in a white robe with on his head a flat, round, white hat, like a tambourine. A priest, maybe? The priest to the husband or oldest boy gave a small white box.

From the top of the steps I took a break and walked down to the front, near the animals. Nearby was Michael Midas, another Austin homicide detective. Aka, the Golden Boy. With blond hair, too.

He nodded at the zoo. Do you have this ceremony at Jewish churches too, Myers?

We call them synagogues, actually, I, with a smile, took the sting off the correction. We ultra-Orthodox Jews, I mean. But no. This is new for me. Is this something your church does?

His head he shook. Nah, we just have prayer services a couple of times a week, and a big one on Sunday. Easter’s a longer service, at dawn. This is one of those churches that tries to do things the old biblical way, but for rich folks. Kind of fundamentalists.

I didn’t know. Not mine biblical way, for sure.

Although, he continued, I’m thinking maybe we won’t have lamb chops this year.

A bleat came from the large, fenced pen. Three baby sheep got somehow their heads together and tangled in the fencing. A couple of the teenagers, their boots shmeared with animal dung, trotted over to save them from themselves.

Brothers and sisters, from a speaker almost behind me directly a voice came. Deep and low, mine tuches it shook it was so loud. Before we start with the sacrifice, a few words.

At the top of the steps, to mine left, a stand with a microphone was set up, and behind it the priest, or pastor, or whatever they were called stood. He all in white was also dressed, and on his head wore a white hat, a fancy cloth muffin with gold stitching.

Between the families and their baby sheep and what looked like an altar at the bottom of the steps, a line of people like white pearls on a broken string in the crowd up to the altar stood. Each like the one taking money was dressed. A screen to the left of the altar hid from the public more men at tables standing. The ones between the altar and the screen were also with white, shiny butcher smocks also dressed.

On the steps above the altar, a younger man stood, younger than mine thirty-three years looking. Also in white he was dressed, and like the main priest speaking a few steps behind in, wearing the same kind of hat. He on top of the robe wore a clear plastic poncho, covering past his feet, down to the ground. A long, thick knife in his palms he rolled around, the blade like a little drill bit spinning slowly. That kind of knife I knew. Mine father was a kosher butcher, who for a living slaughtered cows, sheep, and chickens.

At the younger man, for a moment the older priest frowned.

The man stopped his knife rolling.

The main priest smiled and raised his hands.

Welcome, welcome everyone to the Followers of Faith. Our congregation greets you in Jesus’ name and blesses you. I’m Pastor Jubilee Baker—

Hi, Jube! from the congregation came the shout. He smiled and everyone else laughed—apparently, an inside joke.

Today, our church celebrates and commemorates the beginning of our Savior’s last trial. It’s a celebration of the prosperity that God returns to each of us for our contributions to the Church. I know, he said, smiling, like from a script reading, that Easter is two weeks away. With all the other celebrations, we’ve scheduled this in plenty of time for everyone to partake of the sacrifice. In part, this is a celebration of the opulence and prosperity gifted by God to His believers.

He took a deep breath and smiled. We live a life of cycles: life and rebirth, remembrance and hope. The blood from today’s sacrifice will serve as our sign to God that we are his as we consume the flesh of that sacrifice. And sanctify us until next year as well.

A calendar in mine head I thought up. If for them Easter was in two weeks, and on Friday I knew they had another celebration, then…on Shabbes, the first day of Peysach—Passover—he was talking about.

We made some changes this year to speed things up, so as you come to the front of the line, give the usher your silver talent and take your lamb. Then, pass the lamb to one of the assistant ushers. Thanks, by the way, to our resident silversmith, Elsie Barraghan, for her fine artwork—the coins will be available for purchase at the gift shop starting after Easter. For those of you able to commit more treasure for its blessed return, thorn crowns in steel and silver are also available for purchase.

Vus dus thorn crowns? I had no idea, and nothing in mine quick thinking of the Torah gave to me a hint.

Noise from the congregation was like from my shul sounding: quiet right in front, a little whispering in the middle, and, at the far end away from the man, children and teens talking as if alone on an island they were.

Our great team of church ushers, along with the butchers, will work behind the scenes. He waved to where screens from the crowd hid a butchering production line, to prepare and freeze your lamb for your family’s Pascal Offering dinner. If you’d like to share your meal with the community, we will be conducting a dinner in our main sanctuary on Easter immediately after services. Whether you have or have need, all are welcome to join us.

Subsid families he meant when he said need, for whom not all their ration coupons for a half year would provide food for such a feast. But this was like our Peysach Seder—Passover dinner—the same; anyone who wanted to share the meal was welcome in any house. From our religion he took this, too.

We’ll sacrifice the lambs here, with my son, Pastor Peter, officiating. He at the man with the knife pointed with an open, sweeping palm.

Jubilee Baker raised a knife, a twin to the one in the young man’s hand, up, as if it were an offering. In the sun it gleamed. I knew how sharp they had to be, at least for kosher slaughtering.

Please remember that this might be frightening to younger children. If you think your child is too sensitive or young to understand this sacrifice as a tribute to our Savior, by all means take them either to the playground in the back, or the Babe’s Chapel inside the church. There are babysitters available in both places. The chapel entrance is around the side, past the screened fencing over there. Past me to the right he pointed.

We Jews long ago replaced bloody sacrifices with prayers. Seeing this on one hand made mine stomach clench. But, as a butcher’s son, on mine other hand I saw in this the honesty of people meeting their meat, and not having it go to waste after killing it.

At a paper, the preacher looked down. Will the Chalmers family please come forward?

Like Ya’akov’s—Jacob’s—family they looked: a father leading a descending ladder of boy after boy. Eight, together. Then the mother, who even from yards away I could tell was tired, led the daughters. Fifteen children total. Gevalt—Wow and oy together. They must be money printers for all of them to eat and have good clothes.

The children into age order shuffled themselves. The woman into her husband’s ear whispered. His head he rocked sideways as if for a bit thinking, then nodded. An escape she made with the youngest half dozen of the children, moving quickly past the screens. By the time the father and the older kids came to the front she was back, brushing from her collar little brown circles of cereal.

At the back, by the little bathroom booths, Chaya I saw slip out between them. Mine wife? Here? She wore like almost everyone else a white dress. With her hair…down? For us religious Jews, tsnius—modesty—rules made married women wear on their head a wig or kerchief in public. Only for the husband it was an honor to see her real hair. What was she doing here?

What’s wrong? Mike the Golden Boy asked, like a hunting dog maybe smelling prey. What d’you see?

Our car was what I didn’t see. The PIBniks were standing easy. Even the ones by the bathrooms, doing their sewagemancy, checking for pregnant urine, were talking with each other calmly. So maybe mine wife they weren’t chasing.

If they knew that for Upline she worked, definitely they would be excited, guns out and everything. Upline like a secret railroad was, taking to freedom women wanting abortions, or people fleeing the PIB for whatever crimes they were wanted. To be caught as part of Upline was to be tried for murder. With Chaya being now almost three months pregnant, she they wouldn’t kill because of the fetus. But, it they would take away from us, to be Saved. Raised in some foster home, like a servant indentured to give twenty years of their life once grown up. And Chaya…Chaya the rest of her life from a prison would see the world.

Nothing, I said, mine body forcing to relax. I saw someone running.

Everyone’s running, Shmuley, he said. There’s eighty zillion kids out here. We both watched as from the Chalmers father the lamb broke free. A boy from behind them in the line tackled it and, knees grass-stained, returned it to the father.

There’s kids, and there’s kids, I said.

They’re called lambs, Shmuley. Kids are baby goats.

Like a jet plane, humor is too high for some people.

I’m a little twitchy, I said. Because why was mine wife here? And because some might to recognize her.

Don’t worry, Mike said, I’ll keep you safe.

Issues I had, trusting mine fellow detectives to keep me safe. Only a couple months ago, Detective Simmons, from mine own squad, tried both me and Chaya to kill. Whether it was religious fervor or terrorism, we weren’t sure. Before he could be interrogated, he was killed by the police didn’t know who. I knew, but that was another secret I was from mine employers keeping to mineself.

The tallest boy in the family handed their box with the coin to the usher—I guess he wasn’t a priest. He opened the box, took out a small silver coin, and raised it up so all around could see it.

The farm hands in the sheep pen then took a lamb, swaddled it in a white towel taken from a tall stack, on which a number they painted. Then it was passed to the husband. I watched as from usher to usher the lamb was passed. It bleated the whole way up.

Finally, to Pastor Peter it arrived. From somewhere, harp music came. Not that it was even close to drowning out the bleating or the children talking.

He stood, bright white robes in place under his protective plastic poncho. The lamb was raised for the crowd by one of his assistants. Then, on its belly the ushers put it on the altar. Peter a little raised its head and, quickly with the knife, from side to side sliced its neck. This I’d seen mine father do many times, sometimes even in our back alley.

Immediately, of course, everywhere there was blood. It onto the altar splattered, pooling and then disappearing, like down a drain. Or maybe a big puddle by their feet was growing. The pastor stood, holding the dying lamb until from the carcass no more blood pumped.

Peter then to an assistant gave the lamb. And then another fire brigade of people, all wearing plastic aprons, from the altar took the animal to behind the screened area. Meanwhile, the usher on Pastor Peter’s right dipped a corner of the towel into the blood. The towel he folded and it back to the family it was handed.

The third tallest of the children bent over, donating his breakfast to the lawn. The children younger than him looked at each other, a few into a hug grabbing. The older two tried like their father to keep their faces straight, but inside each I saw the struggle to comprehend the death of a tiny animal they’d just touched a minute before.

Behold this lamb, innocent, sacrificed as the Jews did in the Temple, the older pastor into the microphone boomed. Sacrificed as the Jews sacrificed our Lord and Savior to defend their pernicious defiance of God’s commandments.

And now straight into the Jews killed Jesus thing he dove. Oy. This never could end well. At least about Jews using Christian blood for matzah—the flatbread that on Peysach we Jews ate—he didn’t go to.

Upline

A tide of mothers and children from the line went to the playground. Smart people. Or maybe for a therapist they didn’t have the money.

The head pastor Jube tapped on his ear—a hidden earpiece, I thought—and said something. The harp music disappeared like mist into a furnace. Remember to pick up your pomegranate branch when you pick up your offering or shank bone, he said. He pointed to a table on the grass to the left of the church, where more tables and ushers in white stood. Another tap on his earpiece and the choir, with backing them up instruments, began a prayer.

Four families and five lambs later (one family, for being richer, had themselves bought two of them) some kind of normal this mishegas—craziness—turned into. If the stories didn’t make it back to the cars still dropping off families, the bleating and gouts of blood got for everyone the picture.

This for me was what like some hell could be. People looking holy in their clothes, slaughtering animals and terrifying children. Maybe this by the vegetarian associations was paid for.

I’m going to make a circuit around behind the screens, to Mike I said.

If you think it’s gory here, it’ll be a horror show back there.

I shrugged. My father was a butcher, I said. I’ve seen all this before. I just hope the children won’t be traumatized.

Oh, and you think the parents will be cool about it? At the steps by the altar he waved, where now bloody footprints were like a sticky trail leading all around the altar.

Pastor Peter was like a robot working, steadily culling the herd of lambs. A lamb passed up, held for its last moment face down, legs sprawled around the altar. A slice, and whatever in the altar didn’t catch the blood dripped slowly down the altar’s sides.

I shook mine head at this strange, horrible ceremony. And then remembered that some Jewish sects had the tradition of twirling live chickens above their heads. This was to put the sins of the family (standing under it) in the bird. And then the family ate the chickens around Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year. Even a Jewish cult in Israel every year at Peysach slaughtered a sheep for each family to eat. At other churches I shouldn’t throw hard any stones.

I left the zoo behind me, keeping for Chaya an eye out. With her hair, black and to her waist straight and long, and front bangs that, at home, when she wanted, covered all of her face, I thought finding her would be easy. By the church doors I stopped.

She’d gotten to mine right side of the grass, where a line of plastic outhouses in a line stood. From them everything into a tank with a pump went—recycling always was important—and with it also a couple of PIBniks, both looking at sensor displays. Checking sewage for hormones from pregnant people trying to hide it.

Chaya walked past them, back into the crowd, looking around a little. Then, toward a family standing in the line for the sacrifice back several families she headed. Only five children the man had there. Maybe the rest the mother took to save them from mental scarring. Two boys, almost the same age looking, were right by the father. Then two younger girls, maybe in middle school. And an older girl, maybe older than the boys. She looked, from her body language, tense.

Chaya, as she passed her, whispered something, then toward the outhouses returned.

The girl almost into the air jumped, started around to turn, then stopped herself. I could see as taller she made herself. A decision, already making. Then to the father said something. He nodded, still at the slaughter staring. The girl—woman—at him, and at her siblings a long look gave, then towards the toilets went. And then past them walked to the edge of the grass, down the road, and into the Subsid neighborhood disappeared.

Chaya looked towards the front, saw me, and a smile like for no one else she made. Then she spun around and to the road, in the other direction from the woman, walked.

Definitely for Upline she was doing something.

Everyone would a religious Jewish woman with on her head a kerchief remember. Maybe, I worried, her hair down as a disguise was not enough to hide who she was. And many might even from her teaching English at Reagan High School know her. But to save a life, some time to put one’s own in danger was necessary.

Factory

By the time I got to the screens hiding the butchering, Chaya I couldn’t see. Blood, the smell of copper mine nose it filled, was to mine senses yelling.

At least the butchering was by professionals done. Hooks they’d rigged on a conveyor belt line, the little animal bodies skinned, gutted, disarticulated, and cleaned before the parts into a packing machine going. A dozen people, knives flashing, chatted while on their work keeping their eyes. By the workers, a line of buckets sat. The plop of livers, kidneys, and all of lamb’s other organs loud enough for me to hear. To let any of the animals go to waste no one would allow. Every family their whole sacrifice they’d eat. For calories, if not for their God.

I passed the butchers, making a patrol around the church. It was like around a football stadium walking. There were entrances every ten yards or so—most of them, today, closed—with for each entrance a parking lot, paved out to the Subsid housing beyond. Grass, I guess, was for the front entrance only.

The back had a playground with no parking lot. It was like the church as wide and more than the city’s biggest playground built, and surrounding it were benches with water fountains near it. There was even a bathroom building separate from the church, with changing stations for babies in front.

Hundreds of kids covered the climbing and swinging and rocking equipment. Nets of chains leading to wooden ships, were with children festooned. Women in white around the park, standing in little groups were, or flitted among the children. They grabbed children as they fell, or after into something or someone they smashed, bringing out the not-really wounded for their mothers to hug them before sending them into the battle back.

The smart families in regular clothing dressed their kids. The ones with more than sense money had even for little kids white outfits. Well, they were stained brown and green with dirt now. How back to just white they could clean their clothing was to me a mystery. But with children Chaya and I not yet having, we would in six or seven months know, Hashem—God-willing. I stopped for a bit, to watch the happy chaos.

Mine earpiece crackled as I returned to the screened side.

Myers?

Mine lieutenant again.Here.

What’s your twenty?

Wow, like a mother hen he was today. Doing a circuit around the church. Just passed the playground on the backside and heading back up the screened side.

A grunt he blessed me with.Be on the lookout for a missing kid.

For a second, I waited.

A human kid. In his voice a smile was lurking.Hispanic, female, about six years of age. Thin build, about three-eight or nine. Name is Mariposa Maria Lopez Gonzalez. Curly black hair, wearing a pink bow, white dress, and black shoes. Last seen carrying a Mary Magdalene doll near the, uh, meat processing area. Parents are a the church’s welcome tent by the traffic circle.

Just came that way and didn’t see her, I said. Checking out the playground. Past the playground, trees loomed all the way back almost to more housing. Is the property fenced?

Confirmed solid fencing, and roger that, he said. And Elkson’s doing a perimeter patrol. If the kid went that way, she’ll catch up with her.

Vidcopters allowed back here?

Yes, he said, so long as they’re not buzzing the service up front.

Mine vidcopter from mine belt in a pouch I pulled. Luftmensch, I said, calling it by its name (Space Cadet, it means in Yiddish). Hover at thirty feet and record full resolution. Into the air I tossed it. By the time it got to the top of mine toss, its rotors were out and spinning. Then augree glasses from mine shirt pocket I put on. These from a vidcopter point of view let me see, or what any computer linked might show. At the ground looking where I was going and also at a video from above looking was probably for others around me not safe. I leaned against the church wall and murmured into mine earpiece directions for Luftmensch to follow.

From when I was in Chicago, as a cop I had experience with lost children. Usually, in their eyes, they were not lost. They knew where they were. It was the parents that were lost. If she was carrying her doll, probably she was not on the playscape. And if for her parents she was looking, probably she wasn’t in the bushes. Still, Luftmensch I had run a pattern, from the perimeter by the fence and the trees towards me. Mine vidcopter not even to the playscape got when I saw her. Well, a girl, a doll after her dragging on the ground. And with her a man, white, in white dressed. Neat brown hair with on one side a part. In front of her he was squatting, one hand in hers, in the other something he was showing her.

Elkson, I need you at, the compass in the vidcopter I checked, "the fence line north northeast of the church. I’ve got the missing child with an adult, about fifteen feet in from the tree line. Male white, right by the girl. Only male in the area.

I’m close, through mine earpiece I heard. Sara Elkson was young, smart, and fast. With her brain, she I hoped would try out for detective.

Normal pace, I said. Sometimes for action cops got too excited. What I didn’t want was into the playground area a blue stampede. Easy, easy, into mine earpiece I murmured.

Then, Luftmensch: track target at center of image. Rotate to acquire facial recognition.

Above, mine vidcopter twice blinked green, right when mine glasses did the same.

Off the wall I pushed and walked along the outside of the screen until I got just outside his peripheral vision. Then toward him I went. When the girl saw me, she gave a smile, then started crying. Seeing a police officer was when children usually realized they were the lost ones.

Me he didn’t yet see, but when the girl towards me started to move, he grabbed her with his other hand. That spun him to the right a little bit. He saw me. Then Luftmensch he saw too. In mine augree glasses, around his face a little green box came. Later, his name I’d find from the picture.

Her he let go, and some wrapped candies fell from his other hand. Then, like in football, first to one side, then the other, he looked.

Excuse me, I said, in mine calm cop voice. Got a minute?

Answers, to a cop about that question, are usually yes.

No, he said. I’m late and I’ve got to run. Now he was all upright standing. Five foot eight maybe? From the full mustache infecting him, an adult.

Do you know this girl? I asked him. Then, without waiting, Mariposa, are you all right?

M-my-my parents are—I don’t know where my mommy is! Now the wail started.

C’mon over, honey, I said to her. Then mine glasses I took off, and to him gave my serious as death look. And sir, let’s see your identification. That more than anything was for the girl from him to get away.

His face went still, eyes suddenly only at me looking. He didn’t let the girl go.

Don’t be— Stupid I didn’t have time to say to him. Almost like a spring he went, turning around, leaving the girl, then to the trees, fence, and freedom bolting in a heads-down sprint. Which all of three steps lasted as he ran into Sara.

He bounced off, but she already her hands had on him. One yank he tried to make to struggle away. Then by the arm he in the air suddenly found himself. When he landed, a nice knee into his back he got as Elkson on his wrists slapped handcuffs.

Nice catch, I said. Then I knelt and hugged the little girl. Against mine shoulder her little body I could hear frantically breathing. Shh… I said, her back stroking as thoughts of death the man’s way I sent. You’re all right now. You’re safe.

Connections

After the event, directly I had to drive to the shul—synagogue—for afternoon and evening prayers. The shul building was older even than the closed Jewish neighborhood around it. All the way from Brenham, dismantled and on a truck brought to Austin. Jews left Brenham a hundred years ago. Now it again had a life here in Austin.

Up the few wooden steps, I climbed to the front door. The mezuzah, nailed to the right doorpost, with mine fingers to mine lips, I kissed it. Inside, the entry hall had doors to the main sanctuary. To its left, stairs to the women’s section went up. On the left side, a hallway to a modern building also led: bathrooms, a babysitting room, and, for older children, a miniature shul just for them.

On the right, a community bulletin board was nailed. For babysitters or lesson-teaching advertising, there were tear-off numbers on pages. Also, it was