From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:30:04 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised/reposted Kaddish Shalem I From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:30:04 GMT -------- Kaddish Shalem (I think I've gotten the hang of posting--apologies to all) DISCLAIMER: Fox & Chris Carter own it all. Just for fun. No financial gain. ********************* Author’s note: I wrote this in response to my observation during this episode that Mulder was very affected by the surroundings and events of this episode. He often is affected (it’s what makes DD’s characterizaton of Mulder so wonderful). But I sensed something more here...something unstated...bothering Mulder...that he could not articulate. (He often during the episode seemed to want to say something, but could not--or would not). Testament DD’s always sensitive portrayal of the haunted and tormented Mulder--so much of what is intriguing about Mulder is not what he says, but how he says it---and in the things that are left unsaid. I’m also playing off of the (sometimes intense) debate over Mulder’s ethnicity/religious background. I personally do not care if Mulder is Jewish or Jainian, I’d still like him. But for the purposes of this story, I’m gonna take the leap that he is (at least by birth) Jewish. Sue me if I’m wrong. This is my very first fan fiction--so don’t flame me too terribly. Also, the title: Kaddish Shalem is taken from the Kaddish (the prayer said by Ariel Luria and at the funeral)--but a different version with a different purpose. The Kaddish Shalem (full Kaddish) is the prayer that divides main parts of a Jewish prayer service from each each other. Hence, it is a marker, like a semi colon or period during a service....bb Mulder dreaded the thought. As they walked through the neighborhood, he felt all eyes upon them, upon him. Judging him. Whispering. He was not feeling paranoid. Not really. This was the world of his great-grandparents, frozen in time. A world revolving around prayer, ritual, study...and family. A world he’d only heard of in passing...and only very rarely. He was long removed from it, his grandparents rejecting it and fleeing from it to the world of modernity and the comfortably American upper class Judaism of suburban Boston. And finally his mother, leaving it entirely behind in the wake of the Holocaust to marry William Mulder, White Anglo Saxon Protestant Yankee of the State Department. A Jewish wife would not do there. So his mother sublimated her history, painfully aware of those of her aunts, uncles and cousins who perished to hang on to their religious ideals. They never talked about it. Never. And now, here they were. He was frightened and fascinated, drawn in well beyond the parameters of the case at hand. The murder of on Isaac Luria. Mulder smiled inwardly at the thought of that name. He knew that name. The granddaddy of Jewish mysticism. He had read books on the Kabbalah long ago, not even considering the connection to his own tenuous Jewish history. Mulder was always intrigued by such writings, no matter the source. Dybbuks, demons....and Golems. From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:31:37 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised Repost Kaddish Shalem part II From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:31:37 GMT -------- disclaimer in part I Jacob Weiss answered the door, appreciably shocked at the sight of the two out-of-place FBI agents. His shock turned to anger at the request of his daughter for permission to exhume the newly buried body of Isaac. How can they so intrude on the house of mourning? How dare they invade our home at such a time? A suspect in Isaac’s murder was killed...and Isaac’s fingerprints were found on his neck, the agents explain. They need to find the connection. Hate begets hate. But, though the marriage license had be acquired and in the eyes of the law Ariel and Isaac had been already married a few weeks, the marriage had not yet been sealed in the eyes of G-d. The wedding ceremony and signing of the Ketubah, the marraige contract had not yet been. And so Ariel lived in this time warp. Married, but single, unable to rent her clothing, rip a tear in her dress as an outward sign of her grief as Jewish law required of a spouse--to sit on low stool without her shoes. More than anything, Ariel needed that closure, just beyond her grasp. Only a few days more...if only the wedding had been sooner...Isaac and she would have been away together and he would not have been in the shop to receive the mortal wounds. “Where were you before Isaac was murdered...when there were threats.” Jacob Weiss spit out the words. “There are always threats against us.” Mulder wanted to say something. He couldn’t form the words without them coming out trite or idiotic sounding. He let Scully do the talking. He understood, more than he could admit, what Jacob was saying. Whispering behind his mother’s back that surely she could not have failed to hear. How she was social climber, climbing out of her eastern European ghetto into the posh never never land of Martha’s Vineyard--trying “to pass”--never quite getting there. And the comments of innocent and not-so-innocent school mates, taunting and baiting him....even occasionally at Oxford...those who knew, or guessed, or surmised...or assumed. The physical evidence was there. The dark, Slavic eyes, gently sloped. The prominent nose...THE nose...he was always self conscious of his not-exactly-but-almost Semitic nose. The taunting had made him tough. The emotional toughness of a people who had lived under threat for more than two millennia. It helped him to endure the endless humiliations of those who laughed at his work on the x-files. He wore it like a suit of chain mail armor against his external foes and internal demons, showing chinks in the suit only to Scully, and then only when he felt adequately secure. From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:32:51 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised Repost--Kaddish Shalem III From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:32:51 GMT -------- disclaimer in part I Jacob handed him a brochure. “This was slipped under our door recently.” Mulder recoiled as he opened the pamphlet, reading the hate spewed within...”How Jews created AIDS”. Mulder gasped, nausea gripping his insides. He felt a surge of guilt. He wanted to reach out. He was afraid. “I do understand, Mr. Weiss,” he wanted to say. But how could he say it, without revealing himself as the barely recognizable Jew he was. Weiss would laugh at him, despite his grief. And rightly would challenge his claim as a member of the tribe. Scully watched Mulder, wondering why he was so deeply affected. Surely, it was a sad case, but nothing so unusual as to evoke the eerie silence and sudden, deep melancholy of her partner. Ariel heard herself say that the agents should do what they felt they needed to do. They walked in silence to the car. Scully, disgusted at the vigilante nature of the latest crime, felt contempt for the people who would protect the suspect’s murderer. Mulder knew better. “The persecution, these people (my people, he though, angrily)...these people have know for centuries...why should they feel they can trust us?” But now it was Mulder’s turn to feel contempt. The cramped print shop reeked of hate. No fewer than three times in the span of five minutes, Mulder wanted to grab the owner by the collar and shake the life out of him...but Mulder held himself in check, not wanting to give Brunjes the satisfaction. Brunjes words evoked Mulder’s collective memory, and pangs of anguish mingled with anger. Mulder’s eyes became hardened steel in response to the hate. “You could be working for them.” Then looking point blank at Mulder: “You could be one of them!” Fighting dark urges, Mulder only sneered...his gasp twisting into a derisive, almost visceral, laugh. Scully looked at Mulder. This look scared her...the silent Mulder...the most dangerous Mulder...ready to explode. Scully explained to Brunjes about the murders and Luria’s apparent involvement in his murderer’s death. “Haven’t you heard the news? Isaac Luria is back from the dead.” “What kind of Jew trick is this?” Defiantly, Mulder sneered, “A Jew pulled it off two thousand years ago!” Game and match. As they left the shop, Mulder could not resist one final jab. It felt almost as good as if he’d knocked Brunjes out cold. Innocent smile on his face, Mulder said simply “Bless you,” closing the shop door behind him. Another murder, the second suspect in the Luria murder, killed where? thought Scully, disbelievingly. The cemetery near Isaac’s grave. An opened grave, inexpertly dug up, peered back at the agents. The simple pine coffin hacked by vandals, desecrating the eternal peace of the man buried within. The body gave off natural, but nauseating odors. According to Jewish law, the body was not embalmed, buried simply in a white shroud, with no identifiers of class, wealth or worldly possession. From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:34:06 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised Repost Kaddish Shalem IV From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:34:06 GMT -------- disclaimed in part I All souls come to heaven’s gate as equals. But wait. Mulder saw it first: a book laying beneath Isaac’s neck. Mulder felt a magnetic pull coming from the volume, although he did not understand why. Did not know what the book contained. It was an old book written in Hebrew. He gently examined it with his latex gloved hands. Inexplicably the book exploded into flames. “‘Sefer Yetzirah’ the book of creation, it is called,” explained the man in the Jewish Archive. It was part of the Kabballah, the ancient book of Jewish mysticism. The book belonged to Jacob Weiss. Mulder repeated the book’s title “Sefer Yetzirah”. The words somehow felt natural and at home, like old silk, on his lips, despite never having uttered a word in Hebrew. He wanted to know more, to engage in a long discussion with the archivist, a scholar and Rabbi, a specialist in Kabbalah texts. But now was not the time. He dreaded the thought of arresting Jacob. He could not picture the old man a killer. He could picture the Jacob’s eyes boring through him, questioning him with his gaze. Why have you forsaken your people. Apostate. What right have you to judge me?--Only G-d can judge me. Mulder was not easily intimidated. Jacob Weiss intimidated him. He could not confess this to Scully or admit it to himself. Mulder did not look forward to his next encounter with Ariel’s father. Ariel answered the door. Mulder was distracted, lost in his own thoughts. "Focus, dammit," he silently screamed at himself. Ariel was explaining something about a huge ring. A wedding ring. The ring looked vaguely familiar to Mulder. Where had he seen one like it? A museum? An art book? A photograph? His reliably vivid memory kicked in. A photograph. Very old. No, not a photograph, a sketch. He’d asked his mother about it when he had come across it many years earlier. It had been a picture of a wedding. It was his great grandmother’s wedding. The ring had been left behind in Europe. He recalled the sadness in his mother’s voice as she told the story of the family’s hasty exit from Czarist Russia. Most of the family was left behind, only to perish into the ash remains of the Holocaust. From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:35:32 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised repost Kaddish Shalem V From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:35:32 GMT -------- disclaimer in part I He hadn’t thought of that discussion for a long, long time and Ariel’s tale of the wedding ring moistened his eyes. Ariel’s wedding was to be the final reconnection back to a lost memory. He felt sad for her. And for himself. He felt rootless and unconnected. More alone than ever. Scully would never have suspected. He only listened, absorbed and absorbing every word, uncomfortable and confused. He longed for the comfort of familiar despair over the X-files, his sister’s disappearance and the growing net of conspiracy. Jacob Weiss was not home. It was early morning and Jacob was in prayer, as always, every day at this time. Wrapped in the fringed Talit, symbolically enfolded under the sheltering wings of G-d, Jacob prayed. He thanked G-d for daily miracle of life, for light. He prayed for wisdom, understanding and forgiveness. These were familiar prayers uttered every single day. The presence of the T’filin, the little leather boxes weighed heavily on his head and arm that morning. It was to be Ariel’s wedding day and Isaac was dead. Now, like an avenging angel, someone...something was killing the murderers. He silently thanked the almighty for the vengeance that he did not have to take upon himself. He wept for Isaac and Ariel...and for the dead killers...for they, too, were G-d’s creations. Jacob, distracted from his prayers, heard a noise coming from the second floor of the synagogue. They found Jacob standing near the next victim. Another suspect dead. Something knocked him down, something powerful. He saw it for a fleeting moment. It wasn’t Jacob. But who? What? Jacob knew. Jacob understood finally when Mulder explained about the book--the sefer yetzirah--found in Isaac’s grave. Mulder understood that Jacob knewfar more than he was admitting. Mulder was also convinced that Jacob was not the killer. In the interrogation room, Mulder noticed mud on Jacob’s otherwise spotless suit. Mud. Something in distant memory caught Mulder’s attention about he Mud. But who was it? Was it Ariel? No, she would not have had the strength to knock the wind from him. But then who could it have been? Something about mud gnawed at the line between his conscious and unconscious thought. From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:37:21 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised repost Kaddish Shalem VI From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:37:21 GMT -------- disclaimers in part I Mulder searched his memory. Stories...old stories. He’d seen his mother’s parents so rarely that he vividly recalled the few visits to their house. They’d nearly disowned her when she married Bill Mulder. Considered her dead--a betrayer of all that was their heritage--and in the wake of the Holocaust. But that it was in the wake of the Holocaust---that made it impossible for them to completely cut off the relationship. They’d lost so much already...no survivors among the family members remaining behind in Europe. Hundred of cousins, aunts and uncles: writers, doctors, professors, butchers, bakers, it did not matter. A sudden sadness at the memory momentarily overcame Mulder. He sighed aloud. “Are you all right, Mulder? You’ve been awfully quiet while we’ve been in New York.” He smiled briefly at Scully’s concern and returned to his own thoughts. The family relationship was not cordial. He loved his visits with his grandparents. His grandfather told him stories. Great stories. Ghost stories. Stories of demons and Dybbuks. The story of the Golem. A golem? He shook his head. Legend. Folk lore. Ridiculous. But then again, hadn’t he and Scully witnessed, first hand, other demons of legend from foreign cultures? El Chupacabra, for example? “I need to see a man about a burning book,” he explained to a startled Scully, asking her to monitor the conversation between father and daughter. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Golem?” Mulder asked of the archivist. “Mr. Mulder, the book is filled with stories about Dybbuks, Golems and all sorts of demons...” “I want to know about the golem.” The archivist opened to a particular page in Jacob Weiss’ Sefer. “You see, Mr. Mulder, here...” he said pointing out a paragraph of Hebrew text. It explained that the word “emet”, made from the letters aleph, mem and tav are affixed to the golem to animate it, but only a righteous person is said to have this power to create the golem...a creature of protection and revenge...a body without a soul. Mulder shook his head. Embarrassed at his own ignorance, he confessed his inability to read the Hebrew text. He felt like a school boy who hadn’t studied his lessons well enough, increasing his gnawing discomfort. The archivist went on to explain how to kill the golem by eradicating the “aleph”, effectively making the word “meit”, meaning “dead.” Another death. This time it’s Brunjes the print shop owner. The murderer was caught on videotape. It is the mud-covered body of...Isaac Luria? With Jacob still in custody, Mulder confirmed his suspicion that Jacob was innocent of the murders. But how could it be Isaac Luria? The dead Isaac Luria. Searching for Ariel back at her apartment, they found her gone. “Mulder, do you mean to tell me that hate created this...this golem?” From barbara462@aol.com Wed Feb 26 12:38:49 1997 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Revised repost Kaddish Shalem part VII--end From: barbara462@aol.com (Barbara462) Date: 26 Feb 1997 18:38:49 GMT -------- disclaimers in part I “No,” he explained, finally understanding what Jacob already knew. “Love created this golem.” The wedding ring was gone. And Mulder instinctively knew where to find her. “It’s her wedding day.” Ariel gently kissed the Golem’s hand. Gently rubbing off the “aleph”. The golem looked at Ariel with a heartbreaking sadness. “Ani l’dodi, v’dodi li--I am my beloved’s as my beloved is mine.” The beautiful verse from the Song of Songs in the Bible. As Isaac’s golem disintegrated into dust, Ariel, finally getting the closure for which she so longed repeated the ancient Aramaic that sanctified G-d’s name in the face of death. “Yitgadal, v’yitkadash, sh’mei raba--Your Name is made great and made holy...” He didn’t know what the words meant, but he’d heard them before, somewhere, some time...but he understood their significance. “What is she saying, Mulder?” It was as if Scully knew that he’d know. “She’s saying good-bye.” Mulder listened quietly to the rest of the recitation, saying, almost to himself “Amen” as she finished. Scully looked at him inquisitively. He sighed a shaky breath, reminding himself to make an appointment for that lengthy discussion with the archivist-scholar. It was time to understand and come to terms with a part of his past that intrigued and beckoned him. -30-