Zelig Bookbinder: Uncomfortable Messiah
Zelig Bookbinder does not believe in the popular messiahs. He believes in order. In books alphabetized by author. In candles lit at exactly eighteen minutes before sundown. In hot tea, steeped precisely four and a half minutes. And above all, he believes in silence — the sacred kind you find between the pages of very old books.
His shop is hidden on a side street in Jerusalem. Inside, it smells like sandalwood, old paper, and a faint trace of something else, something ancient. There are manuscripts here that haven’t seen daylight in centuries. Some are so holy, Zelig can’t touch them without gloves. Others — well, let’s just say they don’t want to be touched.
Zelig is 59, turning 60 two months ahead of the High Holidays. He was born on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av — the day that temples fall, that kingdoms collapse, that messiahs cry alone in the dark. But he doesn't talk about that. Not even to his wife, Nancy, who is ten years younger and infinitely wiser. Nancy, the love of his life, who runs the home like a symphony, raising four boys with the precision of a general and the softness of fresh-baked challah.
Their sons — Adam (26), Tzvi (24), Meir (22), and baby Ohav (17) — are bright, eccentric, and uncomfortably observant. They know more than they should, and yet never quite enough. They study Torah like it's a secret language. They train in martial arts like it’s recess. They are good boys, mostly. But they are his boys — and each of them bears a part of the secret that not even Zelig fully understands.
Because Zelig, it turns out, is not just a bookkeeper. He is a keeper of something much older. Much stranger. And far more dangerous.
His father, Shabtai Bookbinder, was a scholar of hieroglyphs and the hidden martial disciplines of the patriarchs. His mother, Mimi — Miriam — a poet who wrote the soul of the Holocaust into a book of verse that still haunts the shelves of grieving grandchildren. Zelig grew up speaking four languages, studying twelve, and training in a martial tradition whispered down from Abraham himself.
Yes — that Abraham. The one with the sword and the tent and the stars. God had promised to be the Shield of Abraham. God had only one request. "I'll be the Shield" said God "... you go be the Sword"!
But for all that, Zelig is a quiet man. A man who recoils from fame, avoids microphones, and vomits violently whenever he tries to hold a volume of the Etz Chaim or any mystical text attributed to the Arizal. The energy is too strong. The light too blinding. He once begged a renowned mystic in Jerusalem to lift the curse. The mystic placed a hand on his forehead — and screamed, hand burning red with fire. "Never return!" the man shouted.
Zelig didn't.
He packed away the too-holy books in plastic, sealed them in a vault beneath the shop, and tried not to think about them again.
But sometimes, late at night, he can hear them whispering to him, a jumble of beckoning calls, and he arises from bed in his nighclothes. When the house is still, when all are sleeping soundly, Zelig as in a dream creeps downstairs to the vault of dead books, what his children laughingly call the "vault-de-morte".
He cracks open the vault door just a hair, and the blinding light emenates, filling his mind with visions of good and evil too awesome and terrifying to behold, and the next thing he knows, he's back in his bed, and light fills the room as Nancy, in her sheer gown, pulls back the curtains to reveal a glorious Jerusalem sunrise.
One day, while browsing the far reaches of a barely-functional Torah discussion forum, Zelig clicks a strange link. It leads to a private group on a little-known platform. The group is called Born Tisha B’Av 5725. There are hundreds of members. All of them born the same Hebrew date. All of them claiming the same thing:
“I think I might be the messiah.”
Zelig closes the tab. Turns off the computer. Goes for a walk.
But something inside him has already been unlocked.
The truth, as always, is more complicated. Because Zelig isn’t the messiah. Not the messiah. But he does know some things... secret things.
He might just be one messiah.. one of a hundred, or maybe thousands, maybe billions.
A single thread in the tapestry. A humble knot in the great net of redemption that spans the ages. In a world on fire, the question is no longer who the messiah is — but when will we each accept that we might be?
And Zelig? Zelig is not ready. Zelig would very much prefer if someone else did it. Anyone else. Please. He has books to shelve, and a family to protect. The last thing he wants is trouble.
But destiny, like overdue library books, has a habit of showing up whether you’re ready or not.
And when it does — when the letters glow again, when the dreams return, when the safe won’t stay locked — Zelig Bookbinder will have to decide what kind of messiah he wants to be.
His shop is hidden on a side street in Jerusalem. Inside, it smells like sandalwood, old paper, and a faint trace of something else, something ancient. There are manuscripts here that haven’t seen daylight in centuries. Some are so holy, Zelig can’t touch them without gloves. Others — well, let’s just say they don’t want to be touched.
Zelig is 59, turning 60 two months ahead of the High Holidays. He was born on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av — the day that temples fall, that kingdoms collapse, that messiahs cry alone in the dark. But he doesn't talk about that. Not even to his wife, Nancy, who is ten years younger and infinitely wiser. Nancy, the love of his life, who runs the home like a symphony, raising four boys with the precision of a general and the softness of fresh-baked challah.
Their sons — Adam (26), Tzvi (24), Meir (22), and baby Ohav (17) — are bright, eccentric, and uncomfortably observant. They know more than they should, and yet never quite enough. They study Torah like it's a secret language. They train in martial arts like it’s recess. They are good boys, mostly. But they are his boys — and each of them bears a part of the secret that not even Zelig fully understands.
Because Zelig, it turns out, is not just a bookkeeper. He is a keeper of something much older. Much stranger. And far more dangerous.
His father, Shabtai Bookbinder, was a scholar of hieroglyphs and the hidden martial disciplines of the patriarchs. His mother, Mimi — Miriam — a poet who wrote the soul of the Holocaust into a book of verse that still haunts the shelves of grieving grandchildren. Zelig grew up speaking four languages, studying twelve, and training in a martial tradition whispered down from Abraham himself.
Yes — that Abraham. The one with the sword and the tent and the stars. God had promised to be the Shield of Abraham. God had only one request. "I'll be the Shield" said God "... you go be the Sword"!
But for all that, Zelig is a quiet man. A man who recoils from fame, avoids microphones, and vomits violently whenever he tries to hold a volume of the Etz Chaim or any mystical text attributed to the Arizal. The energy is too strong. The light too blinding. He once begged a renowned mystic in Jerusalem to lift the curse. The mystic placed a hand on his forehead — and screamed, hand burning red with fire. "Never return!" the man shouted.
Zelig didn't.
He packed away the too-holy books in plastic, sealed them in a vault beneath the shop, and tried not to think about them again.
But sometimes, late at night, he can hear them whispering to him, a jumble of beckoning calls, and he arises from bed in his nighclothes. When the house is still, when all are sleeping soundly, Zelig as in a dream creeps downstairs to the vault of dead books, what his children laughingly call the "vault-de-morte".
He cracks open the vault door just a hair, and the blinding light emenates, filling his mind with visions of good and evil too awesome and terrifying to behold, and the next thing he knows, he's back in his bed, and light fills the room as Nancy, in her sheer gown, pulls back the curtains to reveal a glorious Jerusalem sunrise.
One day, while browsing the far reaches of a barely-functional Torah discussion forum, Zelig clicks a strange link. It leads to a private group on a little-known platform. The group is called Born Tisha B’Av 5725. There are hundreds of members. All of them born the same Hebrew date. All of them claiming the same thing:
“I think I might be the messiah.”
Zelig closes the tab. Turns off the computer. Goes for a walk.
But something inside him has already been unlocked.
The truth, as always, is more complicated. Because Zelig isn’t the messiah. Not the messiah. But he does know some things... secret things.
He might just be one messiah.. one of a hundred, or maybe thousands, maybe billions.
A single thread in the tapestry. A humble knot in the great net of redemption that spans the ages. In a world on fire, the question is no longer who the messiah is — but when will we each accept that we might be?
And Zelig? Zelig is not ready. Zelig would very much prefer if someone else did it. Anyone else. Please. He has books to shelve, and a family to protect. The last thing he wants is trouble.
But destiny, like overdue library books, has a habit of showing up whether you’re ready or not.
And when it does — when the letters glow again, when the dreams return, when the safe won’t stay locked — Zelig Bookbinder will have to decide what kind of messiah he wants to be.