Thus the decision to open the doors of the citadel of the mausoleum was taken by the chance and the kind Osem almost lost her smile while she ran after two overexcited friends through a dark cave, to force open a door that since milleniums has never been opened, which burst open toward the infinite, fifty dark steps clambering up till the Tower, the highest place of the city, while temperature went down to the lowest value in that day and we looked enraptured to the deepest nightly panorama of that Land, three hundred and sixty degrees under the sky. "Do you know Roberto, I found all the answers in the Torah..." went on Eti while we started to go down again through those steps, just in the moment in which the sweet Osem reached the top in the vain hope to get a rest for one second, before facing them another time on the opposite way.

"In the Torah it is written that they hated us and that they will hate us, what's inside our soul?""...maybe it is because in History our brothers and sisters in every place found themselves leading revolutions against the normalization of power?" "It is written that the Messiah will come and he will bring to us the peace..." "...and if it were instead inside us, if that light among the nations, as it has been said by the chief rabbi of the yeshivot in Israel, is nothing else than the hard task to study and share with the other people, until the sword changes in plough without anymore war? maybe in that day it will begin the Messianic era, brought by the human beings?" "Are you tired sweet Osem?" "No..." "I cannot, I want to see the mountains and the seas..." "the answer is written in the Torah...""...or maybe it is inside us? maybe there is the time to study the Torah and there is the time to see the sea...maybe the Torah shows us the path to discover the answer inside us?".

We spoke to each other, Osem had not anymore to direct our words and she got in the car of Eti, it was no more necessary that she shared the chill of the night while we were waiting for the taxi which would take me back to Tel Aviv and then to the airport. "How much did you pay for the coming trip?" "Two hundred shequel" " I dealt for one hundred and fifty for your trip back!" Her face brightened "not only we study the Torah, we are better than you men also in dealing business!".
"Tomorrow morning I will have the time for one hour on the beach..." "I will not come, I can not attend mixed beaches..." "The yellow sheet of paper, do you remember what did you write on it?" I gave it to her, she recognized it and said to me that she remembered every word and left it to me, while the taxi took me far away.
During the trip back I asked myself where did the time go that day, how was it possible that those three hours were as long as three lives?

Tel Aviv - October 1999

The next morning I phoned to her from the beach :"Boker tov...good morning Eti"...I left the message in the tape of her phone.

Teshuva'...in hebrew it means coming back, coming back to the Torah or coming back to the sea...teshuva' means also answer, answer in the Torah, answer in the sea...will they blend?

Milano - October 1999

It was again Shabbat and my sister opened fuming the book of Rav Rambam, Maimonides, his treatise on vegetables..."ok Roberto, your syndrome has to be healed once for ever, coming back from Jerusalem you even put on the table the Bible, here there is all our knowledge on vegetables and I will read for you that your belief on onions..." her face became white, Maimonides wrote :"in the Torah it is said that onions, vegetables with so numerous qualities, were one of the food of which the jewish people had nostalgia in the crossing from the slavery in Egypt to the freedom..."

"You see, we should not have nostalgia of what slavery gave to us, finally I know that mine was not a fixed idea, someway...at Pesah eating the bitter herb we remember our condition of subjects of the Pharaoh and what is wrong if I celebrate freedom not eating onions?" "It is said that every human being has been created with the goal to seek and discover his mitzva', his own precept, and yours, as funny as it may appear, is the one not to eat onions and now you found in our tradition what you were looking for, did you see? There is everything in the Torah". And in that day of the first month of the lunar year five thousand seven hundred and sixty from the creation of the world the known precepts became 614 and I would never again have to remind anyone that when I was a child I did not fall on the head, but only on the elbow.

My sister closed the book and invited me to talk with the sages among our people, the second woman in this memorable days who thinks that a man is able to understand the Torah.

[i)The end[/i]

Roberto