Ring of Fire III by Eric Flint

he can. And the rabbi agrees with you, Julie. You should have been told and so should the boy. This might not have happened if the boy had been told. And he...”
    There was a long pause.
    “Chana?” Julie asked.
    “He says...” Chana looked at Rabbi Fonseca for a long moment. “He says that he has sat in the library and contemplated that entry in the...encyclopedia. He says the knowledge, yes, knowledge should not have been withheld. It was wrong to let the boy discover this thing without those who love him around him. The boy is too smart, too full of his love of God, to be allowed to find this thing out by himself. He should have not been the object of...of...I do not know how to say. Loshon Hora , bad speech. The boy was looked at from the corner of the eye, whispered about. This should not have been done. I agree, too, Officer Julie Drahuta. Someone should talk to the boy’s father. Possibly you?”
    “I certainly will consider...” It was the prayer that caught Julie’s attention.
    “ Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam ,” Rabbi Fonseca began the blessing. Julie had heard blessings like that before the Ring of Fire when she worked in Wheeling, north of Grantville when it was still in the twentieth century and in America, and here, in Grantville, in 1634.
    Who would have thought an IOOF building would have become a synagogue? Who would have thought a False Messiah would be something a social worker would have to worry about? What would they have done if the Ring of Fire had dropped them onto, say, Jerusalem in the year ten or fifteen?
    God, a fifteen-year-old son of God...
    Julie turned in the direction Rabbi Fonseca was praying in and, for a moment, didn’t know whether to scream, cry or just remain silent.
    “I know, I know, Mom, let me explain.” Joseph had his father’s impish smile. Julie found it hard not to smile back. “I locked up the house, Mom. Shabbethai said he was lost and needed to go to church and since he is a Jew I had to bring him here. He’s too young to be wandering around by himself. Honest, Mom. That’s why we left the house. I know you said to stay there until you got home, but there, I said it. It’s my fault.”
    “I just translated into Greek,” Blaise said. “I didn’t do anything.”
    “ Ha-gomel lahayavim tovot sheg’malani kol tov ,” Rabbi Fonseca finished his prayer.
    “Ah-men,” Chana added. Julie would find out later that this was the blessing for, amongst other things, surviving illness or danger.
    “What’s wrong, Mom?” Joseph, truly his father’s son, had no clue what he had done, only that he had done something. “We played some stick ball. Is Shab in trouble?”
    “I think you are,” Sibylla whispered loudly.
    “What did I do?” Joseph looked around, his eyes fixed on the chief of Grantville’s police department.
    “See? Blaise is involved!” Press shouted. “Is that the boy?”
    There was a burst of strong Hebrew from the boy in the crowd of Drahuta and Kubiak children.
    “He says—” Chana was trying not to laugh. “Shabbethai says we should all be glad of the Shabbos, not arguing. He wishes all a good Sabbath and that we should go inside. He tells us it is almost time of the Sabbath.”
    With that Shabbethai Zebi ben Mordecai led his friends into the former IOOF building which was now the first Sephardic synagogue of Grantville, though Julie heard the Portuguese Jews called it something else.
    “And a little child shall lead them.” Julie shook her head. “Is that him?” Julie asked Jacqueline, who was hiding behind her.
    “How does he do that? How does my brother get in the middle of everything? Yes, Julie, that is the boy.” Jacqueline nodded. “That is the False Messiah.”
    “Let’s stick to Shabbethai Zebi for now, okay, Jackie?”
    “Will come?” Rabbi Fonseca asked politely, indicating the front door with a smile.
    “Certainly,” Julie smiled. “Would it break the Sabbath if I drove him back to Deborah