it. His father-in-law, David HaCohen, was born of the priestly line. In ancient times it was the shofar belonging to the priests that marked and ushered in the nation’s sacred times and holy days. From whom did Rabbi Goren obtain the shofar that would be sounded in Jerusalem’s liberation?”
“From his father-in-law.”
“And his father-in-law was a priest. So the shofar that was sounded in Jerusalem at the moment of Israel’s return to her Holy City was the priestly shofar. So as it was in ancient times, so it was on June 7, 1967; the shofar of the priests sounded in Jerusalem to usher in the sacred times of God.”
“In the vision the boy was to sound the shofar on the threshing floor. Why the threshing floor? Was it because it’s linked to the harvest and the boy was told to sound the shofar at the time of the harvest?”
“And Rabbi Goren would sound the shofar in early June, at the time of the wheat harvest. But that’s not the reason behind the threshing floor. The reason is part of a deeper mystery.
“In the year of Jubilee, in returning to its first owner, the land returns to its original state. Do you know what the original state of the Temple Mount was?”
“No.”
“A threshing floor. When the Temple Mount was first purchased by King David, it was a threshing floor.”
“So the original state of the Temple Mount was a threshing floor.”
“And do you know what the Hebrew word for threshing floor is?”
“No.”
“Goren. In Hebrew threshing floor is goren.”
“Goren! Rabbi Goren!”
“In Hebrew his name means threshing floor. And the threshing floor is the Temple Mount.”
“‘Rabbi Threshing Floor’! So the man who returns to the threshing floor is named Threshing Floor!”
“In the Jubilee the original state of the land is reaffirmed. So Goren’s very name manifested the original state of the land and reaffirmed its ancestral connection to the Jewish people. The Temple Mount was purchased by King David when it was a goren, a threshing floor. And it was the man named Threshing Floor whose feet literally stood on the threshing floor, the Temple Mount, to sound the shofar on the day of the threshing floor’s redemption.”
The Oracle paused to let me take it all in. He wasn’t finished.
“Do you know when Rabbi Goren was born?”
“I have no idea.”
“He was born in 1917.”
“The year of Jubilee!”
“Yes. He was born in the year of the Balfour Declaration, the liberation of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire, the year of return and restoration. Each Jubilee is joined to the next. So Goren was born in the one Jubilee to usher in the other. And when he ushered in the fiftieth year, he himself was fifty years old. It was the Jubilee of his own life. It wasn’t only the shofar that was the sign. It was the man himself. He was its embodiment. He was the Jubilean man. So the Jubilean man sounded the Jubilean shofar in the Jubilean year in the Jubilean place at the Jubilean moment . . . and as he sounded it, the ancestral possession passed back into the hands of those to whom it belonged.”
“Who could have put all that together?”
“Only One,” said the Oracle, “only One.”
“There would be one more mystery to be revealed behind the fourth door and before the fifth could be opened. And that mystery would begin where another had left off . . . the mystery of a desert mountain. But the revelation would be taken to another level.”
“To another level?”
“To another level of amazing . . . ”
“And what was the mystery?”
“The Masada Algorithm.”
Chapter 42
THE MASADA ALGORITHM
WHEN I RETURNED to the garden, I found the Oracle sitting in the same place as in the beginning, under the acacia tree. I joined him there.”
“This is the last of the mysteries concerning the fourth door,” he said. “Since it begins where another leaves off, we must first revisit the other mystery. Tell me, what is Masada to ancient Israel?”
“Masada was Israel’s last stand, where its last soldiers perished, where everything ended. Masada was the nation’s grave.”
“And what does that have to do with the Jubilean mysteries?”
“The Jubilee is about restoring what was lost and returning to the place you left. And so the people of Israel had to return there; the people resurrected from death had to return to their ancient grave. And so they did. And when they did, they found a word waiting two thousand years to be uncovered—the prophecy of their resurrection. They opened up