By Barbara Barnett
Barbara462@aol.com

Date sent:        Thu, 9 Oct 1997 17:05:33 -0400 (EDT)
Category:  VA
Rating:  G
DISCLAIMER: Fox & Chris Carter own it all. Just for fun. No
financial gain.
*********************
Author's note:  My first fanfic!  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

***

Kaddish Shalem
By Barbara Barnett

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.

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 feltadequately secure.

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
hough, 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 scaredher...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 manburied 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.  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.  Mulderwas 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.

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.
 

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.  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 neverhave 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.

They  found Jacob 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 knew and 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.

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 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?"

"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-