Chapter Eleven
“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God gives thee, throughout thy tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.”
Jerusalem was awash with the white light of a new day that tinted in gold the eastern clouds, floating on high to endless space.
On that day, all eyes throughout the world were turned to the holiest of all cities on Earth.
People from every corner of the globe filled the city’s streets.
Countless couples in love came to support Love on her difficult day in court.
Yet, tens of thousands of broken-hearted people, whose souls were seared and whose lives were destroyed by Love, also gathered to ascertain that Love gets her due.
The masses were aroused. They sewed flags and waved placards.
They sang anthems and wrote poems. Crowds were everywhere, they filled all of the city’s streets, lanes and alleys.
All the way to the very edge of the commotion, all the way to the top floor of the Supreme Court building, resounding voices of despair and anger, appeasement and hope were heard.
Yiftach looked out the window from the Supreme Court building at the mass of people that seemed to him to be lost souls, passengers on a sinking ship.
However, there are those who will say that on that day this holy city, surrounded by mountains, was colorful, vibrant and alive like never before.
Media and news outlets, local and foreign, set themselves up in every corner throughout the city, the lucky ones even managing to catch a good spot close to the Supreme Court building itself.
Everyone was glued to the radio and television and to the broadcasts over the Internet to observe the greatest trial in history.
The courtroom was expansive, impressive and glittering.
The blue sky could be seen through the long slits in the ceiling that let the sun’s rays spread its clear, soft light throughout the room.
Inside the courtroom, everyone was smiling contently and shaking hands.
Many hands. The ambiance aroused a sense of awe, of festivity, and also tension, to some degree.
The spotless hall was bustling and more crowded than ever.
Despite its size, it was too narrow to accommodate the crowd that wanted to enter, and the security guards could barely stand in the breach.
The Minister of Justice, the Attorney General, the State Attorney and other senior legal officials were present.
With them there were also poets, writers, philosophers, clerics, psychologists and physicians, all of whom dealt with love, studied it and wrote extensively about it.
The excited crowd pushed its way into the hall, there were no empty seats, many people sprawled out on the floor.
The doors squeaked as they were closed and silence fell as three judges walked into the courtroom.
The great crowd stood up. The leading judge reviewed the audience and then shot a hard look at Yiftach and Melody.
He was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—Professor Judge Yaacov Sabat.
Sabat was Israeli-born and sixty-nine years old.
He was a tall man with a gaunt face, stern and dignified, with silver-streaked brown hair and intelligent eyes that further enhanced his distinguished demeanor.
He enjoyed the good life, more so than most of his constituents, and he was well aware of it.
He was highly respected worldwide by his colleagues, he was meticulous and smart and served as a role model.
He was the father of two sons—both renowned lawyers in the field of commercial law.
He liked to describe himself as a self-made man who had risen from the gutter and achieved his success and wealth with his own two hands when, in fact, his wealth was attained in a simpler, quicker way.
He had inherited it. He was married to Dr. Nava Sabat, a senior proctologist at Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, who granted him the freedom to lead his life as he pleased.
Countless times she had heard the same joke from him about her complex patients—“For them, it all starts from the rear”—but she was fascinated by diseases of the rectum, the colon and the pelvic floor, and she devoted herself totally to all those who needed her help.
Rumor had it that Sabat was a narcissist who, from an early age, had developed a superiority complex.
As the son of a very wealthy family, his parents had given him everything he had desired, and at school he had been an outstanding student in every subject.
He had even completed his doctorate from Berkeley University sum cum laude.
An expression of self-satisfaction spread across his face as he stood erect, viewing the audience in the courtroom, imagining that they were a crowd of admirers looking up to the god that had come down to the masses.
Judge Einat Kedem stood to his right. She was sixty-three, shorter than Sabat by a head.
Her hairdo was excessively inflated and traces of gray shot through her brown hair.
She had a receding chin, blue eyes and a freckled face, and she always wore purple lipstick on her thin lips.
She appeared festive and excited. Kedem was born in Poland and, ever since coming to Israel, she resided with her family in Jerusalem.
She completed both her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in law at the Hebrew University.
She was still married after thirty-seven years to the renowned architect, Claude Kedem, had two sons and a daughter and seven grandchildren.
Her main hobbies had always been going to the theatre, reading books and creative writing, and they continue to this day.
Although she had already completed writing two lengthy novels, she never published them despite consistent courting by major publishing houses.
She felt that there was something about publishing her writings that was too exposed, embarrassing and inappropriate for a sitting Supreme Court justice, especially as they often included graphic descriptions of wild, passionate sexual encounters.
She thought to herself that when she retired, she would publish her books.
Judge Barak Golan stood to the left of Judge Sabat.
He was the youngest of the panel of judges.
He was nearly fifty-seven years old and, like Sabat, was born in Israel.
He was slightly shorter than Sabat, with a head of thick, black hair and a black beard.
His small, brown eyes reflected empathy and warmth.
Golan had completed his law studies at Bar-Ilan University.
He had served as a prosecutor and investigating officer with the police force, where he had also done his internship.
At the start of his professional career, he had worked as an independent attorney and, after several years, was chosen to serve as a judge.
Actually, Golan was the only one of the three judges on the panel who had climbed the rungs of the ladder of judgeship: He had served as a judge of the Magistrate’s Court in Rishon LeZion for six years, sat on the bench of the Nazareth District Court for seven years and, for the past three years, has served as a Supreme Court judge in Jerusalem.
Sabat, on the other hand, landed in the Supreme Court directly from the world of academia, after having served two terms as Dean of the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University.
Israeli law enables the Minister of Justice to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court if that person is registered as a member of the Bar Association and has been teaching law at university for at least ten years.
Sabat, a luminary in his field, met these requirements, and even some not written in the law books, such as his outstanding relationship with the minister.
Judge Kedem had also skipped over the Magistrate’s Court.
She was dispatched directly to the Lod District Court after twelve years as a senior partner in one of the country’s leading law firms that was situated close to the Old City in Jerusalem.
After seven years in the Lod District Court, she was promoted to the Supreme Court.
Sabat glanced at his watch. The court hearing was set for eight-thirty a.m. and he was determined to start it precisely on time. The audience fell silent when the Chief Justice began to speak in an authoritative, chilling voice.
“Please be seated,” he turned to all those present. “On behalf of the State…” he looked at the indictment, “Attorney Posner and Attorney Geva?”
“That’s correct, Your Honor,” Yiftach shot up from his chair, with Melody following suit. He looked at them with disdain or, at the very least, with indifference.
“The defendant—Love. Represented by Attorney… Heart?”
There was dead silence in the courtroom. The seat of the defendant and her counsel remained empty and desolate. People began whispering and exchanging glances.
Yiftach breathed heavily. “Melody, she is going to show up, isn’t she?” he whispered to her anxiously. “We’re not going to become the greatest joke in history…” Panic began to creep up from his feet and spread throughout his body.
“Of course she will show up,” she calmed him as she kept looking directly at the judges.
“You know… you have to see it to believe it.”
“You may be surprised. Sometimes, you have to believe it to see it.”
Weissman sat at the back of the room. He looked anxiously at the main door.
If Love doesn’t appear, if, in the end, nothing real stands behind this strange move, it will remain etched in the conscience of the legal world as his personal failure as well, for it was he who facilitated all this.
Doctor Kena looked at his watch with obvious displeasure.