The Kabbalistic Murder Code: Mystery & International Conspiracies (Historical Crime Thriller Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

temperature of 104 degrees. I’m sure you’ll understand and take that into account this time.” Orna had reverted to cynicism, as she had no strength left to scream at her husband. Not that she had any need to scream, as Elijah was standing right next to her.
                  Elijah looked at his wife and noted with satisfaction that she was still beautiful, even after giving birth to two babies. To him, this was an objective appraisal, and not only because she was his wife. She had luxurious brown hair which fell in waves over her shoulders; even when she pulled it all up in a rubber band and went about devoid of makeup and dressed in rags, Orna attracted attention wherever she went.
                  Elijah could no longer contain his excitement and blurted out, “Orna, sweetheart, would you book us a vacation in the Bahamas for a week or two – or as long as you like?” Orna responded with a string of mocking insults; Elijah tried to convince her, in vain, of the seriousness of his intentions and in the meantime, Michali had fallen asleep. Orna went to take her shower, more put-upon and bitter than ever.
                  The next morning she drove off to work in the family’s only car, not saying a word to Elijah before departing.
                  Elijah called an emergency babysitter to take care of his sick daughter and sent the healthy girl off to nursery school. He himself left home earlier than usual on foot; he loved walking and the fact that the Luzatto Institute was within walking distance of his home pleased him immensely. He started pondering on the enormity of the calamity that had occurred in the very place where he now walked. Nineteen hundred years ago, you could have heard the cries of the wounded, and from afar you could have seen the city going up in flames. No, he corrected himself in his mind, ever the exacting scholar, it was actually about 1870 years ago. One of the most significant effects of the defeat had been the sudden disappearance of the flowing post-Herodian script.
    In every written form and every language there are two primary types. Nowadays, they are referred to as square and cursive. The first is the official letter shape used for printing books and newspapers. The second refers to handwriting, which evolves from the first. When you write something by hand, you tend to want to write more quickly. The letters used in cursive script are affected by the environment, the types of writing instruments available, the paper, the ink, etc. Gradually, over time, letters are shortened, lines are joined, and a new style of handwriting is eventually created, which differs from that of the official letters and that is known as cursive handwriting.
                  This also applies to Hebrew. The official Hebrew script is what is known as square script. The letters are composed of horizontal and vertical lines, with a few diagonals. Religious works and especially Torah scrolls, are generally – but not always – written using this square script. Letters and other works are written using cursive script, which changes from one era to the next and from one country to another.
                  At the end of the Hasmonean era and during the Herodian, a unique cursive script began to evolve, an indication of wide-ranging cultural activity and of the fact that more people were literate. This cursive script attained its highest degree of perfection toward the end of the first century C.E., but the manuscripts of the post-Bar Kokhba era, a few decades later, show no trace whatsoever of that script. No sign of it appears on any fragment of parchment, papyrus, or stone carving of that time. People suddenly stopped using the style. They reverted to square script, and developed other cursive scripts. Scholars see this as another sign of the grave calamity that had befallen the Jewish people. Mentally, Elijah had already composed the title of