Lilah: A Heroine of the Old Testament

I can’t be with those who throw stones at women and children.It’s beyond me.Beyond my love for Ezra.Beyond my respect for God.In 397 BC, in Susa, the opulent capital of the Persian empire, where the Jews are living in exile, young Lilah is destined for a happy life: she is due to marry Antinoes, a great Persian warrior well known at the king’s court.But her beloved brother Ezra, with whom she has been close since childhood, is opposed to this marriage with a foreigner.If Lilah insists, she will have to renounce Ezra, and that is something she cannot do, for she senses that he has been chosen by God to lead the exiled Jews to Jerusalem and, after centuries of displacement, revive the laws of Moses: laws which promote justice and give human life a meaning. Abandoning the promise of a golden future, Lilah urges her brother to leave for Jerusalem and gives him new hope that a return to the Promised Land is possible. But Ezra, blinded by faith, orders the rejection of all...