David Encaoua · October 2023 · Unpublished manuscript
**I. Séville, July 1391**
Éphraïm, the night has not yet finished burning the parchments and already the dawn reminds you that you no longer have a home here.
The synagogue of Santa María la Blanca has become a cathedral. Your students have scattered like seeds in the southern wind.
You carry in your arms the *Chaar Kavod Hashem* — those hundred leaves of black ink that say the world rests upon three pillars: the Law, kindness, wisdom.
Three pillars that men overturn in a single July afternoon.
**II. The road to Tlemcen**
The sea once separated you from Séville. It now carries you toward Oran. From there, the Berber roads lead you toward that city of white minarets where other rabbis have already planted synagogues in the stone.
Tlemcen. The name rings like a refuge. A new beginning.
**III. October 7, 2023**
Six centuries later, I read the names of the dead on my telephone. Each name a life, each life a world, each world a library in flames.
Éphraïm, you knew this: that one can lose everything in a single Sabbath afternoon.
And yet you rebuilt. And yet you transmitted. And yet you wrote.
That is why I write to you today.