Tip of the Needle

Ashraf Elghandour

Description

This religious novel tells a modern-day Adam and Eve tale spurred by the apple called technology where the balance that sustained humanity for so long is finally tipped.

Nader and Addis, two exceptionally bright high school boys, live on opposite sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in Israel. They’re brought together by the unlikely friendship between their fathers, a prominent Imam, and an influential Rabbi. As the idealistic religious leaders attempt a campaign to bring their people/followers closer, one is brutally assassinated. The course of each boys’ life is changed forever.

Ten years later, Nader and Addis are rising stars in their respective fields in the United States. Their paths cross again when they’re brought together by the love and ambition of Sacha Zimmerman, the whip smart daughter of wealthy tech giant Zack Zimmerman. As each grapples with their feelings for Sacha, they’re drawn into opposing sides of Zimmerman’s plan to change the world with his breakthrough biotechware technology. The worldwide release of this technology has the potential to eliminate many of the scourges on humanity but risks tipping the balance of power between good and evil.

In a world where technical advances are outpacing the ability to correct for unintended consequences and humanity becomes more willing to relinquish privacy and freewill for the promises offered by technological innovations, the universe is balanced on the tip of a needle. In a modern-day story of Adam and Eve and the lure of the proverbial apple called technology, Nader, Addis, and Sacha must each make decisions based on friendship, love, loyalty, and religion as Zimmerman’s plan has the potential to take him to the presidency and beyond.

Sujets

• Religious
• Religión
• Adán
• Friendship
• Humanity
• Eve
• Technology
• Religion
• Technologie
• Conflict
• Fiction
• Adam

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 27 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781480898301
• Langue: English

Extrait

Tip of the Needle




Ashraf Elghandour








Copyright © 2020 AshrafElghandour.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.



Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

Torah scriptures from the JPS Tanakh (1917) translation.

Quran scriptures from the Sahih International translation.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9831-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4808-9829-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4808-9830-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920974



Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/02/2022



This book is dedicated to Cristina Jacks the mother of my two children. She passed away too soon on April, 3rd, 2020 at the age of 56 from cancer. She was a rough diamond, not a diamond in the rough, that I failed to make shine during our marriage of 21 years-with regrets. I’m sorry, I never let you know how much I loved you. May you rest in peace in our creator’s beautiful gardens with rivers that run under, among the beautiful souls, for eternity, with your beloved German shepherds, Zeus and Indie, drinking and eating your favorite dark roast coffee and dark chocolate.



Contents
Chapter 1 The Sermon
Chapter 2 Interfaith
Chapter 3 The School for the Gifted
Chapter 4 Intifada
Chapter 5 College Life
Chapter 6 The Birthday Party
Chapter 7 The Dream
Chapter 8 The Professor
Chapter 9 The Funeral
Chapter 10 The Book Signing
Chapter 11 The Encounter
Chapter 12 The Tour
Chapter 13 Hadron Collider Project
Chapter 14 The Presentation
Chapter 15 Jeopardy!
Chapter 16 60 Minutes
Chapter 17 Paris
Chapter 18 The UN
Chapter 19 The Fix
Chapter 20 The Relocation
Chapter 21 The Tech Invasion
Chapter 22 The Man of the Year
Chapter 23 The Setup
Chapter 24 The Escape
Chapter 25 The Tech Revolution
Chapter 26 The Launch
Chapter 27 The Campaign
Chapter 28 The Messiah
Chapter 29 The Pandemic
Chapter 30 Hail to the Chief
Chapter 31 The Matrix
Chapter 32 Rebirth



1
The Sermon
Moshe Ackerman stood before his congregation of devout followers. He had been a controversial figure in his community, a community of Orthodox Jews in the heart of West Jerusalem who had partitioned several militant settlements with the help of the Israeli government. The settlements were established in the old Palestinian town of Hebron with a deep and rich history dating back to 3000 BC. Rabbi Ackerman had been no stranger to controversy, a man of deep belief and the son of Holocaust survivors. He saw the pain and suffering inflicted on his parents during their internment in the concentration camp of Auschwitz and vowed never to inflict such pain on another human being in his lifetime. As a young child in the camps of Auschwitz, in the face of the most inhuman acts committed by one human being against another, he saw the purest of love and humanity as his parents and other prisoners protected him and shielded him from the evil that permeated through every aspect of their daily existence. He was read to, sung to, cuddled, and loved as if the horror that existed outside were a nightmare to be awakened from.
Moshe cultivated a community of like-minded individuals who engaged Palestinians who were seeking peace and coexistence, who saw each other as human beings first and as Jews, Muslims, or Christians second. He created the first interfaith group in the community that consisted of himself, an imam, and a priest that saw the three most dominant world religions as the progression of faith based on the tenets of Abrahamic teaching. He would often say, “We are all the sons and daughters of Abraham. What separates us is not nearly as great as what unites us as God’s children.” One of his favorite quotes was “An abused child should never grow up to be a child abuser. The cycle of pain should never be allowed to continue. As Jews, we have experienced the atrocities inflicted on a group just because of their ethnicity and their religious identity, and we of all people should never inflict such pain on others just because they are different from us.”
As Rabbi Ackerman stood before his congregation, he could not help but focus on one face in the crowd, the face of a young man who was no older than fifteen. His face had piercing blue eyes that exuded such sharp intellect - an angelic face with such a profound aura of inner peace and tranquility that clearly was not acquired but innate to him. The synagogue was modestly decorated and housed in an inconspicuous building that did not attempt to promote any of the traditional religious ornamentations. Inside the synagogue stood a small congregation of attentive listeners, but at the fringes of the crowd were those who were clearly not there to heed the rabbi’s words of wisdom, but as agitators. They were settlers hell-bent on shutting down this heresy and silencing the rabbi and his followers.
Moshe began his sermon by declaring, “As Jews, we are the chosen ones.” As he uttered those words, he looked at the expression on the face of the young man in the front row. It was a face that he was very familiar with, a face that he had adored from the first day he first laid his eyes on the boy. That was the day his beloved wife Robbin had given birth to their son, Addis. Addis’s face had the slightest frown as this topic of God’s favoritism of one group over his other creations didn’t comport well with Addis’s sense of fairness. He had been a curious boy since he opened his eyes to this world, and Moshe loved him for it. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and his thirst was never quenched.
Moshe proceeded: “God has bestowed on us the gift of intellect, the gift of creativity, music, art, and science, and some of us choose to use it for material gain and worldly riches, and even to do the devil’s bidding. With this gift, God has shown that he loves us enough to make us his agents on this earth, and yet we have betrayed his love. We took his gift and said, ‘Thank you very much, but we have other plans.’ My brothers and sisters, we owe it to him to make sure that we use this gift to serve him by serving all of humanity, black, white, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—it makes no difference. And let me say it without any equivocation: it does not even matter if you are an Israeli, a Jew, or an Arab.”
As he uttered those words, the settlers standing in the back of the room began shouting, “Traitor! Heretic! Arab lover!” Their voices were getting louder, and their anger was beginning to manifest itself in their body language. They began pointing and shaking their accusatory hands and fingers at the rabbi. The bulges under their coats were clearly visible; everyone knew that they were armed to the teeth. The parishioners began to cower in the face of the intimidating gestures of the disrupters. They became smaller and smaller in their pews as the agitators became louder and more animated, except for one individual who showed no fear. With deliberation, the blond, blue-eyed child of fifteen stood up in silence for what seemed to be a long pause, but it was only for a few seconds. His action had a shocking and yet calming effect on the unruly crowd. The agitators turned and looked at him as if Moses himself were about to speak. The silence in the synagogue was so absolute that one could almost hear the air rush in and out of one’s neighbor’s nostrils with every breath.
Then the boy spoke. The voice was so angelic, and the tone was so pure and rhythmic, that the crowd seemed to be transformed into a hypnotic state, totally under his spell. He could have asked them all to stand on one leg, and they would all have obediently complied. Addis lifted his head, stared into empty space, and uttered the words:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:4–8)
If anyone kills a person it would be as if he killed all mankind. (Koran, Sura 5:32)
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. … Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord th