When Shlomo Feig at length fell silent, the Baal Shem said, “There is a dybbuk in this Kunivar. Do you think, Rabbi Shlomo, that dybbuks ceased their wanderings when the shtetls of Poland were destroyed? Nothing is lost in the sight of God, Rabbi. Jews go to the stars; the Torah and the Talmud and the Zohar have gone also to the stars; dybbuks too may be found in these strange worlds. Rabbi, may I bring peace to this troubled spirit and to this weary Kunivar?”
“Do whatever you want,” Shlomo Feig muttered in disgust, and strode away, scowling.
Reb Shmuel at once commenced the exorcism. He called first for a minyan. Eight of his Hasidim stepped forward. I exchanged a glance with Shmarya Asch, and we shrugged and came forward too, but the Baal Shem, smiling, waved us away and beckoned two more of his followers into the circle. They began to sing; to my everlasting shame I have no idea what the singing was about, for the words were Yiddish of a Galitzianer sort, nearly as alien to me as the Kunivaru tongue. They sang for ten or fifteen minutes; the Hasidim grew more animated, clapping their hands, dancing about their Baal Shem; suddenly Reb Shmuel lowered his arms to his sides, silencing them, and quietly began to recite Hebrew phrases, which after a moment I recognized as those of the Ninety-first Psalm: The Lord is my refuge and my fortress, in him will I trust. The psalm rolled melodiously to its comforting conclusion, its promise of deliverance and salvation. For a long moment all was still. Then in a terrifying voice, not loud but immensely commanding, the Baal Shem ordered the spirit of Joseph Avneri to quit the body of Seul the Kunivar. “Out! Out! God’s name out, and off to your eternal rest!” One of the Hasidim handed Reb Shmuel a shofar. The Baal Shem put the ram’s horn to his lips and blew a single titanic blast.
Joseph Avneri whimpered. The Kunivar that housed him took three awkward, toppling steps. “Oy, mama, mama,” Joseph cried. The Kunivar’s head snapped back; his arms shot straight out at his sides; he tumbled clumsily to his four knees. An eon went by. Then Seul rose—smoothly, this time, with natural Kunivaru grace—and went to the Baal Shem, and knelt, and touched the tzaddik’s black robe. So we knew the thing was done.
Instants later the tension broke. Two of the Kunivaru priests rushed toward the Baal Shem, and then Gyaymar, and then some of the musicians, and then it seemed the whole tribe was pressing close upon him, trying to touch the holy man. The Hasidim, looking worried, murmured their concern, but the Baal Shem, towering over the surging mob, calmly blessed the Kunivaru, stroking the dense fur of their backs. After some minutes of this the Kunivaru set up a rhythmic chant, and it was a while before I realized what they were saying. Moshe Shiloah and Yakov Ben- Zion caught the sense of it about the same time I did, and we began to laugh, and then our laughter died away.
“What do their words mean?” the Baal Shem called out.
“They are saying,” I told him, “that they are convinced of the power of your god. They wish to become Jews.”
For the first time, Reb Shmuel’s poise and serenity shattered. His eyes flashed ferociously and he pushed at the crowding Kunivaru, opening an avenue between them. Coming up to me, he snapped, “Such a thing is an absurdity!”
“Nevertheless, look at them. They worship you, Reb Shmuel.”
“I refuse their worship.”
“You worked a miracle. Can you blame them for adoring you and hungering after your faith?”
“Let them adore,” said the Baal Shem. “But how can they become Jews? It would be a mockery.”
I shook my head. “What was it you told Rabbi Shlomo? Nothing is lost in the sight of God. There have always been converts to Judaism—we never invite them, but we never turn them away if they’re sincere, eh, Reb Shmuel? Even here in the stars, there is continuity of tradition, and tradition says we harden not our hearts to those who seek the truth of God. These are a good people—let them be received into Israel.”
“No,” the Baal Shem said. “A Jew must first of all be human.”
“Show me that in the Torah.”
“The Torah! You joke with me. A Jew must first of all be human. Were cats allowed to become Jews? Were horses?”
“These people are neither cats nor horses, Reb Shmuel. They are as human as we are.”
“No! No!”
“If there can be a dybbuk on Mazel Tov IV,” I said, “then there can also be Jews with six limbs and green fur.”
“No. No. No. No!”
The Baal Shem had had enough of this debate. Shoving aside the clutching hands of the Kunivaru in a most unsaintly way, he gathered his followers and stalked off, a tower of offended dignity, bidding us no farewells.
*
But how can true faith be denied? The Hasidim offered no encouragement, so the Kunivaru came to us; they learned Hebrew, and we loaned them books, and Rabbi Shlomo gave them religious instruction, and in their own time and in their own way, they entered into Judaism. All this was years ago, in the first generation after the Landing. Most of those who lived in those days are dead now—Rabbi Shlomo, Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem, Moshe Shiloah, Shmarya Asch. I was a young man then. I know a good deal more now, and if I am no closer to God than I ever was, perhaps He has grown closer to me. I eat meat and butter at the same meal, and I plow my land on the Sabbath, but those are old habits that have little to do with belief or the absence of belief.
We are much closer to the Kunivaru, too, than we were in those early days; they no longer seem like alien beings to us, but merely neighbors whose bodies have a different form. The younger ones of our kibbutz are especially drawn to them. The year before last Rabbi Lhaoyir the Kunivar suggested to some of our boys that they come for lessons to the Talmud Torah, the religious school, that he runs in the Kunivaru village; since the death of Shlomo Feig there has been no one in the kibbutz to give such instruction. When Reb Yossele, the son and successor of Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem heard this, he raised strong objections. If your boys will take instruction, he said, at least send them to us, and not to green monsters. My son Yigal threw him out of the kibbutz. We would rather let our boys learn the Torah from green monsters, Yigal told Reb Yossele, than have them raised to be Hasidim.
And so my son’s son has had his lessons at the Talmud Torah of Rabbi Lhaoyir the Kunivar, and next spring, he will have his bar mitzvah. Once I would have been appalled by such goings-on, but now I say only, How strange, how unexpected, how interesting! Truly the Lord, if He exists, must have a keen sense of humor. I like a god who can smile and wink, who doesn’t take himself too seriously. The Kunivaru are Jews! Yes! They are preparing David for his bar mitzvah! Yes! Today is Yom Kippur, and I hear the sound of the shofar coming from their village! Yes! Yes. So be it. So be it, yes, and all praise be to Him.
We end our journey with a fun, comedic story from multi-award winner Mike Resnick, who posits how the Earth and its inhabitants might appear to aliens scouting our planet in preparation to colonize it, when they come across some interesting pop culture images and confusion ensues. . .
OBSERVATION POST
MIKE RESNICK
Diary entry #17:
It has been a long, hard struggle, but of course, if the conquest and subsequent colonization of the galaxy is your goal, you don’t expect it to come easily. There was a time, in the Antares skirmish, when I thought for a few days that we might actually lose, and I suppose most historians would say that we did lose the initial battle of Betelgeuse, though of course, we later recaptured the system and settled all its worlds.
Many of us have died for the greater glory of the Empire, and space is littered with the debris of ships, both the conquerors and the conquered. But each planetary system we capture brings us that much closer to our ultimate goal of total galactic colonization, and it was with pride and honor that I accepted the task of being the advance scout in the galaxy’s Spiral Arm. My job is to appraise the situation, determine which systems will surrender and welcome us immediately, and which, if any, can put up meaningful resistance—and when I find the latter, I am to study them as closely as necessa
ry to determine their weak spots, to see how and where to launch our attacks. This is essential, because if we attack with the full firepower we have at our disposal, we can turn a world to dust and ashes in nanoseconds, and it’s not our objective to colonize dust and ashes.
—Kragash
From Commander Braque:
I cannot wait any longer, Kragash. Trocyon III and Benedetti V surrendered without a single shot being fired. As far as I can tell, the planet called Earth is next in our line of expansion. Can we land our citizens there, or will there be resistance? I need your evaluation before I commit my troops and my ships.
From Kragash:
I understand and appreciate your eagerness, Commander, and I will be issuing regular reports as soon as I set up my observation post, either on Earth’s moon or on one of its abandoned space platforms.
Thus far things look encouraging: there is comparatively little neutrino activity, the orbiting space stations are incredibly primitive, and I see nothing to imply that they have more than a rudimentary knowledge of 4th dimensional quantum mechanics.
From Commander Braque:
I simply cannot sit here twiddling my digits while you evaluate every aspect of life on Earth. Just tell me if they will welcome our colonists with open tentacles, or if not, are they are capable of putting up a vigorous defense?
From Kragash:
Sir, I am a highly-trained observer—but I must have time to observe and appraise. Remember: until this year we did not even know the planet was inhabited.
From Commander Braque:
All right, if you need more time, you need more time. But while we’re waiting, I’m ordering one of the asteroids located between the fourth and fifth planets of Sol’s system to be moved out of orbit and directed toward Earth. It will take approximately one hundred revolutions of Earth upon its axis for the asteroid to hit. If you feel that the citizenry would make good workers in our mines, we can always divert the asteroid. If, on the other hand, you find nothing, either in terms of life forms or raw materials, that is worth salvaging, this will at least save us the bother of obliterating all life on the planet with our XQ bombs before moving our people in. Those damned things are expensive; I’d much prefer just hurling the asteroid into the planet and eradicating all life there.
Remember: you have 100 revolutions (“days”, I think you called them) to find some reason to salvage all or part of the planet before we destroy it and we have to build all new structures for our colonists.
From Kragash:
Here are my preliminary findings:
Literally half the world’s land mass is ideal for farming organic crops. Unfortunately, given our metabolism, that will prove useless to us (but it is lovely and productive land).
Hidden beneath the surface are oceans of oil, which powers much of their machinery, but of course, we abandoned fossil fuels centuries ago.
Almost three-quarters of the planet’s surface is covered by a vast saltwater ocean, and this ocean is home to literally hundreds of millions of fish. Again, our metabolism would prevent us from partaking of the fish, and saltwater would be poison to our systems.
I will continue searching the planet and evaluating my findings; there must be some reason not to obliterate this tranquil world by smashing the asteroid into it.
From the New York Times, January 28, 2012:
Astronomers today were able to confirm that an asteroid almost twice the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago is on a collision course with the Earth. “There is less than a five percent chance that it will miss us,” states Nobel laureate Dr. Edmond Khalinov of the Mt. Wilson Observatory. When asked if the military was capable of knocking it off course, he was noncommittal. NASA is working on a probe that will hopefully explode on contact, but, to quote Dr. Irene McDevitt, “First we have to be able to hit it, and second, we have to be able to destroy it. It happens in movies all the time, but you have to understand that we’re talking about totally obliterating an asteroid that’s the size of a small country. It is conceivable that far from demolishing it, we could break it into half a dozen large pieces that will all come hurtling at the Earth.”
There have been no official statements from the White House, the Kremlin, Number Ten Downing Street, or Beijing.
Diary entry #18:
The Commander is pressuring me to gather information about the beings on the world known as Earth. I think he’s still very sensitive about the problem on Gibal VII, where we mistook the strangely-shaped population for a mutated form of corn, and harvested and ate them before realizing our mistake.
The easiest way to learn about a civilization is to monitor its video transmissions, and starting tomorrow I shall be doing just that. If they have the ability to divert the asteroid and withstand a military attack, the sooner we find out the better. Also, I need to analyze their physical capabilities, as we are always in need of slave labor and cannon fodder, and the more of them we take for that purpose, the more of our own people we can move into their deserted dwellings . . .
As I look at it now, through my ship’s computer, it seems a placid, tranquil, blue and green world. I wonder whether we really needed to push the asteroid out of its orbit. It’s hard to imagine a little nondescript world like this presenting any threat to the most powerful military machine in the galaxy.
Ah, well, it’s not for me to worry about the inhabitants, or to mourn their almost-certain passing. My job is to observe and appraise, and I shall do so as soon as I have my lunch.
—Kragash
Diary entry #19:
We were badly misinformed. Earth does have faster-than-light drives. Worse still, they are installed in a huge fleet of military ships. One in particular, named the Enterprise, seems more than a match for even Commander Braque’s flagship.
It is commanded by something called Kirk, a fair-skinned biped, with two opthalmalic lenses, two auditory appendages, opposable thumbs at the ends of its upper-body tentacles, and something that looks like brown grass covering its cranium. This Kirk is subject to emotional outbursts, but is clearly competent at his job, and his job, from the brief transmission I have seen thus far, seems to be threatening and attacking any ship that is not of Terran origin.
Worse, he has a non-human officer with misshapen ears who hails from the planet Vulcan. I have checked and re-checked my star maps, I have run every variation of the word through my computer’s enormous data banks, and I cannot find any planet named Vulcan, nor any name of any known planet that translates as Vulcan in any Terran language or dialect. So not only are we dealing with a world possessed of a starfaring military, but one with allies whose existence was totally unknown to us until this morning.
I am still calculating how fast these ships can go, as I am hampered by the terminology. I am aware that they can exceed the speed of light, but until I learn just how fast a “warp” is, I cannot estimate their top speeds . . .
It has been some time since I wrote the above paragraph. During that interval I observed more of the transmission, and it is most disheartening. This Enterprise, and doubtless all other ships in the interstellar navy, has some invisible force field known as a shield or shields, and this field gives every indication of being able to resist our pulse and laser cannons.
Not only that, but it seems almost a certainty that Earth itself has colonized worlds up and down the Spiral Arm, and possibly into the main body of the galaxy. Clearly its military was not created solely for defense, just as ours was not. In fact, I am struck by the similarity of our goals, though of course our colonization will be beneficial to the galaxy at large, while theirs is a clear and present danger to all intelligent life and must be halted.
This is been an enlightening and upsetting experience. It also presents a major question: there are obviously hundreds, possibly thousands, of ships in Earth’s military, and the strong implication is that all or almost all have the same or even greater capabilities than the Enterprise. Hence the question: why hav
e we never observed even a single one of them. Does every ship in this vast fleet have some heretofore-unknown cloaking device?
And if so, can they fire their weapons while the cloak of invisibility is operative? If they don’t have to drop it during a pitched battle, how are we to defend ourselves and fight back?
A most disturbing conundrum. I must observe more before I make my preliminary report to Commander Braque. I know he wants me to hurry, but I must be thorough and methodical, for I have the distinct feeling that the fate of our invasion, indeed of our empire, depends on what I can learn of this previously-unknown superpower.
—Kragash
Diary entry #20:
The situation is worse than I thought.
This afternoon I observed the Enterprise again, but it had an entirely new crew. The Kirk thing seems to have been replaced by a Picard thing, physically similar except for the lack of grass atop its cranium, but clearly less emotional and more competent.
So why is it worse? Because there are multiple transmissions to be studied, and when I’d finished my preliminary examination of the Enterprise commanded by the Picard thing, I captured another transmission, and it displayed the Kirk thing commanding the same ship!
How is this possible? How many dimensions does this race control? How many thousands of heavily-armored multi-weaponed faster-than-light Enterprises can co-exist? Do the Kirk and Picard things communicate through some telepathic or extra-dimensional bond? If we get into a shooting war with them, as now seems certain, will they exchange messages that our sensors and computers can capture, or will they give and receive orders on a mental or spiritual plane that is forever denied to us?
Beyond the Sun Page 29