He was talking to me about a drink, and if it had not been for the phone call I wouldn’t have known about the dead. He drove all the way to meet his dead friend. His name is Ariel. And Ariel will never leave his dead soldier friend behind. You can’t take a cemetery with you.
Gate Eight
An American Jewish lady finds the Jewish libido and an Israeli biblical expert can’t recall the Book of Isaiah.
NOW THAT I’VE VENTURED OUT OF THE DE FACTO CAPITALS OF BOTH ISRAEL and Palestine, by going to Haifa, it is time that I brave into Tel Aviv, Israel’s cultural capital.
Outside my hotel room is the beach. I look out and see huge signs proclaiming that there is no lifeguard on site and that swimming or bathing are prohibited. I marvel at what I see on the beach: Hundreds of people, all ignoring the signs.
As for me, I go to meet Ran Rahav, Israel’s best-known PR person, who represents the richest and most famous of Israel and who, in addition, is a very famous TV persona in his own right. He has a wonderful office, walls covered by expensive paintings and floors covered by invaluable works of arts, and we have a chat. Ran tells me that the engine driving the Israeli people is this: “Survival.”
Ran, who is the “Honorary Consul of the Marshal Islands in Israel” – don’t ask me how he got himself this title – knows his people much better than many.
Survival.
With this one objective in mind, the Jews of this country planted trees in the desert, erected skyscrapers on swamps, and built one of the strongest armies in the world from scratch. This place, call it Israel or Palestine, was a mix between desert and swamps before the Musulmänner of Auschwitz-Birkenau showed up on its shores. Israel’s Jews, whose home was a concentration camp, have managed to move to the forty-ninth floor of luxury apartments in Tel Aviv. These people, who stayed alive by drinking one dirty cup of water a day in Treblinka, are now licking the most delicious ice cream at sunsets. These people, who authored the Bible, are now the authors of the most advanced technology there is.
Sitting down for dinner with an American Jewish lady, she tells me that she has just found the hidden meaning of Israel. What is it? Sex. Yep. She noticed, she says, that wherever she goes in Israel she encounters “sexual tension” in the air. I’m not sure, but I think an Israeli man has flirted with her and she’s all hot.
I go out to check Tel Aviv’s sexy creatures.
I walk to Rothschild Street, where the Ashkenazi liberal rich dine, entertain, and work. Here one can find restaurants offering healthy drinks that fit the taste and philosophy of Jewish peace lovers, usually at exuberant prices. It is interesting for me to see, as I walk, that the leftists of this land are also its richest. How does this work, and why, is a puzzle to me.
***
When I lived in this land, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Orthodox Jew who studied at Berlin and Basel universities and taught at the Hebrew University, was the leftist I knew and to whose lectures I went to listen. He had the sharpest of tongues and the most brilliant of minds I knew of, and I wonder if today’s Israel’s leftists are the same.
The next evening I sit down with a number of leftist intellectuals, university professors and such, for dinner in quite an expensive restaurant, and talk with the nicest-looking of the bunch who holds the title of “political psychologist.” The first thing she says to me is this: “I am a liberal, super liberal, and I’m an atheist.” When the waiter comes she orders café latte, but being an intellectual that she is, she can’t just order latte without making it tasteless. Her latte, she tells the waiter, should contain coffee without caffeine and milk without fat, and be served in a clear glass.
Her specialty, she informs me, is religious extremists, mainly settlers. The settlers, she declares with authority and certainty, are idiots. And when I ask her if she read any of their literature, just to make sure that they are “certified nuts,” she tells me that she doesn’t have to do so since she has read many of their detractors who quote them, and this is more than enough.
In addition to her settler expertise, she tells me that she’s also an expert on Judaism, which she classifies as a “pagan religion.” I ask her if she has ever studied Judaism, a question that makes her raise her voice in anger. For years and years and years, she yells at this offender of her high stature, she has been studying Judaism over and over and over. I light up a cigarette, inhale and exhale, look at her and ask her: Could you tell me, please, what the “Vision of Isaiah” is? That’s the most basic question one could ask and any student of Bible 101 could have answered this question in his sleep, but this learned lady has no clue. What vision? What Isaiah?
I am befuddled by her lack of knowledge but everybody at this table asserts beyond doubt that I lack the mental capacity to understand higher concepts. They pound me with super brainy words of no meaning, and as I sip my Chivas Regal I reminisce about one of my favorite rabbis from the days of old, a genius by any standards: “He who cannot explain his thesis in simple words is he who has no thesis.”
Yeah. These professors are no Yeshayahu Leibowitz; they are not worthy to even be his servants.
Gate Nine
A man who invented three words, Na Nakh Nakhman, changes a country.
THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS LAND WHO KNOW THE BOOK OF ISAIAH, AND MANY other books as well, and in the morning of the next day I decide to spend some hours with them. They are the ultra-Orthodox people of a city called Bet Shemesh who, I am told, are the most righteous of the Chosen Couples. The women are also known as “Taliban,” because they wear more “modest” clothes than the most pious of Saudi ladies. The “trash bag” ladies I saw in Meah Shearim actually live there, I’m told.
I get there faster than an eagle.
On what seems to me to be Bet Shemesh’s main street I meet a bunch of Hasidim, all of whom look quite bored.
Are you married? I ask one of them.
“Yes.”
Is your wife a great woman?
“Oh, yes.”
Can you share with me two bad things in her character that you really don’t like?
“My wife has only virtues.”
How about your wife? I ask another man, as if this were my business.
“She has only one bad quality: she possesses not one good quality.”
I laugh out loud.
How come these Jews have such a great sense of humor, while the rest of Israeli society is, in comparison, humorless?
I walk further and I meet Yoel, member of a sect known as the Reb Ahrelakh (followers of Rabbi Aharon) dressed in his community’s unique silver coat, and chat with him about current politics.
What do you think of the peace talks (between Arabs and Jews)?
“You have to ask the rabbis, I have no opinion.”
I’m not asking you for a religious ruling, I’m asking you what you think.
“What I think? What is there to think? According to Jewish law, Jews are not supposed to fight the Gentiles. We shouldn’t fight the Arabs! But, peace? There will never be peace. The Gentiles don’t like us, and they never will. What peace? Peace is a dream.”
Let me ask you another question. I came here to see the Jewish Taliban but I don’t see them. Do they live here or not?
“Here we have only about twenty of them. They don’t live in the same place but they meet together and they do what they want. The rabbis have ruled against them.”
Because of the burqa/niqab?
“No, no. If they want to dress in black all over, let them; this is not the problem. The problem with them is that they decide for themselves what is permitted to do and what is forbidden, and they don’t follow their husbands. A husband for them means just a ‘thing,’ and this is against Judaism. Wives should follow their husbands.”
This guy, though he tried to play humble with me, is actually a teacher in the community.
Maybe I can get him to teach me a thing or two, I think to myself. There is something I have been wondering about, something unique to Isr
ael, a peculiarity that I’ve not seen in other countries, nor in the Israel of my past. All over Israel, and I mean all over, there is this sign in Hebrew displayed on almost every available wall: Na Nakh Nakhma Nakhman Me’Uman, which refers to Rabbi Nakhman of Breslev, who passed away about two hundred years ago.
“The Nanakhs are not real Hasidim, they are just meshugehners. They are lazy people who don’t like to study. Instead they spend their days and nights telling people to be happy all the time and dance all day. This is not normal, this is not real.”
Nanakhs is a word I am hearing for the first time; meshugehners means idiots in Hebrew/Yiddish.
How did this Nanakh movement start?
“You don’t know?”
No.
“This started many years ago, maybe thirty, by a good guy, not like the Nanakhs. He had a problem: he was a sick man, sad all the time, and nobody could help him. One day one of his friends decided to do something about it. He took a piece of paper and wrote on it: ‘He who says these words, Na Nakh Nakhma Nakhman Me’Uman, will be happy and healthy.’ Then he added a line next to it: ‘This paper has dropped from heaven.’ He put the paper inside a book he knew the sick man was reading and left.
“When later the sad, sick man opened the book and saw the paper, he believed that it was really sent to him from heaven. He followed what heaven suggested, said this Nanakh all day and it helped him to be happy and healthy ever after. That’s the story.”
Americans came up with McDonald’s and Coca Cola, Israelis come up with computer chips and Nanakhs. Any wonder these two countries are getting along?
***
Normally, when I arrive in a new place I try to taste the food its people eat, which is exactly what I want to do now, only here I encounter a big problem: no restaurants. The Haredi of Bet Shemesh don’t go to restaurants because they believe that restaurants are from the devil. In restaurants, after all, men and women can meet and then the men, God forbid, might get an erection when biting into a chicken’s leg while looking at a Taliban.
In addition to the No Restaurant policy, these people have their own buses, where men sit in the front of the bus and women in the back. It is by this sectional division, God has obviously revealed to them, men won’t be staring at the tempting creatures known as women and won’t entertain sinful thoughts.
Egged, the public transportation system in most of Israel, also operates in this city but does not divide its buses into sections.
I walk around in search of a cookie, instead of a restaurant meal, when I spot on the road ahead a police car, blocking the traffic.
What happened? I ask a Hasid walking by.
“Oh, that? An Egged bus was stoned on the other side of the road.”
Why?
“Was stoned. It happens sometimes.”
By a Palestinian?
“No. In Bet Shemesh we don’t have Arabs. Here it’s only Jews.”
Why was the bus stoned?
“Because the bus, which is not our kosher bus, belongs to the Zionist government,” he answers, as if this makes a perfect sense. It sounds strange to me and I walk over to the police car, inside which the cops sit, drinking coffee and playing with their smartphones. They order me to go away and I show them my press card. A cop by the name of Liran is not impressed: “I owe you nothing, I’m not going to tell you anything. Get the fuck out.”
Is this the way you’re supposed to talk to the press?
“What? What did I say? I said nothing.”
This is rude, I think, and a Hasidic woman passing by tells me: “Write this! People should know how Zionist cops talk and behave. People don’t know. They humiliate us all the time. There will be no buses in the neighborhood for hours. They punish us for the act of one crazy person. Write this!”
I call Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, and ask him if this is normal behavior. The man, professional that he is, raises his voice at me in anger: “You don’t let anybody talk. You listen only to yourself! Why can’t you listen to others?!”
I can’t even guess what’s the source of his anger, but he goes on: “Where are you from?”
I was born in this country, if you really want to know.
“No, no, no. Where are you from?”
Obviously he wants me to say another country, and so I do.
Germany.
“It shows!”
I check on my iPad, as maybe it might know better than me what’s happening right under my nose. Steve’s machine tells me: in the Egged bus a religious man approached a lady who sat in the front and asked her to move to the back. She refused. And a fight started. It became violent, spread out, and three other buses were soon stoned by the devout.
Horny Jews, I guess. They see a woman who’s not a Taliban, smell her tempting flesh, and get violent.
Crazy tribe.
Luckily, there are cultured people in this land, too, with fourteen thousand years of culture, and they are not fanatic, they are tolerant. Provided, of course, you don’t light up on Ramadan.
It is hot today, as I should expect it to be in the middle of summer. I ask a Hasidic Jew wearing a fur hat, a heavy black coat and woolen tsitsis (a garment with fringes) how he can tolerate his clothes on this particular day of blistering heat. He looks at me, notices my wet face, and answers: “You are sweating, I can see, and you have no coat and no hat. What are you going to do about it, are you going to get rid of your face? No. Same with me. My clothes are a Jewish uniform and I’m very used to them, they are part of my body. Summer is always hot, for you and for me. You are not going to replace your face, are you? My clothes, this uniform, save me from committing sins. With these clothes no girl would want me. This is good, because it’s easier to fight temptation when the women don’t want you. Do you understand?”
Very well said, my good man. But if you knew history, or read ancient Jewish texts, you would know that your clothes have nothing to do with anything Jewish. Moses didn’t wear them. King David didn’t wear them. No Talmudic rabbi ever wore them. They are European, of old Europe, and your obsession with tempting females is not Jewish, either. It is Catholic, my man. Are you, too, going to glorify the Virgin Mary?
And as for your “Jewish” uniform: it is a combination of clothes that Austrians, Cossacks, Hungarians, Poles, and others of the sort wore at the time when you, Jews, lived amongst them and under them. When they came to your communities, to kill you because you were Jewish, you saw their clothes and you got jealous. By the time they left, if you were one of the lucky to survive, you copied their ways and their taste.
I say this to him inside my heart, not using my lips. There’s no point in arguing with a fanatic man, as there would be no point in arguing with an intellectual, intellectual just being a nicer word than fanatic.
Gate Ten
God is naked and gay.
NOT EVERYBODY LIKES FURS IN SUMMER. GAYS, FOR EXAMPLE, ARE NOT INTO wearing more and more clothes.
In just a few hours’ time they plan to march in the streets of Jerusalem. They gather in the Garden of Independence, in Jerusalem, for a Pride Parade, and I want to join them. Pride Parades have a tendency to feature half-naked flaming mono-sexists, and after spending time with Jews showing no skin I deserve to see some naked Jews.
Once Liran and his band have cleared the traffic, I ride to the Nude Jews.
Gay pride is not exactly what Jerusalem is known for, but a man I stop to chat with tells me that the former chief rabbi of Israel “is homo.”
How do you know?
“Are you kidding me? Everybody knows! There are many gays in the Haredi community. You didn’t know?”
Wouldn’t be funny if it turned out that the man who tried to force a woman to the back of the bus in Bet Shemesh was actually gay and was pissed off because the woman in the bus was blocking his view of other men.
I stick around in the garden for some time, listening to speeches about the problems of homos, this or that, and then the paraders
, about four thousand people, start their march. No real nudists here, but naked posters are aplenty. At the front of the parade, there is this big poster in Hebrew, Arabic, and English: “Jerusalem march for pride and tolerance.” There are American and Israeli gays here, but I can’t locate one single Arab.
Though they are not naked, they do show some flesh. And most strike me as atheists. Which is refreshing after Bet Shemesh.
About thirty minutes into the parade, someone from the roof of a building we are passing by throws stink bombs on us. It really stinks. A Hasidic homo, I believe, got horny and didn’t know how to fight his desires.
For the most part the path of the parade, as approved by the local authorities, is on roads without buildings. The residents of this Holy City would be offended, or get too horny, if a gay passed through. Many of the marchers come in male and female units. Some are couples who identify with the gay cause, and some are actually gays who have a friend from the other gender; to them it probably feels like walking a dog, which is an interesting concept.
Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv, which has recently been voted to be the best gay city in the world. This is at least what a couple, gay and hetero who live together, tell me. They also say that 30 percent of Tel Aviv residents are gay.
The interesting feature in this parade is a group of Orthodox gays, happily singing: “Ay ya ya, the King Messiah, ya, ya, ya” and “God in heaven, we love you!” If I understand them correctly, they believe that God is a naked male. Gay, of course, and that’s why He has no son.
They are loud.
Would be nice if some Taliban lesbians showed up here as well.
* * *
This is Israel, a land of opposites where, by some strange force of nature, no two are allowed to unite in thought. Yes, there are followers and herds here aplenty, but even they are split into so many sections that it’s impossible to count anymore. Who are these people, the Jews? How did they come into being? Perhaps it is time I visit the First Jew, who for centuries is resting inside an ancient cave and waiting for his lost son, me, to pay him respect.
Catch The Jew! Page 10