One Hundred Philistine Foreskins

by Tova Reich

  Hadn’t Temima wondered about the striking scarcity of young men in Bnei HaElohim? Shira asked. There were in fact very few men in general in the village; it was populated primarily by women and girls ruled over by the patriarchs, the exclusive circle of older men from the original exodus of liberated black slaves who had arrived with Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah. Some, like Abba Kadosh himself, came with first wives, such as the matriarch Em-Kol-Hai, a Jewish woman from the Bronx known then as Hedda Minsky, a lawyer trained at Fordham night school who had gotten Abba Kadosh out of Yazoo City and into Israel, claiming her rights under the Law of Return, and spiriting all of them under her Jewish skirts into the Promised Land where they have remained ever since as illegal squatters here in this remote and inhospitable corner of the universe not far from the desert canyon where the Romans starved out the band of Bar-Kokhba rebels, the caves of Ein Gedi where the bipolar King Saul pursued the young godfather David, the cataclysmic ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the suicide rock of Masada. To this very day the inhabitants of Bnei HaElohim were not officially recognized by the government of Israel as Jews but were classified as a cult or sect, they had no rights as citizens. So much for the ingathering of exiles.

  As for the absence of young men in the village, Shira told Temima, it did not take Abba Kadosh long to realize that in a patriarchal community very few patriarchs are required to propagate the seed. Just a handful was needed—in fact, the fewer the better to retain reproductive supremacy and sustain the line. Young men were threatening, they were dangerous rivals for receptive females, they were rogue elements who had to be subordinated or eliminated. It was a situation not so different, Shira said, from the mating strategies of other animal herds in the wild ruled by a dominant male figure.

  Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah, and the old men who accompanied him here on the middle passage were committed to surviving as the main breeders, the dominant males. And so, when a child was born, if it was a girl, she was allowed to remain in the community. All of the girls were called Zippora bat Cushi. No offense intended by Cushi by the way, which for some people has a connotation kind of like the n-word, Shira put in hastily; here in Bnei HaElohim, though, it stands for black pride, she took pains to elaborate. Most of these Zipporas bat Cushis were given at a very young age to one of the old men as either a wife or a concubine—whom she was given to and her destined status in the household always determined by the powers of spiritual penetration of Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah. You could think of it as a kind of variation of the droit du seigneur theme. A few of the girls, however, were allowed to reach puberty unclaimed until they were married off to a much younger boy who, upon his birth, based on Abba Kadosh’s mystical insights into the baby’s nature, had been granted the right to stay within the community, a privilege that could of course at any time be revoked depending on the character traits he manifested as he developed, the male aggression factor. This was something you could think of as a variation on the eunuch theme, a beta male. All of the boys, those who were kept and those who were unloaded, were called Zephania ben Cushi. That was the name of the prophet Zephania’s father—Cushi—as Temima surely knew, it’s straight from the text, maybe he was from the land of Cush, maybe he was black.

  In any event, before a Zephania ben Cushi who was selected to remain reached the age of three, as soon as he was old enough to pronounce correctly the words Harei-at-mikudeshet-li, one of the Zipporas set aside for this purpose was given to him in marriage. Thereafter, as the wife consecrated to him, this Zippora was charged with tending to him until he grew up as a way of gaining practice and hands-on experience in the care of a husband—feeding him, changing him, cleaning him, playing with him, nursing him when he was sick, and so on. These were the girls carrying their husbands on their backs who served Temima in her cave. But the majority of the Zephanias by far who were born in the village were judged to be budding alpha males, unfit for a patriarchal lifestyle, with incipient wild and disruptive and rebellious and competitive tendencies evident to Abba Kadosh immediately from birth. Every newborn son throw into the Nile, and every daughter let live, as Pharaoh commanded the midwives in Egypt concerning the Hebrew slaves. Within the first year of their lives these Zephanias were taken away and deposited in adoption agencies in Panama or Puerto Rico by Em-Kol-Hai, who as an authorized Jew with the rabbinical stamp of approval could leave the country and return at will; several times each year, she would travel back and forth for this purpose, to unload the latest crop of dangerous black baby boys. This had been the fate of Shira’s own baby, her Zephania ben Cushi, she told Temima, taken from her arms and transported to an orphanage in Latin America—“And I did nothing to prevent it,” Shira wailed. She raised her voice and wept so loud that a male ibex stopped in his tracks and pricked his ears stiffly upward as she howled, great tears rolling down her cheeks, adding to the salt of the sea.

  After she lost her Zephania ben Cushi, Abba Kadosh stopped bothering her. This was the word he used for the act—bothering—since he taught that according to the Torah woman possessed no will or desire of her own and if she did seem to possess a will or desire it was illusion and emptiness, of no consequence. A woman did not choose but was chosen; she was the property first of her father and then of her husband, to be disposed of as they saw fit, she was merely a vessel for use by a man, like your neighbor’s house or his ox or his ass or anything at all that belonged to your neighbor, a possession you were forbidden to covet as stated explicitly in the tenth commandment. Not that Abba Kadosh ever exactly forced himself on a woman, he merely believed the act of bothering to be an expression of the male will, initiated by the man. “I will stop bothering you because you are too sad, you depress me,” he had declared to Shira one day. The man’s decision to stop bothering, Shira explained, was in essence the only form of birth control practiced in the village—that, and breastfeeding for as long as humanly possible.

  By now Abba Kadosh had already stopped bothering legions of women, Shira went on, including some time ago his head wife, Em-Kol-Hai, a mother of ten, because, as he said, she no longer turned him on, she was too old and too fat and with each passing year more and more resembled a man, she had a beard of stiff bristles on her chin that she didn’t even have the decency to pluck and a dark brooding mustache that revolted him. To tell the truth, Shira said, Em-Kol-Hai seemed very relieved not to be bothered anymore, and since then this woman, who was already such a force, has truly come into her own, effectively running every aspect of the entire Bnei HaElohim operation with, you might say, one hand tied behind her back. Temima had surely noticed her missing right hand. It was cut off when she assaulted an Israeli government official inspecting the village as part of the campaign to get them evicted who had dared to raise a fist to strike Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah. Em-Kol-Hai did not hesitate for one minute—she went straight for his testicles. This is explicitly forbidden in the Torah. In such cases, even if the woman is standing up for her man, you must cut off her hand, the Torah commands this. You must show no pity—those are the words of the Torah.

  As for Shira herself, the musical concubine whom Abba Kadosh had once called his Pilegesh of Oud, she was now in charge of the voices; she was the choir director, thanks to her Juilliard training. It was a gospel chorus made up of the beta boys whose voices had not yet changed, and other assorted surviving males for the lower registers. Mostly they sang Negro spirituals or verses from Scripture set to music that Shira composed accompanied by a small orchestra of women sitting behind a curtain playing ancient biblical instruments. Shira herself also conducted from behind this screen while Melekh Sinai stood at the podium waving his arms around pretending to be doing the job and getting all the credit. They performed throughout the country to packed houses, they were very popular, up there on the charts, very much in demand, they even made some records that sold very well and contributed substantially to the income of the community. Hadn’t Temima ever heard of them? She should step out of her cave on her own one d
ay into the sunlight and face the music.

  But what is the attraction of this man, this Abba Kadosh, that he could exercise such power over you? This is what Temima wanted to understand from Shira. How is your beloved better than another, most fair of women? How is your beloved superior to another that you have sworn yourself to him in this way? They were lying naked in the shade of a tamarisk tree in a secluded corner of the oasis of Ein Feshkha, near the pool of spring water in which they had just bathed. Shira was basking in the memory of how Temima had called her My Batsheva as they washed in the pool; surely the meaning of this was deeper than a reference to Bathsheba abducted from her bath. Shira wanted to reflect on this, but the question Temima had just posed sprang into life between them and would not be still. She sat up, folding her pale lean body, wrapping her arms around her drawn-up legs and lowering her forehead onto the caps of her knees so that her long red hair, wet and curly, cascaded forward. She raised her head, smoothed back her hair with both hands, and looked at Temima through pale lashes. “He is whole, complete, his inner peace and self-assurance are like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, it’s what I’ve been searching for all my life, it flows out of him to me, to all of us, all of his women, yet he still makes me feel as if I’m the only one, I feel no jealousy, I feel calm, serene, at peace for the first time in my life, he gives me everything I need, he makes me feel as if my life has meaning, for the first time in my life I feel I’m not just matter, I feel I matter.”

  All this was delivered rhapsodically, as if on a single sustained breath. Shira turned to look behind her at a pillar of salt petrified in an anguished formation—Lot’s wife?—nameless, voiceless. “Self-realization by surrender to a higher force,” Shira pushed on, groping for the words to explain, convince. “For me, he is the end, the ultimate, like the messiah. Maybe you think I’m brainwashed, but what it is really is the purity of surrender. I am like clay in the hands of the creator—he can shape me any way he wants. Into his hands I entrust my spirit—and with my spirit, my body. He is a force of nature, he can take me where I want to go—carry me straight up to the heights.” She gave Temima a rueful smile, coughed out a little laugh as if tuning an instrument, squeezed her eyes shut, then lifted her arms palms upward, opening up in song, letting her voice be heard as if everything that preceded had been recitative and now came the aria—Lord get me high, Get me high, Get me high, Lord get me high, Get me high. Higher and higher, Higher and higher, Lord get me high, Get me high.

  The gospel choir was called Kol-Koreh-BaMidbar. Temima’s inner eye alit on the verse in the book of Isaiah—A voice rings out in the desert!—from the post-traumatic fortieth chapter, Comfort, O Comfort My people. Melekh Sinai was conducting from a podium in the pavilion, his back twitching to the audience at a specially called town meeting that everyone was required to attend when Temima stepped out of her cave that morning and heard the singing. She approached and stood listening behind the women and girls seated in the rear on the straw mats separated from the men and boys in the front section of the congregation by a line of potted sabra plants heavy with prickly fruit. It was a rendition of the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”—the sweet harmony of the high-pitched little boys’ voices lined up in front, the baritones and basses, including a few full-grown men, in the row rising behind them. The full year of mourning for her baby Kook Immanuel had not yet passed and she was still in need of comforting. It was as if the music were stabbing her heart; no wonder the sages forbade music during this period, not because of its pleasure but for its pain. Off in a corner to the right Temima could see the curtain stirring softly in and out as if breathing. Behind this she knew sat Shira conducting her small orchestra of women striving to stay together with the singers now invisible whom she had rehearsed rigorously in private, passing the baton in the public arena to a man, as was required.

  When the performance ended, the congregation rose as one, linked arms, the men with the men, the women with the women, and, swaying from side to side, broke out in the ecstatic refrain from the hymn, “Amen.” But in the Bnei HaElohim version, “Amen” was replaced with “Elmore” in glorification of Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah, whose slave name had been Elmore Clinton; the refrain was transformed into a cry of longing for the imminent grace of Abba Kadosh’s divine presence—El-More, El-More, El-more, Elmore Elmore.

  The members of the gospel chorus melted away into the singing swaying crowd nearly overcome with the anticipated arrival of Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah. Melekh Sinai turned his lectern to face the audience, pulled out a Tanakh from the compartment underneath, and set it down on its slanted desk. As if by a chop from above, the singing was cut off, the entire congregation was struck silent and dropped to the ground in full prostration so that Temima, standing alone in the rear, had an unobstructed view when she laid eyes on Abba Kadosh for the first time. He appeared as if he had descended, like one of the Nephilim, a giant son of the gods who had fallen to earth to cohabit with the daughters of men. He was a glowing apparition in white, long white linen tunic with fringes at its four corners each cluster coiled in azure string, loose white linen breeches, a white linen sash and a regal white turban, like the vestments of the high priest when he entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur day. Sunglasses concealed his eyes. He was holding an African walking stick carved out of ebony wood crowned with the coiled figure of a serpent for a handle. From his shoulders and upward he stood taller than all the people, and, despite what must have been his sixty-plus years, he was still vigorous and manly, a hint of cushioning around the middle inviting a place to rest your head, full lips, wide flaring nostrils, rich black beard with no streaks of gray or fading, skin like dark chocolate so smooth, none of its ripeness fled, eyes almost silver, like mirrored glass, with no signs of dimming, which he took off his dark glasses to reveal, fixing them unblinking straight ahead directly upon Temima, sending out beams to pierce her soul. When he judged that he had taken in enough of this bold antagonist, the only other person not counting Melekh Sinai still left standing in the ring, he put his shades back on, turned to his right, and passed his walking stick to his jittery sidekick in position behind the lectern.

  With an upward gesture of his arms, his large hands outspread palms up, he sang out in a voice that seemed to come from fathoms deep within him, “Rise up, holy brothers and sisters, rise up, Bnei HaElohim! Lift up your voices—El-More, More-El, we cannot have enough of El, Elohim, Adonai, Shaddai, Yah, Yahweh, more and more and more El!” This incantation levitated the entire congregation as one and transported it once again into its rapturous refrain of El-more, El-more, El-more, Elmore Elmore, until with his massive right hand Abba Kadosh, prophet and messiah, made a slicing motion and pronounced, Cut!—and instantly there was complete silence broken only by a steady rhythmic beat, as of a donkey swatting its fly-infested tail against the trunk of a tree.

  “My holy, holy brothers and sisters,” Abba Kadosh boomed out. “For thousands of years we of the ten tribes of Israel were lost in the uttermost West, but our hearts—our hearts have always been here in the East, the Middle East. We have suffered countless woes and vexations, my holy, holy brothers and sisters, descendants of the black tribes of Reuven, Shimon, Yisashar, Zevulun, Gad, Dan, Asher, Naftali, Menashe, and Ephraim—six hundred million holocausts, slavery and torture, maiming and mutilation, beatings and blows, death and disease, disgrace and humiliation, but now our wandering days are over, we have crossed the mighty river Sambatyon roiling with stones, we have crossed over the sweet rolling Jordan and come home at last to the heaven of the Promised Land, we black Jews of the ten lost tribes. Even if the rabbis reject us, even if the Mishna despots and the Gemara oppressors—the Talmud tyrants—in their arrogant certitude spurn our claims as authentic Jews, we have the holy Torah on our side, and the God of the original Hebrew Bible says to us, Truly Ephraim is a dear son to me.” Abba Kadosh turned to Melekh Sinai at the podium at his right and commanded, “Jeremiah, chapter thirty-o
ne, verse twenty—Read!” Melekh Sinai jumped as if sprung out of a far-off realm in which he had been marinating in daydreams, fumbled to find the place and read out loud in Hebrew, stumbling in his confusion. “Ephraim is surely the son who is so precious to Me, the little boy I used to delight in dandling. Even as I speak of him I remember him as a child and My innermost self longs for him. Therefore I shall truly truly pity him still. These are the words of the Lord.”

  Cries of Say it, Brother Abba! and Read it, Brother Melekh! and Amen Selah! and El-More, El-More! and Mashiakh, Mashiakh, Mashiakh, ayyay-yay-yay-yay! and Hallelujah! rang out from the men’s section of the congregation. Women closed their eyes and pumped both arms feverishly upward toward the heavens, many wept and there were some who even collapsed in a faint. Abba Kadosh nodded his head, a beneficent half smile on his lips, then pushed his hands forward palms out as if against a headwind to put a stop to this passionate outpouring. “And He has taken pity on Ephraim, which, as you know, is my true ancestral tribe, my holy, holy brothers and sisters, He has taken pity on all of us. He has brought us home—home to the East. The Lord says to us, Welcome home Ephraim, welcome home y’all to the Middle East where you belong, my children. The Lord is on our side, and that’s good enough for us. What do we care about the dried-out, meat-eating, neutered old chopped-liver gefilte-fish rabbis when we have the Lord on our side? The Torah is on our side—what more do we need?—and we are on the the side of the Torah. And that, my dear friends, is why I have called upon you to gather here today, to fulfill as best we can the Lord’s commandment in His Torah concerning a prodigal son.” He turned to Melekh Sinai. “Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-one, verses eighteen through twenty-one—Read!” There was a bookmark already in place; Melekh Sinai found it instantly and read an abbreviated version: “If a man has a disobedient and rebellious son who doesn’t listen to his father . . . they should seize him and take him before the elders of the town . . . and all the men of his city should stone him to death and thus you will root out the evil from your midst and all Israel will hear and fear.”