by Tova Reich
She took her congregation through the Zion Gate without a glance toward the ghoulish abbey outside the city walls where Miriam the preposterously virgin mother of Yeshua HaNozri had fallen into her final ecstatic trance and was raptured up to paradise. Nor did she manifest any interest at all in the complex of buildings housing the chamber in which Miriam’s son ate his last meal before his crucifixion, icons of his grim apostles flashing eerily one after the other like frames in a movie through the long slitted windows as she moved forward. She passed with equal disinterest the yeshiva for the lost boys of the Diaspora strumming their guitars, more tuned out than the stuporous stones of Jerusalem themselves. With similar disdain she rejected David’s sepulcher in which almost no sane person believed the king was buried if only because sane people believe David king of Israel is alive and everlasting—like Enoch and Elijah whom God spirited away and they are no more, like some immortal rabbis of surpassing holiness on temporary leave from this life, destined to return in messianic splendor, the Toiter, the Maiden, there were already those who whispered in future days Temima herself. Joined on Mount Zion by Ibn Kadosh with his herd of goats coming up from Silwan, she shepherded her flock southward down into the Valley of Hinnom, Gehinnom, the vale of earthly hell, the ancient garbage dump for all of Jerusalem’s bad dreams, receptacle for carcasses and corpses, rotting animals, human sinners stoned, burned, stabbed, strangled, tongues of flame darting into the sky day and night to incinerate the offal, pools of blood saturating the earth until it could absorb no more, the valley of the slaughter where fathers and mothers brought their children as offerings on the altars of the Molekh.
Shira said to Temima, “My band Jephta’s Daughters once gave a concert here—at midnight, for women only.” Temima thumped her fist against her chest over her heart. “I have sacrificed all my children here,” she cried. “O my daughter, I opened my mouth to God and could not take it back.”
Or she led her people out through the colossal portal of the Jaffa Gate taking them through the streets of the city along the Jaffa Road through the commercial center of western Jerusalem, the new city. A village really, Temima thought as she moved onward, ugly, provincial, shabby, primitive, greasy plastic streamers hanging in restaurant entryways, porters crossing the road bent over like mules, pianos and wardrobes lashed to their backs, peddlers with their wares spread out on a rag on the pavement—a few rusted hairpins, a dented saucepan, Q-tips with yellow earwax on the cotton bulbs—everywhere rubbish, filth, reeking human and animal waste, the earthly Jerusalem. You must lift your eyes to the heavenly Jerusalem, was Temima’s teaching as they proceeded through the streets, Ben Yehuda, King George, Radak, Jabotinsky. Look up, it is stretched out like a bright canopy above, like a luminous hologram pitched over our heads. Truly there is a God in this place but I did not know it. How awesome this place is. It is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven. Mah norah ha’makom ha’zeh, the congregation sang out in response, Shira’s strong voice ringing out above all the others. They chanted with palms uplifted, arms pumping heavenward toward the grandeur of the Jerusalem above as their feet trod through the squalor and muck of the Jerusalem below, Shira’s voice penetrating the intoxicating, overrich atmosphere in wave upon wave, drowning out the chorus of bystanders providing commentary and gloss along the parade route. The Jerusalem Syndrome strikes again, it’s a virus in the air! Messiahs and saviors, an epidemic, God help us, nutcases and crackpots! Take a look at her—a lady decked out like some weirdo rebbe, another crazy for our collection, just what we needed in this city! Just listen to them—yelling verses from the Bible at the top of their lungs, another tribe of loonies let out of Egypt!
Shira continued to take upon herself the holy task of pitching her sonorous vocal cords to neutralize the enemy whose ranks grew in number and strength every day as Temima brought her people more and more regularly directly into the heart of the most calcified piety as if snaking through its blood vessels to her destined place, which was approaching clarification. From the Street of the Kara’im they would make their way out of the Jewish Quarter through the arcades of the Muslim and Christian Quarters lined with tourist shops like hives stuffed with artifacts and souvenirs, the proprietors honeying you in just for a look, into the narrow lanes swarming with locals hunting and gathering, sheepsheads on iron hooks dripping blood in butcher store windows, cushiony brassieres in bright flesh-colored synthetics strung up on pegs, then out of the walled city through what the Arab Semites called the Damascus Gate and the Jewish Semites the Gate of Shekhem depending on where you are going, arriving finally into the constricting artery of Mea Shearim Street, marching under banners admonishing female visitors to respect the sensitivities and uncontrollable urges of the residents by refraining from dressing immodestly, a warning Temima’s people abided by in any case on their own terms out of personal choice.
Nevertheless, immediately upon their appearance cries went up of Beged Ish! Beged Ish! They pointed to the male apparel of Temima in her rebbe’s costume, accusing Temima of violating the injunction explicitly stated in the book of Deuteronomy against women wearing masculine garments, the prohibition against cross-dressing, an abomination to the Lord. Shira would then be inspired to raise her voice to declaim in a kind of recitative between full-blown arias or more familiarly for this congregation a cantor’s liturgical chanting between discrete tunes, she would sing out her counterpoint that maybe it is actually the rebbes themselves who have been going around in drag all these years. Since when has a long silk bathrobe tied with a sash and a giant fur pillbox hat and white leggings and black pumps been designated a man’s outfit? Maybe the rebbes are the ones who have been committing a transgender violation abhorrent to God by decking themselves out like the opposite sex. At which a roar went up even more furious, Kol Isha! Kol Isha! punctuated by a hailstorm of stones. How dare a woman raise her voice in public, how much more so, in song? Kol Isha Erva, they screamed, the voice of a woman is nakedness, she might as well just go ahead and take off all of her clothing in the public square in front of everyone as open up her pisk like that and actually sing, allow her naked voice to be heard out loud and bring nearly half the neighborhood to orgasm.
As Temima’s people ducked for shelter behind cars and inside the doorways of shops, Shira placed herself in front of her mentor and teacher to shield her from the assault and sang out even louder above the voices of her harassers, “Yes, Kol Isha Erva. That’s me. From now on that will be my name.”
Temima raised her head in a show of support for her bodyguard, rendering herself a visible target, she clamped her two hands on either side of Shira’s waist like a dance partner about to lift her up and twirl her in the air, she nodded as if she were the ventriloquist throwing her voice, projecting the words directly into the mouth of the golem she had created in her image out of mud as God created man in His image out of earth. “Because if I am silent now at a time like this,” sang Kol-Isha-Erva moving her lips definitively with Temima’s face rising above her like the sun, “salvation and deliverance will come from somewhere else, and I and my people will be lost. And who knows if it was not for a moment like this one that I have reached this place?”
The powerful vibrations of Kol-Isha-Erva’s naked voice now faded as she craned her head to attend with her trained ear to a sound that seemed to be audible to her alone in her state of acute sensitivity and receptiveness. She made a large summoning gesture with her two hands, calling together all of Temima’s followers from their places of refuge. She set out at their head with clear purpose and direction, Temima gladly taking her place as one of the congregation, in her wisdom as a leader deferring to Kol-Isha-Erva’s authority, a disciple in the throes of visionary inspiration.
Without doubt or wavering, Kol-Isha-Erva led them through the maze of alleys and lanes, between piles of dilapidated structures propping each other up, blocks of cramped, festering apartments held together as if by clotheslines, attending to the sounds beckoning her t
hat at first only she could discern. But as they moved deeper and deeper into the dark and suffocating hidden cells of the interior the cries began to reach the others as well—Their cries have reached Me, I have seen how they are oppressed. When they burst in through the door of the fetid rooms reeking of stale Sabbath stew and soiled diapers he was beating her with his shoe, his rage materializing down his beard in runnels of white foam. Her cries cut off instantly. “It’s me, I deserve it, it’s coming from me, the smell, I stink very bad,” she called out to them from her degradation curled up on the floor, one hand tugging her headscarf forward to conceal every strand of her hair, the other shielding her face, slashed and swollen. “Go away, it’s nobody’s business,” her words pumped out in bleats. “There are ten children to marry off.”
The voice of my sister’s blood screams out to me from the ground, Kol-Isha-Erva sang out. Yet over the period of time that she was gripped by these illuminations, this was not the only woman to refuse rescue for the sake of public image and the family’s survival, the perpetuation of the myth of peace in the household behind every door at whatever cost. Kol-Isha-Erva was always the first to hear the moans, nearly always she could pinpoint the source with supreme accuracy and assurance as if guided by an unseen beam straight to the rank black hole—a woman battered and beaten with fists and straps, choked and burned in the presence of her mute children, pregnant women stomped and kicked in the stomach. She was practically driven mad by the sights her eyes were seeing.
Now and then, it is true, the source of the cries would elude her as if she were a false prophet. Later she would insist to Aish-Zara that she had heard her cries too and had followed them until they had faded away like a ghost. “You did not allow yourself to be found then out of misguided pride,” Kol-Isha-Erva chided Aish-Zara only half playfully. “People almost stopped believing in me.” But there were also those times when the spirit would come to rest on a woman taken in the tribulation of ravaging violence. She would rise up from the lowest point, her nose bashed in, teeth knocked out, eyes puffed shut, black and blue, bleeding, stagger out with them in her housecoat and slippers and kerchief, leave everything behind and throw in her lot with Kol-Isha-Erva, loop herself in a loop of the rope of the school for prophets and transform herself into a prophet so that it could be said about her that she too is among the prophets.
Temima did not restrain Kol-Isha-Erva’s visionary ministrations, she did not begrudge her. To the contrary, she drew a portion from the spirit that was in herself and bestowed it upon Kol-Isha-Erva. If only all of God’s people would become prophets, Temima declared as had Moses Our Teacher. If only God would put His spirit into all of them, Temima proclaimed.
It was said of Temima that during this period of preparing herself to come out in her full radiance as a towering leader in Israel there was not a single instance when she refused a call to assist in the ritual preparations of a dead woman for burial, no matter the time of day or night or the distance to be traveled or whatever the obstacles in her path, and especially if the deceased was utterly alone with no one else in the world. This, as everyone knows, is regarded as a supreme mitzvah, since under the circumstances there can be no expectation of gratitude from the beneficiary, not even a simple thank you.
Yet it was also reported and attested to by every single woman of the holy society who had ever worked at Temima’s side in a team of four performing these final ministrations that, without exception, in the last moments, as the veil was drawn down over the face of the corpse lying there in her white shrouds just before being swaddled in her winding sheet, the words Thank You always came out of her mouth packed with sand without spilling a grain, as if emanating from her agitated soul still hovering like a moth rubbing its wings together on her lips before taking flight. They all heard it, they were startled the first times it happened, but then they came to expect it almost as a point of good manners; they recognized that it was meant not for them but for Temima alone, and they bowed their heads in awe. But Temima’s head swung back sharply as if struck each time the words shot out of the mouth of the corpse, it was always a blow. The highest mitzvah for everyone else was not available to her, she was not worthy, she performed this service with an excess of pride disguised as humility. Upon Temima was placed the burden of having to strive to fulfill an even higher mitzvah for which she would get no gratitude.
Her quest also lay in the realm of death, that much was clear—but what? Remembrance? Resurrection? Reclaiming the tree of life that the first woman had forfeited? Slashing her way beyond the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword guarding the entrance to the east of Eden and plucking its fruit? Finally, the woman had figured out which fruit was the forbidden one. Knowledge was tasty, delightful to behold, desirable to attain—a pastime, a plaything, a distraction. But choosing life, swallowing up death forever and wiping away the tears from every face—that was the true prize, that was her messianic mission, her thankless task.
Nevertheless, the women who worked alongside Temima under her direction performing the purification ritual considered it a great honor to be joined in their holy society by a personage of such stature. Moreover, they regarded her participation as an extraordinary privilege accorded to the remains lying naked under a sheet, a distinction the corpse was surely aware of at some level of consciousness and could appreciate.
Temima demanded to take on for herself the most difficult and unsavory tasks—washing the waxen feet encrusted and scaled like hooves and cleaning under the clawlike toenails with a toothpick, thrusting her hands into the orifices to drain out all solid and liquid matter like a plumber, extracting whatever they were stuffed with, false teeth, rotting food, pessaries, excrement, gems, money, drugs, once, a piece of wire coathanger, another time, a vibrator like a dead rat. She chanted psalms and verses from the Song of Songs in praise of the beauty of the remains lying stiffly in front of her as she labored, pausing between refrains before exposing the next section of the body to be worked on in order to beg forgiveness of the dead if in any way she had violated her dignity, addressing her by name—so-and-so daughter not only of a father but also of a mother, she had ruled that the mother’s name must also be noted and invoked as well.
So it happened one night that Temima repeatedly intoned throughout the meticulous washing of an exceptionally heavy woman weighing more than three hundred pounds the words, Forgive me Frima daughter of Zsuzsi and Rudolf if by any of my actions I have in any way trespassed on your honor. But it was only when she would not be dissuaded from serving as one of in this case three women who held up this massive body while the fourth poured the nine kavin of water over it in a continuous stream for the actual tahara ritual, chanting She is pure, She is pure, She is pure, only when she felt the full crushing weight of this body through which this human being had experienced her life and looked out at the world, only then did Temima realize with a pang of despair that the dead woman she was raising was her father’s wife, Frumie. She had removed the plaintive polish from the nails, raked between the toes, separated the folds of fat to wipe the crevices in between, extracted the false teeth from the mouth, probed inside the nostrils and ears with a Q-tip, combed out every knot in the wispy hair, cleaned the scar over the gash through which the womb had been scraped out, cleaned the webbing of scar tissue where the breasts had once been, cleaned out the orifice where her father had deposited his seed, repeating the name of the dead woman all the while, pleading for forgiveness for any sins this woman might have committed among them surely gluttony, begging forgiveness for herself if in any fashion she had offended her. But not until she had hoisted the great load of the physical remains for the purification bath itself did Temima recognize that this had been her own stepmother Frumie to whom she had been attending all this while. She had invoked her name again and again and the name of her mother and father, she had looked at her closely, examined the moles and bristles on her skin, the sores and spots and discolorations, the lumps and lesions, her acne-pitted face, but s
he had not taken her in, she had not truly seen her in death to know who she was as she had not seen her in life.
How much older was Frumie than Temima? Five, six years at most. But the body Temima now gazed down upon ready to be dressed in its shrouds was utterly used up. Frumie’s girls, the daughters of her father but not her mother, Temima’s half sisters, whom she had always conflated with the five daughters of Zelophekhad of the unmentionable sin demanding their right to exist, might even at this very moment be waiting outside the door of the purification room in the direction toward which their mother’s feet were pointed, assuming they had escorted her remains from Brooklyn for burial in Israel, which would have amounted to a grudging expense for their mutual father, Reb Berel Bavli. No matter, whatever they shared in common, Temima would not have recognized them in any case except perhaps if they were clumped together in a gang of five, and out of delicacy members of the holy society because of the intimate knowledge they acquired of the deceased took pains to avoid contact with survivors especially those who had in some form once been inside this very body.
She wondered if her father might be lurking somewhere nearby too or even if he had come to Israel. Maybe he hired some loafer to accompany the body stowed in the cargo hold of the El Al carrier through all the stages to the interment in some less prestigious and cheaper cemetery in the Jerusalem environs, the compromise Temima imagined worked out by her father in his negotiations with his wife so that she would give up and die already, just as he had hired a bum off the street to recite Kaddish over her own mother. In any event, Temima had not had any contact with her father since he had turned down her appeal for help in obtaining a divorce from Howie.
Soon after that, he had officially cut her off entirely by declaring her dead and sitting shiva over her for committing adultery with a schvartze whom nobody could ever convince him was a Jew even if you stood on your head and spit wooden nickels and talked until you were blue in the face. At least he sat shiva in person, Temima reflected, rather than hiring some good-for-nothing to do the job in exchange for a brisket.