by Tova Reich
OUR HOLY mother’s chastisement for my passive-aggressive behavior, admittedly so deserved, was delivered to me in the inner sanctum of the chambers in the northern garden to which I had been urgently summoned by Rizpa and then hastily ushered in by Aishet-Lot, who immediately exited the quarters to resume guard duty outside. Ima Temima, unveiled and in a long white robe, was seated at the table against which what looked like a shepherd’s staff or crook was propped and upon which the little mother Torah so familiar to me was undressed and only slightly unfurled on the right tree-of-life roller to the opening portion in which the man passes the buck and blames both the woman who had given him from the tree to eat and God who had given him the woman. So much time had elapsed since I had seen the bare luminous face of our holy mother, its incandescent light like celestial fever, that I was nearly blinded, to the point that I did not at first notice the nomad propped up on pillows in the bed under the quilts, his body from his naked shoulders and upward visible, blotched with a florid rash. “You thought you can hide him, but I know the whole time,” the nomad spoke. “When you go back to little love nest, do not look for lover boy. They already drag him out on his fat ass, maybe you see shit marks on floor. We tell to him that maybe next time he go out on the town, he should be suicide bomber. Anyway, good news is, on way to police car, a stone fall on his head, a nice big stone. Maybe some blood avengers, who knows? I think he not feeling so great no more. Bad news is, he sticked the cat in the freezer for good-bye present to you. We leave it there for now so it don’t go soft and mushy and stink up the place. Sorry about cat. Cute little pussy.”
Ima Temima spurted out what sounded like a dry little laugh, and reached for the staff leaning against the table and clasped it, indicating in this way that the fleeting widening of my eyes when I had entered the room and instantly spotted this vaguely familiar sinister object had, not surprisingly, not escaped our holy mother who sees all. “It’s all right, Kol-Isha-Erva, don’t be afraid, I don’t intend to smite you with this rod, merely talk to you.” The beautiful eyes, fully visible, crinkled teasingly and yes, forgivingly, as the holy hand stroked the smooth wood. “Maybe, though, if I let it drop to the floor it will turn into a serpent and bite your heel. Well, as it happens, this staff comes from Gan Eden, from the original tree of knowledge good and evil as a matter of fact. The first couple took it with them when they were expelled, a walking stick to keep them from crawling out on all fours, to aid them in evolving to the upright and human position as they began their wanderings—and they passed it down through the generations. Believe it or not, it’s the very same stick that Judah gave to his daughter-in-law Tamar as a pledge when she stood at the crossroads veiled in the manner of a prostitute, to procure her services. Kadosh-Kadosh gave it to me. It was passed down to him from his warrior grandmother Hephzibah.”
Our holy mother bent a gracious eye upon the nomad grinning under the covers, baring his teeth like the wolf in the grandmother’s bed in the children’s fairy tale, showing his gums spotted with sores. “For it is I who am desired at the end of days,” HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, added enigmatically.
Ima Temima’s exposed face turned grave. “For the sake of Zion I shall not be still, for Jerusalem’s sake I shall not be silent,” our holy mother declared. Turning decisively to the matter at hand, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, referencing once again the expulsion of Adam and Hava from the Garden of Eden (as is true for the Torah itself, every repetition by our holy mother also signifies), informed me that when it became known outside the confines of our walls that we have been harboring within our paradise a snake, a notorious wanted criminal and terrorist, a decision was made at the highest spheres of government to reclassify our “leper” colony as occupied territory—specifically, as an illegal settlement outpost to be evacuated within the next forty-eight hours.
Even our holy mother’s extraordinary contacts and protectzia could not in this instance prevent the forthcoming ethnic cleansing. It had escalated to a matter of extreme diplomatic sensitivity that touched upon the continued support and patronage of the superpowers at the topmost levels who were demanding the evacuation as a point of honor, as acknowledgement of their authority; the pressure was intense, the goodwill of the protectors was far too vital for the state to risk for such an inconsequential and lunatic fringe figure as Go’el-HaDam. What it boiled down to from the point of view of the state was a serious threat to its basic survival if it failed to evacuate the “outpost”; as for the municipality, here was its opportunity to seize the upper hand economically, for it had long had its eye on this exceptionally valuable piece of real estate in the heart of West Jerusalem and would have liked nothing better than to auction off the property to the highest bidder to be developed into luxury apartments for holiday visitors and commercial centers for foreign investors.
As I stood there with head bowed and eyes lowered accepting this justified rebuke for the catastrophe I had brought down upon our people I could only tremble and weep. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me.” My throat was constricted, I could barely squeeze the words out, I had lost my woman’s naked voice. All I wanted at that moment was to curl up and die, I felt annihilated, I fell upon my knees and prostrated myself at the feet of our holy mother.
Our holy mother took pity on me, raised my head with the staff, and kissed me on the mouth. I could feel the heat penetrating me and spreading throughout my body like fever as I was comforted by the news that permission had been obtained for a very small nucleus of first-circle adherents to remain within the “leper” colony following the evacuation until they too disappeared through natural attrition as the plague ran its course. Thank God, despite my sins, I was one of the elect.
With overwhelming pride I can report that the evacuation, which began the next day, inspired a brilliantly creative protest from the citizens of our “leper” colony now reclassified as an illegal settlement outpost. The remaining hundred or so of our inhabitants came boldly forth to face the police contingent sent in to carry out the aktion. Dressed in striped concentration camp uniforms, with numbers tattooed on their forearms and yellow stars of David imprinted with the word JUDE pinned to their breasts or on bands wound above the elbow around their upper arms, some with shaved heads, our brave deportees screamed, Nazis! Stormtroopers! Gestapo! They held up signs, JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS? JEWS DO NOT EXPEL JEWS! THIS “LEPER” COLONY SHALL NOT BE JUDENREIN! NEVER AGAIN!—and so on. The effect was so mind-boggling that the cops withdrew as if whacked with a cudgel, failing to accomplish their assigned mission.
That night the media was foaming at the mouth with righteous indignation and condemnation of the misuse and trivialization of Holocaust language and imagery by cult groupies of a woman guru no less, squatters in a “leper” colony of all places that had been harboring a homicidal maniac terrorist; this was nothing but a desecration of the memory of the six million martyrs of the Shoah, which was an unprecedented genocide to which no other atrocity could ever be given moral equivalency. But in my woman’s naked voice I say, with all my authority as director of the school for prophetesses, that if a “leper” colony can be reclassified as occupied territory or an illegal settlement outpost, why not also as a ghetto, why not a death camp? The Holocaust belongs to all of us Jews, it is our communal birthright, no Jew has exclusive rights over it, we all own it to use as we see fit.
Also that night a delegation of top cabinet officials made a preemptive secret pilgrimage to our holy mother’s private quarters in the northern garden of our “leper” colony to negotiate a deal for a relatively peaceful and orderly disengagement, providing for only a controlled token protest by our people so that we could save face while also guaranteeing no further embarrassment or trauma for those on the government-enforcement side taxed with doing the dirty work. In exchange for this concession on our part, a quota of select visitors and supplicants would be allowed to continue to enter the radiant orbit of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, and those evicted from the grou
nds of the “leper” colony along with other followers would be granted the right of return during daylight hours in order to be in physical proximity to our holy mother to whom they were in any event always spiritually connected as by an umbilical cord wherever they were in the world, day or night. But when darkness fell they would be obliged to depart from the grounds of the settlement outpost “leper” colony ghetto death camp and go into exile, leaving only the remnants of the chosen people within, and the gates would be sealed.
The next morning, however, the news was once again hectic with reports of an underground raid on Yad Vashem carried out by “psychos” and “nuts,” a happening, it was conjectured, that must have taken place in the early hours of dawn before the Holocaust remembrance museum opened for business, during which an unauthorized exhibition was put up entitled Remember Munich! Pullout Equals Appeasement Equals Shoah!, which showcased images and videos and artifacts from the confrontation of the previous day between our persecutors and our “leper” colony’s ghetto fighters and death camp inmates; the floor surrounding the display billowed with concentric half-moons of hundreds of flickering memorial candles, a very effective installation, I might note, which let’s just say I was privileged to view myself with my seer’s eyes. But because of this so-called trespass and violation, a much larger police contingent than had originally been allocated was dispatched to execute the pullout later that morning, padded with an extraordinary number of female officers to physically manhandle our women, along with ambulances, fire trucks, military support and vehicles, including tanks and helicopters, plus armored buses standing ready with engines churning to haul away the evacuees, not to mention those usual feeders-on-carrion who swoop down and swarm to any public spectacle—the press, bigshots, thrill-seekers, idlers, gawkers, and other assorted lowlife.
I can only say that as I stood on the elevated landing of the “leper” hospital beneath the JESUS HILFE inscription and bore witness to the tremendous dignity with which our people faced their oppressors, it was as if my heart shattered from sorrow into millions of cells that soared up to the heavens and became recombinant in joy. Row upon row of police fully equipped with anti-riot gear, helmeted and masked, advanced in formation into our “leper” colony bearing body-length transparent bulletproof shields in front of them and emitting apelike grunts with each choreographed step forward. On our side, every woman stood fearless and inert, frozen in place cloaked from head to toe in a great white talit, awaiting her fate (how well trained we women are at staying put and waiting, as if this acquired trait had become a mutation in our genetic code); our men, fewer in number, were also garbed in white prayer shawls, each one blowing his shofar. Visually, from where I was standing, it was black versus white, a metaphor for the war between evil and good.
As the ranks of police goose-stepped nearer, discharging their barks and roars, not one of our people flinched or cowered. Nor did they resist, but neither did they collaborate or participate in their own extermination or corroborate the canard against the Jews by going like the proverbial sheep to the slaughter. Instead, as the police shields came up against them like a barrier wall they let their bodies slump and go limp in the time-honored posture of Ghandian passive resistance, Dr. M.L. Kingian, Jr. nonviolent protest, necessitating that each one be lugged out like a deadweight by a minimum of two male officers or four females in a respectful manner avoiding all physical contact with any tender or vulnerable or private body part, especially in rounding up and transporting and uploading our women. As they were being carted out (I must insert here that each time I recall this moment a lump forms in my throat forcing me to consciously stop myself from raising my woman’s naked voice and bawling) they were singing with such heavenly sweetness it was as if tears of honey were falling from the clouds—I believe with full faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even if she tarries, despite all that I believe.
FIVE MONTHS after these events, in the first week of Adar, word spread beyond our walls that a coronation would take place inside the “leper” colony at which HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, would be anointed the queen the messiah. The faithful arrived in the morning, first a trickle but as the week built toward its climax and the news rippled out they converged in increasing numbers to claim a spot facing the hospital in anticipation of this end-of-history eschatological event. All day they would remain fixed in place to be among the first to greet the queen the messiah, their eyes focused on a hopeful point of light in the distance until darkness descended and they were banished from the grounds. No one knew exactly when the coronation would be carried out, speculation abounded, it could take place with no forewarning at any moment, in the blink of an eye, even behind closed doors or at night, yet the general consensus was that it would be a public ceremony with a multitude of witnesses to affirm that the redemption was already underway, and the likelihood was, it was agreed, that it would come to pass on the seventh day of the month, also the birthday of Moses Our Teacher, another messiah contender according to certain kabbalistic calculations.
The plan was to spread the news beyond the “leper” colony, to broadcast the coronation via satellite TV throughout the world, beam it across the planet, even more mystically into the universe, for it was rumored that the blessed oil would be decanted in a golden stream from the four angels in the upper spheres surrounding the heavenly throne, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, directly to earth to anoint the head of the designated messiah, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita. This is what I heard only after plans for the coronation had been set in motion, for I had no part in it, I fought against it with every fiber of my being when I learned it was in the works, there was no doubt in my mind that in its grandiosity and vulgarity it would be contrary to the spirit and teachings of our holy mother who, with rare exceptions, was no longer favoring us at that time with the personal expression in words or through body language of what was to be considered desirable and what loathsome.
During that entire first week of the month of Adar I remained hypervigilant, on high alert in order to prevent this grotesque carnival from unfolding, I did not shut my eyes for a second, and yet despite my opposition, the procedure was carried out in the shadowy light of a deep purple dusk late on the fifth day, when it was almost dark. It lasted two minutes at most, even some of the assembled still dragging their feet in the courtyard blinked and missed it. Our holy mother (or perhaps it was our holy mother’s double), shrouded from head to toe in what resembled a bedsheet like a ghost (though it might have been a prayer shawl or maybe a chador or maybe a hood drawn over the head of a condemned person about to be executed) was pushed in a wheel-chair by an individual who looked like an Arab but was, some maintained, an original Canaanite, out through the main door of the “leper” hospital onto the elevated landing that served as a kind of stage or platform against the setting of the JESUS HILFE inscription (ironically, an invocation of a false messiah reduced to the background role of helpmeet for the anointment of the true chosen one who happened to be a woman). The Canaanite with a white keffiyeh pinned across the lower portion of the face like a bandit in a cowboy movie so that only the large aviator sunglasses were visible and robed in a white jellabiya trimmed with gold embroidery along the edges pulled out a half-liter bottle of Two-State-Solution Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil produced in a joint cooperative grassroots venture by Palestinian and Israeli farmers and poured all of its contents over the blanketed head of the person in the wheelchair alleged to be Ima Temima, though it could just as easily have been a bump on a log (no comparison intended, God forbid) for all anyone knew.
At a certain point in the proceedings a hand emerged from under the wrappings in the wheelchair which, according to the testimony of some witnesses, seemed to wave sedately from side to side like the queen of England acknowledging her subjects from the balcony of Buckingham Palace and by implication endorsing their adoration. But others who also saw the hand come forth from under the layers of drapery asserted that it was gesturing in agitation a
s if to ward off the sludge and slick of the oil and everything it signified spilling all over the place and making an awful mess.
Assuming that this is not an urban legend and that the apparition under wraps in the chair was actually HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, being anointed as the messiah, I am of two minds about the hand that appeared—either it was raised in defiant rejection of the entire idolatrous farce or it was offered in resignation to the inevitability of the ritual that flowed from having been chosen—our holy mother has gone into hiding and has declined through silence to elucidate the mystery. There is, however, universal agreement that at a certain point a cry rose up, nor is there any dispute as to the words of the cry, everyone could make them out loud and clear: Long Live Our Master and Rabbi the Queen the Messiah Forever and Ever—Long May She Live! May She Live Forever! Tekhi! Tekhi! Tekhi!
It is no secret that it was I who had raised my woman’s naked voice and bellowed out that cry for all to hear. The truth is, we of the inner core circle, with the exception of the nomad who worshipped in his own way as was his right and privilege, had over the preceding excruciatingly difficult months taken to singing out this phrase at various points during our devotions to affirm that the redemption had already begun. I had set it to music so that we could chant it over and over again, like an hypnotic refrain, a mantra, a chorus, breaking out in ecstatic dancing, whirling in a trance until we either took off to outer space from spiritual uplift or melted down from physical exhaustion. The verse was a variation based on the salutation spoken by Bathsheba to her husband, King David, as he lay dying, probably with the exquisite Shunamite virgin stretched out naked in the bed under the covers alongside him warming him up like a human hot water bottle. Years earlier, when Ima Temima and I were still in apprenticeship to Abba Kadosh, a’h, as we bathed in the spring of Ein Feshkha, our holy mother had addressed me as My Batsheva, adding that every human being, regardless of gender, needs a wife. On the first level, this was a reference to what would eventually become my official appointment as secretary, traditionally a woman’s role, gal Friday, among other duties perpetuator of the legacy of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, with the responsibility to preserve the teachings and stories and history that otherwise would have been lost by raising my woman’s naked voice through speech, song, and above all through writing, a medium our holy mother personally shunned for mystical reasons. Writing is murder, our holy mother would sometimes cryptically say—and yes, I could not have agreed more, writing is very hard, it’s hell, it’s torture, which is why I procrastinate so much and avoid it for as long as possible and am always pounding as with a sledgehammer to break down my writer’s block. So unshakable was Ima Temima’s refusal to write, as it happens, that had we been dealing with an ordinary mortal here I would have diagnosed this aversion as an extreme case of graphophobia or another anxiety disorder of some sort. But given the stature of the personage in question, I have concluded that this acute negative reaction to the act of writing was a further teaching from our holy mother concerning how a leader’s time might be most optimally allocated. Important leaders, world class celebrities, major public figures, and the like, do not waste their time writing. For that they have support staff, chroniclers, scribes, official biographers, secretaries, speech writers, ghost writers, assistants, aides, clerks, and other such wives like myself.