Mother India

by Tova Reich

  It is the fate of the righteous man of the generation to absorb the suffering of the world in order to save mankind, Rav Nahman taught. My brother, Reb Breslov, as his gilgul, now felt the truth of this observation even more keenly, weighed down as he was by the confinement of his wheelchair and the increasingly painful urgency of his prophetic vision—the inexorable approach of the next and final holocaust. Averting this calamity was a priority. No personal suffering inflicted upon him would be too much in the fulfillment of this mandate, but given his revised circumstances, the performance of tikkun through pursuit no longer seemed the best option. Rather, it was necessary to repair the world by retrieving the divine light through an act of extreme degradation—by crawling again and again down to the lowest depths of sin and transgression where so many of the holy sparks had fallen and were lost, crawling on his belly and eating the dust of the earth, like a snake.

  The gematria of the Hebrew letters adding up to snake (nakhash) is exactly the same as the numerical value for messiah (mashiakh)—358. Together, they equal 716, the numerical value of the Hebrew word found in the second book of Kings, le’hitrapeh, to heal—holy healing! It was impossible to overestimate the significance of these confluences both in terms of my brother’s personal physical circumstances and his overarching obligation to enact tikkun, which bottom line amounted to nothing other than ultimate healing; only an idiot would regard this convergence as coincidence. Now that my brother no longer was able to stand up and move about on his feet, the only way to perform the necessary healing act of tikkun, retrieving the hidden light that would bring on the messianic age, was to crawl, to turn himself into a snake, the most vulgar and naked of seducers.

  According to a secret scroll, it was mandatory for the purpose of carrying out this tikkun that eighteen women be attached at all times to different parts of his body like tumors, like an affliction of elephantiasis, causing him excruciating pain and rendering him grotesque in the eyes of the world. Each would submit to him, but afterward she would despise him and tread on his head. The suffering he would absorb would be endless, but the sins he would be obliged to commit with these women would be essential to bringing about the redemption. Instead of being pursued as a holy figure, he would be pursued like the most base and repulsive of criminals. Yet through this suffering that he took upon himself, the imminent catastrophe would be averted, and the hour of reunification of the lost sparks with the infinite source of the mystical light would draw closer and closer, the radiance beckoning just over the horizon.

  When a young woman would come to his chambers for a blessing, my brother, Reb Breslov, was able to take one look at her and recognize at once if she was potential material for one of the eighteen boils destined to be attached to him for tikkun purposes. If she was married and arrived with a husband, he would inquire when she had last immersed herself in the ritual bath. Depending on the answer and other mystical factors known only to him, he would command the couple to abstain from intimate relations for a specified period of time based on his calculations, after which they would receive a visitation in the form of a child. He would then request that the husband leave the room and wait outside while he sanctified the wife. He would ask the woman to sit on his lap in his wheelchair, drawing the prayer shawl he always wore up over his head and down over hers, thereby creating a sacred space of seclusion as after the breaking of the glass at a wedding. Within this talit tent he would insert his hands under her clothing to check every part of her body for as long as necessary to certify if she was one of the eighteen buboes chosen to be attached to him, soothing her the entire time during this procedure with such words as, Take comfort, daughter, you have entered the world of nobility. If she passed this test, he would request that she take off her clothing and stand before him naked as he licked her entire body with his tongue; it was important for the sake of salvation not to miss a spot. If he found her worthy, he would then order her to undress him as well and help him from his chair so that he could lie down beside her on the daybed in his chamber, the two of them naked.

  Nor was it necessary for the woman to be newly married; she could also be even younger, a virgin. For the purpose of carrying out his work of purification and deliverance and of averting another holocaust, as he informed the candidates, the essential point was that there always be eighteen females attached to him, married or virgins, since as might be expected, some fell away for one reason or another over the course of time, like scabs, there was always natural attrition, and replacements might be required. It was with one of these younger unmarried girls that he was lying one afternoon, when he turned and saw the face of a disciple pressed against the half-open window. As if no one had told him he was naked, with the innocence of Adam before the fall in the Garden of Eden, he slithered off the daybed and crawled on his belly to the window to confront the disciple perched on a ladder. “You have merited to see your master in the midst of performing the act of tikkun,” he said. He reached his powerful arm up from the floor and slammed the window shut, sending the ladder reeling backward as the disciple hung on to the ledge like a spider.

  The disciple unfortunately was possessed of a limited understanding of what he had witnessed. In recounting all of this to me, my brother speculated that the boy likely had base designs on the girl, and for this reason alone, to protect the maiden, a few of his stronger followers were dispatched to teach him a lesson. Even so, within twenty-four hours, false and sensational accusations involving my brother leaked out, appearing in the press and all the media, and a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Israeli police. For his own safety and protection, his supporters had no choice but to spirit him immediately out of the country. The whole thing was completely ridiculous, Shmelke told me, reverting to the Brooklynese of our childhood, to our conversations in the womb. By that point, because of his regimen of fasting and the various forms of ascetic practice that he had taken upon himself to hasten the redemption, not to mention the obvious desiccation of his lower half as a result of his injury and his confinement to a wheelchair, his whole sex drive was a nonstarter; he would not have been able to get it up if you paid him, he confided to me. I was after all his twin sister, we had been naked together for forty weeks in the womb, we had played naked in the mud as children, his baitzim had shriveled to the size of two raisins, he confided to me. Nevertheless, and despite his disability, he was branded an abuser and offender, and forced to hit the road and take up again the extremely onerous tikkun of pursuit, but now he was pursued not only as a holy man by his disciples who chased him exuberantly into exile wherever he might lead them, but also by the authorities, who pursued him relentlessly like a common criminal.

  For seven years, as his hair and beard turned a brilliant patriarchal white, my twin, Shmelke, was on the lam. In general the family had no idea of his whereabouts—and I least of all since I had so radically severed the ties not only because of my marriage to Geeta, a gentile, but especially after word reached them of the manner in which our mother’s remains had been processed. I was cut off without hope of access, any reference to me inevitably followed by a sputtering execration as if I were already dead, May her name and memory be blotted out forever and ever, pooh pooh pooh. Nor did Shmelke contact me privately, through alternative underground channels, falling back instead on our extraordinary soul connection from prebirth, trusting that I would know, simply know, trusting that I would be his ally and never betray him. Except for a single extremely critical occasion that forced him to solicit my collusion, he never overtly thought of me, never reached out until finally he arrived in the lap of Mother India and found a haven there at last. During the greater portion of his years as a fugitive, I, like everyone else in our family and the public at large, was not briefed as to where he was in the world. Only when some mention of him and his merry band hit the news were we able to get a precious clue as to his location and stick a voodoo pin into the map, usually when he and his loyalists were kicked out of a place where they had found some
temporary sanctuary, or when the Israeli government from which nothing is hidden, every hollow and cavity, blocked or ruptured, all of it exposed and revealed before its seat of glory—only when all-knowing Israel was inspired for some reason to insist yet again on extradition from the country in which he had taken refuge could we pick up his trail and follow it in the media as the case was fought in the courts by his armies of lawyers bankrolled by the exclusive secret society of his supporters and benefactors, independent thinkers one and all, including, thanks to me, the very influential and very rich Charlotte Harlow.

  The tale of his wanderings as my brother, Rebbie-ji, recounted them to me in Kolkata at Mother Teresa’s starter hospice, now reconsecrated as Rabbi Tabor’s House of Holy Healing ashram—that tale as he laid it out before me to cheer me up with its happy ending, had by then already been sculpted and polished into lore—epic and myth. Whenever he and his flock, including women and children, arrived in their wanderings at a new place, Shmelke told me, their modus operandi was to take over an entire motel and camp there until, for one reason or another, they were forced to move on.

  As he recalled those unsettled years, Shmelke shook his head as if in disbelief. The most amazing thing about it all, he said, was that just about wherever we went—and they had stopped at a multitude of out-of-the-way places, seriously off the beaten track on this lonely planet, he assured me, he would only mention some of the major power points—the motel they took over was always owned by an Indian named Patel. After a while, Shmelke would just roll up to the front desk upon arrival surrounded by his tight escort of the inner circle of his Hasidim secret service, his arm outstretched in readiness for a hearty handshake provided the clerk behind the counter was not a female, and he would boom out, “Sholom aleikhem, Mottel Patel. How’s it going? Vos makht a Yid?” And indeed two of these Mottel Patels, big Mottel and little Mottel, eventually converted to Judaism thanks to my brother’s charismatic influence and took the names Mottel Patel-Aleph, since he was the Patel from America, and Mottel Patel-Zayin from Zimbabwe. Now that these two freshly Jewish Mottel Patels were back home in India they rechanneled the skills acquired for survival in exile, bustling around the ashram in their glossy black beards and sidelocks, great bowled white yarmulkes fitting snugly on their heads setting off their dark skin, robed in long kaftans girded with a rope belt, in charge of overseeing the hospitality end of the operation.

  He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to read the sign hurled directly in his face over and over again by the Master of the Universe, Shmelke told me—that his final destination was India. It could only have been the built-up tension and pressure from being cast adrift as a wanted man, forced to run in circles like a cockroach in the beam of a searchlight that blinded him to the obvious signification of all these Mottel Patels, he thought. My antennae were going bad, the wax was drying up, I wasn’t picking up the vibes. I should have headed straight to Mother India—she was calling out to me, arms open, breasts bared, Come to me, my darling boy, suck, suck—how come I couldn’t see what was right in front of my eyes? My own mother of blessed memory was in India, her earthly remains in the form of ashes, like so many of our holy martyrs scooped with a shovel from the ovens, and you were there too, my sister, my seeker, my twin, calling to me. What was wrong with my head? India and Israel—one and the same—both equally renowned for their formidable mothers and math-genius sons and over-the-top weddings and wildly successful diaspora communities of unstoppable ambition, number one in so many realms, not only motels. Coming to India was like coming home at last, returning to the true Zion, it was as if I were dreaming. From the spiritual angle, India and Israel, both the final destination of the holy seekers of the world, from the political angle, both spitting out their British oppressors, then brutally torn asunder, partitioned in the same blink of an eye 1947–48 in the universal timeline. It was a trauma from which neither has yet recovered and never will, a violent slashing that fired up the sons of Ishmael, wild asses of men, their hands mixing it up with everyone and everyone’s hands mixing it up with them. Israel and India, together they will bring on the end of the world.

  In addition to the Patels, my brother picked up other converts along the way, easily identifiable in his retinue and circulating through the ashram because, Let’s face it, didi, as he put it—he had taken to addressing me by the Bengali term for older sister, which I was, by six minutes—even with the beard and peyes and the whole getup, they don’t look Jewish, right? It was not that he sought them out like a missionary, God forbid. It was simply that coming from a place of extreme suffering and despair, the lowest depths, they were restored by Reb Breslov’s potent cocktail of ecstatic release mixed with meditative, confessional solitude, and as if born again.

  Most of the converts were collected in America, because it was in the heartland of America, in Postville, Iowa, that my brother and his Hasidim sojourned for the longest period of time during their wanderings in the wilderness; Postville, Iowa, was their Kadesh Barnea, their oasis. A Jewish infrastructure was already conveniently in place around the Chabad kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking sweatshop located there, the town’s main natural resource. And to ease the way for my brother, Shmelke (a vegetarian from his earliest years), there was the flat terrain, so friendly to the disabled in wheelchairs. Above all, he was born in the USA, he was a citizen, he had a US passport, he could even run for president. As an American citizen he could expect full rights and protection from his government. Even if an extradition treaty existed with Israel, he would not be handed over, his legal team assured him, without serious prior concessions from the Jewish State in territory, right of return for Arab refugees, and other nonstarters as part of the deal. Just keep the old lecher, he’s all yours, we’re not giving up anything, Israel would declare, and wash its hands of the whole business. And should his enemies persist out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness, committing the gravest of sins by turning into informers, chasing and pursuing him in exchange for nothing but the sadistic pleasure of the hunt, his lawyers would fight his extradition all the way to the Supreme Court, the fight would drag on for decades, plenty of time to pack up and move on in search of the elusive Promised Land.

  As it happened, though, what caused my brother and his followers to decamp from Postville, Iowa, in the end was not the notorious event that took place there—the massive raid by immigration authorities on the Chabad-owned meatpacking plant and glatt kosher slaughterhouse, the arrest and deportation of hundreds of illegal immigrants, the charges of child labor law violations, identity theft, social security manipulation, sexual harassment, fraud, money laundering, and so on and so forth, not to mention the ethical issues churned up when labor exploitation is linked with kosher certification, toxic work environments in which human beings are treated more cruelly than animals destined to be served up in a cholent stew for the Sabbath lunch. Rather, it was the ongoing war between the Chabadniks and the Breslovers over messianic issues—whose rabbi was really dead, whose would reappear quickly and in our time as the Messiah in white robes riding on the back of a white ass, and other matters of equal gravity and weight.

  This war had, over the time of my brother’s stay, played itself out mostly in petty, even childish, skirmishes—puncturing each other’s tires, wrapping toilet paper around each other’s trees, chalking each other’s kaftans, fistfights, flicking spitballs, seltzer squirting, dumping slop from rooftops on passersby below, women from rival sects tearing off each other’s wigs and kerchiefs, and so on. Then one day it burst out into a full-scale gang war rumble involving knives from the slaughterhouse and other weaponry. The immediate provocation was a disagreement over which of the two groups could take credit for having inspired the conversion of an exceptionally desirable candidate, a six-foot, six-inch former sheriff named Buck, who came complete with a six-pointed silver star badge. The rumble took place in nearby Waterloo, at the National Cattle Congress fairground not far from the sheep and swine pens, the very same umsc
hlagplatz where the illegal immigrants rounded up from the kosher slaughterhouse had been held, handcuffed and chained together in packs of ten like slaves on the block.

  That very night, on the urgent advice of his lawyers and financial backers, my brother and all of his followers left town, and to play it super safe, they also bid farewell to the good old USA, his native land. Joining their ranks, in addition to the Mottel Patel of Postville, Iowa, and his entire extended family, was a mixed mob of leftover illegals who had managed somehow to hold on after the raid and deportations and become converts too, Mexican, Guatemalan, a Ukrainian, a Somali, a Micronesian, and also, as my brother, Reb Breslov, was so proud to inform me, the big prize, Buck himself (but this of course was public information, his figure so striking as he blissfully undercut the Bulvans at every opportunity to carry his beloved guru on his back around the ashram), who, upon his conversion, had taken a new name as if he were reborn. Thereafter he was known as Buki ben Yogli, cited as the leader of the Tribe of Dan in the book of Numbers, alluding in this fashion, for those paying attention, to that most famous Danite of all, the Jewish Hercules, our legendary strongman, Samson.

  In consequence of that experience, Shmelke confided to me, he resolved that wherever in the world his wanderings would take him, under no circumstances whatsoever would he step foot on two continents—Antarctica or Australia. The reason for this was that the first was overrun by penguins and the second by Chabadniks, both in their black-and-white suits, an external physical manifestation that possessed deep negative mental and emotional associations for Shmelke, and even more negative inner spiritual signification, so far beneath his sacred mystical level in the aura of the divine. The five remaining continents were enough, he reasoned, in which ultimately to find a haven from his pursuers. On this point, he was immovable. He was going with his instincts, which since childhood had always been impeccable, empowering his survival and ultimate victory over his enemies, shaping him from Rabbi Shmelke Tabor into Reb Breslov Tabor—and ultimately, triumphantly, into Rebbie-ji, the world-famous guru whom the entire global congregation had come to recognize for his extraordinary spiritual access.