One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (30 page)

Our numbers had been reduced over our sojourn in the “leper” colony approaching extinction, it is true, but on that morning of the funeral of Aish-Zara, za'zal, they were vastly multiplied by the added presence of by my estimate well over one hundred (a Jew is forbidden to count other Jews directly) members of the family of our cherished high priestess—children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—who stood some distance from us separated by gender, the men and boys on one side, women and girls clustered in a tighter space on the other side close to but not touching the stone walls. It was a dizzying sea of black hats and long black kaftans, wigs and headscarves and loose dresses brushing the ankles, but that was not the most striking feature that set them apart, nor were the white surgical masks they all wore over the nose and mouth, presumably as a precaution against exposure to the pollution of “leprosy” rather than anxiety about contaminating us. What was most striking about them above all was how large they all were, almost without
exception, even the youngest among them, not only well above average in height but also big-boned and heavy, some bordering on the plus-sized; it defied the imagination to absorb the facts on the ground that these specimens had emerged from that hollowed-out little white package lying there on the bench. The only logical explanation was that the Pupa abuser who begat them was a giant, which rendered the visual of him ramming a raw fist into such a small creature as Aish-Zara, za'zal, even more intolerable.

By all accounts he himself was not there that morning. It was possible, however, to distinguish among this throng a few who were the actual children of Aish-Zara, za'zal, by the obligatory mourning rent in their garments close to the heart, and so I approached one of them, a daughter naturally, since I knew from mortifying experience that none of the men would be willing to speak to a woman, and would, in fact, simply look right past me as if I were invisible if I attempted to address him. After expressing my sympathy for her loss, I inquired of this daughter, a large matron with a brown mustache and matching wig, if she could tell me the name of the mother of Aish-Zara, za'zal. Once again the celestial powers of Ima Temima were stunningly affirmed for me when this daughter informed me in Yiddish that she in fact had been named for her mother's mother, for her maternal grandmother, Sora—our very own Sarah-Yiska, precisely as Ima Temima had foreseen. I was then able to insert this name in its proper place when I sang for all the assembled the
El Maleh Rakhamim
, which was the honor given to me thanks to the training I had received at Juilliard before dropping out—God full of mercy, grant a proper rest at the highest levels of the most holy and most pure to the soul of Essie daughter of Sarah—and it did not faze me in the least that every single male member of the family of Aish-Zara, za'zal, had his fingers plugged into the depths of his ears and was droning in a monotone as I sang lest he God forbid sin by hearing my woman's naked voice.

The eulogy was delivered by HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, at first in tones so soft and intimate that all the assembled were
obliged to lean in to hear. I pictured the crowd as if from above, resembling a copse of trees all bending in one direction from the gust of a mysterious squall lashing them from behind.

“My darling Essie,” our holy mother began, addressing Aish-Zara, za'zal, directly, as if they were alone in a room, as if it were a personal conversation to which we were only by chance fortunate to be privy, “my dearest friend, my teacher, my rebbe”—and our holy mother went on to speak achingly not of all the suffering and injustice endured by this tiny creature now lying blotted out on the bench at the lip of her grave, not of all the humiliation and contempt and sheer dismissal of the terms of her very existence inflicted upon her, but rather our holy mother recalled the monumental courage and defiance this little heroine had displayed. “When you assumed your rightful place as our high priestess and took on the name Aish-Zara,” Ima Temima said, “we recognized immediately that for you no name could be more fitting. Because you are like the strange-fire, the
aish-zara,
that the two elder sons of the high priest Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, brought to the altar in the sanctuary on the incense pan. Like them you served God in your own way. For their boldness God consumed them in an instant flash of flames, just as moments earlier He had lapped up with fire the burnt offering and the fat parts of the ox and the ram. Nadav and Avihu were just another ox and ram to God, another sacrifice, our God has a taste for blood and fire, and so their father Aaron was forbidden to mourn—Aaron was silent, the Scripture reports. We too shall refrain from mourning, mommy, we too shall remain silent, but we shall honor you by continuing to serve God in our own way, following in your path wherever it leads.”

Our holy mother then turned away from Aish-Zara, za'zal, raising both arms to the heavens and in powerful tones, bold and young, taking on God Himself. “We know You exist because You created our world in Your image. You are a cruel God and it is a cruel world—but I have no fear at all. I shall not move from this place, I shall not leave this ‘leper' colony, until You put an end to all the injustice and oppression, until you call a stop to all the sorrow and suffering.
Yitgadal Ve'yitkadash Shemai Rabbah.
Even if my protests incite You to grow more savage and furious, to heave up the entire universe and turn it back to water, to astounding emptiness and void, I shall not move from this spot until You swallow up death forever and wipe away the tears from every face. Exalted and Sanctified May Your Great Name Be.”

There was more, but in the interest of full disclosure I must insert at this point that I was unable to hear every precious word of our holy mother's eulogy and was obliged to reconstruct the entirety of the message afterward by consulting with others to obtain the complete transcript that I have yet to fact-check. It was a great personal loss for me, this goes without saying, but a necessary one since early on in the course of Ima Temima's talk I detected restless murmurings in the crowd coming from the direction of the family of Aish-Zara, za'zal. As a precautionary measure, therefore, sensing the danger of brewing violence, I moved unobtrusively to a corner, pulled out my cell phone, and dialed automatically the number programmed in to alert our friends in high places of impending trouble. As our holy mother was drawing the comparison between Aish-Zara, za'zal, and the sons of Aaron the high priest, shouts rang out from the crowd—
Apikorsus
, Heresy,
Hillul HaShem
, Desecration of the Name, and so on and so forth, the usual garbage flung at us over the years. By the time Ima Temima came to the plea to our cruel, savage God, a few stones were thrown, mostly pebbles, mostly by the children in training, I observed with sadness, the pebbles they happened to bring along with them in their pockets as they must have been forewarned against touching anything of ours, all of it saturated with contamination and impurity, which is probably why no one was hurt, thank God. It might have escalated in some way, however, these things can sometimes spread faster than “leprosy,” but before that could happen we heard the thumps of a loping four-legged creature though the trot was clearly not that of the police horses I might have expected.

Charging into the crowd at that moment came an Arab astride a huge bellowing camel baring its teeth. His long robes were flowing, his red-and-white checked keffiyeh was drawn across his entire face except for the eyes, he was riding as if through
the drifts of a sandstorm on the desert dunes, one hand grasping the camel's reins and the other cutting through the air with a glittering saber, slashing at the wind while ululating shrilly as he drove the entire crowd of masked strangers to the exits and pursued them out of our “leper” compound, disappearing along with them just as the sirens could be heard and the police wagons drew up.

All that was left to remember our guests by were steaming piles of hoo-ha nuggets dropped by the camel, which I can only conjecture are not particularly beneficial to the soil for organic fertilization purposes since the desert is not as a rule known to bloom except through the sheer force of willpower of Zionist pioneers, though our creative domestic management associate Rizpa did later gather up the dung to use for cooking fuel. It remained for us, the embers salvaged from the blaze, the last inhabitants of our “leper” colony, to bury our dead.

As we stood there in reverent silence, Aishet-Lot descended into the grave and the body of Aish-Zara, za'zal, was passed with the utmost delicacy and respect into the safety of her arms by the three Bnei Zeruya working in a relay like rescuers at a fire. Aishet-Lot laid our dear high priestess down lovingly at the bottom of the grave like a baby in its cradle, and ascended. For a few seconds it seemed to us as we gazed into the depths of that pit that our poor Aish-Zara, za'zal, swaddled in her white talit like a receiving blanket was stirring in distress, as if struggling to find a more comfortable position, and then it was as if she had found her place, as if she let out a low sough of relief at the prospect of never having to be bothered again, and she gave herself over to sleep.

A shovel filled with dirt was placed in the hands of HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, whose chair had been brought up to the very rim of the grave. The honor of being the first to cover Aish-Zara, za'zal, with the earth from which she had come was given to our holy mother, who tipped the shovel downward, letting the dirt spill slowly into the grave onto the body nestled below. Then we all took turns with the shovels and spades that had been supplied, thrusting them into the piles of dirt that rose
on either side of the grave and emptying them on top of the unresisting body of Aish-Zara, za'zal, until the grave was filled and a soft fragrant mound rose above it into which a temporary handwritten marker was sunk—E
SSIE DAUGHTER OF
S
ARAH
-Y
ISKA, AISH
-Z
ARA, ZA'ZAL
, with a simple drawing as if outlined by a child of two hands raised in blessing, thumbs arcing, middle and ring fingers separated, to indicate the resting place of a priest. In a year's time, God willing, we shall unveil a suitable monument over the grave of Aish-Zara, za'zal. Our three remaining priestesses to whom Aish-Zara, za'zal, was like a mother chanted the mourner's Kaddish standing in for her own children who had fled—exalting, sanctifying, glorifying, blessing the Name of the Holy One, praising God despite everything.

That very evening I was summoned to the quarters of our holy mother. I expected to find Ima Temima already in bed after these strenuous days filled with so much stress and loss, but was surprised and I must add reassured instead to see our holy mother sitting in a chair drawn up to the table on which the Tanakh was open to Leviticus, chapter twelve. There were no signs of mourning in the room, not even a memorial candle, and Ima Temima made no reference at all in the course of our conversation to the passing of Aish-Zara, za'zal, or to any of the incidents that had occurred during the purification and burial rites that had taken place that very morning. Pointing to the text spread open on the table, HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, reminded me that this was the section of the Torah devoted to the impurities of skin eruptions commonly classified under the heading of “leprosy.” But the portion begins with the strictures relating to the impurities of a woman who has just given birth. If a woman gives birth to a boy, she is considered to be in the untouchable state of a bleeding
niddah
for seven days followed by thirty-three days of a secondary degree of impurity, our holy mother reminded me; if it is a girl, the untouchable menstrual
niddah
stage lasts fourteen days, followed by sixty-six days of generalized uncleanness. Why the difference? Ima Temima asked. Because the baby girl, a female like her mother, is herself also a sack of blood, and doubles the impurity.

Turning now to the subject of the baby girl who had just been born to the priestess Tahara Rappaport only the day before, our poor little Vashti, Ima Temima noted that the child already has three counts against her, possibly even four, because in addition to being a female leper with a tail it was very likely that she was also a “bastard,” a
mamzer
, a devastating label slapped upon an innocent soul mandating extreme forms of discrimination and ostracism. This, I knew, was a subject that our holy mother had probed very deeply and was acutely sensitive to, as Zippi, the daughter that Ima Temima had borne in the wilderness to our mutual husband, the late Abba Kadosh, a'h, had been publicly classified by some mean-spirited authorities as a
mamzeret
.

Having laid all these cards out on the table like a Tarot reader, HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, gave me my orders. My mission was to go at once to the priestess Tahara Rappaport and inform her that in fourteen days' time from the day she had given birth, at the completion of her first period of extreme bloody pollution in accordance with the strictest interpretation of the text, on the twenty-second day of Av, she must pack her bags and take her baby, Vashti, with her and leave our “leper” colony forever. “Inform her that you will give her some bread and water on that morning and send her on her way with her girl child,” HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, commanded with a finality that left no opening for argument or discussion. “You may also want to add that my personal advice based on what awaits the child in this life is that she take her into the wilderness and lay her on a rock, abandon her there like a superfluous newborn Chinese girl. Tell her to expose the daughter to the elements for her own good, and to the birds of the sky.”

Part
III