One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (59 page)

For the messiah, death is not an option.

O
UR CRIES
of
Tekhi!
rang out as we prepared the physical shell and dressed it in the white linen garments sewn by the hands of Aishet-Lot. We wailed
Tekhi! Tekhi! Tekhi!
as we concealed our holy mother swaddled in a great white prayer shawl along with the little mother Torah under a blanket of black earth in the bed in the northern garden in a ritual that others might consider to have been a funeral but was actually a joyous rite of passage attended by thousands upon thousands who had arrived to escort HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, on the charted journey to the next level shouting
Tekhi!
the whole way.

Tekhi!
resounds in the courtyard of our “leper” colony all through the day as they arrive in their multitudes to stand in pure faith awaiting the return until they are evacuated when darkness falls. Every point in our negotiations with the authorities as to the disposition of our “leper” colony is punctuated with
Tekhi!
To the state and municipality's claim of eminent domain for the construction of luxury villas and apartment houses, commercial centers and educational institutions here we counter,
Tekhi!—
we shall drain this “leprous” swamp and build on this land a palace of sapphire and gold bricks surrounded by lush blooming gardens and fruit bearing trees in readiness for our holy mother's return from concealment and the commencement of the messianic reign.
Tekhi! Tekhi!
we sang out when we dug a grave for the white bones of Sister Ketura, a'h, alongside the resting place of our high priestess Aish-Zara, za'zal, and when we drew back the covers of the bed in which HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, is concealed to tuck in the remains of our holy mother's mother, Mrs. Rosalie Bavli, z'l;
Tekhi!
when we carved out a pathway between the bed and the private quarters in the northern garden along which our holy mother will God willing very soon proceed under an ethereal blue canopy in regal splendor to the golden throne with red satin cushions embroidered with silken threads
that awaits the end of the concealment;
Tekhi!
when we erected a pavilion to protect from the elements the holy bed where HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, is hidden as in a cocoon from which any minute the queen the messiah will burst forth like a butterfly with the most dazzling and magical wings in celestial colors, azure and scarlet and gold, never before seen or imagined on this earth. Long Live Our Master Our Teacher Our Rabbi the Queen the Messiah Forever and Ever! Long Live Temima!
Tekhi Temima! Tekhi!

In the beginning we rejoiced that the concealment had commenced, and now, almost half a year later, we rejoice even more terribly for with each passing hour we can only be moving closer to the promised revelation. Soon the seventeenth day of Tammuz will be upon us, traditionally set aside to mourn the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the enemy invaders and the destruction of the Holy Temple three weeks later, but we shall celebrate with wine and sweets, for the redemption is already in progress when every fast day is transformed into a feast day. The Third Temple stands complete in full magnificence in heaven ready to be lowered to the top of Mount Moriah that the Dome of the Rock now occupies like an illegal settlement outpost. Yes, it will be lowered very soon to its rightful spot on earth the moment the queen the messiah HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, rises from the holy bed and favors us by coming out of concealment.

Meanwhile, every day hundreds of petitions arrive from every corner of the globe to our “leper” colony, pleading for blessings, healing, wisdom, answers, justice, pouring out grief, begging our holy mother to come out of hiding—Now! A deep pit has been dug inside the pavilion as a repository into which we empty the petitions at the end of each day like treasured fragments inscribed with the divine name that may never be destroyed but must be buried as if they are human remains. Already the ones at the bottom of the pit have merged with the soil to nourish with their tears everything that grows.

On warm nights we three ladies in waiting of the queen the messiah—Rizpa, Aishet-Lot, and I—sleep under the stars alongside the pavilion, poised to greet our holy mother at the end of the concealment that could come at any moment. My sleep at the
pavilion is always fitful and agitated, troubled with guilt by my failure to fulfill my duties as our holy mother's scribe and chronicler, restless with anticipation that any minute Ima Temima may rise up and come out of hiding. I must be ready, I must be alert, it is the moment for which I keep myself alive.

Often I get up in the night to commune privately with the active presence of our holy mother, seeking comfort and counsel. At times I lean over the trench filling up with petitions to HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, scoop up a fistful, and study them by the glow of the eternal lamp and the flickering candles in glass cups, an act I perform at the behest of our holy mother calling to me from behind the veil. Like music, human suffering I have come to understand is confined to a limited scale of notes expressed in endless variations, infinite stories. In an unmistakable sign, a petition I plucked out last night was addressed to me rather than to Ima Temima.

“Kol-Isha-Erva,” the message singled me out by name, “You know I consider writing to be a crime, with no immunity or pardon even after death. Still, I have gone to the extreme of writing this note and letting it fall into your hands as you scavenged among the private petitions meant for me so that you would interpret it as a sign that it is I who am speaking, I and no other. From where I am now, an eternal place without past, present, or future, I see and know everything, but blessedly I am liberated from the burden of caring. Hava and Adam, prototypical wife and husband, are twined together in the form of two serpents, mouth to tail; they have left the mothers and fathers they never had to devour each other for eternity thereby becoming one flesh. My Elisha is coiled like the serpent of a caduceus or the rod of Asclepius, contorted in agony for eternity with sickness and pain from overindulging on the fruit of the tree of knowledge good and evil. My mother with hair of writhing snakes dangles in front of me the ripe fruit of the tree of life, but I am not tempted. It is better for a person never to have been born, and all the more so not to be sentenced to endless life without parole. I have shed my snake skins, all of them false and diseased—the idea of mother, the idea of master, the idea of messiah. I have ground down the
copper snake I held up on a pole to deceive all who had been bitten by the lethal serpents of life into believing that by looking at it they will be cured, and they brought me offerings of incense and worshipped me. It was all vanity and idolatry. Do not believe in it, Kol-Isha-Erva. Do not wait for me. I shall not return.”

I regard this message as a hoax perpetrated by the nomad, but I transcribe its contents in their entirety here in these pages in compliance with my obligation to censor nothing, hold nothing back. At first glance, these words purportedly attributed to our holy mother might seem disheartening, crushing. Yet, miraculously, they have fractured and pulverized my writer's block like Moses' serpentine staff when it struck the stone to release the water so that the words have begun to flow. At last I have been able to overcome my resistance and sit down at this table to fulfill my mandate to write it all down, as Ima Temima has commanded.

I think about the times our holy mother would brood on how heartbreaking it is for women to yearn for the messianic age. “Should it ever truly arrive, for there is no real mention of it in the text itself, there will be nothing in it for women, it is a male fantasy,” our holy mother would say. But what if the messiah is a woman—a mother? Therein lies true salvation. It is for our mother we always cry out in the darkest night and deepest pain and always in the end our mother comes, she sustains us with sweet cakes, she revives us with apples, she sits across from us at the table, her hand propping her chin, watching over us as we eat and are restored, for we are sick with love and she will never forsake us. Rather than vaporizing my faith, then, the sign given to me from our holy mother has strengthened my resolve to once again raise my woman's naked voice and cry out my
Tekhi!
Ima Temima lives. Temima daughter of Rachel-Leah, You are not dead. The moment we long for beyond all else, when the earth will tremble and the true mistress of the spirit, HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, will rise from concealment and return to shine the holy face upon us, is now closer than ever. For the messiah does not come willingly. The chosen have no choice.