Goodbye 37

GOODBYE 37


[“So Israel is on the skids” wrote one disgruntled reader. “I get that from lots of places. So you’re having toilet troubles. Why should I give a crap that you can’t give a crap? I only waste my time reading you because of the cats. So what’s with the cats?”

Okay…

Muffy-the-superannuated-Slut has a large, deep wound on her neck. How she got it is a mystery. The wound dries, she scratches, blood flows again. Rachel is concerned. I am not. Rachel wants us to take MuffSlut to a veterinarian. I wouldn’t mind taking her to a taxidermist.

Muffy has aged visibly. But that – given my predilection for older females – is not the reason I am less than enthusiastic about her. She travels with an entourage, three of her offspring courtesy of The Impregnator. Two have their father’s slits for eyes and fluffy tale. The third has Muffy’s beautiful large-eyed innocence. Unfortunately she howls endlessly. All three are larger than Muffy but the feline yiddishe mama hustles food for them constantly. She appears at the door, whining piteously, then saunters off as soon as I’ve put the food out. At which point The Unholy Three come out of hiding and eat.

The only one who gives me pleasure is Chaleria (Cholera) who follows me about and lets herself be petted. At one point I started feeding her by hand, but she clawed me so badly I’ve given it up. Still, there are moments close to ecstatic. I sat down on the lawn, extra-length cigar in hand, to listen to a broadcast of Brahms 4th. Chaleria appeared. I groaned inwardly at the thought that I would have to get up and feed her. But she lay down at my feet and didn’t utter a sound or move until the symphony and my cigar had ended. Was she listening? Probably not. But I could pretend that she was, and shed tears of contentment.]

[“You should have been a conductor, Moshe. Too bad the streetcars and trolleys don’t run anymore.”

Yes, I should have been a conductor. Among the many fantasies that have sustained me, this is near the top.

Of course, there are problems. The first is that I never learned to play an instrument or to read music. In retrospect, this is all to the good. Over the years my numerous contacts with musicians made me realize that their attitude to music is largely that of a mechanic to motors, or a butcher to meat. In my case, ignorance really is bliss. I have been able to maintain my awe of music, my belief that music starts where words leave off, my belief that music is holy.

I listen to a piece over and over and over, til I’ve memorized it, then indulge my fantasy that I’m attending a concert and the conductor suddenly drops dead/has a stroke/is whisked away by aliens. The concertmaster calls out, “Is there a conductor in the audience?” I make my way to the podium, close the score, conduct – brilliantly, of course – from memory.

The second problem is less easily solved, even in fantasy. When my right arm was sent to nose-picker’s Valhalla, I was merely inconvenienced. I was, after all, left handed. Then my left hand was turned into a claw, and I cannot hold the baton.

There is, of course, another appendage to which the baton could be attached. But even an egomaniac like myself cannot fantasize about conducting anything lengthier than an orchestration of Chopin’s minute waltz. Thus do dreams die.]


GOODBYE 37 MISERY HATES COMPANY

Though the windows are closed the house is permeated with the smell of burning wood and leafs and Lord knows what else. It is L’G B’Omer eve [11 May] and all the crypto-pyromaniacs, like the crypto-drunkards on Purim, are allowed to live out their fantasies. Bonfires large and small abound, as do barbecues and cookouts. Viewed from space, Israel must have disappeared under a thick cloud of smoke.

Rachel is out among the bonfires, cheerfully working the crowds in her own inimitable way, while Old Grouchy sits transfixed before the computer, inundated with articles mirroring his despair.

It does little to cheer me that so many are coming around to the conclusions I reached long ago. Misery does not love company. I have prayed for so long that I’ll be proven wrong, that flaws in my arguments will be pointed out, that the hopeless despair I feel will be shown to be a personal psychosis and not one based on fact. Instead, the ‘usual suspects’, loonies like myself, are being joined by mainstream commentators. I thought I had scraped the bottom of the Misery Barrel. Now I’ve been given a shovel with which to dig beneath the Barrel.

One of these mainstreamers is the estimable Naomi Ragen. One of her recent letters has intensified an ongoing disagreement between Rachel, ever optimistic, and yours truly who requires no effort to wallow in blackest despair.

“I write less because I have no words to express just how bad things are,” wrote Ragen, “how beyond imagination that the Jewish State has gotten to this point in its history.”

Rachel and I are battling over “the Jewish State”. I say there is no Jewish State, only a state with many Jews. Were we a genuinely Jewish State, a state of Jewish believers, we wouldn’t be facing extinction right now.

Rachel points out that it is L’g B’Omer, and most Jews are attending bonfires, just as most Israeli Jews attend a seder on Passover. Even those who participated in the expulsion are doing the Jewish thing.

These, I argue, are nominal Jews and not believing Jews. Their having a bonfire or a seder makes them no different from the millions of Americans who have a Christmas tree. They are nominal Christians and not believing Christians. And their activities don’t make America a Christian country any more than the activities of nominal Jews make Israel a Jewish country.

Some of you were offended by my characterization of Obama voters as collaborators in our destruction. I was watching a documentary about the Jewish singles scene in the States, all those wonderful, caring, concerned people. And not a McCain voter among them. It must have been wonderful, even liberating, to polish your liberal credentials by voting for one of the traditionally oppressed. I believe you had no intention of harming Israel. The interests of Israel probably weren’t even on your radar when, floating on a cloud of rhetoric-induced euphoria, you wafted into the polling station.

And when disaster strikes us you will weep genuine tears on our behalf. I tell you in advance that we appreciate your tears, because by the time they flow we won’t be able to thank you. We will have been slaughtered. Rachel, myself, our children, our grandchildren, the Zionists, the non-Zionists, the anti-Zionists, the committed few, the indifferent many.

When we were expelled from Gush Katif I, like many others, underwent a crisis of faith. Was the Creator simply a sadist, setting us up with five years of indisputable miracles only to abandon us when we needed Him most? The conclusion I came to was that He protected us from everything the gentiles threw at us, only leaving us to our own devices when our fellow Jews were the enemy.

And it is about to happen again. Most of my fellow believers don’t see it. “The Almighty won’t allow it to happen,” is what I hear most often. “Even if you are right about Gush Katif, the Almighty won’t allow it because we face destruction by the gentiles, not the Jews.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Our physical destruction may be carried out by gentiles but it is the Jews who have empowered them, the Jews who have legitimized them, the Jews who provide their justification, the Jews who everywhere – especially Israel – lead the charge against us. Who, after the Holocaust, would call the Jews ‘Nazis’ unless the Jews themselves were using the term?

Is there another people anywhere, at any time, whose cultural and intellectual elite is so filled with self-hatred? Is there another people anywhere, at any time, whose cultural and intellectual elite is so desperate to rid itself of the religious burden placed upon it at birth that it will do anything – anything! – to be ‘free’?

The examples of their self-destructive actions are so numerous that I will not list them. You are aware of them, or you aren’t. As to motive…

There was a ‘joke’ I heard many years ago. It is Christmas Eve in the Ukraine and a band of Cossacks ride into a Jewish village. Fueled by vodka and native stupidity and a desire to avenge their crucified Lord they are determined to slaughter the inhabitants. A rabbi runs out to confront them. “Stop!” he shouts. “We have just learned that it was the Jews from the next village who killed Christ!” The Cossacks turn and ride away, to slaughter the Jews in the next village.

moshe