One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (25 page)

My thought patterns at that moment naturally legatoed to my ex-student, EliEli, who turned out in the end to be a false prophetess, it pains me to report. EliEli, of the lustrous, swinging hair that nearly consumed her in flames like the incinerated altars of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel when she danced so rapturously during our Passover Seder, is among those who now are no longer with us, but in her case it was not a voluntary departure. Holding aloft in defiance a splintering wooden cross, the two beams lashed together with bandages, she was unceremoniously expelled from our compound mounted on the shoulders of one of the four Bnei Zeruya, the very one with whom she had been observed engaging in inappropriate behavior after the
Dayenu
—and the gate was shut fast against both of them. It grieves me to add on good authority that she did not even have the decency to cover her private parts with undergarments for her disgraceful exit, her legs clamped around the neck of her bearer. Nevertheless, I consider it my duty, with the sanction of our holy mother, to report this gross detail. She was cast out of the “leper” colony as the “leper” is cast out of the city; there is not much lower you can sink.

On those rare occasions now when Ima Temima requires to be borne aloft by four strong men, the place in the Bnei Zeruya quartet of EliEli's accomplice is taken by one of my prophetesses, a woman weighing in at over one hundred kilos whom we call Aishet-Lot, whose specialization is visions of the past rather than the future. That alone signifies that she can carry a load. Aishet-Lot has never been heard to speak a single word, however, so extreme an observance of a fast of speech has she taken upon herself that I have at times worried if she is in reality verbally challenged or perhaps afflicted with a case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the insult of the sages' injunction against excessive conversing with a woman that had plunged her into a lifelong state of oral paralysis. Yet, contrary to popular belief, such extreme silence is an attribute to be prized in a prophet just as being hearing impaired ought to be prized in a mental health provider. (With apologies for this personal digression, which I permit myself only to honor such differently abled individuals as
Aishet-Lot, my own amazing therapist wore a hearing aid when I first became his client at age six; by the time my treatment ended at age nineteen when he declared me fully cured, he was completely hearing impaired—i.e., “deaf.”) As for Aishet-Lot, she has found many creative ways to express herself without words in delivering her brand of past prophecies. Of course, there is the added benefit that her muteness assures utter discretion in confidential spheres, and so, due to severe staff cutbacks, she has also been selected to assist our petite Rizpa as personal attendant to our holy mother, above all with the heavy lifting, an interim arrangement that was made permanent after the night that Cozbi disappeared for the last time.

As it became increasingly unavoidable to face the fact that I had a problem on my hands with EliEli, our holy mother, HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, directed me once again to the fundamental text of chapters thirteen and eighteen of the book of Deuteronomy in which the identifying features of a false prophet are laid out. There was no question that EliEli fit the bill—a possessed dreamer of dreams, speaking in the name of the Master of the Universe, even shocking us now and then by pointedly dropping His forbidden name “Yahweh” as if He were a celebrity pal of hers with whom she was on a first name basis, offering signs and portents some of which given the odds even on occasion came true, all for the purpose of enticing our people to follow and worship other gods that they knew not and to test us to see whether or not we truly and exclusively love the Lord our God with all our hearts and souls and everything we have.

Nevertheless, Ima Temima allowed me to find my own way to the resolution of this challenge and at my own rhythm, never undermining my authority as executive director of the school for prophetesses by invading my space and handing down peremptory orders from above as to how to manage this infestation on my turf. Instead, to help guide me, our holy mother offered a subtle teaching concerning the seven women in the Tanakh whom the rabbis of the Talmud classify as true prophetesses. First among the Talmud-designated prophetesses is Sarah, whom Ima Temima calls Yiska—from the root
sakha
, she gazed—because of
her penetrating visionary powers, her ability to look directly at what was what without deceiving herself. Yiska, who in the text is identified as one of the daughters of Haran, Abraham's brother who died in Ur of the Chaldees, is none other than Sarah, the Talmud states. And though some sages had their doubts about this, and especially given the added complication that it would have made Abraham her uncle as well as her husband (not to mention also her half brother as he confesses later on), Ima Temima always refers to Sarah as Yiska in homage to this clear-eyed, sophisticated realist.

The other six prophetesses in Israel, according to the Talmud, are Miriam (our very own Lady of the “Lepers”—Miriam-Azuva-Snow White), Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Hulda, and Esther. In the plain text of the Tanakh, however, Ima Temima taught, there are only four women explicitly labeled as prophetesses—Miriam, Deborah and Hulda (both called nasty names by the Talmud sages for their alleged arrogance in their dealings with men), and Noadia. Noadia is only a bit player, with a cameo mention when Nehemia implores God to keep in mind for retribution how this prophetess, among others on his revenge hit list, had unduly alarmed and vexed him.

With respect to how my apprentice prophetess EliEli fits into this food chain, I will say in my defense that I had at first assumed, perhaps too hastily, that the somewhat self-important and presumptuous name she had chosen for herself was a reference to the opening verse of the song of David in Psalm twenty-two—Eli Eli (My God, My God), why have You forsaken me? I now realize that in her personal brain pan, the main ingredient was the “My” rather than “God.”

I must have been in a willed state of denial because, looking back, I can no longer repress my memory of the night I came upon her sitting by a bonfire in a far corner of our “leper” colony, in a clearing encircled by dry tangled brambles and nettles, the leaping flames a true hazard to our community, liable to spread as wildly as her dangerous proselytizing and ignite a conflagration. As EliEli sat by the fire along with several co-conspirators, members of her support group, none of whom is any longer with
us, in a high state of ecstasy the source of which I now openly acknowledge to have been not entirely spiritual, she chanted over and over again the seventeenth verse of that same psalm from which her name is derived—Psalm twenty-two—in a bizarre free translation I had never before heard: “Dogs surround me, evil ones encircle me, they pierce my hands and feet.”
Pierce
my hands and feet? Where did she get
pierce
from in that verse? Was she talking
stigmata
?

Yes, I admit that the horrifying thought did pass through my mind then and there that her chosen name EliEli was not after all a reference to the song of David, but to the reported final cry in Aramaic of the false messiah Yeshua HaNozri, dying on the cross, ripping us off to his very last breath. I am abashed to confess it did occur to me even then there might be a false prophetess in our midst, but in my own defense I must point out that at the time, with our beloved Aish-Zara, za'zal, suffering so unendurably and with each passing day drawing this dear soul further and further away from us to the next life, I felt I just simply did not have the energy to deal with issues related to a borderline personality like EliEli.

Then one night, as I was sitting by the bedside of our precious Aish-Zara, za'zal, strumming an oud and riffing a tune to the words of the prayer for the sick recited during the Torah reading—Oh God, bless Essie daughter of Pessie (unfortunately, I did not know the name of the mother of Aish-Zara, za'zal, and so I simply grooved with the rhyme) with soul healing and body healing along with all of sick Israel—and Aish-Zara, za'zal, was lying on her bed with her mouth open and dry lips drawn back rendering her face even more skull-like, rattling in her throat and wheezing through the black holes of her nostrils having drifted for this interval into a pocket of relief from pain thanks to the marijuana tea I had brewed and fed to her with a teaspoon, Rizpa announced her presence with a considerate padded knock, pushed open the door, and informed me that she would take over death and dying palliative care hospice duties while I went to Ima Temima, who had summoned me to appear without delay.

It was well past midnight when I arrived at the sacred
apartment. My prophetess Aishet-Lot was sitting in the garden outside the door keeping guard, knitting on automatic by moonlight at a frenetic clip with fat needles and thick rough yarn white as salt, a frothy puddle of woolen matting rising at her feet like sand falling in an hourglass.

With a slight nod, Aishet-Lot granted me entry. I found our holy mother already in bed as would be expected at that hour alongside the cherished little mother Torah, which seemed to have grown a few feet longer judging from the bulge under the blanket defining its form, the upper portion of the scroll with its two wooden tree-of-life rollers protruding like the horned pigtails of a child who had just had a nightmare with the cover drawn securely up to her chin.

“Kol-Isha-Erva,” Ima Temima said with eyes closed when I entered the room, one hand clutching a roller of the mother Torah as if to pick up its pulsing message in the transmission of a cryptic oracle, “my sources tell me that you must find your prophetess EliEli at once and root out the abomination. Whatever she says to you, you must not believe. It is a sadistic religion. In its intercourse between men and women, there is no such thing as brother and sister.”

I will not defile these pages devoted to the teachings of the holy HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, and to instructive tales from our journey here in the “leper” commune of Jerusalem by setting down in full detail what I witnessed when I entered the den of my ex-prophetess EliEli. Suffice it to say that those Christian theologians who advocated castration for self-flagellants as a safeguard against sexual arousal while engaged in this perverse activity had a point. The erotic tension in that room was constricting, like a bulge in the throat, it vibrated like instruments with every string drawn too tightly liable any minute to snap as the whips lashed and the blood flowed in an orgy of self-scourging and penitential mortification, men and women flogging their own lacerated naked backs and occasionally the raw proffered backs of others.

EliEli, as if in a trance in another realm, red in the face, slick with sweat, saw me at last standing in the doorway taking all of this in. She approached as if floating on an ozone layer cloud
and held out to me her bloodied whip to use for my own penance, saying to me, “With this you too can do the will of My Father in heaven and be my mother.” Frankly, about the last thing in the world I wanted was to be the mother of this mixed-up girl—that's all I needed for my sins. Sweeping the tail of her whip in the general direction over the writhing self-help group in the room, including the member of the Bnei Zeruya whom she had enabled with her enticements, all of them aware of nothing but the rhythmic stings of the whip and their own ecstatic self-mutilation, EliEli added, “Just as they do His will and therefore are my brothers and sisters.” She was paraphrasing from the gospel of Matthew—the New Testament!

At that point all I could do was remain in my place without raising my woman's naked voice to answer a word to this spiritually disabled child in her altered state. I could only silently bow my head—not just in an effort to dodge the furious arcs of the flailing whips, but above all in awe at this further testament to the powers and divine energy of our holy mother, Ima Temima, who had once again foreseen and understood everything.

I
N THE
spirit of full disclosure, and with the unqualified approval of HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv, shlita, I have already described the brazen departure from our “leper” colony of the pollution of my mutinous false prophetess EliEli and her loathsome sect. It is now my burden to move onward with the task of laying out a complete account of the mysterious disappearances and reappearances of our holy mother's personal attendant Cozbi, the former masseuse, Anna Oblonskaya of Moscow, Russia, which began the day after our Passover Seder and climaxed with her final vanishment shortly before the passing of our beloved high priestess, Aish-Zara, za'zal, revealing evidence that annihilated all hopes for her return. The matter is of particular sensitivity, not only because of the suspicion of foul play involved in every sense of the word, and not only because of the confidential and privileged position in which Cozbi had served in relation to our holy mother, but above all because of the way in which it impacted the fragile spirit and self-esteem and life choices of Paltiel, the
son about whom Ima Temima openly admits to feelings of guilt, fist pounding heart, with regard to the traumatic and scarring maternal abandonments he was forced to endure as a very young child for the sake of our holy mother's divinely ordained mission.

When Paltiel awoke in the early afternoon on the first day of Passover, the place beside him in the bed usually occupied by Cozbi was empty. Only the imprint of her long naked form remained on the stale sheets along with the vapors of her perfume and the stains of her female effluvia. These details of the Cozbi case that I offer here, however distasteful, have been garnered from several sources, including Paltiel. Our holy mother has commanded me to give a full and uninhibited account of what happened, to relate it as if it were a story, someone else's once-upon-a-time-in-a-faraway-land.