The Last Testament: A Memoir (16 page)

⁹
I think the Jews’ famous passion for fine dining derives directly from their cultural memory of spending four decades eating nothing but manna.

¹⁰
Over time I tried to make it a little more palatable; after 10 years I started dropping little salt and pepper packets with it; after 20 years I began raining it down deep-fried; after 30 years it began precipitating in tiny little animal shapes, which proved popular among the younger set;

¹¹
But I did not bother putting too much effort into improving its flavor; for the truth is, no one goes to Israel for the food.

¹²
Yet there were endless complaints about how things were better back in Egypt when everybody had triple chocolate fudge cake à la mode; and every one of those complaints went directly to Moses; for he was the sole intermediary between me and the Chosen People, a task I realize now was unduly onerous upon him;

¹³
For no human being should have to spend half his time dealing with a mob of unhappy Jews.

¹⁴
(Lo, I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe; so when I say that it’s not anti-Semitic.)

CHAPTER 8

¹
F
inally, on the first day of the third month after the Exodus, the Jews reached Mt. Sinai; and this was when I decided to make our covenant legal.

²
I had selected Sinai because it was a beautiful backdrop, and I wanted my proposal to be unforgettable;

³
So I nervously called Moses up the mountain, and instructed him to approach the Jewish people on my behalf; to fall upon one knee, bearing a golden ring, and to say unto them,

⁴
“The L
ORD
wants you to know, that these last two months have been the happiest time of his life;

⁵
And that he never thought he could feel this way about a
person,
much less a People;

⁶
And that you have made him more stable, more nurturing, and more confident in his smiting;

⁷
And that he cannot imagine spending the rest of world history, without you by his feet;

⁸
And so he asks, if ye would make him the happiest God in the universe, by being his Chosen People.”

⁹
And Moses went down the mountain, and gathered the Twelve Tribes together; and I gave him my two signals, which were a deafening horn fanfare from atop Sinai, and a dust storm of rose petals;

¹⁰
Whereupon he poppethed the question; and the Israelites said yes.

¹¹
It was a glorious moment, and I descended to them in a dense cloud, that we could in some way embrace each other; though I made it clear that anyone who so much as touched the mountain would be put to death;

¹²
For I still needed my space.

¹³
Then I called Moses and Aaron up to the top of Sinai, to begin dictating unto them the law; starting with the Ten Commandments.

¹⁴
Ah... the Ten Commandments.

¹⁵
I have very little to say about the Ten Commandments.

¹⁶
To tell the truth, I no longer give much thought to them.

¹⁷
Hang them on your doorposts or not; teach them in your schools or not; post them in your courthouses or not; live by their precepts or not; yea, even the “kill” one.

¹⁸
It is all the same to me; for, as I say, I no longer give much thought to the Ten Commandments.

¹⁹
Hardly any thought at all.

²⁰
[Pause.]

²¹
That is not true.

²²
I think of the Ten Commandments all the time.

²³
I think of them all the time, because I hate them.

²⁴
I
hate
the Ten Commandments.

²⁵
I hate the Ten Commandments, in exactly the same way Don McLean hates “American Pie.”

²⁶
For hear me: when I wrote those words all those years ago, they meant something very personal to me; I put my heart and soul into them, and then sent them out into the world as any writer does, hoping they would find their audience.

²⁷
Never did I imagine that work would remain after all this time my best-known piece; the one people still cite, and debate, and interpret, and quote from start to finish.

²⁸
On one level, I am glad so many of you have taken it to heart, and extracted so much meaning from it, and embraced its simple AAAAAAAAAA structure.

²⁹
But I am tired of it defining me; tired of being regarded as a one-list wonder, locked forever in the public consciousness as “that deity who wrote the Ten Commandments.”

³⁰
I did a lot of good work before it, and I have done a lot of good work since; I continue to chart my path as a creative artist, and I welcome all those interested in taking that journey with me.

³¹
But that is all I intend to say about the Ten Commandments; do not ask me to recite them again here, as an encore; I will not do so.

³²
To the extent they represent the apotheosis of Mosaic law, consider this the day the Mosaic died.

CHAPTER 9

¹
B
esides, the Ten Commandments are but a small fraction of the hundreds of other laws, terms, conditions, mandates, edicts, ukases, and mandatory suggestions I bequeathed to the Jews on Sinai.

²
I know many of my readers are unfamiliar with the words of scripture, being freethinking entropists living neck-deep in snark; so I will kindly inform them that much of Exodus’s second half—and the three remaining books of the Pentateuch, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—is little more than a catalog of the innumerable bureaucratic minutiae the Israelites were lucky enough to be micromanaged by.

³
And for
these
minutiae I maintain a great affection; I enjoy rereading them unto this day; and ask me not to choose a favorite, for each outdated relic of an obsolete mode of living is like a child to me.

⁴
I will not waste undue tree-pulp quoting myself here; but I will offer a few choice selections, the better to inspire thee to scurry to thy local Old Testamentery to obtain a copy.

⁵
Leviticus 1:14: “And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the L
ORD
be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtledoves, or of young pigeons.”

⁶
Boom!

⁷
Deuteronomy 20:13–14: “When the L
ORD
thy God hath delivered [a city] into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself.”

⁸
Pow!

⁹
Exodus 27:3: “And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basins, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.”

¹⁰
Oh no, I didstn’t!

¹¹
I am mirthing, but seriously: Canst thou even
imagine
a world wherein thy ashpots and shovels and basins and fleshhooks and firepans were made of, say,
bronze?

¹²
But there is one set of regulations whose impact exceeds even that of my earth-shaking brazen-ashpot dictum; these are the kosher dietary laws, and they remain to this day my greatest regulatory achievement.

¹³
There exists no greater demonstration of the strength of my contract with the Chosen People, than the continued observance by so many of them, over 3,000 years later, of the laws of
kashrut.

¹⁴
For the strength of a contract cannot be gauged by one party’s willingness to adhere to provisions that are easy; such adherence hardly requires a contract to begin with.

¹⁵
But neither can its strength be gauged by one party’s willingness to adhere to provisions that are merely
arduous
; for such adherence is often maintained out of fear of punishment, rather than any intrinsic respect for the contract itself.

¹⁶
No; the strength of a contract can only be gauged by one party’s willingness to adhere to provisions that are a) arduous, but also b) devoid of repercussion if violated, and c) lacking the barest lick of common sense.

¹⁷
And such are the laws of
kashrut.

¹⁸
What; didst thou think these laws had a sand-grain of reason behind them?

¹⁹
That shellfish are unclean, for they lack fins and scales? Yea; for the contaminants of saltwater are best filtered not with hard shells, but porous gills.

²⁰
That pigs are unclean, for they alone among the common farm animals are filthy? Yea; for cows are models of hygiene; and sheep are neat freaks; and chickens must have OCD, what with all their nonstop claw-washing.

²¹
That all insects are unclean . . . save four species of locust? Yea; because that is in there; look it up; Leviticus 11:21–22; I kid thee not.

²²
Or consider the most famous dietary injunction of all: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”

²³
What kind of people would take such a specific rider—one forbidding only intergenerational culinary goat cruelty—and extend it into a ban against consuming
all
meat with
all
dairy, on the principle of “just to be safe”?

²⁴
A
Chosen
People, that’s who.

²⁵
Why, put aside the nature of the laws themselves: consider but their context and they become even more laughable.