The Teachings Of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, Shlita
(May She Live On For Many Good Long Years)—
Recorded By Kol-Isha-Erva At The “Leper” Colony Of Jerusalem
DRAWING from the secrets of the wise and the discerning, and from the teachings derived from the knowledge of those endowed with understanding, I will open my woman’s naked mouth in prayer and supplications to beseech and beg mercy before the King who pardons and forgives sins. I have been remiss, I am awash in mortification, whatever excuse I might offer is feeble and of no account. Write it down! Write it down! our holy mother wordlessly commands me every day, several times a day I hear the prophetic voice insisting, demanding, Write it down! Hold nothing back!—but until now in my weakness I have procrastinated, I have lacked the strength of character to get my act together and carry out my mandate. It is now well over a full year that we have sojourned here in the “leper” colony of Jerusalem. I have been drained of energy almost to extinction, my fingers have grown numb, the skin of my hands has become scaly, my arms are knobbed and mottled, until now I have not been able to muster the spirit to lift my pen and perform my duty, God forgive me.
Only five souls remain in full-time residence within the walls of our settlement, towering above us all HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, who has entered a hidden state, no longer rising from the holy bed, and, in mystical abstinence, no longer communicating through speech. Of the five surviving remnants who have dug in and refused to be uprooted—hell no, we won’t go!—the exalted HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, is, needless to say, first and foremost; last and not even meriting mention is my insignificant afflicted self. The remaining three survivors in order of appearance include Rizpa, our faithful domestic management associate now donning ritual fringe ziziot at the corners of her apron, her dark wizened skin erupted in patches of discol-oration, still emotionally powerless to move past her personal mourning and loss through the five stages of grief and achieve closure with acceptance; my prophetess of the past, Aishet-Lot, every exposed part of her massive body white as the salt of the Dead Sea, now promoted to the position of our holy mother’s primary personal assistant, still suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder with its symptomatic muteness that surely elevates her silent conversations with Ima Temima to transformative heights not to be imagined; and our male help-meet, a nomad (this is not the time to disturb Ima Temima with the question as to whether or not it is appropriate to use the word “Arab” to identify another human being created in the image of God) whom Ima Temima called Kadosh-Kadosh, though I suspect that is not his true name. I recognized him, of course. He was the visitor who would arrive from time to time to the Temima Shul in the Bukharim Quarter—to bless me, our holy mother would say, instead of the reverse. Whenever he showed up, despite whatever else of urgency might have been scheduled, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv would enter a secluded state with him for a long session of hitbodedut, in the bedchamber where all business was conducted, with the door closed and no one else present, and when word of this deference to a lowly seeker of obviously no consequence in the world and unmistakably not even Jewish would leak out to the disciples, it only served to embellish our holy mother’s legend.
These are the five survivors of our camp, the embers salvaged from the flames. The decimation of our ranks is in no small measure my fault, I take full responsibility, I am prostrate with shame and remorse, I am abject, our holy mother has forgiven me but I shall never forgive myself. All that is asked of me now is to write it down, to hold nothing back, to lift my woman’s naked voice and make public confession. I was tested and I failed—flunked, flunked! I stand now on the block as the emissary of our congregation and deliver myself into the hands of the Lord, the high executioner up above: Here I am, impoverished of deed, quaking and terrified, unworthy and unsuitable, a sinner and transgressor, have mercy.
Now at last, in compliance with the admonition of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, to hold nothing back in these pages, I accept that it is no longer possible to avoid setting down a full accounting of what happened here in our “leper” colony starting on the tenth of Tishrei, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, two months and a day after the passage of our high priestess, Aish-Zara, za’zal, from this world to the next. It is my duty to acknowledge that my reluctance to testify to these events, putting the task off day after day, was nothing but a small-minded, self-centered defense mechanism on my part to rewrite history through omission due to the corrosive light these compromising events shed on the weakness and baseness of my own character. Our holy mother’s continued silence warns me that I can no longer hide behind the excuse of female modesty or my hypocritical aversion to calling attention to myself in order to be spared the disgrace I deserve for my inappropriate behavior, for all the pain and suffering I have caused, for corrupting and contaminating our community with a sin that festered undercover until it leaked and spiraled out of control to a disastrous climax.
WE WERE still a community of about one hundred souls on that Day of Atonement. How long ago it now seems, a past life, a full year has not yet gone by since that Yom Kippur when it all began but the questions we asked then have already been answered—Who by madness? Who by disease? Who by despair? Who by degradation?
HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, did not join us in prayer on that Yom Kippur due to physical issues, but instead remained cloistered over the entire twenty-four-hour period in the holy chambers attended by the only non-Jew from our inner circle, the nomad Kadosh-Kadosh. Everyone else, including Aishet-Lot, who had become the primary caregiver to Ima Temima, was ordered to take the day off to fast and pray as was required, optimally with the full congregation.
During the short break following the afternoon service, highlighted, to my mind, by its detailing of the frenetic ancient priestly rites and sacrifices and costume changes on the Day of Judgment when our Holy Temple still stood in all its glory on its Mount, may it be rebuilt speedily and in our time, and with its rapturous exhalation of relief when the radiant high priest manages to make it out of the Holy of Holies in one piece, I found myself in the northern garden outside our holy mother’s quarters beside the burial spot of our own high priestess, Aish-Zara, za’zal, who had not been so lucky, she had not been spared. There I sat and also wept as I remembered Aish-Zara, za’zal, just as our ancestors also musicians (entertainers like other eager-to-please immigrant population groups) once wept in exile by the waters of Babylon.
So deep in end-stage grief and longing was I crouched there between the still-unmarked grave of Aish-Zara, za’zal, and the sealed door of our holy mother that I did not at first notice the stranger in our midst climbing over the wall until he came scrambling and scraping down and crash-landed on the ground. Naturally, I rose at once to come to his aid, but gesturing defensively with lacerated hands, as if on guard to repel me if I turned out to be a hostile or allow me cautious limited access if I showed myself to be a potential ally, he cried, “The go’el ha’dam is after me! This is an ihr miklat! You have to take me in!”
The white garments he was wearing as is the custom on Yom Kippur, from his great white crocheted yarmulke pulled low and snug over his skull to the white cloth sneakers on his feet and all the whiteness in between symbolizing purity, a clean slate and fresh start for the new year, were filthy, shredded and bloodied from the ordeal of the gripping chase scene he had just starred in with the blood avengers pursuing him, hot on his heels.
Even then I wondered where in the world he had picked up the notion that our “leper” colony was an ihr miklat, a city of refuge, set aside to give asylum to accidental murderers, but he was pitifully battered and distraught, it was not the time to interrogate him, he had the right to remain silent. He was not such a young man either, well beyond the age to be scaling walls. Nor was he in very good physical shape for such an extreme workout, panting heavily, sweating lavishly, clutching his gut. His patchy grizzled gray beard was wiry like steel wool, his sidelocks were white and wispy, but his eyes, set a little too close together, gave off a poignant childlike wounded quality, as if expecting something good and expecting to be disappointed, both at the same time. He reminded me of someone, I couldn’t at first quite put my finger on whom.
As I continued to stand there in silence taking pains not to make any threatening gesture or abrupt move—for instance, backing up a few paces and turning to pound on our holy mother’s door in this genuine emergency to demand the nomad’s help in dealing with this intruder—his agitation began to cool, he calmed down to a degree though he remained wary and alert, and he went on declaiming, “The whole world’s going crazy—you know? I’m the main go’el ha’dam—that’s my job description, to avenge the blood, I’m the blood redeemer, so how can a go’el ha’dam be chased by another go’el ha’dam? Hel-lo? The buck has to stop somewheres, otherwise you get your endless cycle of violence, blahblah, ve’hulai ve’hulai. And where does it stop? The answer is—Right here, lady, in your “leper” colony. Who’s gonna come in after me into this joint anyways, and maybe catch the sickness and turn all white and bumpy like a cauliflower with boils like from the ten plagues and pus pimples like you wouldn’t believe oozing gunk all over the carpet and all of his body parts that stick out hanging from a piece of skin and then dropping down on the floor one by one, plop, plop, plop, first his toes, then his nose, then his fingers, then his ears, then his pecker—gross, right? So I’m safe in here—right? Until the Moshiakh comes, quickly in our day, amen, the “leper” colony is our ihr miklat, my refuge city. It’s your job to gimme shelter, lady, like Reb Mick says—’cause there’s a war going on, the end of days, Apocalypso, Gog and Magog, fire, flood, rape, murder, and the mad bull lost his way. I’m the main bull, lady, and boy am I mad, I’m real mad!”
All this and more he poured out in English, it occurred to me. There we were in the “leper” colony of Israel but he wasn’t speaking Hebrew, he had sized me up instantly as an Anglo. It was a New York accent of some sort, definitely not Upper East Side, nothing I was familiar with, some neighborhood in one of the outer boroughs probably. That was when I also realized whom he reminded me of—our holy mother’s son, Paltiel.
Then it all came together for me, like sparks fusing into a bolt of lightning, like prophecy. This was Paltiel’s father, aka Go’el-HaDam the blood avenger, aka Haim Ba’al-Teshuva, scribe and phylacteries maker of Hebron, the former Howie Stern of Ozone Park, Queens, New York. I had never met him personally but I knew all about him, there was no mistaking him, this was the man our holy mother, Ima Temima, was still technically married to by the law of Moses and Israel, though, as I also knew perhaps better than anyone, our holy mother’s true husband was and remains the Toiter in the line of the redemption and fulfillment of the messianic mission.
Out of concern for embarrassment to HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, therefore, without informing anyone of the arrival of this potentially compromising incendiary figure within our gates, I led him along back pathways around the northern garden through the tangled brush and nettles on the east side of the hospital up the stairs under the JESUS HILFE inscription to the refuge of my room, where I closed the door and offered him asylum.
I HID him in my room for close to six weeks, convinced that during that period, with the exception of Basmat, my cat, I alone knew of this stranger’s presence in our midst, and I alone would bear the consequences for shielding a fugitive from justice should his whereabouts ever become known. During that time, I took care of all his needs, from soup to nuts, it pains me to confess. Apart from food and shelter, it would be morally equivalent to a violation of attorney-client confidentiality to give a full blow-by-blow of all the needs I provided for; suffice it to say they were across the board, to my everlasting shame. He called me his “little righteous gentile,” I blush to admit, and promised to plant a tree in my honor at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum when all of this blew over for placing myself at mortal risk by hiding him from his Nazi anti-Semite persecutors. I am equally mortified to confirm that I called him my “Hero of Our Time,” but it is my intention in these pages not to spare myself any humiliation or hold anything back except for a pointless recapitulation of the intimate details, which, in any event, would simply reward prurience and idle curiosity, and bottom line always boils down to the same-old same-old tiresome drill between a man and a woman with very limited wiggle room for originality or variation on the theme to the disappointment and boredom of voyeurs and pornography junkies everywhere.
As for attending to his emotional needs, this consisted primarily of listening, of allowing him to talk, which he did practically nonstop when I was in the room with him and we were awake. Fortunately, he did not talk in his sleep, nor did he cry out from nightmares most likely because he was congenitally immune to fear or guilt, nor, to my surprise, did he snore though judging from the position of his septum that was on full display in flagrant deviation when he slept on his back with his nose pointed to the ceiling, coupled with the nasal quality of his voice to which I am acutely sensitive thanks to my musical training and his open mouth that shut only to grind his teeth, he looked and sounded like he would have been a snorer. Each night’s sleep, however, I am obliged to note, was interrupted at least once by the thud of poor Basmat’s body striking the wall when he hurled her out of the bed across the room. The flow of his talk ran on without pause or interruption or comment from me, which was his sexual preference as well. The only caveats I imposed were that all conversation must be conducted in a whisper, and that above all he was banned from uttering a single word or syllable, either negative or positive, about his so-called “wife,” our holy mother, or anything even remotely touching upon our holy mother. In no uncertain terms I warned him that all it would require would be one violation of this restriction and he would be out the door on his rear end in the street before he knew what hit him, at the mercy of the revenge freaks, which is the main natural resource and export of the Middle East.
It was through his endless ramblings, supplemented by my own sleuthing and Internet stalking, that I got full disclosure of his escapades as a blood avenger—not only how many Arab thumbs and big toes he had chopped off, or how many ugly buttocks he had exposed, or how many beards he had half-razored, or how many earlobes he had punctured, for all of which he had already served an abbreviated oddly triumphant jail term flashing his V for victory every time he was hauled out in front of the cameras smiling insanely, but also an exhaustive listing of his more-recent exploits, including shootings through car windows, bombs planted in mosques and discotheques and cafés, buses blown up, packages rigged with explosives, olive groves burned down, wells poisoned, and so on, targeting Muslim extremists and latent jihadists (which, in his world view, encompassed all Muslims), Christian proselytizers, Mormon baptizers of dead Jews, Jews for Jesus, Jewish left-wing intellectuals, homosexuals, Israeli historical revisionists, women rabbis and women wearing prayer shawls or raising their naked voices to cantillate from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, Holocaust deniers, anti-Semitic European academics posing as anti-Zionists, Zionism-equals-Racism propagandists, international Israel bashers, neo-Nazis, self-hating Jews, women immodestly dressed, the list goes on. The growth curve in his choice of victims was staggering, rendering it exceedingly hard for the authorities to finally figure out that this broad-spectrum violence streak was coming from a single source. For by the time I had given him asylum in my room it was not only the blood avengers who were pursuing him, the law was also on his tail, he was right up there on the top-ten charts of the most wanted. Still, it was not for me to be a moseret or a rodefet. For the informers let there be no hope. Excuse me, but I would not be the one to squeal or turn him in.
I suppose it is necessary for me to pause here to tap into my unconscious, drawing on my years of treatment with my amazing hearing-impaired Park Avenue mental health therapist, in order to try to analyze my motivations while in no way justifying or turning into an apologist for my transgressive behavior in sequestering an individual who was so clearly the antithesis of everything I had ever stood for during my entire life—a bigot, racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, yaddayadda, never mind an outright murderer, a first-degree criminal and felon, not to mention cruel to animals, which speaks volumes about a person. And not only did I take him in, literally and figuratively, at great personal risk, but in doing so I was also endangering our community and all we had journeyed so long and so hard to accomplish at such heavy spiritual and emotional and material cost. Most importantly, though, I was jeopardizing the reputation of our holy mother, our epicenter, our source, to whom I had devoted, and continue to devote, all of my energy and passion, my very life’s breath, whose well-being and interests I place above my own without reservation in every way, for whom I would take a bullet anytime, for whom with no hesitation whatsoever I would throw myself away. HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, Ima Temima, our holy mother, was and remains the overriding and consuming passion of my life, I can never let go of it and I never will because were I to do so, there would be nothing left of me, I would be eviscerated, hollowed out, empty, I would cease to exist. How then can I explain the root cause of such inappropriate and unacceptable behavior on my part?
What I now recognize and acknowledge, specifically with regard to my relationship with Go’el-HaDam and how it impacted me, is that it was subconsciously my way of connecting with Ima Temima who, when he literally dropped into our “leper” colony that Yom Kippur, was more and more turning inward and withdrawing from us, avoiding association with almost all of the established inner core circle with the exception of the nomad Kadosh-Kadosh. To put it simplistically and, I should add, superficially, when I hooked up with the admittedly somewhat unbalanced and unstable Go’el-HaDam, once again Temima and I were connected through a man as we had been through Abba Kadosh, a’h, in the Bnei HaElohim days in the Judean Desert. Go’el-HaDam was “into” me as once he had been “into” our holy mother. He was the link between us. We formed a triangle, a trinity, a ménage à trois so to speak. I don’t want to push this idea any further than is necessary out of respect for our holy mother lest it be misinterpreted as irreverent, coarse, even obscene, though for my part I see it and intend it in purely spiritual terms, a mystical union beyond human understanding, like in the Song of Songs. Whatever my motivations in harboring Go’el-HaDam, they reflect not at all upon the lofty spirit and sacredness of Ima Temima, but rather on my own flawed nature and neediness.
And indeed, when all of this sordid affair involving Go’el-HaDam was winding down to its inevitable miserable smashup, spewing wreckage everywhere and nearly wiping us out, it was our holy mother who got it exactly right and explained me to myself. “The serpent beguiled you,” HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, taught, “and you ate.”
Our holy mother then offered a radical teaching based on the provocative similarity between the words haya, animal, beast, and the name given to the first woman Hava, mother of all living, the airborne tiny letter yod dragged down into the mud and tamed to a vov. “When God realized that it is not good for man to live alone, He passed every haya and bird of the sky before Adam to choose from and name. According to some sources Adam mated with the female of each kind to try her out, but from none of these did he get satisfaction and he did not find a fitting helpmeet, which obliged God to perform the first recorded surgery to come up with a new and improved model. This one Adam liked, she would serve, and he named her Hava. From Haya to Hava. What do we learn from this?” HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, posed the question. “That a woman is an animal—so she is perceived and so she is used.”
Our holy mother went on to elaborate, in more words spoken aloud than in several months prior, more words by far than we have since been worthy to hear to this day from the sacred source, that the wilde haya wild beast is Lilith, Adam’s first wife some say referring back to the conflicting double narrative of the creation of woman—Lilith, the woman created at the same time as the man in the image of God like the man, who would therefore not accept a subservient role, rebelled against the missionary position, would not lie still underneath and just take it, but spread her wings and flew off to yenne welt, the land of imps and demons, of Asmodeus and Samael, witch and sorceress, disobedient, uncontrollable, a bird of prey, a raptor, a wild horned goddess, a tigress prowling and lusting and wreaking her havoc on lonely men and newborn babies in the night, not a suitable helpmeet. In contrast, Hava, fashioned through Dr. God’s cosmetic-surgical intervention from a spare rib of the man created in the image, was a behaima, a domesticated animal, cattle, a cow to milk, a sheep to fleece, an ox to pull the cart, an ass to carry the load, a mare to ride upon, a fitting helper doomed to suffer endlessly, cursed with desire for the man who rules over her.
Whether I was the daughter of Lilith or of Hava, whether I was a Lilith haya who had been beaten down into a Hava behaima, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, did not go on to specify, nor was it necessary, for both fell prey to the temptations of the flesh, leading to the loss of paradise, shame and death.
OUR HOLY mother’s chastisement for my passive-aggressive behavior, admittedly so deserved, was delivered to me in the inner sanctum of the chambers in the northern garden to which I had been urgently summoned by Rizpa and then hastily ushered in by Aishet-Lot, who immediately exited the quarters to resume guard duty outside. Ima Temima, unveiled and in a long white robe, was seated at the table against which what looked like a shepherd’s staff or crook was propped and upon which the little mother Torah so familiar to me was undressed and only slightly unfurled on the right tree-of-life roller to the opening portion in which the man passes the buck and blames both the woman who had given him from the tree to eat and God who had given him the woman. So much time had elapsed since I had seen the bare luminous face of our holy mother, its incandescent light like celestial fever, that I was nearly blinded, to the point that I did not at first notice the nomad propped up on pillows in the bed under the quilts, his body from his naked shoulders and upward visible, blotched with a florid rash. “You thought you can hide him, but I know the whole time,” the nomad spoke. “When you go back to little love nest, do not look for lover boy. They already drag him out on his fat ass, maybe you see shit marks on floor. We tell to him that maybe next time he go out on the town, he should be suicide bomber. Anyway, good news is, on way to police car, a stone fall on his head, a nice big stone. Maybe some blood avengers, who knows? I think he not feeling so great no more. Bad news is, he sticked the cat in the freezer for good-bye present to you. We leave it there for now so it don’t go soft and mushy and stink up the place. Sorry about cat. Cute little pussy.”
Ima Temima spurted out what sounded like a dry little laugh, and reached for the staff leaning against the table and clasped it, indicating in this way that the fleeting widening of my eyes when I had entered the room and instantly spotted this vaguely familiar sinister object had, not surprisingly, not escaped our holy mother who sees all. “It’s all right, Kol-Isha-Erva, don’t be afraid, I don’t intend to smite you with this rod, merely talk to you.” The beautiful eyes, fully visible, crinkled teasingly and yes, forgivingly, as the holy hand stroked the smooth wood. “Maybe, though, if I let it drop to the floor it will turn into a serpent and bite your heel. Well, as it happens, this staff comes from Gan Eden, from the original tree of knowledge good and evil as a matter of fact. The first couple took it with them when they were expelled, a walking stick to keep them from crawling out on all fours, to aid them in evolving to the upright and human position as they began their wanderings—and they passed it down through the generations. Believe it or not, it’s the very same stick that Judah gave to his daughter-in-law Tamar as a pledge when she stood at the crossroads veiled in the manner of a prostitute, to procure her services. Kadosh-Kadosh gave it to me. It was passed down to him from his warrior grandmother Hephzibah.”
Our holy mother bent a gracious eye upon the nomad grinning under the covers, baring his teeth like the wolf in the grandmother’s bed in the children’s fairy tale, showing his gums spotted with sores. “For it is I who am desired at the end of days,” HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, added enigmatically.
Ima Temima’s exposed face turned grave. “For the sake of Zion I shall not be still, for Jerusalem’s sake I shall not be silent,” our holy mother declared. Turning decisively to the matter at hand, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, referencing once again the expulsion of Adam and Hava from the Garden of Eden (as is true for the Torah itself, every repetition by our holy mother also signifies), informed me that when it became known outside the confines of our walls that we have been harboring within our paradise a snake, a notorious wanted criminal and terrorist, a decision was made at the highest spheres of government to reclassify our “leper” colony as occupied territory—specifically, as an illegal settlement outpost to be evacuated within the next forty-eight hours.
Even our holy mother’s extraordinary contacts and protectzia could not in this instance prevent the forthcoming ethnic cleansing. It had escalated to a matter of extreme diplomatic sensitivity that touched upon the continued support and patronage of the superpowers at the topmost levels who were demanding the evacuation as a point of honor, as acknowledgement of their authority; the pressure was intense, the goodwill of the protectors was far too vital for the state to risk for such an inconsequential and lunatic fringe figure as Go’el-HaDam. What it boiled down to from the point of view of the state was a serious threat to its basic survival if it failed to evacuate the “outpost”; as for the municipality, here was its opportunity to seize the upper hand economically, for it had long had its eye on this exceptionally valuable piece of real estate in the heart of West Jerusalem and would have liked nothing better than to auction off the property to the highest bidder to be developed into luxury apartments for holiday visitors and commercial centers for foreign investors.
As I stood there with head bowed and eyes lowered accepting this justified rebuke for the catastrophe I had brought down upon our people I could only tremble and weep. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me.” My throat was constricted, I could barely squeeze the words out, I had lost my woman’s naked voice. All I wanted at that moment was to curl up and die, I felt annihilated, I fell upon my knees and prostrated myself at the feet of our holy mother.
Our holy mother took pity on me, raised my head with the staff, and kissed me on the mouth. I could feel the heat penetrating me and spreading throughout my body like fever as I was comforted by the news that permission had been obtained for a very small nucleus of first-circle adherents to remain within the “leper” colony following the evacuation until they too disappeared through natural attrition as the plague ran its course. Thank God, despite my sins, I was one of the elect.
With overwhelming pride I can report that the evacuation, which began the next day, inspired a brilliantly creative protest from the citizens of our “leper” colony now reclassified as an illegal settlement outpost. The remaining hundred or so of our inhabitants came boldly forth to face the police contingent sent in to carry out the aktion. Dressed in striped concentration camp uniforms, with numbers tattooed on their forearms and yellow stars of David imprinted with the word JUDE pinned to their breasts or on bands wound above the elbow around their upper arms, some with shaved heads, our brave deportees screamed, Nazis! Stormtroopers! Gestapo! They held up signs, JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS? JEWS DO NOT EXPEL JEWS! THIS “LEPER” COLONY SHALL NOT BE JUDENREIN! NEVER AGAIN!—and so on. The effect was so mind-boggling that the cops withdrew as if whacked with a cudgel, failing to accomplish their assigned mission.
That night the media was foaming at the mouth with righteous indignation and condemnation of the misuse and trivialization of Holocaust language and imagery by cult groupies of a woman guru no less, squatters in a “leper” colony of all places that had been harboring a homicidal maniac terrorist; this was nothing but a desecration of the memory of the six million martyrs of the Shoah, which was an unprecedented genocide to which no other atrocity could ever be given moral equivalency. But in my woman’s naked voice I say, with all my authority as director of the school for prophetesses, that if a “leper” colony can be reclassified as occupied territory or an illegal settlement outpost, why not also as a ghetto, why not a death camp? The Holocaust belongs to all of us Jews, it is our communal birthright, no Jew has exclusive rights over it, we all own it to use as we see fit.
Also that night a delegation of top cabinet officials made a preemptive secret pilgrimage to our holy mother’s private quarters in the northern garden of our “leper” colony to negotiate a deal for a relatively peaceful and orderly disengagement, providing for only a controlled token protest by our people so that we could save face while also guaranteeing no further embarrassment or trauma for those on the government-enforcement side taxed with doing the dirty work. In exchange for this concession on our part, a quota of select visitors and supplicants would be allowed to continue to enter the radiant orbit of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, and those evicted from the grounds of the “leper” colony along with other followers would be granted the right of return during daylight hours in order to be in physical proximity to our holy mother to whom they were in any event always spiritually connected as by an umbilical cord wherever they were in the world, day or night. But when darkness fell they would be obliged to depart from the grounds of the settlement outpost “leper” colony ghetto death camp and go into exile, leaving only the remnants of the chosen people within, and the gates would be sealed.
The next morning, however, the news was once again hectic with reports of an underground raid on Yad Vashem carried out by “psychos” and “nuts,” a happening, it was conjectured, that must have taken place in the early hours of dawn before the Holocaust remembrance museum opened for business, during which an unauthorized exhibition was put up entitled Remember Munich! Pullout Equals Appeasement Equals Shoah!, which showcased images and videos and artifacts from the confrontation of the previous day between our persecutors and our “leper” colony’s ghetto fighters and death camp inmates; the floor surrounding the display billowed with concentric half-moons of hundreds of flickering memorial candles, a very effective installation, I might note, which let’s just say I was privileged to view myself with my seer’s eyes. But because of this so-called trespass and violation, a much larger police contingent than had originally been allocated was dispatched to execute the pullout later that morning, padded with an extraordinary number of female officers to physically manhandle our women, along with ambulances, fire trucks, military support and vehicles, including tanks and helicopters, plus armored buses standing ready with engines churning to haul away the evacuees, not to mention those usual feeders-on-carrion who swoop down and swarm to any public spectacle—the press, bigshots, thrill-seekers, idlers, gawkers, and other assorted lowlife.
I can only say that as I stood on the elevated landing of the “leper” hospital beneath the JESUS HILFE inscription and bore witness to the tremendous dignity with which our people faced their oppressors, it was as if my heart shattered from sorrow into millions of cells that soared up to the heavens and became recombinant in joy. Row upon row of police fully equipped with anti-riot gear, helmeted and masked, advanced in formation into our “leper” colony bearing body-length transparent bulletproof shields in front of them and emitting apelike grunts with each choreographed step forward. On our side, every woman stood fearless and inert, frozen in place cloaked from head to toe in a great white talit, awaiting her fate (how well trained we women are at staying put and waiting, as if this acquired trait had become a mutation in our genetic code); our men, fewer in number, were also garbed in white prayer shawls, each one blowing his shofar. Visually, from where I was standing, it was black versus white, a metaphor for the war between evil and good.
As the ranks of police goose-stepped nearer, discharging their barks and roars, not one of our people flinched or cowered. Nor did they resist, but neither did they collaborate or participate in their own extermination or corroborate the canard against the Jews by going like the proverbial sheep to the slaughter. Instead, as the police shields came up against them like a barrier wall they let their bodies slump and go limp in the time-honored posture of Ghandian passive resistance, Dr. M.L. Kingian, Jr. nonviolent protest, necessitating that each one be lugged out like a deadweight by a minimum of two male officers or four females in a respectful manner avoiding all physical contact with any tender or vulnerable or private body part, especially in rounding up and transporting and uploading our women. As they were being carted out (I must insert here that each time I recall this moment a lump forms in my throat forcing me to consciously stop myself from raising my woman’s naked voice and bawling) they were singing with such heavenly sweetness it was as if tears of honey were falling from the clouds—I believe with full faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even if she tarries, despite all that I believe.
FIVE MONTHS after these events, in the first week of Adar, word spread beyond our walls that a coronation would take place inside the “leper” colony at which HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, would be anointed the queen the messiah. The faithful arrived in the morning, first a trickle but as the week built toward its climax and the news rippled out they converged in increasing numbers to claim a spot facing the hospital in anticipation of this end-of-history eschatological event. All day they would remain fixed in place to be among the first to greet the queen the messiah, their eyes focused on a hopeful point of light in the distance until darkness descended and they were banished from the grounds. No one knew exactly when the coronation would be carried out, speculation abounded, it could take place with no forewarning at any moment, in the blink of an eye, even behind closed doors or at night, yet the general consensus was that it would be a public ceremony with a multitude of witnesses to affirm that the redemption was already underway, and the likelihood was, it was agreed, that it would come to pass on the seventh day of the month, also the birthday of Moses Our Teacher, another messiah contender according to certain kabbalistic calculations.
The plan was to spread the news beyond the “leper” colony, to broadcast the coronation via satellite TV throughout the world, beam it across the planet, even more mystically into the universe, for it was rumored that the blessed oil would be decanted in a golden stream from the four angels in the upper spheres surrounding the heavenly throne, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, directly to earth to anoint the head of the designated messiah, HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita. This is what I heard only after plans for the coronation had been set in motion, for I had no part in it, I fought against it with every fiber of my being when I learned it was in the works, there was no doubt in my mind that in its grandiosity and vulgarity it would be contrary to the spirit and teachings of our holy mother who, with rare exceptions, was no longer favoring us at that time with the personal expression in words or through body language of what was to be considered desirable and what loathsome.
During that entire first week of the month of Adar I remained hypervigilant, on high alert in order to prevent this grotesque carnival from unfolding, I did not shut my eyes for a second, and yet despite my opposition, the procedure was carried out in the shadowy light of a deep purple dusk late on the fifth day, when it was almost dark. It lasted two minutes at most, even some of the assembled still dragging their feet in the courtyard blinked and missed it. Our holy mother (or perhaps it was our holy mother’s double), shrouded from head to toe in what resembled a bedsheet like a ghost (though it might have been a prayer shawl or maybe a chador or maybe a hood drawn over the head of a condemned person about to be executed) was pushed in a wheel-chair by an individual who looked like an Arab but was, some maintained, an original Canaanite, out through the main door of the “leper” hospital onto the elevated landing that served as a kind of stage or platform against the setting of the JESUS HILFE inscription (ironically, an invocation of a false messiah reduced to the background role of helpmeet for the anointment of the true chosen one who happened to be a woman). The Canaanite with a white keffiyeh pinned across the lower portion of the face like a bandit in a cowboy movie so that only the large aviator sunglasses were visible and robed in a white jellabiya trimmed with gold embroidery along the edges pulled out a half-liter bottle of Two-State-Solution Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil produced in a joint cooperative grassroots venture by Palestinian and Israeli farmers and poured all of its contents over the blanketed head of the person in the wheelchair alleged to be Ima Temima, though it could just as easily have been a bump on a log (no comparison intended, God forbid) for all anyone knew.
At a certain point in the proceedings a hand emerged from under the wrappings in the wheelchair which, according to the testimony of some witnesses, seemed to wave sedately from side to side like the queen of England acknowledging her subjects from the balcony of Buckingham Palace and by implication endorsing their adoration. But others who also saw the hand come forth from under the layers of drapery asserted that it was gesturing in agitation as if to ward off the sludge and slick of the oil and everything it signified spilling all over the place and making an awful mess.
Assuming that this is not an urban legend and that the apparition under wraps in the chair was actually HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, being anointed as the messiah, I am of two minds about the hand that appeared—either it was raised in defiant rejection of the entire idolatrous farce or it was offered in resignation to the inevitability of the ritual that flowed from having been chosen—our holy mother has gone into hiding and has declined through silence to elucidate the mystery. There is, however, universal agreement that at a certain point a cry rose up, nor is there any dispute as to the words of the cry, everyone could make them out loud and clear: Long Live Our Master and Rabbi the Queen the Messiah Forever and Ever—Long May She Live! May She Live Forever! Tekhi! Tekhi! Tekhi!
It is no secret that it was I who had raised my woman’s naked voice and bellowed out that cry for all to hear. The truth is, we of the inner core circle, with the exception of the nomad who worshipped in his own way as was his right and privilege, had over the preceding excruciatingly difficult months taken to singing out this phrase at various points during our devotions to affirm that the redemption had already begun. I had set it to music so that we could chant it over and over again, like an hypnotic refrain, a mantra, a chorus, breaking out in ecstatic dancing, whirling in a trance until we either took off to outer space from spiritual uplift or melted down from physical exhaustion. The verse was a variation based on the salutation spoken by Bathsheba to her husband, King David, as he lay dying, probably with the exquisite Shunamite virgin stretched out naked in the bed under the covers alongside him warming him up like a human hot water bottle. Years earlier, when Ima Temima and I were still in apprenticeship to Abba Kadosh, a’h, as we bathed in the spring of Ein Feshkha, our holy mother had addressed me as My Batsheva, adding that every human being, regardless of gender, needs a wife. On the first level, this was a reference to what would eventually become my official appointment as secretary, traditionally a woman’s role, gal Friday, among other duties perpetuator of the legacy of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, with the responsibility to preserve the teachings and stories and history that otherwise would have been lost by raising my woman’s naked voice through speech, song, and above all through writing, a medium our holy mother personally shunned for mystical reasons. Writing is murder, our holy mother would sometimes cryptically say—and yes, I could not have agreed more, writing is very hard, it’s hell, it’s torture, which is why I procrastinate so much and avoid it for as long as possible and am always pounding as with a sledgehammer to break down my writer’s block. So unshakable was Ima Temima’s refusal to write, as it happens, that had we been dealing with an ordinary mortal here I would have diagnosed this aversion as an extreme case of graphophobia or another anxiety disorder of some sort. But given the stature of the personage in question, I have concluded that this acute negative reaction to the act of writing was a further teaching from our holy mother concerning how a leader’s time might be most optimally allocated. Important leaders, world class celebrities, major public figures, and the like, do not waste their time writing. For that they have support staff, chroniclers, scribes, official biographers, secretaries, speech writers, ghost writers, assistants, aides, clerks, and other such wives like myself.
On a deeper level, though, I also understood intuitively that, like Batsheva, I was first and foremost being impregnated with prophetic powers capable of envisioning the messianic line destined to manifest itself through the coveted neighbor’s wife scooped up from her bath, Batsheva, the name by which our holy mother captured me, down through the generations to the end of time culminating in HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, and that I was being charged above all with protecting and enabling its full realization. Not for a single moment has my faith wavered in the redemptive mission of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, who except for the irrelevant gender factor is a perfect candidate for the messiah according to the traditionally accepted definitive arbiter Rabbi Dr. Moses son of Maimon, known as Rambam; in an open equal-opportunity nondiscriminatory job market Ima Temima fulfills the Maimonidean messianic qualifications—that’s the bottom line. Our belief in the arrival of our holy mother as the full-fledged messiah was, and remains, so strong that even as we ministered daily to the weakening and deterioration of the physical vessel that housed the messiah, and even now after the concealment of the physical instrument, the cry of Tekhi! May She Live On And On! still bursts out of our throats spontaneously, not only during prayer but also in the absence of any apparent external stimulus, as if we are gasping for breath—Tekhi! And I cannot even count how often our cries of Tekhi! were greeted by nods or even on occasion a confirming smile under the veil from our holy mother prior to the concealment, a clear sign to us that the messianic materialization we foresaw and all of our aspirations for salvation were acknowledged and approved by our holy mother. Ima Temima was supportive. Our holy mother would deliver. Our holy mother would deliver us—when and how as yet to be determined.
For me, at issue was never the absolute given that HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, would sooner or later emerge in messianic splendor but rather the delicate but crucial matter related to how to sell this radical idea in the public arena, not only the heretofore unimaginable concept of a woman messiah that provokes such cognitive dissonance, but also how to factor in commonly held notions relating to death. For to the uninitiated, Ima Temima during the stage prior to the concealment might have looked like just another very sick and very decrepit and very out-of-it old lady in end-stage full-body systemic failure going the way of all flesh. On top of that, there was and remains the heavy business of what in polite circles some might term the resurrection thing, to put it even more bluntly, a second coming, for Jews an extremely sensitive subject, a real sore spot as it relates to a messiah figure. Even in a case that does not involve death, merely concealment, our holy mother’s return nevertheless evokes the corrosive myths and madness of Christianity, one of the two of the three major Western religions that had ripped us off so brazenly and persecuted us so relentlessly for being the first, the originals, the chosen ones. Yet despite all that, we await the return, we believe.
In such a sensitive climate, therefore, my strategy was diplomatic—an abiding private faith coupled with working clandestinely behind the scenes to usher in the golden age over which HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, would preside as messiah. In a way, I was carrying out a disinformation campaign, for my public stance then was that of an anti-messianist with regard to our holy mother in order not to alert and put on guard the establishment rationalists and skeptics (and needless to say, also the sexists), but what I was in reality was an Ima Temima Messiah Marrano for my commitment to a more secret, undercover process through which I had no doubt the truth would inevitably be revealed on the day of the arrival so that nobody could ever again deny it. The nomad, on the other hand, the impresario of the coronation, pushed full speed ahead for a public in-your-face emanation in order to hasten the coming out of the closet of our holy mother as the messiah. On this matter, he and I were in violent disagreement.
THANK GOD I was informed of the coronation stunt in time to raise my woman’s naked voice in this emergency situation and shout out my Tekhi! It was at least a form of damage control, for it was critical that any influential cynic witnessing this coronation imposed upon us by the aboriginal Canaanite not conclude that our holy mother was just another messiah-syndrome victim from breathing in the radioactive microbes of Jerusalem’s supernatural air, or that the cloaked figure being drenched with oil making deflecting hand gestures in the wheelchair was actually stricken by the impostor syndrome, attributable to a disabling sense of fraudulence at being hailed the messiah. Moreover, the Tekhi! is exceptionally potent and healing, especially when combined with Temima, as in Tekhi Temima!, two words that in mystical Gematria numerology, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet possessing a numerical equivalent, together add up to 913, exactly the same sum as the very first word of the Torah, Bereishit, “In the Beginning.” All of this is so incredibly special, I cannot even begin to describe the comfort it afforded us during those dark days, for it confirmed for us how beginnings merge with endings, how inextricably bound up they are with each other, how what might seem like an end (for instance, what the unenlightened might call death) is actually a beginning (the advent of the messiah, the raising of the dead). And as an added bonus, if you flip over the 9, you get 613, corresponding to the number of mitzvot in the Torah, the sum total of negative and positive commandments, the don’t-do’s and the do’s, from some of which we women are so patronizingly exempt. There are times when numbers speak more eloquently than words—mystically, not superstitiously, I hasten to add.
The numerical resonance of the Tekhi Temima! hinting at the imminent messianic age when we women will be liberated to fulfill all of the mitzvot is so meaningful words are inadequate to penetrate this territory, it requires the perfection, the absoluteness of numbers. Still, I was furious with the nomad for staging the travesty of the public anointment. It was at best age abuse, at worst blasphemy and sacrilege, and so the next day, Adar six, when I was summoned by the chronically grieving Rizpa toward evening to the private chambers of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, I regret to report that I lost my cool entirely, I was powerless to manage my anger.
When I arrived in the inner sanctum our holy mother, unveiled and noticeably more frail, more shriveled and withered and mottled no doubt due to having been dragged out in the cold to be displayed in the nomad’s obscene circus, was in bed alongside the little mother Torah, the two wooden rollers of its scroll poking out from the covers like rabbit ears perked up at attention alert to danger. Aishet-Lot was sitting at the table under the window, not knitting this time but stitching together a garment of white linen, while Rizpa, compulsively bunching and stroking one of the clusters of ritual fringes at the corner of her apron like worry beads, remained standing humbly at the door not venturing to step more deeply into the room. The nomad was nowhere in sight I was relieved to find. Aishet-Lot set down her work and rose to hand me a folder containing full instructions regarding the reburial of the bleached bones of our holy mother’s “sister,” Ketura, a’h, from their temporary resting place in Be’er LaHai Ro’i in the wilderness to the northern garden of our “leper” colony alongside our high priestess Aish-Zara, za’zal. Most importantly, the packet provided the information I needed as to whom to contact to expedite the transferral of the remains of Ima Temima’s mother, Mrs. Rosalie Bavli, z’l, from her grave in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, New York, also to the northern garden of our “leper” colony, to be placed in the same bed in which our own holy mother soon planned to enter the concealment stage that precedes and heralds the revelation. “And I want my little stuffed animal in there with me too,” an ancient voice called out.
So unaccustomed had I grown to hearing that voice during this bleak period that it did not immediately register with me that it was truly our holy mother speaking, like the little boy Samuel in the Tabernacle at Shilo who did not realize he was being addressed by God Himself, that he was experiencing his first nocturnal prophecy. The consequence of this was that when I finally turned toward the source on the bed with the question writ large on my face as to what was this mystical entity our holy mother referred to as a “stuffed animal” and I saw Ima Temima’s arm caressing in answer the little mother Torah in its worn, well-loved plush mantle now fully visible from top to bottom, and beneath it, pushing it up into view ever higher, rising from under the covers alongside our holy mother like the devil from hell, I saw the fiendish face of the nomad grinning madly, swelling indecently, followed by the red blotches of his neck and shoulders, I was speechless, my woman’s naked voice failed me, the sight totally blew my mind.
I have to admit that at this point I lost it completely. How dare he? I reached for the staff propped now against the wall, grabbed it, and began flailing wildly in the direction of the nomad. I was out of control, I was grunting like a savage, I never knew I was capable of such a violent, primitive outburst, I wanted nothing more than to smash him to pieces. Fortunately, he had the animal instinct to leap from the bed to save his own skin, which also spared me from God forbid accidentally striking our holy mother so close by, an innocent civilian caught up in a war zone (a calamity that would have driven me up to a mountaintop to throw myself off like his father, Abba Kadosh, a’h, was thrown), in the process flashing his entire body monstrous with ulcerations and excrescences, grabbing a cloth from the pile on the bed to cover his nakedness as he ran for safety and squatted against the wall snarling like a feral cat with eyes of crystal, reminding me as never before of his father before him who had been the glue connecting Ima Temima to me for which I shall always be indebted to him. At the same time, Aishet-Lot, all one hundred-plus kilos of that monumental prophetess of the past, threw herself on top of me despite the fact that I am her superior in the school for prophetesses deserving of her respect and pinned me to the floor. She detached the stick from my hands finger by finger as I wailed beneath her, and passed it to our holy mother.
HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, planted the staff on the floor beside the holy bed holding it erect with one arm extended supported by Rizpa through the night. What I saw with my prophetess’s vision from under the pillar of salt that was Aishet-Lot was our holy mother’s hand stroking the rod with tender encouragement all night long until the next morning when it budded, then blossomed, then bore fruit.
That was the morning of the seventh of Adar. I had been released early at dawn for good behavior from under my prophetess Aishet-Lot and had taken my place against the wall among the others keeping vigil when the Hephzibah staff burst forth in full bloom and the ancient voice, beloved by all of us, was heard for the last time. “Bitter almonds for women—thorns and thistles for men. We have all been cursed, women and men alike. None of us has been spared. Where I am going no man will ever touch me again. I will miss that above all. In spite of everything, my desire is for him. For your salvation I had hoped, O Lord.”
As I said, this occurred on the seventh day of Adar, the birthday of Moses Our Teacher and also, it should be noted, the day on which, one hundred and twenty years later, he died by the kiss of God, which is fatal. To die on the same date as one’s birth is a rare privilege of profound import, a sign of pure righteousness, a sign that the individual so set apart possesses godlike qualities, constantly being reborn and dying at the same time, the same moment even, eternal renewal, a perfect circle; such a person is immortal, it is an attribute of the messiah. The stunning truth, however, is that Ima Temima, though born on the seventh of Adar like Moses Our Teacher, did not as some deluded individuals may claim and superficial appearances might suggest also “die” on that date like Moses but rather entered a period of hiding from which we anticipate an imminent emergence in messianic glory.
What happens to the body is beside the point; despite the truism not everyone must die. Enoch, who walked with God and is no more—he did not die for God loved him and took him. Jacob, who might have had a glimpse into the end of days, merely let out a gasp, an agonized exhalation (the penultimate va’yigvah) and was collected to his fathers, the text does not in the usual close-the-book way explicitly add that he also died. And Elijah the Tishbite, who as everyone knows will return in the messianic period to answer all unresolved questions and dilemmas, made the most spectacular exit of all, ascending to heaven in a whirlwind in a chariot of fire drawn by blazing horses. Father! Father! Israel’s chariot and horsemen! his disciple Elisha cried out.
And so, when on Adar seven, which is also our holy mother’s birthday, Ima Temima’s breathing grew more and more grating and wheezing, shallow and labored until it became manifest to us that HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, had receded to the furthest end of a tunnel like a microscopic dot and entered the concealment space, we also raised our voices and cried out, Mother! Mother!—and spontaneously we joined hands and whirled in a circle raising our women’s naked voices and singing joyously, Tekhi! Tekhi! Tekhi!—for we understood that our holy mother had merely moved on to the next station in the messianic journey that would soon lead back to us and nail down the redemption. Our universe is filled with all sorts of phenomena we do not see with our eyes but whose effects we experience, belowground and aboveground, surrounding us everywhere, atoms and electrons, for example, the invisibility of God Himself. In the same way, we would soon no longer see our holy mother, our holy mother would go underground as it were into hiding, it would be as if our holy mother were rendered invisible behind a curtain or screen, veiled by concealment as the physical container of Ima Temima had been veiled, but the power and mystery, the wisdom and benevolence of the unseen presence would still remain active and exert its force until the ultimate rising and revelation.
For this reason in this chronicle that I have been charged with keeping I do not now use a traditional honorific for our holy mother to denote a person who has God forbid “died,” such as a’h, aleha ha’shalom, peace be upon her, or z’l, zikhrona li’vrakha, may her memory be a blessing, or even za’zal, zekher zaddeket li’vrakha, may the memory of the righteous one be a blessing, which I attach regularly to the name of our beloved high priestess Aish-Zara, za’zal, for example, who has gone on to the next world, and for whose return we long every day with the raising of the dead that will accompany the coming of the queen the messiah. Rather, to the name of HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv I append and always shall append the acronym shlita, may She live on for many good long years (the only time, I might point out, that I permit myself to use for purposes of translation the pronoun in connection with our holy mother, which I regard as vaguely tainted with disrespect). This is because HaRav Temima Ba’alatOv, shlita, is not “dead.” Simple minds, based on the news of what is said to have transpired, may automatically file our holy mother away, dismiss our holy mother, slap a “death” certificate on our holy mother and consider the case closed. Unfortunately for them, they are not gifted with the spiritual powers or vision to grasp the essence.
For the messiah, death is not an option.
OUR 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.