AS Motty awoke one morning from impure dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a very large goy. In his waking half-sleep, he lazily scratched his hairy chest.
Hairy?
He threw back the covers. His chest had become broad and muscular. A thick coat of curly black hair spread across it and trailed down his stomach. His newly muscular arms and shoulders felt huge in his tank top. Motty didn’t remember owning a tank top, certainly not one that said Budweiser across the chest.
Awesome.
He moved his heavy arms up and down, watching the muscles expanding and contracting beneath his suddenly taut skin. Beginning on his shoulder and extending down his arm was an elaborate tattoo of a blond woman in a bikini straddling a large sword that rested in the eye socket of a bloody skull.
He was overcome with the desire to build something with hammers and wood.
He ran to his mirror. From the neck up, nothing had changed. He was all Motty. From the neck down, he was a burly construction worker. It gave the effect of some sort of experimental head reassignment surgery gone terribly wrong. In addition to the tank top, he was wearing a red and black flannel plaid shirt buttoned only to the chest, and faded denim jeans, torn at the knees, from which hung a yellow and black Stanley tape measure marked “Contractor Grade.” Motty unzipped the jeans and looked inside his black underwear. Black underwear?
“So that’s a foreskin.”
It occurred to Motty that somewhere out there was a once-burly, previously uncircumcised construction-type person running around with the body of an eighteen-year-old Lubavitcher yeshiva student.
“But,” thought Motty, “that’s his problem.” He stopped himself. “That’s his fuckin’ problem.”
Nice.
There was a loud rapping on his bedroom door. “You’re going to be late for shul!” his mother shouted. “Motty!” He had completely forgotten it was Shabbos.
Motty swung the door open.
“Ta-da!”
Motty’s massive goyish body filled the doorway. His mother’s mouth dropped open in a silent scream. Her eyes rolled backward into her head, her eyelids fluttered and she fell face first onto the hard bedroom floor.
She was out cold.
Motty lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom. He put her in bed, installed some ceramic tile in the master bath and left for shul.
With his goyishe legs and powerful stride, it took him only half the usual time to reach the synagogue, but he still walked in right in the middle of the rabbi’s midservice sermon.
Everyone turned.
“Who dares to walk in right in the middle of the rabbi’s speech?” their faces all seemed to ask.
A tall shaygitz in jeans wearing a yarmulke and a tallis was not the answer they were expecting.
The chief rabbi motioned to the cantor, who motioned to the assistant rabbi, who hurried down the aisle to the man in the jeans and motioned to him to please come outside.
“Are you a guest or friend of a current shul member?” asked the assistant rabbi.
Motty explained it all as simply and directly as he possibly could. He was Motty Aranson. He had awakened as a goy, it was as simple as that, but clearly it was a matter of biology and not of belief, and he didn’t think it should change anyone’s opinion of him.
Motty asked that he please be allowed inside so as not to miss any more of the services.
The assistant rabbi kindly asked that Motty leave the premises before he was forced to call the police.
The doors opened and Rabbi Epstein and Rabbi Akiva stepped outside.
A discussion ensued.
The central question, it seemed, was whether Motty was to be considered kosher or traif. Motty explained that he should be allowed to enter the shul because religion is based on belief, which is a function of thought, which is a function of your brain, which is located in your head. So, Motty observed, the head was more important than the body.
The assistant rabbi disagreed. “When God prohibits the bringing of the flesh of an unfit animal into the Temple, he specifically says flesh. Why? Because God is telling us that no matter how pure the thoughts of the pig might be, his body is still what matters most. We learn from this that the body matters more than the head.” Motty’s body was prohibited from entering the shul, the assistant rabbi declared; however, if they were to cut Motty’s head off, they would certainly be permitted to carry it inside.
Rabbi Epstein shook his head. “Even if we knew for certain,” he said, “that a pig had only pure thoughts, and that the pig believed with his whole pig heart in The Holy One Blessed Be His Name, the ancient rabbis still forbid us to eat it.” Thus, Rabbi Epstein held, irrespective of whether they could allow Motty into the synagogue, they were, without question, prohibited from eating him.
“That’s utterly ridiculous,” argued Rabbi Akiva. “If the pig believed in Hashem—as it is written, With all of your heart and all of your mind—the ancient rabbis would certainly deem the pig kosher.” Therefore, according to Rabbi Akiva, they could not bring Motty into the synagogue, but they could probably eat him. And so it was decided.
“Motty?” the assistant rabbi called out.
But Motty had already gone home.
His mother had still not awakened. He regretted having frightened her so, and decided to prepare the Shabbos lunch for the family so she could rest a bit longer. He also built a second level to the deck and installed some landscape lighting. For entertaining.
He was in the kitchen preparing a kugel tray when he heard his father come through the front door, speaking loudly with a number of other familiar voices.
“I’m in the kitchen!” Motty called out. He recognized the other voices as belonging to Rabbi Brier and Rabbi Falkenstein.
“We didn’t see you outside shul,” his father was saying, “so we just …”
The three men stepped into the kitchen and froze at the sight of him.
Motty tried to explain.
“I woke up like this.”
“Shaygitz!” Motty’s father spat.
“I’m not a shaygitz!” said Motty, “I’m your son, Motty. Listen! Listen, it’s just some kind of a miracle, a Shabbos miracle. I don’t know how or why it happened, but I can’t see why it should make you feel any diff—”
Motty’s father smashed him across the face with his Talmud Bavli. The oversized hardcover book caught Motty just below his left eye, and he fell to the floor.
“Traif!” yelled his father. “You dare to touch our food with your goyishe hands! You anti-Semitic …”
He raised the Talmud up to strike the hideous creature again, but Rabbi Brier and Rabbi Falkenstein intervened.
A discussion ensued.
“Rabbi,” asked Motty’s father, “should not a father correct his son? Is it not written ‘Teach them to your children and their children after them?’”
Rabbi Brier explained that while the Torah certainly encourages the hitting of a no-good, rotten child, if the child is traif, you are forbidden from hitting him with a holy book. He suggested that they strike Motty again, only this time with a leather belt, or perhaps a flat piece of unholy wood.
Rabbi Falkenstein disagreed. “Are we not commanded to ‘make for yourself a gate out of the Torah?’ Could that not be interpreted as permission to use the Torah for your own defense? And is it not true that the best defense is a good offense?”
Rabbi Brier concurred, but added that, if possible, the blows should be concentrated on the head and face, which they knew for certain to be kosher.
Rabbi Falkenstein praised Motty’s father for never once hitting his son below the neck, and they all agreed that Motty’s father was obligated to continue pummeling Motty with his sacred book. They shook hands, and Rabbi Brier handed Motty’s father the Talmud.
“Motty?” his father called out.
But Motty had already gone.
He was on his way to his yeshiva, hoping that at least his friends would accept him. He already knew from the incident at shul that he probably wouldn’t be allowed inside the building, so he stood outside and shouted up at the dormitory window.
“Yitzi! Yoel! Yankel!”
They all came outside to meet him.
Motty offered Yankel a handshake, but Yankel held his hands up.
“Traif,” Yankel explained.
“Come on, guys, check it out,” said Motty, pulling up his sleeve to show them his tattoo. When he flexed his biceps, the woman on the sword seemed to dance. He’d been thinking about getting more ink done.
“Maybe on my back, you know? Eagle wings or something.”
Yitzi stepped forward. “Motty, it’s a big question if we can still be your friends.”
A discussion ensued.
Yitzi explained that he was basing his reasoning on the prohibition from Deuteronomy, “Do not intermarry with them, for they will turn you onto their gods.” “If marrying was not allowed,” Yitzi put forth, “can we not also assume ipso facto that friendship, too, is prohibited?”
Yoel disagreed. He pointed out that the greater commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself specifically avoids saying whether the neighbor is Jewish or non-Jewish. Why? “To show us that when it comes to human acts of kindness—such as friendship—religious orientation is of no consequence.” According to Yoel, their friendship wasn’t merely allowed, it was obligatory.
Yankel argued. “On the contrary,” he said. “When Hashem commands us to go to Canaan, He says ‘And you shall drive them out of your midst and destroy their idols and images.’ What do we learn from this? That not only are we forbidden to be friends with Motty, it is incumbent upon each one of us to kill him.”
“Yes,” agreed Yitzi. “With a sword.”
“Blessed is Hashem,” said Yoel, checking his pockets for a sword. “Motty?” he called out, looking around.
But Motty had already gone back home.
He decided he would just leave. Go somewhere else. Even back when his body was Jewish, he’d often suspected that his mind was not.
He could find a place in the city, transfer into NYU, maybe take a film class.
He could find people who would love him for who he was, not for who he was no longer.
When Motty got home, he was met by several officers from the Rockland County Sheriff’s Department. They wanted to question him in connection with the death of his mother.
“May I quickly use the bathroom?” Motty asked.
Officer Landry felt that they should not allow him to use the bathroom, as the Sergeant had specifically commanded them to “apprehend” the suspect.
“Yes,” argued Officer McKenna, “but is it not written “To Protect and Serve?”
In the living room, the rabbis were debating whether Motty should be punished as a Jew who kills another Jew or as a non-Jew who kills a Jew. Motty walked past, went upstairs, tied a rope tightly around the part of his body where the Jewish part met the goyish part, and quietly hung himself in the shower.
MOTTY sat up in heaven and looked down on his funeral taking place below. A black hearse led the procession, followed closely by his father’s beige minivan and a black Lincoln Town Car full of rabbis. They drove all the way to the Gates of Zion Cemetery in Spring Valley, where they were stopped at said gates by the chief of security.
There seemed to be some confusion.
A rabbi from the cemetery office came hurrying down to the gates. His name was Rabbi Pearlstein.
Rabbi Pearlstein was of the opinion that Motty’s body could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery because it had a tattoo, though if they were to cut his head off, it would be permissible for them to just bury that.
A discussion ensued.
Motty laughed.
Motty’s father looked around. Who was laughing?
“Motty?” he called out.
But Motty had already gone.