After Papa's death, I had no reason to remain in Yavneh. I didn't want to get married, and inside me a voice repeated over and over "No! You are not cut out for a woman's life." My father studied Torah with me as though I were his son, and a son to him is what I felt.
Finally, on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashana, I girded my lions and told him:
"Papa, I have the soul of a man."
"So why then were you born a woman?"
"Can heaven make mistakes?"
"No. Never."
"But I know I am a man."
"It is I who've made a mistake in teaching you Torah."
"Did not the Lord say to Shmuel: 'For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart?'"
"You know the Tanakh says a thousand things about the duty of women for every one about His mercy for those who sin."
"Well, maybe one in every thousand women is supposed to be a man."
"You are a woman, and you shall learn no more Torah."
On the shabbos after Yom Kippur, the Holy One struck him dead. Whether the Lord punished my father for his judgement, I knew that in the next world, Papa would look on me with mercy. He was buried by Monday and the shiva continued till Sukkot.
Alone the first night of Sukkot, seventeen days after my confession, I dressed myself in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, his gardel and the dagger he carried within it, then studied my reflection in the mirror. I took his dagger from the gardel and shore my hair. I was very nearly the handsome young man I knew myself to be. All of Yavneh was asleep; and after I packed clothes, mine along with his, I lit my father's long pipe and left his house forever as I smoked.
I feared it was a terrible sin in the eyes of the Holy One BBH to abide my journey's assistance from fellow Jews without telling them of intentions they'd regard mortally sinful; but requiring provisions and food for my journey, I sold my body so that the sin would be only upon me and those who sought sin: once a day for six days in Ashdod, six in Ashkelon, six in Gaza. After eighten days fornication, I walked into the Sinai Desert where once trod Moses and Miriam. So many mountains and any among them could be where Moses received the Law.
I was tall and thin, possessing narrow hips and deep voice. There was but one feature that made me seem woman. My chest was irepressibly cumbersome. Some older men of Yavneh would repugnantly indicate the extent of my womanly endowment and the hands of a few would cheapen modesty upon them.
In the Sinai, having heard not a single sound for three days but my footsteps and breath, I striped down to nakedness under night's cover, and shivering in the wind I grabbed hold of Papa's dagger and chopped those breasts from my body; and as I howled blessings to the Gates of Heaven I attempted to stop bleeding with sand. Even as I wailed I passed out, yet I awoke midday more man than woman. I searched the ground for their remains, but my breasts were gone, disappeared into wind and sand.
Our people are not even supposed to look upon women as women. They are wives, mothers, eventually our daughters, slightly unfortunate children of God, but as women? No, we go discreetly with our god, and that which God joins to us, we abide with discretion. As Egypt does we indulge our base lust, but Egypt copulates wantonly amid the day's acrid heat. Egyptians must think us next to celibate; because for us it is done in the bed chamber, on the Sabbath night, by cover of darkness. Our bodies are but vessels for the wondrous, and Jews make love not to the body but the soul.
I was told it would take 30 days for a beginner to cross the Sinai but a bedouin could cross in ten; I had eighteen days' rations but I could not abide one more day's harlottry. As a woman, I could not reliably join a travel partner, nor could I travel by caravan as fellow passengers would forever know my secret after I excised those wrongly placed casabas. It was only alone in the desert that I could annoint my identity, and therefore determined to sojourn immediately, perform the amputation whenever I encountered three days' silence, recover swiftly from the excision, renounce desire for rations with extreme abstention, journey with infinite haste, and pray to the CBH for assistance.
Yet after eighteen days silence I was nauseous from lack of food and water. I had to walk bare chested. Every day my chest bled anew so the shirts must be used to stop blood, a procedure that demanded half my water supply. It seemed the CBH was without mercy for my plight as Papa said, yet on the nineteenth day when I thought of using the dagger on the rest of me, there appeared a small caravan. Its travellers saw the blood upon my chest, told me I was near death, and invited me to abide with them to rest and heal.
"A pregnant man..."
"What?"
"I've heard such things but never thought I'd minister to one."
"I'm pregnant?"
"Surely men won't recognize the symptoms."
"So I'm a man?"
"No less than I..."
"Are you a man?"
"Of a type..."
"What type?"
"The type that bleeds, same as you."
"You bleed?"
"I did."
"Has your monthly cycle ended?"
"No, but just like you I bled from what was severed."
"What was severed?"
The old healer pointed to his loins.
"I too heard of those whose testicles were removed in youth, but never thought such would be so."
"Is it any different than your people, who sever the foreskin of babes?"
"The babe is eight days old."
"It's still barbaric."
"But why would parents permit it?"
"So the child might be educated in the Pharaoh's service."
"The price of education is to relinquish manhood?"
"Of a type. It's said that the attractions of the palace are such that only eunuchs may survive the temptations of civil service without defiling the women at court."
"Do you desire to defile women?"
"Less than most men, but yes."
The eunuch administered to me an herb called silphium, and told me thrice daily imbibement would flush the fetus out. At the very moment of our arrival in Alexandria his medicine took root, and the healer threw the entire company out of the caravan so they would not witness its effect.
And for the second activity of my time in Alexandria, the eunuch did lead me into an underground passage beneah the ground that brought us directly underneath the palace of Cleopatra - a synagogue minyan where all its members were eunuchs in Egypt's public service.
"And who is this Reb Moshe?"
I had to think quickly what my name would be.
"We've just crossed the desert together but I actually never learned his...."
"...My name is Yanai-ben-Yokhanan of Yavneh."
Reb Moshe the healer immediately responded: "Reb Yanai, I don't think that's your real name."
"What?"
"You are now Yanai-ben-Yokhanan of Alexandria. He came here to stay and work."
"Peace be unto you Reb Yanai."
"Can you do a drasha?"
"Right now?... I guess..."
"So you're a khakham."
"Of a type..."
"And you are... one of us?... nu?"
Again Reb Moshe: "What gave it away?" The whole minyan laughed at a high pitch.
"And you can lain Torah?"
"Hen vaHen."
"So you're a Rabbi?"
"Of a type."
"Alright Rav, well, let's hear a drasha from you. We'll pick an easy one. Simchat Torah wasn't that long ago, so let's hear a drasha on B'reishit."
B'reishit. "In the beginning," the very first part of the Torah when CBH created the world, put Adam and Eve in the Garden then threw them out, watched passively as Cain slew Abel, then decided to destroy the world.
I quoted them the passage on how Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and realized their nakedness. "We should not presume to question God but God created our class of eunuchs and brought us to power. Perhaps He means to demonstrate through us that man can return to the Garden of Eden, where they are unaware of base desire, and therefore untainted by evil or shame."
I did not know men could applaud so lustily as these did.
"Well Rav Yanai, did you learn any other skills across the desert?"
"Of a type." (everyone laughed again)
"Well even if you have no skills like all the other Israeli Ravs, we can put you to work here in the palace. My name is Rav Yosef-ben-Ephraim and I'm chief of medical research to Pharaoh Cleopatra, blessed be her name, and in case you don't already know, you were riding through the Sinai with Rav Moshe-ben-Menashe, Cleopatra's chief physician - sent to Jerusalem to look at King Herod's arm. What's it look like?"
"It works but it keeps getting infected. The Mamzer's in serious trouble..."
"Then all Judea's in serious trouble. You did the right thing in coming here Rav Yanai."
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