Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee

 To my esteemed colleagues and our honored donors,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt, though the warmth of the Babylonians I've known, through your commitment to Israel, to your commitment to keeping the Jewish people alive, Babylon is nearly as much home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, forever testing what he could get away with, but he was human and could strive half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod.

However evil Herod seems, he's much moreso than that.  He is the darkness forever present in Jewish History, the Amalek that it's arguable has always been within us. We claim Herod is not one of us, and yet if he isn't, has not the rise of someone like Herod always been inevitable?

From the moment we arrived in Israel, there were people already present. People we have conquered again and again for a thousand years and killed off by the tens of thousands over and over. Our people are continually dispersed, yet these people always remain, fight against us upon our return, continually lose, only for us to overmatch them and kill them again the way we ourselves were killed by others. This is as much part of God's plan as our return. We will be thrown out of Israel until such time as we learn to stop ourselves from aping the slaughter perpetuated upon us.   

Because through it all the Kingdom of Judea is a place of unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all. But there is something in the holiness of this land that provokes the dark within us all, and makes us unworthy to stay in this holiest of places. We leave and we suffer until such time as our sins are cleansed to make our return, only yet again for our behavior to force us to leave. 

Herod is the divine punishment for our people's sins. He is the murder we perpetrate visited back upon us. We cannot resurrect those Herod killed off any more than we can raise the souls our people have killed. 

I hear from the auditorium's consternation that this sentiment is as controversial as I presumed it would be. Perhaps you feel as you have to the boot of gentile hands upon your necks in an entirely different way from how they're placed on ours. Perhaps we in Israel give Jews a worldwide reputation as homicidal and slaughterous. The eyes of the world are forever looking to Israel, judging us as harshly as the Holy One does, condemning us in their minds as more animal than man. 

What sort of God would allow His people such an impossible situation? What sort of God would willingly place His nation in such peril? Why would He do it? What does He gain from our uncertainty?

We cannot know the divine will, but we can interpret, we can guess, we can plan accordingly, and perhaps this guessing game is the purpose that leads us to the crown of wisdom. The ability to interpret is the Jewish people's essence. Hashem left it up to us to locate connections between the world of God and the world of man. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and make the deals. We are the variables in God's experiments, we are the beta testers through which God observes the results of his new research. God is perfect, but perhaps His perfection is perfect because He is always evolving, rather than perfect because He is. Perhaps He is God not because He knows all but because He learns all. And because He learns, we Jews are those who learn half His truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells within various places of not knowing.  

So therefore, without the Jewish people, there can be no 'this world,' because how could God create a world without testing its results? Before this world, there was only the world to come, but we bring parts and essences of the next world down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but however much He knows, only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine Hashem's intentions, it is that we find the good within the bad just as we are easily tempted by seeing the bad within the good. 

(The text of Hillel's prepared remarks cuts off here. - RW)

Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - Half

  To my esteemed colleagues and our honored donors,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt, though the warmth of the Babylonians I've known, through your commitment to Israel, to your commitment to keeping the Jewish people alive, as though Babylon is nearly as much home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, forever testing what he could get away with, but he was human and could strive half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod.

However evil Herod seems, he's much moreso than that.  He is the darkness forever present in Jewish History, the Amalek that it's arguable has always been within us. We claim Herod is not one of us, and yet if he isn't, has not the rise of someone like Herod always been inevitable?

From the moment we arrived in Israel, there were people already present. People we have conquered again and again for a thousand years and killed off by the tens of thousands over and over. Our people are continually dispersed, yet these people always remain, fight against us upon our return, continually lose, only for us to overmatch them and kill them again the way we ourselves were killed by others. This is as much part of God's plan as our return. We will be thrown out of Israel until such time as we learn to stop ourselves from apeing the slaughter perpetuated upon us.   

Because through it all the Kingdom of Judea is a place of unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all. But there is something in the holiness of this land that provokes the dark within us all, and makes us unworthy to stay in this holiest of places. We leave and we suffer until such time as our sins are sufficiently cleansed to make our return, only for our behavior to force us to leave again. 

Herod is the divine punishment for our people's sins. He is the murder we've perpetrated visited back upon us. We cannot resurrect those Herod killed off any more than we can bring raise the souls of those our people have killed. 

I had half expected the hall to boo me out of the synagogue by now, but perhaps you feel as we don't have to the boot of gentile hands upon your necks as we in Israel give Jews the reputation abroad as murderous and slaughterful. The eyes of the world are forever looking to Israel, judging us as harshly as the Holy One does, condemning us in their minds as more animal than man. 

What sort of God would allow His people such an impossible situation? What sort of God would willingly place His own nation in such peril? Why would He do it? What does He gain from our uncertainty?

We cannot know the divine will, but we can interpret, we can guess, we can plan accordingly, and perhaps this guessing game is our purpose. Perhaps the ability to interpret, to locate connections between world of God to the world of man, is the Jewish people's essence. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and make the deals and. We are the beta testers, we are the variables in God's experiments. We are those who learn half the truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells securely in various places within the abyss of not knowing.  

Without the Jewish people, there is no 'this world.' There is only the world to come, but we bring parts and partials of the world to come down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse all the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine God's will, it is that we find the good within the bad just as we are easily tempted by seeing the bad within the good. 

Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - A Bit More

  To my esteemed colleagues and honored guests,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt as though this Babylon of Judean dreams is as home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even the worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, always testing what he could get away with, full of dangerous mischief, but he was human and strove half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod. 

Yet through it all the Kingdom of Judea is suffused with unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all.

But we can interpret, we can guess, and perhaps the guessing game is our purpose. Perhaps the ability to interpret, to connect the find connections between world of God to the world of man, is the Jewish people's essence. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and set up the deals and make the trades. We are the beta testers, we are the variables in God's experiments. We are those who know half the truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells securely in various places within the abyss of not knowing.  

Without the Jewish people, there is no 'this world.' There is only the world to come, but we bring parts and partials of the world to come down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse all the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine God's will, it is that we see the good within the bad just as we are tempted to see the bad within the good. 

TCP: Prepared Remarks of Rav Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - A bit more beginning

 To my esteemed colleagues and honored guests,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt as though this Babylon of Judean dreams is as home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even the worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, always testing what he could get away with, full of dangerous mischief, but he was human and strove half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod. 

Yet through it all the Kingdom of Judea is suffused with unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He has kept his promise in full. 

TCP: Prepared Remarks of Rav Hillel to the Judean Distribution Committee of Babylon - Beginning

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. 

TCP: Whenupon He Shouted

To our Rabbanim Hillel and Shammai,  

This letter is for your eyes only. If it is to be discovered, we're all the dead men we may soon be. 

Herod says nothing, he merely sits in full royal robes in a makeshift throne on a raised platform as a tribunal of 150 Pharisees sit below him in the temple to do his every bloody bidding. Nicolaus of Damascus lays out the charges and prosecutes every case - including his sons. There is no counsel for the defense. Everyone is an agent of his now executed children and heirs, everyone is treasonous, everyone is put to death by unanimous consent. Gradually, a trickle of tribunal members are put before the tribunal themselves, where the tribunal votes them as guilty of sedition as the alleged partisans. Herod replaces them on the tribunal with the alleged guilty's sons or brothers, where they have no choice but vote the death of kin. 

There was, however, revolt among the Sadducee class implemented by ones Yehuda ben Tzipori and Matisyahu ben Margalot. They lead a force to storm the temple, cut Rome's eagle down with an axe, threw the eagle down the western wall. For their futile stunt, they were burnt alive right in the Temple courtyard in front of the tribunal and all the Sadducees who followed them, whereupon the Sadducee offenders were hung on crosses at Golgotha Hill. 

It is said they were inspired by rumors of Herod's death, but no Jew is ever so lucky. Herod refuses to die. The maggots invading his boils are plainly visible. It's claimed he cannot talk without slurred speech, while his entire right side is plainly paralyzed. Amid these hundreds of showtrials, Herod's made only one intelligible comment whenupon he shouted 'Palestine has defeated Israel!' 

And that is not the worst that's said. It's said when Herod dies that he's ordered execution of the entire Sanhedrin that same day so that he might stop celebrations of his demise. Rather, the day of his death would be a day of national mourning. 

My dear Rabbanim, wherever you choose to go, if you return to Jerusalem, Judaism itself shall die. 

Ever your bokher,

Gamliel 

 

TCP: Baba Ben Buta - Complete

  Hillel: Are you sure this is the way?

Shammai: This is the only way. 

Hillel: Not what I meant. 

Shammai: This is the way we get to his cave. 

Hillel: I don't understand why we couldn't have taken a bedouin with us who knows the caves.

Shammai: And compromise our identity?

Hillel: What identity? We're in disguise! 

Shammai: We can't take the chance. 

Hillel: Nobody knows we're missing yet. If we don't get back by sunup tomorrow everyone will assume we've fled and they'll kill us.  

Shammai: They might kill us if we stay. 

Hillel: They'll kill us if we go, they'll kill us if we stay, why don't I go and you stay and we'll see who's alive by next week. 

Shammai: You want to go? Go. But it's your beloved people we're trying to save. 

Hillel: Wait, what are you trying to save?

Shammai: The sanctity of Hashem. 

Hillel: So you admit that Hashem means nothing without people to worship Him. 

Shammai: If I had known a brief walk in the desert is the only thing that would make Rabban Hillel grouchy I'd have taken him on a walk eighteen years ago. 

Hillel: I'm grouchy because we're about to get killed and you're taking me on a walk to a cave to visit a Rabbi we don't even know is alive. 

Shammai: He's alive.

Hillel: You'll have to excuse me for doubting you when you just told me for the first time that he survived the Sanhedrin massacre. 

Shammai: He's here. 

Hillel: How do you know?

Shammai: Because he said he would be. 

Hillel: What did he say? When did he say it?

Shammai: He told me in a dream. 

Hillel: Doesn't your school reject dreams as otherworldly temptation?

Shammai: We reject dreams unless we can prove to an authority that they come from God. 

Hillel: And your proof is?..

Shammai: My proof is when we find who we're looking for. 

Hillel: That's a dumb rationalization even for the School of Shammai. 

Shammai:  There is no school of Shammai, there's a School of Baba ben Buta. I'm just the Rabbi who spreads his word. 

Hillel: 'Spreads his word?' What on earth? You sound like a goy! 

Shammai: Once you meet him you'll understand. 

Hillel: What's there to understand?  Herod had a stroke and went meshuggeh. It doesn't get more simple than that.

Shammai: Nothing is simple in the eyes of Rav Baba. 

Hillel: Just what we need right now, something complicated. 

Shammai: That's why we need Rebbe Bava. He'll know. 

Hillel: What will he know?

Shammai: I don't know, but I know he'll know. 

(enter bedouin from behind a rock)

Bedouin: You seek the one who knows?

Hillel: GAH! 

Shammai: We seek nothing. 

Hillel: Genug Shammai. (to bedouin) We seek the one who knows!

Bedouin: He who knows is here. Very close by. Listen closely and you can hear what he sees. 

(they listen to the wind, and they hear two very faint voices, one shouting gibberish, the other shouting in terrible pain) 

Shammai: We do not seek whomever you think we do. 

Hillel: Shtum Shammai. 

Bedouin: You seek of whom I speak. 

Shammai: We do not. Zei gezunt and be gone. 

(the Bedouin disappears)

Hillel: Farkakte's sake, he disappeared. You don't fuck with a dybbuk like that. 

Shammai: LANGUAGE!

Hillel: Whatever, we'll be dead tomorrow. How many geists will you shoo off just because you don't want anybody to know where we're going.  

Shammai: We don't seek who he's taking about because Rebbe Bava is blind. 

Bedouin: (still invisible) Yet he who knows can see. 

Shammai: A blind man doesn't see. 

Hillel: We're here because your dream said to go to the House of Bread just like the prophet said, and that's what you saw in your dream. How many nesses do we have to see before you get it into your keppe that this invisible bokher is why we're here. 

Shammai: (shouts to the air) Zein nito! Be gone! 

Hillel: Fuck him don't listen! Show where you want us to go! 

(A star appears to shoot and slowly falls to earth, it illuminates a dilapidated stable)

Hillel: Well it can't hurt us to see what's there. 

 (Hillel and Shammai knock on the door of a horse stable. Inside they hear overwhelming screaming and cheers.) 

Shammai: Rav Baba? Rebbe Bava?! He doesn't hear us. 

(Shammai opens the stable door. Inside is Rav Baba, looking at a video images of the Nuremberg Rally from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. After three seconds, the images stop.)

Rav Baba: Komm mein kint! Shammai, you've done well. 

Shammai: Not well enough it seems. 

Rav Baba: It is Hashem's will you should fail, just as it was that I fail too. 

Shammai: When did you ever fail?

Rav Baba: To pacify Herod, and even that was a success. 

Shammai: You failed to succeed?

Baba: I succeeded to fail. 

Hillel: Oh... He succeeded to fail......

Baba: It was Hashem's will that I fail, and now I see what Hashem wanted. 

 Hillel: Ah... Now he sees what Hashem wanted....

Shammai: What does Hashem want?

Baba: He wants the Jewish people to leave Israel. 

(silence)

(Hillel bursts into laughter)

Baba: I came to Herod shortly before the Sanhedrin were massacred. The guards nearly killed me for approaching him. I told him it was not too late to repent his misdeeds, but he must do something for the Lord which only he could do. 

(silence)

Hillel: OK, I'll bite. What could only Herod do?

Baba: Only Herod had the funds to build the temple to the glory I thought Hashem wanted.

Shammai: The glory you THOUGHT Hashem wanted?

Baba: I thought glory was what Hashem wanted, but all glory but Hashem's is false glory. 

Hillel: So you're the reason Herod renovated our temple?

Baba: God is the reason Herod rebuilt a temple. His temple. Not God's. I was the mouthpiece through which God inspired Herod to build the temple. 

Hillel: So if I'm to understand correctly: you were the mouthpiece through which God told Herod to build the temple God doesn't want...?

Baba: God wanted Herod's temple, but God wanted Herod's temple so that He may destroy it. 

Shammai: God builds things so that He can destroy them?

Baba: There is a tree of life and a tree of death. God creates so that He can destroy and destroys so that He might create again.

Shammai: Master, surely our God is not so fickle. 

Baba: God's constancy is often fickle to our eyes. 

Shammai: Mein Rebbe, I have missed your wisdom every day for thirty-six years, but even I cannot believe you that God would be so indifferent to our essence. 

Baba: You were not brought here for easy emes. He that sits in the heavens laughs at us in derision. 

Shammai: Master!... Why?...

Baba: There is a world past this one, and we will know more when we arrive there. Perhaps there are many worlds with many different truths. 

Shammai: Rebbe, you just spoke heresy!

Baba: Treat what you don't understand with a little khesed Shammai. 

Shammai: The khesed you claim our god lacks?

Baba: He lacks nothing, neither khesed nor malice. 

Shammai: What has become of you?

Baba: Sha, sha kint.

Shammai: You have succumbed to the Other. 

Baba: I did not succumb to it, but Hashem sometimes does. 

Shammai: Hillel we must leave this evil place. 

Baba: There are evil actions which are not beneath Hashem, and there are actions great enough to be beyond his competence. 

Hillel: I actually want to hear more. 

Shammai: My master has become the evil he bravely fought. 

Hillel: I thought your master was a schmendrik, but your master may understand things we don't. 

Baba: I understand nothing Hashem did not wish for me to understand. 

Hillel: Rav Baba, please understand, Herod is very much alive and still more evil than you remember. He had a stroke after getting sepsis in his right arm. Since then he's had terrible brain damage and paranoia: he ordered one son executed and thrown his other two in jail. He's obsessed with a prophecy about a usurper about to be born in a house of bread, so he may be about to issue an order killing babies and young children around the country. Even if we wanted to stop him, he still has a bodyguard of 2,000.

Baba: The House of Bread is here. 

(pause)

Hillel: Shammai, how far are we from Beyt-Lekhem?

Baba: The border of Beyt-Lekhem is roughly a thousand cubits from where you stand. 

(they suddenly hear the cry of a baby. Enter Joseph) 

Yoseph: Koom arang my friends! Rav Balthasar has told us so much about his kavodiker guests! Kavodiker guests of a kavodiker freint! So much nakhes you must have from everything you do! And barukh hashem, all these presents you sent! Gold! Myrrh! Frankincense! I'd send you a thank you note but business has obviously been slow this year and I had to sell off my stationary. Koom, meet my nayes sohn, Yehoshua, along with his beautiful mother, Miriam. Everybody's named Miriam these days but this Miriam, this Miriam just had a baby! Miriam! Sha the baby already! We thought she would have to give birth in some cave but we met Reb Balthasar while registering for the Census, ochen vey that census, we were told by our elders we could register in Natz'rat where we live, but I'm from Beyt-Lehem and moved to Natz'rat because the wood there is so nice. I'm a carpenter by the way, and I had to go all the way from Natz'rat to Beyt-Lehem because I have to register in my birthplace. Did you know you had to register in your birthplace? Zicher I didn't and neither did my landsmen. I had to register, but I didn't know that Miriam was pregnant when we left and who would have? I'm sure King Herod does enough shtupping for us all but who has time around Pesach for anything in the bedroom am I right? Anyway, the whole spring you're lucky to have time for one quick one and that one gets you pregnant right when you have to make a huge nesiyeh from one land to the other. But anyway, we met Reb Balthasar in town and he's been such a mensch to give us this shed where we've been staying for more than a month. He really is nice for a greycer goy isn't he? 

Hillel: Yes, he is. 

Yoseph: All this naarishkeit about a God who's light and dark and doesn't know light from dark, what kind of schmegegge is that? Anyway, I just let him go on about his meicehs and I don't say anything because I'm a good guest but you and I both know it's a lot of bupkis. Right?

(Shammai clears his throat)

Yoseph: He goes on and on and on about how my son is going to be some king that overthrows Herod, but then he says that once he becomes king he should pay attention to his followers because they're going to be just as bad as Herod, so I say to him 'what does Yehoshua need to become king for?' He can just build houses like his Tateh, it's a nice living, at least it is when you're not running around to alla drerden telling the Romans you got born. Don't get me wrong Miriam is very happy her son's gonna be a king but if you ask me it's a lot of tsuris for not much. King Herod is a king and he seems pretty tsoredik these days.

Hillel: If you'd excuse us just for a moment Reb Yoseph, we will come meet Yehoshua in just one minute but we'd just like to understand something Rav Balthasar told us. 

Yoseph: Oh... alright... I understand. 

Hillel: Thank you Reb Yoseph. 

Yoseph: No, it's alright. A boy gets born and you'd think people would want to meet the boy. 

Hillel: Please understand. 

Yoseph: I understand! There's something really important here. What other reason would there not be for celebrating with a new father who just had his first born?

Hillel: Thank you Reb Yoseph. 

Yoseph: It's just... what is so important?

Shammai: Reb Yoseph ple...

Yoseph: A bokher just has his first child and all these kavodiker guests come from far away to be there for the birth, you'd think they'd want to celebrate the simcheh with him but apparently there's more important stuff to talk about. 

Hillel: Reb Yoseph, please try to understand we do want to share your simcheh and will come to you in just a moment. 

Yoseph: Oh you want to share your simcheh with me! So why don't you? What's stopping you? Apparently something so important is happening that you need to stop celebrating a simcheh for it. 

Hillel: But Reb Yoseph, it IS that important. 

Yoseph: Of course it is! Otherwise why would you interrupt a new family to talk about your vichtiger things that are too important to bother with a big simcheh! 

Hillel: Alright, this can wait... Let's meet your son. 

Yoseph: And my wife!

Hillel: And your wife...

Theory about the Missa Solemnis

 Theory: one I'm not sure I believe. In his late works, Beethoven wrote a series of novels in sound in which he tells us exactly what it's like to be from his era and locale: one in the final four sonatas, one in the final five quartets, and an orchestral one begun with the ninth symphony that doubtless had a few more to go. Scraps of every musical style he'd ever heard is in these works from sublime church counterpoint to garish street music, and late Beethoven functions as a kind of diary for them: perhaps a better way of referring to it is an 'autobiography in sound.'

The one thoroughly complete novel in a single work is the Missa Solemnis. A work so thoroughly atraditional that when the traditional ending insists on itself, there's still an hour of the work to go. It took Beethoven four years to write a work of this scale, even had he ten more years he would have not attempted another.

The Missa Solemnis is a near-literary stream of consciousness about Beethoven's experiences of the sacred. If you try to analyze it in a traditional harmonic way, you won't understand the work. This is, my guess, why Furtwangler abandoned performing the work during his Berlin period. True to his pessimistic nature, Adorno calls it an 'alienated magnum opus.' I suppose I understand why Adorno would think it alienated: think of Bach's B-Minor Mass and how it smiles at the question of transcendence, while Beethoven brings to the transcendent questions an unmistakable question mark. But anything that strives however mightily for the infinite will only bring an impression of the infinite down to earth rather than the real thing, and in that sense Beethoven's grandest work is no different from Bach's. If the Missa Solemnis is an alienated work, then all the most transcendent art is similarly alienated.

In that sense, the composer the Missa prefigures most is Mahler, so it probably follows that IMO, the conductors who get closest to its spirit are conductors who excel in Mahler: Gielen, Bernstein, Kubelik, a few other familiar names too, who perceive that this musical world must be made to sound as though it contains literally everything.

The musical key to organizing the Missa Solemnis is counterpoint, but the formal key cannot be found in music. I believe the key to organizing the Missa Solemnis is literary and philosophical. Doubtless Beethoven was extremely familiar with Goethe's Faust, with which it shares a seeming formlessness in its structure and seeming randomness in its themes. But in both of them, the teeming abundance of invention creates a shape of its own, a shape that cannot be contained by traditional boundaries of form.

Take Beethoven sonatas 106-111 together, and you have a larger metawork in which the ultra-contrapuntal ending of the Hammerklavier is the mere conclusion to a first volume of four, and taken together, the four are far more meditative and probing than even their most profound moments sound when played piecemeal in performance. In the same way, the Gloria is merely a conclusion to the second volume of five in which Beethoven mounts his ultimate answer to the questions of transcendence, or, perhaps, his ultimate question about the answers of transcendence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcGS6zs6Rxs

TCP: Bava ben Buta - a little more

 (Hillel and Shammai knock on the door of a horse stable. Inside they hear overwhelming screaming and cheers.) 

Shammai: Rav Baba? Rebbe Babba?! He doesn't hear us. 

(Shammai opens the stable door. Inside is Rav Babba, looking at a video images of the Nuremberg Rally from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. After three seconds, the images stop.)

Rav Baba: Komm mein kint! Shammai, you've done well. 

Shammai: Not well enough it seems. 

Rav Baba: It is Hashem's will you should fail, just as it was that I fail too. 

Shammai: When did you ever fail?

Rav Baba: To pacify Herod, and even that was a success. 

Shammai: You failed to succeed?

Baba: I succeeded to fail. 

Hillel: He succeeded to fail......

Baba: It was Hashem's will that I fail, and now I see what Hashem wanted. 

 Hillel: Now he sees what Hashem wanted....

Shammai: What does Hashem want?

Baba: He wants the Land of Israel to fall. 

(silence)

Baba: I came to Herod shortly before the Sanhedrin were massacred. The guards nearly killed me for approaching him. I told him it was not too late to repent his misdeeds, but he must do something for the Lord which only he could do. 

Hillel: OK, I'll bite. What could only Herod do?

Baba: Only Herod had the funds to build the temple to the glory I thought Hashem wanted.

Shammai: You THOUGHT Hashem wanted?

Baba: I thought glory was what Hashem wanted, but almost all glory is false glory. 

Hillel: You're the reason Herod built our temple?

Baba: God is the reason Herod built the temple. I was just the mouthpiece through which God inspired Herod to build the temple. 

Hillel: So if I'm to understand correctly: you were the mouthpiece through which God told Herod to build the temple He doesn't want?

Baba: God wanted Herod's temple, but God wanted Herod's temple so that He may destroy it. 

Shammai: God builds things so that He can destroy them?

Baba: There is a tree of life and a tree of death. God creates so that He can destroy and destroys so that He might create again.

Shammai: Master, surely our God is not so fickle. 

Baba: God's constancy is often fickle to our eyes. 

Shammai: Mein Rebbe, I have missed your wisdom every day for thirty-six years, but even I cannot believe you that God would be so indifferent to our essence. 

Baba: You were not brought here for easy emes. He that sits in the heavens laughs at us in derision. 

Shammai: Master!... Why?...

Baba: There is a world past this one, and we will know more when we arrive there. Perhaps many worlds. 

Shammai: Rebbe, this is heresy!

Baba: Treat what you don't understand with a little khesed Shammai. 

Shammai: The khesed you claim our god lacks?

Baba: He lacks nothing, neither khesed nor malice. 

Shammai: What has become of you?

Baba: Sha, sha kint.

Shammai: You have succumbed to the Other. 

Baba: I did not succumb to it, Hashem has. 

Shammai: Hillel we must leave this evil place. 

Hillel: I actually want to hear more. 

Shammai: My master has become evil. 

Hillel: I thought your master was a schmendrik, but your master may understand things we don't. 

Baba: I understand nothing Hashem did not wish for me to understand. 

Hillel: Rav Baba, please understand, Herod is very much alive and still more evil than you remember. He had a stroke after getting sepsis in his right arm. Since then he's had terrible brain damage and paranoia: he ordered one son executed and thrown his other two in jail. He's obsessed with a prophecy about a usurper about to be born in a house of bread, so he may be about to issue an order killing babies and young children around the country. Even if we wanted to stop him, he still has a bodyguard of 2,000.

Baba: The House of Bread is here. 

TCP: Rav Baba ben Buta - Scene 2 Beginning

(Hillel and Shammai knock on the door of a horse stable. Inside they hear overwhelming screaming and cheers.) 

Shammai: Rav Baba? Rebbe Babba?! He doesn't hear us. 

(Shammai opens the stable door. Inside is Rav Babba, looking at a video images of the Nuremberg Rally from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. After three seconds, the images stop.)

Rav Baba: Komm mein kint! Shammai, you've done well. 

Shammai: Not well enough it seems. 

Rav Baba: It is Hashem's will. 

  had his right arm amputated. He's killed one son and thrown the other two in jail; he's about to literally issue an order  killing babies around the country and he still has a bodyguard of 2,000 so no one can stop him.

TCP: Rav Bava ben Buta - Scene 1

 Hillel: Are you sure this is the way?

Shammai: This is the only way. 

Hillel: Not what I meant. 

Shammai: This is the way we get to his cave. 

Hillel: I don't understand why we couldn't have taken a bedouin with us who knows the caves.

Shammai: And compromise our identity?

Hillel: What identity? We're in disguise! 

Shammai: We can't take the chance. 

Hillel: Nobody knows we're missing yet. If we don't get back by sunup tomorrow everyone will assume we've fled and they'll kill us.  

Shammai: They might kill us if we stay. 

Hillel: They'll kill us if we go, they'll kill us if we stay, why don't I go and you stay and we'll see who's alive by next week. 

Shammai: You want to go? Go. But it's your beloved people we're trying to save. 

Hillel: Wait, what are you trying to save?

Shammai: The sanctity of Hashem of course. 

Hillel: So you admit that Hashem means nothing without people to worship Him. 

Shammai: If I had known a brief walk in the desert is the only thing that would make Rabban Hillel grouchy I'd have taken him on a walk eighteen years ago. 

Hillel: I'm grouchy because we're about to get killed and you're taking me on a walk to a cave to visit a Rabbi we don't even know is alive. 

Shammai: He's alive.

Hillel: You'll have to excuse me for doubting you when you just told me for the first time that he survived the Sanhedrin massacre. 

Shammai: He's here. 

Hillel: How do you know?

Shammai: Because he said he would be. 

Hillel: What did he say? When did he say it?

Shammai: He told me in a dream. 

Hillel: Doesn't your school reject dreams as an otherworldly temptation?

Shammai: We reject dreams unless we can prove to an authority that they come from God. 

Hillel: And your proof is?..

Shammai: My proof is when we find who we're looking for. 

Hillel: That's a dumb rationalization even for the School of Shammai. 

Shammai:  There is no school of Shammai, there's a school of Bava ben Buta. I'm just the Rabbi who spreads his word. 

Hillel: 'Spreads his word?' What on earth? You sound like a goy! 

Shammai: Once you meet him you'll understand. 

Hillel: What's there to understand?  Herod had a stroke and went meshuggeh. It doesn't get more simple than that.

Shammai: Nothing is simple in the eyes of Rav Bava. 

Hillel: Just what we need right now, something complicated. 

Shammai: That's why we need Rav Bava. He'll know. 

Hillel: What will he know?

Shammai: I don't know, but I know he'll know. 

(enter bedouin from behind a rock)

Bedouin: You seek the one who knows?

Hillel: GAH! 

Shammai: We seek nothing. 

Hillel: Genug Shammai. (to bedouin) We seek the one who knows!

Bedouin: He who knows is here. Very close by. Listen closely and you can hear what he sees. 

(they listen to the wind, and they hear the very faint screaming of gibberish) 

Shammai: We do not seek whomever you think we do. 

Hillel: Shtum Shammai. 

Bedouin: You seek of whom I speak. 

Shammai: We do not. Zei gezunt and be gone. 

(the Bedouin disappears)

Hillel: Farkakte's sake, he disappeared. You don't fuck with a dybbuk like that. 

Shammai: LANGUAGE!

Hillel: Whatever, we'll be dead tomorrow. How many geists will you shoo off just because you don't want anybody to know where we're going.  

Shammai: We don't seek who he's taking about because Reb Bava is blind. 

Bedouin: (still invisible) Yet he who knows can see. 

Shammai: A blind man doesn't see. 

Hillel: We're here because your dream said to go to the House of Bread, and that's what you saw in your dream. How many nesses do we have to see before you get it into your keppe that this invisible bokher is why we're here. 

Shammai: Zein nito! Be gone! 

Hillel: Fuck him don't listen! Show where you want us to go! 

(A star appears to shoot and slowly falls to earth, it illuminates a dilapidated stable)

Hillel: Well it can't hurt us to see what's there. 

 

TCP: Bava ben Buta - Beginning

 Hillel: Are you sure this is the way?

Shammai: This is the only way. 

Hillel: Not what I meant. 

Shammai: This is the way we get to his cave. 

Hillel: I don't understand why we couldn't have taken a bedouin with us who knows the caves.

Shammai: And compromise our identity?

Hillel: What identity? We're in disguise! 

Shammai: We can't take the chance. 

Hillel: Nobody knows we're missing yet. If we don't get back by sunup tomorrow everyone will assume we've fled and they'll kill us.  

Shammai: They might kill us if we stay. 

Hillel: They'll kill us if we go, they'll kill us if we stay, why don't I go and you stay and we'll see who's alive by next week. 

Shammai: You want to go? Go. But it's your beloved people we're trying to save. 

Hillel: Wait, what are you trying to save?

Shammai: The sanctity of Hashem of course. 

Hillel: So you admit that Hashem means nothing without people to worship Him. 

Shammai: If I had known a brief walk in the desert is the only thing that would make Rabban Hillel grouchy I'd have taken him on a walk eighteen years ago. 

Hillel: I'm grouchy because we're about to get killed and you're taking me on a walk to a cave to visit a Rabbi we don't even know is alive. 

Shammai: He's alive.

Hillel: You'll have to excuse me for doubting you when you just told me for the first time that he survived the massacre of the Sanhedrin. 

Shammai: He's here. 

Hillel: How do you know?

Shammai: Because he said he would be. 

Hillel: What did he say? When did he say it?

Shammai: He told me in a dream. 

Hillel: Doesn't your school reject dreams as an otherworldly temptation?

Shammai: We reject dreams unless we can prove to an authority that they come from God. 

Hillel: And your proof is?..

Shammai: My proof is when we find who we're looking for. 

Hillel: That's a dumb rationalization even for the School of Shammai. 

Shammai:  There is no school of Shammai, there's a school of Bava ben Buta. I'm just the Rabbi who spreads his word. 

Hillel: 'Spreads his word?' What on earth? You sound like a goy! 

Shammai: Once you meet him you'll understand. 

Hillel: What's there to understand?  Herod had a stroke and went meshuggeh. It doesn't get more simple than that. 

Shammai: That's why we need Rav Bava. He'll know. 

Hillel: What will he know?

Shammai: I don't know, but I know he'll know. 

 had his right arm amputated. He's killed one son and thrown the other two in jail; he's about to literally issue an order  killing babies around the country and he still has a bodyguard of 2,000 so no one can stop him.

TCP: An Ancient Scholarly Note

"Sources around the world have been destroyed, but those who have read manuscripts report that at the re-consecration of Jerusalem's second temple upon the completion of King Herod's renovations, the king was said to masturbate into the Holy of Holies in front of his subjects and guests, to their general uproar. When faced with an insurrection from his subjects, he simply them blocked from the Temple Mount so they might watch as he had every Torah in the temple burned from the roof."

- Eusebius Polymocrates

(Editor's note: This is one of the very few remaining textfragments we have from Eusebius Polymocrates. 

Dr. Raginmund Westenbach, Free University, Berlin 1952)

TCP: Transcript of Herod at Caesaria

 "We've got a half-mile of real estate. What do you say? Should I make Caesaria my capital? Why shouldn't such a beautiful city be the capital? It's got a beautiful seaview, you can never get that in Jerusalem. My friend Augustus used to say to me "you should try to make the capital somewhere other than Jerusalem. Those Jerusalemite elites never loved me and they never loved you. You should try to make the captial Sebastia, it's right on the top of the mountains, it's a perfect fort!" But I can't move the capital away from Jerusalem. Do you have any idea what kind of machareikeh those Jerusalemites would start if I ever tried to do that? But still, we can dream of a new capital and one day, maybe when they're not looking...

And let's give you a load of our beautiful new High Priest Simon ben-Boethus. He's one of a kind, folks!  This guy is going to administer the new loyalty oath like he just came up with it himself! I've never heard anyone administer a loyalty oath like this guy. He said to me "Herod!" and that's what my friends call me, I never go in with this 'Your Majesty" drek, you all can call me Herod too, you know what's what, not like those rich Jerusalem elites and their crooked Rabbis, and I know, you're supposed to say honorable things about the Rabbis but between you and me, folks, those Rabbis are bad people, very bad people, they really are, and just want the power to tell you what you should do, but we're not gonna let them tell us, are we?

(cheer)

TCP: Shimon of Jamnia - Rough Draft

Shammai: You commanded me to audience majesty?

Herod: Yes, have a seat. 

Shammai: I presume this is about o... .... Majesty, may I inquire what's happening to your arm?

Herod: Nothing that's your concern. 

Shammai: Majesty, please forgive me for pointing it out, but your right forearm is twice the size of your left. 

Herod: Of course it's about the oaths. Six thousand of your followers refuse to take the loyalty oath. Are your bochers really that stupid?

Shammai: I can't be responsible for those who don't take your oaths.

Herod: Of course you're responsible! Every one of your beheymes refuses it. 

Shammai: Am I the Pharisees' keeper?

Herod: You're THESE Pharisees' keeper. It's not like they respect Hillel. 

Shammai: They don't know him as we do. 

Herod: You know what I mean. They don't follow Sanhedrin rulings. 

Shammai: So?

Herod: Everything they follow is written by a nudnik named Rav Shimon of Jamnia. 

Shammai: Is your majesty implying something?

Herod: Do you think I'm stupid? 

Shammai: Anything but, majesty. 

Herod: You think Hillel is stupid?

Shammai: Is what I think of Rabban Hillel what we're discussing?

Herod: If you're gonna publish your own rulings that contradict the court you can at least do it under a name that doesn't sound exactly like Rav Shammai of Yavneh. 

Shammai: Well if Majesty is so curious, he should know that yes, I have sometimes written under the name Shimon of Jamnia, but never since I was summoned to become the Sanhedrin's court father. 

Herod: Well, Shimon of Jamnia is surely aware that I could have you charged with perjury. Tribe of Reuben vs. Hezekiah, Yahya vs. Binyamin , Yitzhak vs. Yitzhak, these are cases the Sanhedrin heard after your arrival. 

Shammai: I have not perjured myself. There is no Shimon of Jamnia. It's a common name many rabbis have used. 

Herod: Oh you're good. You're as good as Hillel. 

Shammai: I suppose I should take that as a compliment?

Herod: The highest. You have a code with your followers. There is no place called Jamniah, it's probably just a way of saying Yavneh in some slave language. 

Shammai: No language I'm familiar with, Majesty. 

Herod: For decades, the Sanhedrin ruled on the laws and the sane part of this country followed its rule, but for twenty-five years there's been this northern fanatiker named Shimon of Jamnia who issued legal ruling after rabbinical writing that declares the exact opposite of the Sanhedrin on every rule, but now, instead of writing on regional cases in the northern tribes, Shimon of Jamnia's now issuing entirely separate rulings about Sanhedrin court cases. Are you going to plead ignorance of this?

Shammai: These writings have crossed my desk. 

Herod: These opinions began right after you came to the high court! 

Shammai: Your majesty, I have not once written under the name of Shimon of Jamnia since I came to the Sanhedrin. 

Herod: Of course you haven't, you just have any one of your twenty chassids on the court write it for you. For all I know they're just taking dictation, and these are rulings on everything from prohibiting conversions to the direction of Hanukkah candles... for fucking Yahweh's sake, what Haredi meshuggener needs a separate ruling over which way to light the candles? 

Shammai: Your majesty, I cannot presume to control the religious practices of hereti... Your majesty there is liquid issuing from your arm. 

Herod: There's always liquid on my arm. Don't change the subject. You have your Labans publish rulings for you, and those are the rulings your northern schnorrers observe. 

Shammai: Surely you're not suggesting that there's more than one court in the land. 

Herod: This country has two courthouses: the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The House of Hillel for the sane people who just want to live their lives, and the House of Shammai for idiots who throw their lives away on Hashem. 

Shammai: Your majesty forgive me but you promised independence for the courts and it's not for you to judge how your subjects choose to worshi

Herod: I promised the independence of one court, not two. 

Shammai: There is only one court. 

Herod: Of course there is, you secretly don't recognize the Sanhedrin. You only recognize the court of Shimon of Jamnia, who apparently isn't you. 

Shammai: If that's true, why did Rabban Hillel appoint me as his court father?

Herod: Because Hillel knows that he has to appease all your northern mamzers by letting you do all those tzudreyt things you do in the n... ... ... ...

Shammai: Majesty?... ...

Shammai: ... ... Majesty?

Herod: ...North! Forcing widows to marry their brother-in-laws, not letting widows have a dowry on remarriage, having separate plates for each food, saving all your meat for Shabbes even if the meat spoils, having to go all the way to Jerusalem to eat certain fruit, forcing people in the North to freeze to death every night in the Sukkah: what sort of mole people live like this?

Shammai: Majesty forgive me for pointing this out but before you listed your misinterpretations of our northern practices you just froze for a mo

Herod: I freeze now, it's something that happens. Don't change the subject. 

Shammai: Forgive me Majesty, I'm not sure I follow what the subject is anymore. 

Herod: The subject is that your followers refuse to take the loyalty oath. 

Shammai: Umm, Forgive me, Majesty, I cannot be held responsible for the actions of people who would presume to follow what they think I want. 

Herod: What you want is obvious. 

Shammai: Then please enlighten me Majesty, what do I want? 

Herod: That your... your northerners won't take the oath. I'm... I'm trying to run a kingdom here that doesn't break into civil war. 

Shammai: I doubt you're in any danger of that. 

Herod: Civil war... is what you Israelites do, it's your fa... favorite shabbos activity. 

Shammai: Well if your majesty is worried about civil war surely a mere oath won't stop your subjects from pursuing...

Herod: It will remind them that if they cross me I wo... ... won't hesitate to kill them. 

Shammai: Surely the king is not so vengeful as to kill six thousand men just because they might feel a loyalty to Hashem. 

Herod: I should have known. After all these years I still can't believe that it's all about your farshtu... farshtunkiner god. You're all just naarish enough that I believe you. 

Shammai: Northerners are not naarish, but we do take our emuno seriously. 

Herod: Seriously or not, tell your Shimon of Jamnia that I need that oath. 

Shammai: I keep telling you, there is no Shimon of Jamni

Herod: Don't play.... dumb khaleryah, you know what I need. And remember, I've done worse than.... kill six thousand, but no. I'm not that vengeful, though I can make them wish they were dead. 

Shammai: Your majesty might consider that such behavior might be another reason why they refuse to take the oath. 

Herod: Oh I'm well aware of why they REALLY don't take the oath Rebbe, but since I'm... so hated, I have to ensure rule of law somehow. 

Shammai: You might consider giving the north a greater role. 

Herod: Rav Shammai of Yavneh! I never thought I'd see the day you actually played politics. 

Shammai: All I'm saying is that the north should have a greater say in the matters of state and law. 

Herod: Tayerer gott, I... I don't believe it. Yes. It's a shame the North doesn't have a bigger say. It's a shame after all this time that we never worked together. 

Shammai: We do work together! 

Herod: We work against each other. I need someone who works with me. 

Shammai: Don't you have Hillel?

Herod: Hillel's weak, you know it as well as I do, I need a Chief Rabbi of iron. 

Shammai: Your majesty. What kind of iron?

 

Herod: The iron Hillel will never be. 

Shammai: Majesty. Surely if you communicated your wishes to Hillel. 

Herod: I communicate them every day. They go into a tohu vavohu and I never see them again. Maybe it's time for him to join it. 

Shammai: Em... If your majesty means what I

Herod: I'm not going to commit any violence against the Northmen, but if they refuse to take the oath I will tax two-thirds of their holdings. If they take the oath, I will annihilate the threat from Hillel and push Shimon of Jamnia's rulings through the Sanhedrin, but I need to know, when I have my own laws to add, will you push through my ruli.....

....

....

....

....

....

....

....

Shammai: Your Majesty? 

Your Majesty? 

YOUR MAJESTY?! 

KING HEROD?!?

(Shammai waits a moment, thinks about it, then slaps Herod as hard as he can. Walks to the door of the room, then thinks twice of it, comes back to Herod and slaps him again. Then he leaves the room. ) 

TCP: Shimon of Jamnia - 80%

 Shammai: You commanded me to audience majesty?

Herod: Yes, have a seat. 

Shammai: I presume this is about o... .... Majesty, may I inquire what's happening to your arm?

Herod: Just a small matter. 

Shammai: Majesty, please forgive me for pointing it out, but your right forearm is twice the size of your left. 

Herod: It's the least of my worries. Anyway of course it's about the oaths. Six thousand of your followers refuse to take the loyalty oath. Are your followers really that stupid?

Shammai: I can't be responsible for those who don't take your oaths.

Herod: Of course you're responsible for it! Every one of your pharisee extremists refuses to take the oath. 

Shammai: Am I the Pharisees' keeper?

Herod: You're THESE Pharisees' keeper. It's not like these guys have much respect for Hillel. 

Shammai: They don't know him as we do. 

Herod: You know what I mean. They don't follow Hillel's rulings. 

Shammai: So?

Herod: Their legal documents are written by someone named Rav Shimon of Jamnia. 

Shammai: Is your majesty implying something?

Herod: Do you think I'm stupid? 

Shammai: Anything but, majesty. 

Herod: You think Rabban Hillel is stupid?

Shammai: Is what I think of Rabban Hillel the matter of discussion?

Herod: If you're going to publish your own rulings separate from the court you can at least do it under a name that doesn't sound like Rav Shammai of Yavneh. 

Shammai: Well if Majesty is so curious, he should know that yes, I have sometimes written under the name Shimon of Jamnia, but never since I was summoned to become the Sanhedrin's court father. 

Herod: Well, Shimon of Jamnia is surely aware that I could have you charged with perjury. Tribe of Reuben v. Hezekiah, Yahya v. Binyamin , Yitzhak v. Yitzhak, these are cases the Sanhedrin heard after your arrival. 

Shammai: I have not perjured myself. There is no Shimon of Jamnia. It's a common name many rabbis have used. 

Herod: Oh you're good... You're as good as Hillel. 

Shammai: I suppose I should take that as a compliment?

Herod: The highest. You have a code with your followers. There is no place called Jamniah, it's probably just a way of saying Yavneh in some slave tongue I'm not familiar with. For years, the Sanhedrin presided and the sane part of this country abided by majority rule, but there was this northern fanatic named Shimon of Jamnia who issued book of legal ruling after rabbinical writing, but now, instead of writing on regional matters in the northern tribes, Shimon of Jamnia's now issuing entirely separate rulings on Sanhedrin decisions. Are you going to plead ignorance of this?

Shammai: These writings have crossed my desk. 

Herod: These opinions began right after you came to the high court! 

Shammai: Your majesty, I have not once written under the name of Shimon of Jamnia since I came to the Sanhedrin. 

Herod: Of course you haven't, you just have any one from the twenty chassids in your pocket write your rulings for you. Rulings on everything from prohibiting immediate conversions to the direction of Hanukkah candles... what sort of Haredi meshuggener needs a separate ruling over which way to light the candles?

Shammai: Your majesty, I cannot presume to control the religious practices of hereti... Your majesty there is liquid issuing from your arm. 

Herod: There's always liquid issuing from my arm. Don't change the subject. You have your Labans publish rulings for you, and those are the rulings your northern na'ars observe. 

Shammai: Surely you're not suggesting that there's more than one court in the land. 

Herod: This country has two courthouses: the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The House of Hillel for the sane people who just want to live their lives, and the House of Shammai for idiots who throw their lives away on Hashem. 

Shammai: Your majesty forgive me but you promised independence for the courts and it's not for you to judge how your subjects choose to worshi...

Herod: I promised the independence of one court, not two. 

Shammai: There is only one court. 

Herod: Of course there is, you secretly don't recognize the Sanhedrin. You only recognize the court of Shimon of Jamnia as legitimate. 

Shammai: If that's true, why did Rabban Hillel appoint me as his court father?

Herod: Because Hillel knows that he has to appease your northern partisans by letting you do all those tzudreyt things you do in the n.... ... 

Shammai: Majesty?... ...

Shammai: ... ... Majesty?

Herod: ...All those tzudreyt things you do in the North! Forcing widows to marry their brother-in-laws, not letting widows have a dowry on remarriage, having separate plates for each food, saving all your meat for Shabbes even if the meat spoils, having to go all the way to Jerusalem to eat certain fruit, forcing people in the North to freeze to death every night in the Sukkah... what sort of mole people live like this?

Shammai: Majesty forgive me for pointing this out but before you listed your misinterpretations of our northern practices you just froze for a mo...

Herod: I freeze now, it's just something that happens. Don't change the subject. 

Shammai: Forgive me Majesty, I'm not sure I follow what the subject is anymore. 

Herod: The subject is that your followers refuse to take the loyalty oath. 

Shammai: Er... I cannot be held responsible for the actions of people who would presume to follow what they think I want. 

Herod: What you want is not in question. 

Shammai: Then please enlighten me Majesty, what is? 

Herod: That your... your northerners won't take the oath. I'm... I'm trying to run a kingdom here that doesn't break apart into civil war. 

Shammai: I doubt you're in any danger of that. 

Herod: Civil war... is what you Israelites do, it's your fa... favorite shabbos activity. 

Shammai: Well if your majesty is worried about civil war surely a mere oath won't stop your subjects from pursuing...

Herod: It will remind them that if they cross me I... ... won't hesitate to kill them. 

Shammai: Surely the king is not so vengeful as to kill six thousand men just because they might feel a loyalty to Hashem. 

Herod: I should have known. After all these years I still can't believe that it's all about your farshtunkiner god... you're all just naarish enough that I believe you. 

Shammai: Northerners are not naarish, but we do take our emunoh seriously. 

Herod: Seriously or not, tell your Shimon of Jamnia that I need that oath. 

Shammai: I keep telling you, there is no Shimon of Jamni

Herod: Don't play.... dumb, you know what I need. And remember, I've done worse than.... kill six thousand, but no. I'm not that vengeful, though I can make them wish they were dead. 

Shammai: Your majesty might consider that such behavior might be another reason why they refuse to take the oath. 

Herod: Oh I'm well aware of why they REALLY don't take the oath Rebbe, but since I'm... so hated, I have to ensure rule of law somehow. 

Shammai: You might consider giving the north a greater role. 

Herod: ... ... Rav Shammai of Yavneh! I never thought I'd see the day you actually played politics. 

Shammai: All I'm saying is that the north should have a greater say in the matters of state and law. 

Herod: Tayerer gott, I... don't believe it... Indeed it is a shame the North doesn't have a bigger say. 

---------------------------------------------------------

Shammai:  and it's a shame after  we couldn't work together. 

Shammai: We do work together! 

Herod: We work against each other. I mean work together. 

Shammai: If your majesty means what I...

Herod: Rav Hillel is weak, you know it as well as I do, I need a rabbi of iron.

----------------------------------------------------------------

TCP: Shimon of Jamnia - Beginning

Shammai: You commanded me to audience majesty?

Herod: Yes, have a seat. 

Shammai: I presume this is about oaths? 

Herod: Of course it is. Six thousand of your followers refuse to take the loyalty oath. Are you really that stupid?

Shammai: I can't be responsible for those who don't take your oath.

Herod: Of course you're responsible for it! Pharisees who abide by the strictest legal interpretations refuse to take the oath. 

Shammai: Am I the Pharisees' keeper?

Herod: Well it's not like these guys have much respect for Rav Hillel. 

Shammai: They don't know him as we do. 

Herod: You know what I mean. They don't follow Rav Hillel's rulings. 

Shammai: So?

Herod: Their legal book was written by someone named Shimon of Jamnia. 

Shammai: Is your majesty implying something?

Herod: Do you think I'm stupid? 

Shammai: Anything but, majesty. 

Herod: You think Rav Hillel is stupid?

Shammai: Is what I think of Rav Hillel the matter of discussion?

Herod: If you're going to publish your own rulings separate from the court you can at least do it under a name that doesn't sound like Shammai of Yavneh. 

Shammai: Well if Majesty is so curious, he should know that yes, I have sometimes written under the name Shimon of Jamnia, but never since I was summoned to become the Sanhedrin's chief justice. 

Herod: Well, Shimon of Jamnia is surely aware that I could have you charged with perjury. Tribe of Reuben vs. Hezekiah, Yahya vs. Binyamin, these are cases the Sanhedrin heard after your arrival. 

Shammai: I have not perjured myself. Shimon of Jamnia is a name that many rabbis have used. 

Herod: Oh you're good. You're as good as Hillel. It's a shame we couldn't work together. 

Shammai: We do work together! 

Herod: We work against each other. I mean work together. 

Shammai: If your majesty means what I...

Herod: Rav Hillel is weak, you know it as well as I do, I need a rabbi of iron.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Shammai: Surely the king is not so vengeful as to kill six thousand men just because their highest loyalty is to Hashem. 

Herod: I've done worse, but no. I'm not that vengeful, though I can make them wish they were dead. 

Shammai: Your majesty might consider that such behavior is why they refuse to take the oath. 

Herod: Oh I'm well aware of why they don't take the oath Rebbe, but since I'm so hated, I have to ensure rule of law somehow. 

Shammai: You might 

TCP: The Sybil at Masada - Rough Draft

Nu Shammai?

I trust in my absence you've upended every one of my rulings and the Kingdom of Judea is now the theocracy of your geshlechter wet dreams. More seriously, I trust you in my absence to be fair and broadminded tzaddik I know you are; but don't worry, if you do anything too egregious Gamliel will report back to me and we'll call back all the disputants, at which point they'll watch me dump a plate of falafel over your head. 

Don't get me wrong I wish I was back in Jerusalem making headway on our mountain of parchmentwork, but our dear leader really has something extraordinary here in the desert. He's literally built a castle out of a mountain's rock, it serves both as desert resort and a military fortress people can flee to under siege. 

That doesn't mean it's easy to get there. Ochen vey the trip up the mountain is excruciating and you have to start at first light or else you're too winded to climb the farshtunkiner thing. Climbing it takes forever, it's murder on the knees, and by the time you're at the top you're too tired and hot to appreciate the place. 

Anyway I was obviously there to dedicate the synagogue, but who could be waiting for us but an Essene priest named Yochanan (they're all named Yochanan...). I know the Essenes know how to live in the desert like we never will, but he was just standing on one of the benches, waiting for us to get there as though anybody could have seen him, but clearly the guards had no idea he was there, and who knows? He might have been hiding in the palace for weeks!

I know the Essenes really get to you Shammai, but if you got to know the Essenes, you might be stunned by how much you have in common with them. They might live communisitically, but they do it so they can better live Hashem's laws. These are people so devoted to living like a mensch that most of them never get married or have relations. They don't own slaves because they serve each other. They don't swear oaths so they won't break them. They don't even trade because they view business matters as unclean. They even hold in their drek on shabbos to keep the day pure. Isn't this the kavonah you've always wanted from our Yisraelim?  I'm sure you don't like that they don't sacrifice animals, but nu, what's there to eat in the desert? 

Obviously, Herod made pretty quick work of this guy, but not before he rendered a pretty impressive prophetic speech. Anyway, this wasn't just an Essene, this was a rhetorician. I can't relate you the tone of his speech, but it was as incantory as anything you've heard in the beis hamikdash. We think prophets no longer walk among us, but if half of what this guy forecasts is true...

Try not to think about that for now. What's more important is that dear leader wants us to interpret his sayings, so I'm just going to report to you the fragments I remember, and maybe you can help me interpret what that means for us. Among other things he said is that 'Rome is only conquerable from within', but also 'Israel shall conquer Rome.' He said 'the world has not and shall not change such as this for two thousand years', 'god will render god unto Rome,' but also 'through Rome shall gods conquer all.' 

Then there were his musings on our dear leader for which I'm sure said leader wants ample interpretation: 'Herod slays kings, yet a king is born shall slay Herod in a house of bread.' 'The king shall be as merciful as Herod vengeful, yet is Herod an angel next to this king's vassals.' 

 But most troubling is what he said about us, and this I remember quite clearly: 'After Herod shall the Lord cast Israel off unto the seventy-seventh generation. Herod's yoke shall be as a kiss. In Israel shall be found the mark of Cain, bless Israel and ye shall be blessed, curse Israel and ye shall be cursed. The Lord chose Israel as His instrument, and the Lord's instrument is a trumpet of judgement.'

As you can see, if this man is a true prophet his prophecies are deeply burdensome. 

I trust your discretion and good sense to let no one know until I return of this prophecy but certain members of the small court you think best suited to interpret it, I leave that at your jurisdiction. Upon my return we will of course discuss it in the small court. 

Abi gezunt and please thank Bernice for that wonderful kafta recipe, Doris swears it would have never occurred to her to put cinnamon in, 

Hillel

Israel/Palestine: 20 Questions

 

1. Does Netanyahu want a ceasefire?

No.

2. Does Hamas want a ceasefire?

No.

3. Whom do they think they're fooling?

Everybody.

4. Who are they actually fooling?

Nobody.

5. Why do millions on either side continue to support them?

Because people with authoritarian beliefs believe leaders lie to the public for their own good, and everyone who doesn't see what the the leader sees is too dumb to understand the truth.

6, Who is responsible for this impasse?

Technically, the Israeli and Palestinian governments, but actually it's everyone who supports the Israeli right (probably 3 out of every 8 Jewish citizens), along with everyone who supports Hamas (unable to be calculated). There is a sizeable part of both sides who still support Netanyahu and Sinwar because they long for this war to go on perpetually until one side is vanquished, which they delusionally believe is possible. Neither side will ever vanquish the other side, but they may yet get their wish for the first half of that question: a long war that prolongs the tenures of both Netanyahu and Sinwar (or a replacement) until things get sufficiently violent to make both sides dread war's cost enough to demand new leadership.

The Israeli military is responsible in that it must carry out the policies of a lunatic government. Netanyahu refuses to give up the Philadelphi Corridor, a small plot of land connecting Egypt and Gaza, and this is a sticking point without which bringing hostages home is impossible. His own defense minister wants him to concede it, his own general staff wants him to concede it, his own intelligence agencies want him to concede it, but Netanyahu refuses to give it up because he says it's how Hamas reloads (and in all fairness, he may be right, but clearly the military thinks they can manage it).

Without hope of a ceasefire, the hostages become of no value to Hamas, and most of them will be killed. Fortunately, Hamas can't be seen as walking away from a ceasefire either, and that buys the hostages time. If negotiations cease, many of the hostages are doomed, but both sides must be seen as going through the motions of negotiations they have no intention of agreeing to nor honoring.

7. What would it take to unseat Netanyahu and Sinwar?

Surprisingly little, and yet like the Israel/Palestine conflict itself, enacting the obvious solution depends on millions giving up their most cherished beliefs. Only five defections of Knesset members in Netanyahu's coalition would bring down the government.

8. How likely is it that five members would leave?

Almost impossible. Meaning Netanyahu has an unbreakable hold on power until Israeli law mandates elections must be called in 2026

9. How is Netanyahu still in power?

Because like a leech he drains the Israeli body politic of everything that was once good about it. From its beginnings, Israel's greatest virtue was that however chaotic the country and the body politic, they banded together in a crisis. Israel was briefly united after October 7th, that unity now seems a grand delusion.

10. What is it that Netanyahu exploits to stay in power?

The chaos of the Israeli multi party system of government. This chaos used to be thought Israel's great strength, it is now clear that like so many unstable governments, it was waiting for a demagogue to exploit it to sit atop the chaos like a dictator.

Hamas has announced it's bringing suicide bombing back to Israel. When it happens, Netanyahu will get a whole new group of supporters

11. What are the chances to negotiate the return of more hostages?

Almost impossible. Even now.

12. What would make it possible?

The negotiated settlement neither Hamas nor the Israeli right wants.

13. What will happen to the hostages if they're not returned home?

Many of them will be killed, some deliberately placed under Israeli bombing raids, others shot to prevent nearby Israeli soldiers from rescuing them. Others will fester in Palestinian captivity for years.

14. Does Netanyahu care?

Of course not.

15. Does Netanyahu even believe his own rhetoric?

Nobody believes his own propaganda more than this guy. Even after all this, Netanyahu believes the State of Israel is his personal property. If Netanyahu decides total victory is more important than getting back the hostages, no one can convince him otherwise.

16. Does anyone believe Netanyahu's rhetoric?

A large number of Netanyahu's supporters believe he does not go far enough and wants him to simply announce perpetual occupation and further settlement in the West Bank.

17. Is there anyone who opposes Netanyahu's plan?
Nearly 70% of the country does. Some estimates show that as many as 700,000 participated in this weekend's protest to demand a ceasefire just in Tel Aviv, along with tens of thousands in protests around the country elsewhere.

18. Whose fault is all this?

Everyone's, yet no one's. 40,000 Palestinians are likely dead, yet the truth is that were Israel not successful in deterring Palestine, 40,000 dead Jews is a mere trifle compared to what Hamas would visit on Israel's Jews. It's not going to happen, and yet it could...

Nevertheless, even if Israel were correct to see itself as the side of democratic civilization against totalitarian barbarism, Israelis are so much more powerful than Palestinians that there is far less distance to travel between bloody thoughts and bloody actions. Israel has an obligation to show their model of how to go about things is the superior model, and yet by convincing themselves that they are the unquestionable side of democracy and civilization in a civilizational conflict, they become the barbarism they despise. When people believe they're in a struggle between good and evil, there is no evil act they cannot convince themselves to do.

Israel is changing as rapidly as any country in the world. Israelis complain about Islamic birthrates, but the birthrates of Israel's religious are breathtaking. 20% of the country is orthodox and half of that is ultra-orthodox. Birthrates have nearly doubled in the ultra-orthodox population in a mere fifteen years. This could give the orthodox enough power to make Israel a semi-theocracy sooner than we can fathom, a theocracy sitting atop a nuclear stockpile that will dwarf anything in the Arab world, even should Iran successfully develop a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu knows this, and he means to drain the efficacy of secular Israel and be succeeded by the religious right, which can be the majority of Israeli society sooner than you think.

19. What is Netanyahu's ultimate goal?

Superficially, to stay in power and avoid jail, and in order to do that he must placate the far far right members of his coalition by having no negotiated settlement.

More broadly, it's to create a conflict large enough that the US becomes directly involved, therefore the US bombs Iran's nuclear program using their military capabilities that still dwarf Israel's. Iran's nuclear program is so deep under mountains that no Israeli weapon can reach it.

But Netanyahu can't be seen as causing the conflict himself, so he waits, and subtly provokes, until the axis of resistance commits a terrible mistake that kills American forces or the number of Israelis that are now killed in Gaza. And make no mistake, Netanyahu would view 50,000 Israeli deaths as mere collateral damage in a much larger conflict in which victory would save millions of lives from nuclear annihilation. Netanyahu will wait a long while yet, because neither Hamas nor Hezbollah have set a foot wrong. But in their manipulation of public opinion around the world, their tactics are astonishingly modern.

20. What could stop Israel from becoming a theocracy?

Ironically, antisemitism abroad, causing mass migrations from countries with lots of Jews. It doesn't happen until it does. That is the great lesson of Jewish history.

* I may be wrong about all this.

One last question:

Was the authoritarian drift of Israel inevitable?

Maybe, but if it was, then the drift of the world toward authoritarianism is inevitable too. The functionality of the world depends on the ability to tolerate contradictions: Israel itself has always been such a contradiction: secular yet based upon a religion.

Israel was a compromise that had to happen in order to keep Jews alive. If your ideology prevents you from seeing the necessity of places like Israel, your ideology is too simple to work in the real world. If your ideology prevents you from seeing why Israel must aspire even through its battles to be as liberal a democracy as can exist in these circumstances, your ideology is too simple to work either. Either way dooms Israel, and writ large, dooms the world too. The real world demands pragmatism, not ideology, and embracing the contradictions.

The world is leaving pragmatism behind, and without it, there is no real world anymore.