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...