Thursday, September 12, 2024

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. 

 





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