So Aeli,
They call it an 'experimental event.' I have no azazel'ing idea what that means, but it's ten days long, it takes place every year, and the papyrus says it's focused on 'community, self-expression, and self-reliance.' I don't know if the whole thing will be as great as Reshep says it will; getting through the kid burning is going to be brutal, but all told it's pretty awesome so far. People burn these amazing sculptures they all made themselves, all kinds of priests come here to do performance art. You're supposed to leave your weapons at the edge of the campsite, and I guess some bouncers look after them, but if there were really no weapons you couldn't do half the things people do in this place.
But everybody says this festival has gotten all 'corporate.' It used to be for frum people: you know, the real free spirits. Now it's become a meeting point for all these tribal elders from around the country to meet each other and make business contacts and stay, of course, in luxury campsites separate from the rest of us low degree... Some promoter I talked to yesterday told me about all sorts of bureaucracy involved: bans on transportation on the grounds, any animal sacrifice has to have a permit and many activities are only zoned for specific parts of the campsite.
They do the whole thing in a different place every year: all around the Negev where nobody not involved would ever bother them, maybe even never notice them: though you'd think fires that big would attract attention 200,000 cubits away. There's a lot of jargon in this place: like everywhere these days. All kinds of dogmas about 'radical inclusion, radical self-expression, radical decommodification, radical gifting', is there really anything radical about this pagan worship festival compared to the other 300 pagan worship festivals going on around the Middle East?
There's a lot of exchanges here, they call it gift-giving but the reality's pretty different. Whatever food people make they share with each other. If somebody's cold, they share tunics and cloaks. Some lady I zayin'd last night whose name I didn't learn gave me a shawl and we ended up snuggling under it: it was really nice. But if you don't have food, you're expected to perform sexual favors in exchange for a meal, which isn't. Whenever there's a couple fornicating outdoors in the daytime, there's an unspoken rule that if a third person joins them, that person's expected to cook the couple dinner afterward out of their own food supply. But however unkosher all that can sometimes be, some of these gifts aren't even exchanges. Some people come to the festival with literally hundreds of pre-made gifts that they hand out to whomever is around, and some of them are extraordinarily generous. Some old lady heard I was Jewish and gave me an idol of Ba'al that must have taken her two months to carve. It was beautiful! Hopefully it won't break before I get home so I can show it to you. This is exactly how they must get converts. It's not the sex, it's the community, it's that people are usually so nice to you at these things.
People have been complaining about the priestesses. Apparently they used to sell their own merchandise--mostly tapestries--and charge people for drinks and drugs and transportation, apparently they were even considering charging the congregants for coitus: you can imagine how that would go over. But people put up such a m'huma about it all that they stopped charging for everything. The priestesses are all really nice: young, old, it doesn't matter, but greed is something all religions have in common.
But even if this is no commune, the people out here are so progressive that they don't even bury their shit. We're encouraged to pick it up and give it to the nearest priestess, who puts it in a series of giant tubs around the camp grounds that apparently fertilizes their grounds every year and make the crops that a lot of these people subsist on year round.
Obviously it goes without saying that public nudity is entirely encouraged. In this way, the Canaanite pagans are not quite as free as their reputation. The vast majority keeps their clothes on, even when it's beytzim hot out. Most of them are nearly as concerned as we are about sunburn, and they prefer going around in combo outfits of linen and wool. Some people cosplay as animals and have these incredibly ornate designs. I will never understand cosplay as long as I live, and here as everywhere else, cosplayers are so much weirder than nudists.
Obviously the art is amazing: I've mentioned the sculptures, but the tapestries are amazing, so are the murals, metal masonry, ivory carvings, all kinds of intricate outfits people wear (not just the cosplayers), the vast majority of it will be burned in offerings to Ba'al and Asherah, and sometimes Ashtarot, whom half these pagans don't even realize is a different goddess than Asherah. There are incredible amateur musicians who pull out their instruments every night and jam out with each other on every campsite. There's even some guerilla theater: though, of course, some of it was a little anti-Israel.
But then you get the mainstage acts, and they are extraordinary. Just the most incredible music you've ever heard, with ten thousand people dancing their asses off to the most intricate African-influenced drum beats this side of Carthage. None of this old fashioned Jewish fiddling crap our parents forced us to learn.
But now for the thing you really want to know: the 'Sex Dome.' Yes, the priestesses fuck everyone in there. Many of the priestesses are very attractive, but you'll either be disappointed or relieved to know that this Eden of pleasures you'd imagined is so far from what's going on there. It's the most normal sex worship you'll ever encounter. Everything is calibrated so that the priestesses can do missionary work. There's no carpeting on the tent's ground so everything is sandy, and god knows how the priestesses deal with that... You have no idea whom you're osehing next to until you're next to them, and nearly all the priestesses are age appropriate for the worshipper, so however beautiful the priestess you often have to do it in front of a couple of copulating senior citizens. You also need your partner there to watch you, ostensibly it's either part of the consummation or maybe they just think it's sexy, but it's really to make sure that you behave yourself around the priestesses, and even so there are some unfortunately toxic pagans who pull the rough stuff. Try likshaving the business while some guy is screaming his head off as he gets thrown out for trying to mess up a woman.
On the other hand... the drugs man... the drugs: Lavanese hash, Berberian cannabis, Anatolian opium (apparently the rich guys import it all the way from Aryana), mandrakes and wine from all around the Mediterranean, and the stuff people really come there for: Henbane, that Phonecian plant that gets you so high you'll think you saw Yahweh. I'm not kidding on that one dude, my friend Avner says Yahweh literally talked to him. I told him don't dare tell anybody at the festival.
It's not the greatest thing I've ever seen, but it's a pretty awesome way to pass a week and a half. When you get old enough, you should go to festivals like this. It doesn't mean that you'll become a pagan if you go, but you owe it to yourself to see everything that's out there. We just can't compete with all this shit. They've got all these gods and beauty and music and sex, and we've got... a book? What are we supposed to do next to all this, fuck a torah?
Mom and Dad of course hate that I'm going to this festival, and I see why. If the elders knew what was going on here in Re'im they'd send an army to mow us down. Avner literally talked to Yahweh, but he still says he's going to start keeping idols in his room. If his parents find them, he'll get the rod-striking of the century. The point I've always been making to Mom and Dad is just that you can't take everything you hear so seriously: whether it's Joshua talking to God or some cute priestess outside a Canaanite welcome center. Everybody's got something to sell, and it's up to us to figure out what it is. When this is over, I'll come home and I'll go back to making tents, but after you hit Bar Mitzvah age you should go to a festival like this too and make up your own mind.
Love and see you soon,
Avshalom
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