Generation 1:
All Things and Nothing (creation story)
In the beginning was the Old New Land.
All things and nothing.
Heaven was earth and earth was heaven and both were hell.
And hell was bad and good.
And good was earth and bad was heaven.
And heaven and hell were inextricable.
Therefore in the beginning Man created God, who created the Heaven and the Earth, and therefore God created Man.
For the earth was both with form and void; And the spirit of God moved upon the face of men.
Who said, There was light, and light there is, therefore light let there be.
And man saw the light, that it was good, and man divided the light from the darkness.
And some men called the light Night, and some men called the darkness Day. And the evening and morning were the first generation.
And man discovered firmaments in the midst of the waters, and waters in the midst of firmament.
And man divided the firmaments and used the waters to grow the firmaments, and in competition for the water, man rose up against man, and it was so.
And man called his own firmament Heaven, and the firmament of others Hell. And the evening and morning were the second generation.
And man said, let the men under the Heaven be gathered unto one place, and let God appear, and it was not so.
And man called the others with land heretics, and the occupation of lands he called Holy, and man saw that it was bad, and he called it good.
And man said, since the earth brings forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, and it is so:
Let us bring forth more and better grass, more and better herb yielding seed after his kind, more yielding trees bringing forth more and better fruit, upon the earth, and man saw that it was good and saw no bad in it.
And the evening and the morning were the third generation.
And man said, there are lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from night, let them be signs, for seasons, and for days, and years:
And the firmament of the heaven gave only the light upon the earth that was already upon the earth, and it was so.
And man made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night,
But man set them both in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness, and man saw that one light was good and one light bad, but none could determine which to each, and man fell eternally upon man over which light was the greater and which light the lesser. And each man called that which he was good.
And the evening and morning were the fourth generation.
And man said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly for our people of the light, and scarcely for their people of the darkness, that farming may fail upon the part of the earth closed to the firmament of heaven.
And man created great works, and every living creature that moveth were forthwith affected abundantly after their kind, and every work fulfilled after its kind, and man saw their works benefit all men, and men saw that it was good and not good.
And man cursed their works, saying, be fallow, and divide, and fill the waters with poison, and let division befoul the earth.
And the evening and morning were the fifth generation.
And man said, we brought forth on the earth living creatures after our kind, but thou art cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after thy kind, and it is so.
And man made men into beasts and cattle and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after their kind, and man saw that bad was good.
And man said, let us make all men in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And to every man that is like beast, to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, all wherein there is life shall serve us, and it was so.
And man said, Behold, we have taken every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to us it shall be for meat.
And man saw every thing that he had taken, and, behold, he saw that it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth generation.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And in the seventh generation all life that served men did rebel against that work which he had made, and they fought to rest in that seventh generation from all work which they had made.
And they did create a new god to bless that seventh generation, and sanctify it: because in that god they would rest from all their work which without a god they created and made.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they are created, in the days that men make the earth and the heavens,
And every plant of the field after it is in the earth, and every herb of the field after it grows: until the Lord God shall not cause it to rain upon the earth, and there is not man to till the ground.
For we work, and we work, and we work; and we wait, and we wait, and we wait, but we're always thrown out of the Old New Land.
Century 2:
Chapter 2:
And there went down a mist from their eyes, and watered the whole soul of their faces.
And men did form their new god from the dust of the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and their god did become a living soul.
And this lord god commanded men to plant their garden in the new earth, east and west and north and south, and there they put the men whom their God had formed, who in turn was formed by men.
And out of the ground made men to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, trees of life in the midst of the garden, and trees of knowledge of good and evil.
And fresh rivers went out of earth to water the gardens; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
The name of the first head is Europe: that is which compasseth the whole land of the north, where there is God and gold,
And that land hoards both well: there is bedazzlement and hearts of onyx.
And the name of the second river is Africa, the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Egypt to Ethiopia and well beyond.
And the name of the third is Asia; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth region is Eurasia, which goeth from the Tigris and Euphrates to Europe.
And the lord god took the man who invented him, and put man into the gardens of earth to dress it and to keep it.
And the lord god commanded man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, for I wast made to bless thee in thy consumption.
And man did answer: But of the trees of knowledge of good and evil, every day we eatest thereof, and we shall surely die. We do not believe that thou, our god, shall make us immortal.
And the lord god which man created said, it is not good that man should abide existence alone, I will make myself half-woman to helpmeet his belief in rebirth.
And the half-woman god did help man to bear the burden in every beast of the field, and every fowl of air, and brought them unto men. And men did determine what they shall be called, and whatsoever men called every living creature was their name thereof,
But belief in rebirth did make men heedless of death, and men did give other men names akin to all cattle, and did treat other men like every beast of the field, and mock them like the fowl of the air, and for such cattle-trodden men there was no helpmeet.
And man did cause in god despair, and a deep sleep to fall upon god, and they slept, and man took one of god's ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof.
And the rib, which Man had taken from Lord God, made God all Man, and brought God unto Men.
And Men said, God is now bones of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, God shall be called Man, because He was taken from women.
Therefore God shall abandon our mothers and daughters, who shall cleave unto their husbands, and we and God shall be as one flesh.
And the nature of Man and His God stood naked, and They were not ashamed.
Generation 2:
Now Woman was grieved, and had as much cause as any man made into beast of the field and dream of more subtle things than any beast of the field which Man had dreamed the Lord God did make.
In longing to possess a God from which she was kept, woman did dream of an other to overthrow Man's God, And the other did say, Yea, hath god said, Woman shall not rule every tree of God's gardens?
And women replied unto the other, We shall not, but we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the gardens.
But Man hath said, we shall not rule of it, lest we die.
And the other did respond unto women, Ye shall not surely die.
For God knoweth that in the day ye rule thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, doing good and evil as Men doeth solely evil.
And women did say, We do know good and evil very well, and we wish to be as no god. Man doeth evil all the days of his life for he believeth God is Man.
And the other did reply, ye are already as Gods, for thou becomest great with child, and surely Man knoweth that thou art His one true god.
And women did respond, If we be as gods, then why be we slaves like the beasts of the field?
And the other did say, Because woman is other than man, as is God. But thou women art as gods.
And woman did reply, even if woman is as other, we wish not to slay Man, for it is Man's slaying that doth make women other.
And the other did respond, thou can'st not reason with Man.
And women did say, then why art thou reasoning with us?
And the other did reply, For we knoweth of higher gardens, and if thou eatest of the knowledge of Men, thou shalt as gods, see what men cannot.
And women did ask, What can we see that men cannot.
And the other did reply, A greater garden, a higher garden from which Men are barred, good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, trees to be desired to make one wise, where no man worketh as beast of the field. Where one taketh the fruit thereof, and doth eat, and give also unto thy husbands with thou, and they do eat, and becometh good.
And woman did ask, Where is the garden?
And the other did respond, An old new land no Man hath seen. It existeth in a space between space where existeth potentials, heavens, antiquities, health, infinity, and justice.
And women did awaken from their dream.
Generation 3:
And women took of the fruit of the trees thereof, and gave also unto her Husband with her, and Man did eat of a greater portion than woman did eat.
And the eyes of woman were opened, and she sowed leaves of the trees thereof and made aprons, for it was only in her dreams that longings were stretched before her naked.
And in dreams she heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the gardens in the cool of the night, but Man, knowing she might hear celestial voices as men did, did bar his wife from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
But in dreams, the other called upon woman, A Man who bars the way to the gardens of the earth is no man, nor God a god. You are the god, and Man is the other. When Man is asleep, thou ought walketh in the garden and gaze thine eyes upon all that from which Man barreth.
And when Man was asleep, woman went into the gardens, and saw the trees, good for food that make men wise, were upon earthly gardens themselves.
And Man did awaken from his sleep to find woman's absence from His bed.
And Man went into the gardens in the cool of the night, and woman hid herself from the presence of Man in the trees of the gardens.
And Man called unto Woman, and said unto her, Where art thou?
And she said, I heard thy voice in the gardens, and I was afraid, for my desire to see the gardens was now naked, and therefore did I clothe myself in the trees.
And He said, Who told thee to desire the gardens? Hast thou heard the voice of my God, whereof I commanded thee was Mine over yours?
And woman said, A voice did I hear who called to me in dreams, he enticed me of the tree, and I did eat.
And the Lord Man said unto the woman, is this voice a dream? Is it god? And the woman said, it is another voice than God, another voice beguiled me, and I did eat.
And unto the woman the Lord Man said, Because the other hast done this, I do name this other Evil, as is God's right of Men, and to have another voice art thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly be thy work, and my dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
For this other hast put enmity between Me and the woman, and between my gardens and my seed, I shall bruise over her head and she shall bruise my heel.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conceptions; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and We shall rule over thee.
And unto God, Man said, Because another voice hast hearkened unto the dreams of My wife, and bade her eat of the tree, a voice for which I created thee, Thou art either half evil: therefore be cursed is the nature of God for the other's sake; in sorrow shall we partake of You all the days of our lives.
This other, Lord God, this voice that speaketh to those whom we had not blessed to rule shall evil be, thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to those to whom we forbid thou to speak, and thou shalt dwell beneath the herb of the field.
In the sweat of thy fire shalt we eat dread, till we return unto the ground, for out of fire was God made; for fire thou art, and unto fire shalt thou return.
And Man called woman's other voice 'evil' or 'devil', because her dream was the mother of all threats.
Unto God also and to his wife did the Lord Man make coats of shame, and clothe them.
And the Lord Man said, Behold, God is as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live on earth:
Therefore the Lord Man sent God forth from the gardens of Man, into the minds from whence he was taken.
So Man drove out the god from all human forms; and he placed at the east of the gardens of Men priests and prophets, and inflamed swords which turned every way, to keep in the way of the freeing of wife.
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Yet to be written tale of Cain and Abel here
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Tale 5: Drink
Every day, my father warned me of the dangers of the demonic fluid. It is drink which unleashes all of man's evil and eliminates the barrier from beast. It is drink which eliminates health and happiness. Drink is danger, drink is trauma, drink is obscenity and humiliation, blasphemy in the eyes of God and excrement in the windows of memory. Drink is serenity's eternal expenditure: instants of bliss for an eternity of inner violence.
Trauma is the intrusion of another soul that claims a new section of of the mind every day, intrusion doubling upon intrusion, exhibiting ever more masterfully that he, not you, is the part of your mind that thinks.
Perhaps this other soul is a devil or dybbuk, perhaps he's simply another person who deliberately lodged part of himself within you, or perhaps he's another person burdened with his own dybbuk. But whomever he is, he, not you, masters the mind, and you become a spectator within your own consciousness. With every hour he determines more of your decisions, and with every new decision he makes for you, you wonder ever more if he was you all along.
For centuries, father barely touched drink. He knew of its ecstasies and torments as well as any man, but he saw what drink made him, and what drink made others, and its humiliations were repugnant. It caused a whole earth on which man has neither self nor divinity, but only sense - pleasures to drown our pain, other people's pain to drown us in pleasure, a whole earth of trauma absorbed and trauma inflicted where man uses his divinity to inflict all the worse. And so where the rest of Earth was wine, the House of Noah was water, kept fresh and pure in wells we cleaned every day along with blessings to a spirited drink in a second, smaller well. A spirit of the drink whose name we never pronounced, and perhaps we never knew. For an hundred years of our lives, Ham, Japeth and I knew no drink but water.
All the while, as the temperature warmed and the Earth became fire and rain, Father communed with his holy spirit of the drink. Every day as he had for hundreds of years, he pulled a bowl from the well tied to a string, put a finger in the drink, touched its holy spirit to his lips, and threw the bowl back. Every day he spoke with the spirit of the drink, and the Drink spoke back. For seven hours every day Father walked around the well, speaking questions and answers, and the pool told him all creation, of its trees and crowns, of its spheres visible and hidden, and the Spirit of the Drink made Father the wisest of men.
The spirit told Father to build an ark and gather every living thing that creepeth upon the earth, for the spirit was wroth with the world and would flood it. The water would cleanse the world, who'd begin anew in a second Eden where would live none but the House of Noah's righteous offspring.
And the Spirit was right, for lo, the earth became drink; not drink still and clear, but torrential and murderous, until all the world was again without form and void. Then the sea level rose, and rose, and rose, until the planet itself rose up and murdered its unworthy caretakers, and all the Earth was but one large ocean, stewed in the iniquities of its trillions of drowned beings and glazed with salt to parch any survivors. And within three days, all remaining life lodged within an ark of 300 cubits.
The invisible spirit told us of the flood, he told Father to build the ark, precisely how, and with what, and how large, and how many animals to gather, but he gave us no extra ration of fresh water. All we had was the water within our well, which when drawn out must be fermented ere it turn to undrinkable slime. So there was only barley fermentation, and wine, and animals, and obscenity. There was not even water for children.
And yet the first thing we brought aboard the ark was Father's pool of drink, of which he made us carry pitcher by pitcher to a pool of stone he'd constructed without assistance.
Upon the ark it was only us and the wine. Father told us we had no extra rations of drink for the animals, but to allow ourselves twelve times an eleven month supply for four families - we asked why, he did not say. Surely father knew what was to come better than we.
It began not with agony but with joy and camaraderie - days of merry work followed fine nights of wine and song. Then lying with our wives in tents on the Ark's four opposite corners. The children would fall serenely asleep after dinner, and so torpid they never wandered. The House of Noah used our wealth to buy all the crops of nearby families to feed the ark's animals, and once aboard we pickled them within buckets of salt water procured from the outside deluge.
Father had always been serene, but he was quiet and cryptic, and often warned us of what sort of different man he was before encountering the holy Spirit. He took to the wine immediately, and his serene self turned upside down to the most dreadful moroseness. None saw him eat, and he said not a word even as he fed the animals. Yet while Father submerged into drink, our work seemed as play.
But at the cusp of manhood, no drink could torpor Canaan. In less than one year he'd have taken to wife, but what wife lived to take him?
The noises began with the sheep of course, and then the goats, and then the dogs and cows, and then to the larger animals, and the smaller, until we wondered if there was an unsullied animal among the 16,000 on the ark. An animal would exclaim that peculiar scream, always the same in every species, and we knew what Canaan was doing, particularly because he would return every morning with terrible bruises and scratches. But what did it matter if we all were so besotted with drink? The world was ending, boys will be boys, the animals were drunk too, and were we to believe Father, the House of Noah was the one family in the world who did not enjoy the company of livestock.
"Your father tried to kill me before I laid my curse on you!"
"It is not for you to question what the spirit in the drink tells me."
"There is no spirit in the drink."
"Indeed, the spirit tells me the world is fornication and wickedness. Just like y..."
"No, grandfather, the world was already flooding, the spirit only told you what you knew."
"No, our spirit sees with our eyes."
"May your bullshit visions of the Eden we lost haunt all your days and creep all your nights. May you forever see in me your only impediment to paradise."
Noah immediately charged at Canaan to strike him down but was prevented by the cage he built himself. He reached for the key to the cage, but Canaan pulled Noah's key out of his own tunic.
"Execration! Astonishment! Reproach! We spit you out of the House of Noah for eternity!"
"I was planning to run away from this pathetic house for years. Now I've got a whole new world I can start on my own!"
Tale 6: The Master Builder
So this letter is meant for God and Abel, though I don't know how to send it or if anybody else does. If anybody ever finds this letter, if you can find a way to send this to God I'll be very grateful.
It's been a little more over 30 years since The Flood. From the way people talk about it you'd think everybody died, but it couldn't have even been one in a hundred who got themselves killed. Maybe if you were closer to the Mediterranean you had worse chance of living, but people here just hiked themselves to the Zagros mountains, and a lot of people with houses made of proper mudbrick just camped out on the roof and fished.
As far as apocalypses go, the Flood just wasn't that big. ...It was big, but mostly for how it made us shelter in place for two years. It was just a pre-echo of the real event that came for us because of how we responded.
We thought The Flood focused everything, solved everything, clarified everything. It obliterated from our minds all the trivial drek. The generation before the flood seemed to be the generation of partisanship and violence, but we were the generation of unity and love. Every man and woman on earth experienced the same loss, the same fears, the same meshiggas, the same boredom, the same rage.
Everybody knew who was at fault. To make a flood this big, there must be a god so powerful that no other god can be much of a god, and it could only be Ea, this water god everybody believes in. There was even a movement to rename him Y'Ea because he was so willing to use his power, but nearly everybody agreed: if one god can be that powerful, we need a war on him before he kills the rest of us.
Of course there were some who didn't believe this, Ea still had a bunch of loud partisans on Earth who were violent and dangerously powerful, but the partisans of the other six gods had an unbeatable coalition. Any system in which the partisans of Ea win is a broken system, and if the system was really this broken, the only option left was to go up to heaven and fix the system. It was one of those few moments in every lifetime when everybody seems to speak the same language.
Nobody actually wanted the responsibility of a god, not if they thought about it... But they did want the right to sometimes be free of gods. Like every other god in their lives, they fulfilled every commandment of Ea's in good faith, they obeyed every obligation to sacrifice, they prayed to him whenever they were afraid, they talked to him when they were lonely, and only crazy people ever thought he answered.
As for me? I knew that Ea was an old wives' tale. I just had a thought that maybe you B'H didn't think of, that this flood was related to all that kvetching you write to me about this heavenly schpritz. Maybe there's a leak in heaven, so I just wanted to go up there to point out the leak and help you fill it.
And the the Kings of Babel, Persepolis, and Uruk did call a second counsel of all the kings of the Earth. And the kings of the earth did invoke their promise "Verily, thou hadst promised trusting mensuration for an end to floods, yet thou hadst not provided faithful measurement." And the three kings did say "It is better to burden with great care to avoid flood than than to take little burden to meet flood." And the kings of the earth did accuse them "Verily thou hadst not used thy plenty in the service of faithful measurement." And the three kings did respond "Lo, thou hast availed great use of our pronouncements. Thy subjects do live who shall have died, thy vines do multiply which shall have withered, and thy buildings do stay which shall have fallen."
Aleph. And war did rage for seven years, the very machines created by the builders of Babylon in hopes to conquer death did become the world's executioners: boulders of dashing pulverization hurled into masses of men; basins of tar lifted atop the walls of cities, burned to boiling and cast upon millions of innocent as rain. Rulers wished to preserve their men as chattel, yet their chattel lay upon hills as carrion; their blood transfigureth grains of sand into forest, their flesh turneth all that lives into plague. And a fifth of the earth's men did die, and a fifth of the earth's men did become crippled, and a fifth of the earth's men did dwell in the house of lunacy.
And behold, the unfathered children of the Festival at Babel had turned twelve. And by such time as their fifth years when war beginneth throughout the world, they all were cast out from their mothers as reminders of former sin. Great was their disgrace, and the streets of the world were tumultuous with cries through their mothers' windows: "Mothers, why hast thou forsaken us?" And the mothers did weep in concord with their children but offered them not food neither shelter nor warmth. And the children of Babel did sleep and eat within the streets of every city of the world - robbing for food, maurauding for shelter, and trespassing upon sheep to sheer for blankets. And the Children of Babel were much despised.
And as every city sent citizens into battle to die man by man, the unfathered boys and girls did become as men for every city. By six did they learn to ply trades no city man could practice. By eight did they tenant the markets of their cities. By ten did they take among themselves to man and wife. And by twelve they were manifold among ministers for the kings of the earth.
And verily, as men fought the world elsewhere, there was none to shield mothers from their unwanted children. Few were the new children of men, and the younger children who did live were great with hunger. And the mothers did come to their unwanted children and ask for sustenance they had not means to give, and the Children of Babel did grant their mothers and brothers food and nourishment.
And by the sixth year of war, the mothers of the earth were exceeding with woe, for their youngest sons were soon to be trained as soldiers, and the mothers did fall in supplication upon the Children of Babel:
"Go unto the kings of the earth and prevail upon them to end the war. For we have no children but our striplings, and err the war continueth shall we have no son but the sons of Babel and no honorable men to marry our daughters?"
and the Children of Babel did exclaim unto their mothers, "Were we not children enough for thee? Hath we not proven our honor? In shame didst thou banish us like slaver, yet for the world we did become as men. When the harvest was great we were like chaffe to thee, yet now we are the source of thy wheat, and thou askest us to vouchsafe the reverence of mothers who never did love us as children,"
to which the mothers responded, "We did always love you as the issue of our hearts, but great is the shame of our actions in Babel. Thou art not the children of thy fathers, for we did lie with enemies. Though we did wish to raise you as children, thou hadst been born with marks of shame.'
and the Children of Babel did reply: "We are not shameful. We are descendants of the world entire. Through no aid of forebears, we have turned shame to fortune. And behold, thou wishest to profit from thy shame."
and the mothers were prostrate with weeping and exclaimed "Lo, we have betrayed, we have been disloyal, we have sinned, we have turned away and ignored the children of our wanton acts of wickedness."
and the Children of Babel did say to their mothers: "Well,... fuck it. No, you're not wicked or evil, you're just kind of a selfish bitch. I'll talk to the kings of the earth and see what I can do."
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Bet. And the Children of Babel did speak with the kings of the earth and they did say "Verily, we have spoken with the mothers of the earth and they hath pleaded you to end this war ere their last children depart for the valley of the shadow of death."
And the kings of the earth did respond "Behold, what have these children to live for? We cannot provide them plenty nor succor without visiting the valley ourselves, for they shall rise up and revolt; and therefore their lives are saved merely by their commitment to our darker purposes. Only their deaths shall endow them with meaning."
And the Children of Babel did reply "Thou dost surely realize they would disagree."
And the kings of the earth did respond "What else may we do for them? Their lives are but torture and squalor, but glory may they find as swordly extension of sovereign's arm."
To which the Children of Babel did respond "They do surely have their consolations, and surely they do value their lives however small. Life mattereth to them if even thou seest them as wheat for the harvest."
And the kings of the earth did reply "Only pharaohs see themselves as gods of stone. We sovereigns are half mortal and do feel the guilt of their calamities. We cannot provide them with more ere they go the way of the earth, and when they do, the flock thins, and as shepherds we may tend them more."
And the Children of Babel did say unto them "Thou wouldst not have to fret over rebellion if thou hadst not become as tyrants over them."
And the kings of the earth did say "We did not become tyrants, our tyranny was compelled by the tyranny of many kings before us, and should we relinquish our despotic privilege, others would assume merely what we had, with all the greater force for their insecure positions."
And the Children of Babel fell prostrate "Thy chattel has bled the earth. As the dying wheat beareth much fruit the dying soldiery must beareth provision for the living."
And the kings of the earth were resolute "The people of the earth are chattel and chattel they must remain."
Gimmel: And the Children of Babel did return to the Kings of the Earth and they did say. We have spoken among ourselves and have solutions. Thou seest the verdancy of earth post-deluge, and the farming of the earth may be so fecund that there should be no drought for centuries hence. We entreat thee, make peace and put thy subjects as tillers to work the land in fields and forests.
And the kings of the earth did sue for peace, and the surviving men did go into the fields and work the earth, and there was abundance.
And the kings of the earth did take the abundance for themselves, and did distribute to their workers with meagerness, but fearing the Children of Babel, the kings of the earth did allow them to partake of abundance. And the surviving men did go to the kings of the earth and entreat them: Behold, we have not food for our children nor reward for the sweat of our brow.
And the kings of the earth did say: Lo, it is the Children of Babel with who hast taken thy abundance. Their rewards are great while thine are few. They hath not spoken for thee, and hath prevented us from bequeathing thou thy just rewards for fear the surviving men shall overthrow the Children of Babel.
And the surviving men did overthrow the Children of Babel and did slay manifold among them, and the Children of Babel did flee their houses and cities, and did lodge together in the wilderness, and did assume the habit of wanderers.
And lo, they did wander the earth for seven generations until they came upon the House of Canaan.
And the House of Canaan did say: Behold, our rations are meagre, our cattle are weak, our coin is soft and our crops are dry. But this land will we shew thee, for there is room to settle and land to work. By the sweat of our brow must we work in heat and dust, but here is thy home, and here shalt thou bloom.
"And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there."
Genesis 11:31
1.
And an unfamiliar spirit appeared to Terah in a dream, announced that Emtelai is great with child, and that which is conceived in of an holy ghost.
Behold, an old lady shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Abram, which being interpreted is that he shall be father of a nation.
Now when Nimrod the King heard tell of new nations and holy spirits, he was troubled, and all of Sumer with him.
And when he gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where an Abe of nations should be born.
The priests and scribes were without postulation but one scribe, hailing from far north, who realized perhaps it was Ur of the Chaldees, for the word 'Ur' meant 'first' in his native country.
And when they were departed, behold, the unfamiliar spirit appeareth to Terah in a dream, saying, "Arise, take the young child and his mother and flee to the Shanidar Cave. And be thou there until I bring thee word: for Nimrod will seek the young child to destroy him."
When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed to the cave.
And then Nimrod, when he saw he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Ur of the Chaldees, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
In the beginning was the Land, and the Gods were with Land, and the Lands were Gods. The same was the beginning with Land. All things were made by Land, and without Land was not anything made that was made. In it was work; and work was the life of men.
But idleness was the life of Terah and Abram in the Shanidar Cave. For lo, there was no land to work, nor were there men nor Gods. There were only caves, and sand, and rock, reeds from which to eat, a small wadi with which to drink and gazelle forthwith to hunt.
It was in this cave that Abraham discovered the ancient bones of a monstrous lizard.
2.
Terah knew not what the lizard was for all he saw of it was a skull, a crown of neither man nor cattle nor dog nor familiar beast - a skull of an elephantine goose, a mountainous bird head of pure bone leaving space for eyes the size of cooking pots and a beak resembling fowl except for its mouth of forty teeth, each the size of his toddling hand.
Every night, Abram and his parents dined as the skull of the avian leviathan gazed upon them - they knew not for good or ill, but his presence was always with them, and never was their presence in the cave revealed.
Long after Abram and his parents returned to lodge in Ur, Abram did remember the skull, and regaled his older brothers with tell of its splendor.
Now Terah was a stonemason and chief constructor of idols for his city, and his older sons Nahor and Haran made idols of their great seven gods: An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nana, Utu, and Inanna. When Abram reached manhood, his task was the delivery of the idols upon order completion to receipted address.
And once there was a time when Abram was sent to deliver an idol to the elder, Gishkim, who claimed he sent for an idol not. And said unto Abram "What need have I, a man threescore, to worship an idol made yesterday?"
And thereupon became Abram an atheist.
3.
And Terah did grow exceptional wroth with Abram, for Abram was exceeding quarrelsome with customers.
"What need have ye for idols?" Abram did say "who take praise for thy work and punishes thou for no misdeed? In the sweat of thy face dost thou make bread. What god would curse a ground to make thou eat in sorrow all the days of thy life?"
Verily, the people of Ur threw off their gods, and they did destroy the idols of Terah's hoard, and they did slay Terah's son Haran.
Thereupon Terah did say to his son "What hast thou done to us that thou would sacrifice thy family in thy quest to destroy gods?"
And Abram did leave Ur and return to the cave of his childhood.
Behold, in the Shanidar Cave did Abram see the behemoth bird skull, and he did lift the skull, for he was exceeding strong in relation to childhood, and he did notice the skull was connected to another bone.
Thereupon did Abram fashion a shovel, and he dug underneath the colossal birdskull, and thereon did he discover a lizard skeleton of four legs, sixty cubits in length and ten cubits in height, with neck of fifteen cubits and tale of thirty cubits.
And Abram did name it 'sauropod diplodocus' for its feet were of a lizard and its extremities like beams.
By his discovery Abram did say "verily there is a god who forms all things upon earth and heaven, for only a creator of all could form such a beast of the field and preserve it in earth for all time. In him do I trust, and to his glory do I submit."
4.
Abram did return to Ur, and married Sarai, who was exceeding humorous and beautiful.
Then had Terah encountered an holy spirit who said unto him "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee."
And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran.
For Haran was the name of his son slain for the hoard of idols, Haran and Haran reading the same in many languages, and Terah upon it as a sign from the holy spirit that this was the land, and they did lodge there.
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Tale 9: The King of Mushrooms
And Abram did fall into a very bad crowd who were called 'Habirus' for they had covered their heads with dust.
And the Habirus did deny the false gods and were outcast from the people of Haran.
And lo, the King of Haran did say unto the Habirus: "thou art a race of thieves and deceivers who worship no idols and sacrifice to no gods. We do exile thee to the barren land of Canaan, where all is dust for from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return."
And lo, did Terah said to Abram "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Thou hast fallen in with dirty mercenaries and broken out against all sound judgement."
And Abram did say to his father: "I am not a child, I am seventy-five."
And Terah did answer: "thou art an errant weed who worships no graven images, sacrifices no humans, and eats nothing unclean. Surely thou art an abomination in the eyes of the Lords."
And Abram did answer: "Surely I am unrighteous and have sinned against idolatry, I have trespassed and betrayed."
And Abram did repent of unheathen ways, and made burnt offerings of his slaves.
And Abram did work in his fathers fields and sell his father's idols.
But the Habirus did give Abram a mushroom which caused Abram to see all gods of the earth as an heavenly army, and a Lord of hosts proclaiming above them as a celestial King.
And the king did say unto Abram: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy fathers house, unto a land that I will shew thee."
And Abram did flash back to his lordly vision manifold times. And Abram did say: "The Lord and I will make of the Habirus a great nation and bless me, and make my name great, and I shalt be a blessing.
And He will bless them that bless me, and curse them that curseth me, and in me shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and all the souls they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
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Two yet to be written tales about Abraham: The first is his relationship with Lot. The second is a long short story, perhaps a novella, about his role in the war of the nine kings.
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Tale 11: Will The Servants Not Think
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and all the souls they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
And in the land of Canaan did Abram go to the Habirus, and the Habirus did say to him "Behold, there is famine in the land, which is grievous with drought. Go unto Egypt where a river does make the land plentiful and bounteous.
And Abram did call to his celestial King for edification, and the King did not respond. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and all the souls they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Egypt they came.
And Abram did suffer from a kind of impotence, possessing loin of slender compaction, and for fifty years in Haran did Abram only know his wife Sarai by mouth, for her opening beneath was naturally great.
And Sarai was very beautiful, and did long to be known loin to loin, and did suffer while Abram did know his concubines by all manner of opening.
And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know thou art a fair woman to look upon:
Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.
Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
And Sarai did reply, Will the rulers not take me for concubine?
And Abram did respond, It is my envisage that they do. You shall become great with child from a Pharaoh of Egypt, and behold, Pharaoh shall bless us with his favor by raising his child.
And Sarai did answer, Will the servants not think I am a ho?
And he did reply, It is only such time as we must remain in Egypt, for the Lord did promise me the land through which we passed.
And she did answer, Thou shalt make me a ho. And Abram did reply, So it is as our Lord wills.
And Sarai did riposte, The Lord willed naught, we came unto Egypt because the land promised you was fallow. Behold, you are a false prophet and naught but my pimp.
And he did answer, If the Lord wanted me to not make you an ho, He would have told me. You shall know raiment well beyond yours in Haran.
And did Sarai retort, You shall know gold well beyond yours in Ur.
And Abram told her, Silence woman, thou art mine helpmeet, and if I command thee to ho thou shalt ho.
And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
Dearest Lavan,
Let me start with the deepest expression of gratitude for taking Yaakov into business. You can’t possibly know the nakhes I get in reading letters from Yaakov about his success. I know how much of a risk it was to bet on a free spirit who hadn’t found himself in his late seventies getting his act together; but even if no one else saw Yaakov’s promise, I knew you couldn’t have picked a better mensch. In case I didn’t make it clear at the wedding, you diffused a family predicament somewhat like what happened between Lot and Abba Betuel when we were kids, so I knew that when you saw Yaakov you could guess the general idea of what brought him to you before he even told you. I have nothing but gratitude for how you brought Yaakov into the House of Terakh as an untried associate. I’ve worried for years that you wouldn’t see what I see in him, and I worry that his father never has.
This makes it doubly unfortunate that I have to speak to you unpleasantly again, but the fact remains that you gave my son permission to marry Rokhel, you knew that Rokhel was the daughter he wanted to marry, and Yaakov swears that all the contracts he signed with you said ‘Rokhel’, not ‘Leyah’. So why then did you give him a different bride than the one he earned? I know I told you at the wedding how unfair a trick you pulled on Yaakov in front of his hundred-twenty year old mother - a mother who’d journeyed for six months just to kvell over her son marrying the love of his life; and I understand I’m an outsider to your situation, but I feel the need to re-emphasize how cruel it was.
Yitzhak’s old and blind. We have no family member in Canaan of proper bloodline to run the corporation but Esav, a son with so much seykhel he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He put half our money into a huge investment hinging on getting a hunt-for-profit license which whose credit check may not even pass. I had Eliezer-ibn-Eliezer draw up a report. HIs projections showed that big game has a high short-term yield but that the hunting bubble could pop very soon.
I’m so happy Yaakov’s employment worked out as it has, but we need Yaakov to return as soon as possible to run our organization, and he won’t return without Rokhel as his wife. You obviously lied to Yaakov because you find him valuable, but please, I’m begging you, let him marry Rokhel so we can bring him and his family back to his old mother before she dies.
Barukh Hashem and much love,
Rivka
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Dearest Rivka...
It’s been nearly 90 years since you left for Canaan and I still have to remind you to stay out of my business. This is why you never got married until you were 40! I don’t know why you need Yaakov to return so badly. You proudly told me at the wedding how influential you are in House Avraham and your ideas to improve in their production, if this meshuggeh idea for two entries in the bookkeeping is so successful, why do you need Yaakov?
So since you claim you’re an accomplished person of business, I’ll explain all this to you businessman to businessman, though I imagine this is a station you’ve earned completely by marriage. I’ll also explain this situation parent to parent, which you’ve clearly done an exemplary job at even if you obviously play favorites.
I don’t know why you or Yaakov think an eighty-four year old man has any business marrying a girl who’s barely 19, let alone the twelve-year-old she was when Yaakov first kissed her at the well when he was high on hash. Yaakov swore he thought she was at least ten years older, but even if she were 22, what the hell is a seventy-seven year old doing proposing to someone more than half a century his junior? I thought I was doing the right thing by separating them and that you’d support me, but please understand, this compromise is win/win for everybody.
Maybe you haven’t read the tablets for the last half century but just in case you forgot, the Sumerian Empire just collapsed and it almost killed my whole family and millions more. Let’s also not forget that the whole mess started over that dispute Avraham got mixed up in over the Valley of Siddim.
Yaakov and I just spent the last seven years moving the family out of Ur and re-establishing ourselves in Kharan, An & Enlil and Enki be praised. It’s a miracle we’re alive and we have entirely Yaakov to thank, but neither of us have made any profit by his years with the House of Terakh, and if he wants to make real money, he needs to stay another seven years.
Without whatever angels bless your son, there’d be no Terakh House anymore, so in spite of his questionable taste in women, the House of Terakh loves Yaakov. He’s a sheep broker with skill by the terracubit, and has it in him to be a visionary in our fields. Maybe a mensch like Yaakov could have found himself sooner if his mother disciplined him more, but he’s exactly the kind of trail-smart entrepreneur that’s indispensable to Terakh House’s survival.
What would Yaakov do in Canaan anyway? It took so much work to get him out of that desert where the only body of water is that dead sea which is more dehydrating than the sand. How long would Yaakov stay if he ever came back? Even a prodigy son like Yaakov would be as helpless as Esav against drought. I guarantee that either Yaakov or his kids will end up in Egypt where there are growth fields and jobs.
And you don’t even need Yaakov! In spite of how badly you speak of him, Esav is thriving. I’ve seen your financial statements. Your endowment increases 18% every lunar year, even from what it was when “Yitzhak” was the boss. Your livestock dividend expands every quarter and Esav diversified a whole second arm of your securities by moving House Avraham into big game, where the real money is. There’s nothing that Yaakov can do in Khevron that Esav can’t, and what would Yaakov do for House Avraham that he doesn’t do here on a larger scale?
Incidentally, it was very tactful of you to come to the wedding without your husband, since the whole party would have recognized your husband as Yishmael, who suspiciously disappeared from the House of Terakh eighty years ago, fifty years after he suspiciously came to us from the House of Avraham. It was clear from the way you spoke about “Yitzhak” that you two are having trouble.
As for Leyah, whenever you meet her again, you’ll understand. She’s lovely in every way, and will be such a better wife and mother than Rokhel. Yaakov is his grandfather’s grandson in so many ways who never stops dreaming extravagantly, but Leyah will talk him down from those heights he always sees. She’s pragmatic, she’s grounded, never makes a fuss, and OK, she has lots of pockmarks from when she had staphylococcus, but you didn’t see what she went through. Before the illness she was just as captivating as Rokhel, but she has scars on every parasa of her body for the rest of her life. When she was sick she was in excruciating pain from the boils and couldn’t leave bed for a year; but she never complained, never screamed, always apologized for the inconvenience, and always reminded Rokhel about her incomplete textile weaving - not that Rokhel ever finished... It’s a miracle Leyah’s alive. She always had the most beautiful eyes in the world and no boil could ever take them away. Not once has this daughter of mine ever had a suitor, but she has a right to a family as much as Rokhel, and deserves it much more. Even if Yaakov is not in love with her, they’ve always been friendly and she clearly has feelings for him. It will be a great marriage and she will create the best family for him. Who needs to love their spouse?
Rokhel, on the other hand, is unmistakably beautiful, but she’s troublesome and reckless, has a terrible temper, bears false witness all the time, and I honestly think she’s a kleptomaniac. She told me her suitors left because they saw how in love she was with Yaakov, but she bribed multiple suitors to leave by offering them a night with her handmaid, Bilhah, who to be perfectly honest is my illegitimate daughter. It will be a scandal if people ever found out that one daughter of mine is pimping another, even an illegitimate one. Let’s hope that Rokhel will calm down, but Yaakov has no idea the whirlwind he reaps if they marry.
But here’s the real reason I had to prevent the marriage, which Yaakov doesn’t know. Hopefully my sharing this secret will convince you that I’m an honest marriage broker, because if I didn’t tell the truth until now it was best for everyone. This secret must stay between us on the pain of enmity between our houses. I’m sorry to threaten something extreme, but this secret is just that horrible.
Of course, the official record is that Rokhel is still pure, but the truth is that my furrier bondsman got her pregnant. He seduced her by making her a really tacky coat. Rokhel, thinking of no consequence, surrendered her virginity and brought shame on our house. I had no choice but to order our healer to abort the baby. He warned me that after taking the potion Rokhel wouldn’t have children for another thirty-three years. Rokhel doesn’t know, Yaakov doesn’t know, I don’t want them to ever find out, and on pain of war between our houses you can never tell them.
So instead I put Yaakov on a second, more lucrative contract. Let’s all give this another seven years. Yaakov will calm down when he has kids and realizes what a great wife Leyah is and hopefully her younger sister will stop being a korveh. If Yaakov still wants Rokhel, Rokhel will, An-willing, calm down and they can attempt that kind of romantic marriage the Jubalians always sing about. Meanwhile, Leyah will be the real wife.
Aside from everything else, the coat was a monstrosity, it has… well… it has a lot of colors.... I can’t even give it to another tribe as a gift.
An & Enlil and Enki be praised and all my love,
Lavan
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Dearest Lavan…….
Thank you so much for inviting me to the wedding of Yaakov and Rokhel, for as long ago as it should have happened, it really was lovely. The Arabian caterer couldn’t have been more understanding about my dietary restrictions, and I could not believe how beautiful the Babylonian floral arrangements were, but nothing could have been more beautiful than Rokhel. Was her dress Trojan?
I wish I could write seven letters to you kvelling about the wedding but unfortunately i have to speak to you again because of something Yaakov showed me while I was at the wedding. My son showed me ten cuneiform invoices demonstrating you’ve paid him one-third his full earnings. He tells me that every time he raises a new cattle herd, he creates much better herds than yours, only for you to pull rank and commandeer his better-fed herd just before the harvest in exchange for the drek herds you raise. Whatever the state of the herds you give Yaakov, he always creates more good herds only for you to steal his herds again. Please understand, none of this is meant as a criticism of your skill as a cattle trader, Yaakov just thinks you’re saving money by starving the animals - what shepherds do to their animals in private is their own affair.
Lavan, it’s bad enough you cheated Yaakov on his wedding, but you begged Yaakov to stay with your firm because of the better professional opportunities, only for you to steal his business. Every time you steal merchandise from him, he creates better profits out of the bopkes you hand him, only for you to leave him with bopkes again.
All Yaakov wants is to return with his family to Canaan and make an honest living. I know we’ve always had occasional trouble Lavan, but I honestly never thought you were a liar or a gonif. Please show me you’re the righteous person I always knew was in you.
Baruch Hashem and Love….
Rivka
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Dearest Rivka……….
I deserve better from you. You know perfectly well that on the morning Rokhel found Yaakov he’d smoked so much hash that he was literally seeing angels walking up and down a ladder. Now, when he’s nearly ninety, he finally gets his act together and absorbs invaluable corporate experience, and that’s not enough? You remember Dad, do you really think Abba Betuel was any different with me than I am with Yaakov?
I know you love your son, but you have another son whose scribe keeps writing me about how you treat him. Esav is doing better than ever for House Avraham, but after what they wrote me it’s a little tiresome to read you accuse me again of dishonesty. That birthright story was really shocking. Esav offered Yaakov his birthright in exchange for a bowl of soup as a joke, and once Yaakov jokingly took it, he threatened to burn it rather than give it back; and when you heard about it, you not only didn’t demand Yaakov return it to its rightful owner, you deliberately tricked ‘Yitzhak’ into giving Yaakov the Blessing too.
Do I really have to remind you that our firm’s ‘tricks’ are the reason you have any sons at all? You’re the one who wanted to marry that crazy side of the family which claims they’re ‘chosen’ by a god they never see, cuts the foreskin off its babies but doesn’t sacrifice them, and thinks themselves so morally superior to the rest of the world that they whore out their wives and expel their concubines (and don’t think all that ‘explulsion’ in the House of Avraham is over just because your meshuggeh father-in-law is dead). How many of your grandchildren will even be able to stay in Canaan? Your side of the family is so fucked up that your favorite son had to run away to save his life. Fortunately he had a rich uncle to employ him, though apparently if he’s rich he has no problems at all…
Please understand, the head of the house always gets the plumb herds, that’s the way it’s always been; you know that very well, but what you might not understand is how difficult things still are. Whatever luxury we knew in the old days of Ur, An & Enlil and Enki be praised, that’s over now. We came to this new country with nothing, and over fifteen years we built a successful multi-empire syndicate that still isn’t half the organization we had in Sumeria, which I shouldn’t need to remind you was liquidated due to anti-semitic discrimination.
I’m just trying to keep expenses low, and as head of Terakh House, if I didn’t take the best shares, Yaakov’s life would be threatened. You never met my son, I discipline him as best you can a schnorrer, but he runs with a very bad crowd of Assyrians. If I let Yaakov keep the best herds, what defense would Yaakov have if my son decides Yaakov’s a threat to the inheritance Boer refuses to work for? Yaakov isn’t a hunter-gatherer like his brother, and even if Boer is as unathletic as the rest of us, his friends are not, and any one of them would make quick work of your son. So please understand, if we made business decisions on the basis of all your womanish worries, we’d all have died a hundred years ago
Rivka, please understand, I love you, I love Yaakov, I love Leyah and Rokhel, even if Rokhel is a hur…, and I want to see them all thrive. I’m doing what I think is best for us all, especially Yaakov, and very soon he can choose whether to be head of House Terakh or House Avraham.
So as a show of good faith, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Kharan’s annual livestock fair is in half a year. In six months we’ll have more goats and sheep than any of us know what to do with. Yaakov will get all the black ones, all the spotted and speckled ones, and I’ll just take the pure white.
Your unappreciated brother who loves you, An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Lavan
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Dearest Lavan………….
I really can’t believe I have to do this yet again. I read this new promise to Yaakov with great happiness, it was really was amazingly generous, but I just got a letter from Yaakov saying that you removed all the non-white livestock and herded it a three days journey away so Yaakov couldn’t find it. If your word was a stick you couldn’t lean on it.
Is Esav paying you to fercockt all this?
Rivka
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Dearest Rivka…………………………………….
I’d say I’m shocked by your tone but that’s obviously untrue. As I said, if my son ever saw that Yaakov keeps the best herds, what defense would Yaakov have if Boer decides I gave Yaakov the inheritance Boer believes is his by natural right?
Well, Boer heard about our arrangement just hours after I sent the letter. If I respect Yaakov’s safety and his children’s, if I appreciate my own, I had to send the cattle away and stop Yaakov from taking them.
And even if that’s what I did, Yaakov has me to thank for no danger coming to him or his family. Neither of us would be in any danger had he trusted I’ll compensate him properly as soon as possible, but instead he stayed up all night painting spots on the remaining livestock and I legally had let him keep them. Ever since, my son yells at me every day about how I let Yaakov get richer than we are and how I’m cheating him out of his inheritance. Yaakov and I both live every day in fear that Boer will get Assyrians involved in our business dispute. The Mesopotamian police can only protect us so much.
The Assyrian Empire gets closer and closer, and you have no idea what they’re like. We have to avoid getting involved with them. I’ve seen Assyrians slice off a man’s hands, feet, ears, nose, then make him watch as they throw his wife off a high tower. I’ve seen them behead a child, flay alive his brother, then roast a third brother over a fire. In wartime they burn cities to the ground. In peacetime Assyrian cities beat criminals and whip debtors to death, pull out their tongues, gouge out their eyes, impale, behead, make them drink poison, burn children in front of their parents, and not as a sacrifice! Maybe you don’t believe me, but one day they’ll come for Canaan too and you’ll understand.
I don’t expect gratitude, but you owe me appreciation. Every decision I make is to protect the House of Terakh, in which Yaakov is the most important member. Yaakov no longer wants to be head of Terakh House, and that’s a shame for us all, but if he ever does again he’d immediately see that it’s no easier for him to honor vows and covenants than it was for me
All my love which you don’t currently deserve, but I miss the better times in Ur, An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Lavan
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Dear Lavan….
How could you not tell me that my son was living in this kind of danger every day for twenty years? Are you exaggerating or have you deliberately kept secret what kind of neighborhood you live in? You had us believe you were running a respectable business, but now you tell me you’re associating with lowlives like the backgammon scum you hustled in Zaydie Nakhor’s barn!
For our whole lives, you told me I have no mind for business because I’m a woman, and for our whole lives I’ve watched you senselessly put our family’s lives in danger just so you could make a profit. First I watched you manipulate your position as heir, your tenure as head of the house, and your maleness to get away with lie after lie. What the point of being President of the House of Terakh if you run the House just for the good of yourself? Even when we were thirteen, I knew this is how you would run things. Maybe you’re right, maybe a woman would run a business differently. Maybe one day, the House of Avraham will let a woman run the organization and do a superior job to men like you.
The time has come and long since passed for Yaakov to come back to Canaan. Yitzhak dropped into a coma the day after Esav’s wedding and is unlikely to wake up; so with Yaakov gone and Yitzhak incapacitated, I’m Vice-President of the House of Avraham. As you know, I have the authority to order Yaakov’s return without Esav’s permission. By my authority, Yaakov must return to his real household immediately so he can take his Birthright and run the house of his grandfather, which he should have done twenty years ago.
Rivka
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Dear Lavan,
As I’m sure you recognize by the time you read this letter, Yaakov and his family are well on their way to Canaan. Within seven days of sending my last letter I realized we had no alternative to escorting Yaakov home ourselves, even if it means Yaakov fleeing under cover of night with your daughters and grandchildren and all their worldly goods (such as you let them have any...). I knew you’d never show Yaakov my order and would bear false witness to keep his service forever, so I immediately sent Eliezer-ibn-Eliezer to deliver an official command of homecoming.
I’m deeply unhappy relations between our houses came to this. I wish there were another way, but you’ve become such a danger to the family’s security. There was no other choice, and once I told Esav everything, he agreed.
I only wish you the best of luck, which I’m sure you’ll always have, and for your household to be fruitful and multiply. B’Ezrat Hashem such luck we all will have, whether in this world or the next. In the meantime, I reluctantly send you my deepest love,
Rivka
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Dear Rivka,
I discovered Yaakov left with his family about an hour after they abandoned us. No doubt you won’t believe me when I tell you that I’d already decided to let them go and would have given them my full blessing the next morning. You wouldn’t be able to accuse me of delaying them for a moment if Rokhel, whom Yaakov taught everything about your house’s god, hadn’t stockpiled hoards of gods from my own collection. Knowing the statues would easily be discovered and how much they would offend you and Yaakov, I immediately sent for my best horses to catch up with them, took my gods back and said a swift goodbye to my family that I love dearly in the best and most forgiving way. Rokhel is now your problem, a true Jewish Arabian Princess.
It’s made me unhappy to read you taking offense at my treatment of Yaakov so many times, but I repeat, all that I’ve done was for our family’s good. You have the luxury of viewing our situation from 650 miles’ distance. In my position, you’d make no decision differently and you can’t possibly tell me that I’ve withheld the dangers of our situation because I know I’ve sent decades of letters to you about it. Whether it was about our exodus from Ur to Kharan or the dangers of having Assyrian clients and tenants, there’s nothing I’ve kept from you. You just didn’t have eyes to see or ears to hear anything about it. Nothing here in Mesopotamia is more dangerous than Sumeria ever was, or Canaan is, An & Enlil and Enki be praised. If I spared you the explicit details, it’s because I know how you worry about Yaakov, but this is why I’ve constantly advised you you’re not a person of business. You never understood the risks, you never wanted to understand, and if you did, you’d never sleep.
You’re absolutely right, I’ve dismissed you for being a woman for a century, and it wasn’t right of me. I swear before Divine An that I repent and plead both An’s mercy and yours; but I do know you Rivka, and whether it has anything to do with your womanhood, I know that even if you had the kishkes for running a business, being a woman would make running a family house much more labor for you than it ever was for me - and it’s always plenty. You were always smart, and being smart is helpful in business, but what you really need is chutzpah of steel - which hasn’t been invented yet, but you know what I mean. You wouldn’t just spend the last century avoiding fraud, you’d spend it avoiding assassins who know that a woman as a household head endangers every male power in the world. You’d have to kill every powerful man before they kill you, because your death would be the example to every woman who dreamed as passionately as you did for a world with justice.
But to be perfectly honest, in recent years, my opinion of you changed drastically. What changed it was reading how you defrauded your own son, and I don’t know which I’d worry about more: whether you don’t have any killer instinct, or whether you have too much. Maybe you could have been the woman with the kishkes to succeed in a man’s world, but how can any person who kills that many people on the hope of creating a more just world be righteous?
And so, if “Yitzhak” is in a coma, there’s no sense in longer keeping from you my deepest secret. If I’d ever told you this information before now you’d have immediately told Yaakov, and he’d either leave or see through the lesson I tried so hard to teach.
Three days before Yaakov arrived at my well, high on hash if you recall, I got a letter from Yitzhak/Yishmael about which he clearly never told you. He ordered me to burn it immediately after reading, but I remember every word.
The original lie which gave Yitzhak/Yishmael his lifelong wealth was almost a century ago, but he felt shame at living Yitzhak’s life every day which only grew with every decade; and during your family’s more recent conflicts, so great was the shame that his head was stricken by a horrible voice; not a pleasant, blessed voice like An who kept company with his father, but a screeching, horrible voice like Nergal’s who every day pierced his skull and slit his flesh; a voice who never stopped telling Yitzhak/Yishmael that deception is built into the House of Avraham’s entire future; claiming your house’s idea of only one god who rules over all creation will always be tarnished with an original sin of dishonesty that will repeat itself from generation to generation for as long as the House of Avraham exists.
To be perfectly honest, I always thought the idea was a shandeh. Living is hard enough without convincing people they’ll live more honestly if they believe in a god who controls everything, reads all their thoughts, and follows them everywhere. I know he thinks the idea will redeem the world and make people act more decently, but it’s going to put every mind who believes it into a prison. It will only make them suffer more, tell more lies, be more violent, more covetous. If it ever caught on it could turn the whole world into meshuggeners like Avraham.
When Yitzhak/Yishmael saw how easily you decided to lie when you second-guessed your husband’s judgement, and how quickly Yaakov agreed to conspire with you, your husband decided he had proof that the voice was absolutely right, and eventually the voice sent him to a permanent sleep.
Yitzhak/Yishmael saw that Esav was a slow learner, but was good natured and always did the right thing. When Esav handed Yaakov his Birthright, as a joke, Yaakov immediately claimed Esav’s joke was a serious exchange and threatened to throw the document into the fire rather than return it, then he hid it in a place which only he knew. When Yitzhak/Yishmael heard what Yaakov did, he saw that the voice’s suspicion was true; however shrewd and charming, Yaakov was dishonorable and false-hearted.
And you not only believed Yaakov, you helped the son you love more steal the blessings and possessions of the son you love less! That was your plan, Rivka, not Yaakov’s. Thanks to you, Yaakov is the designated heir and there’s no way for Esav or Yitzhak/Yishmael to reverse the effects of your betrayal, but it was Esav, not Yaakov, who ran the House of Avraham brilliantly for twenty years, and the disasters you predicted for Esav’s period as household head never materialized.
What Yaakov required, Yitzhak/Yishmael wrote to me, with underlining, was brutal discipline. According to your husband, Yaakov’s dishonesty was due to his mother spoiling him. You insisted that Yaakov was not cut out for challenging work, you made sure he got easy jobs shepherding the herds while Esav hunted large animals in the desert, going without food and sometimes water for days, endangering his survival against savage beasts. Whether Esav has any brains, he has the seykhel for business, he has the kishkes, and he has the…
So if Esav was angry enough to say he wanted to murder Yaakov a few minutes after learning that his own brother and mother betrayed him, he soon realized he didn’t mean it; and even if he did mean it at the moment he said so, he long since repented his words and told me he regrets them every day.
If you were paying attention, you’d see that Esav’s long since forgiven his brother and, more obviously, forgiven you. His scribe wrote me that Yaakov will be welcome at a surprise celebration with hundreds of Hittite guests. Esav forgave both you and Yaakov, but neither of you have forgiven me for my deceptions, deceptions that are obviously on a level more trivial than your own betrayal of your son and husband.
And even so, when I heard everything that Yaakov did, I appreciated straight away that this is a guy with the chutzpah to be a great businessman, but he needed to learn business’s risks, he needed to accept the price of success, he needed to understand exactly what it means to be a cattle trader and endure all the humiliations of apprenticeship just like I did. Being a boss is no easier than being an associate. A good head of the house still carries the heavy stones by himself, still picks the weeds with the bondsmen, still gets on his knees to wash the sheds; he cleans sheep drek from the backside wool, his hands have bloody scabs from plucking the chickens, this is the way Abba learned, this is the way Zaydie learned, the way apprenticeship is always done and I guarantee it was much more ruthless in the past.
I don’t expect to be thanked, but Esav assured me Yaakov will return a hero. Esav is nearly 100, claims he has enough savings and wants nothing more than to take a cruise down the Nile. Even if Esav stays in Canaan, you’ll have two sons near home who can run the House of Avraham brilliantly and make a living that keeps your descendents out of the slave house forever. Meanwhile, the House of Terakh has no capable heir yet, and even at the age of a hundred thirty, I can’t retire. You can’t possibly know what a burden it is to work as hard at one-hundred-thirty as you did at thirty and there are no words for my exhaustion. At times I even believe I’m hearing the voice Avraham heard all those years ago….
An & Enlil and Enki be praised, all my love, and your welcome,
Lavan
So I started on my way to Haran, it was a shit journey. They say the Levanese coast is beautiful, I wouldn't know. I just wanted to get to Haran as quickly as humanly conceivable, and I could conceive of a lot of things happening on the way. One of them already did happen when that piece of shit Eliphaz came up to kill me. He was a smarkatiner yingle as a kid, he's an asshole now.
I really did want him to kill me. I wanted to die, no question of that. I meant to die, I thought about doing it every day of that journey. The only thing that got me through was the idea of what might eat my corpse. It's not fair that Abraham and Sarah get a cave and a proper burial, and just in case there's ever a resurrection they can walk around with a whole body. Me? I would just get picked apart by some vulture in two or three days and my bones would scatter everywhere and if some kind of revelation's at hand I'm nothing but a drumstick.
So, yeah, that dream... fuck if I know. Angels going up, angels going down, angels going all around... it's just a fucking ladder. Everybody asks me what it means, I think it means I could have charged them a lot of money as a motivational speaker and people would have eaten that shit up, at least until they talked to me and realized I didn't have much motivation in me to begin with.
It is fucking tough being the grandson of Abraham. Esau agrees. Our dad was fine, he clearly didn't get me but he tried hard enough, harder than I've tried with a few of mine, I could've done better to them, we all know that. You bask in the glow of Hashem long enough and eventually you think even your khara smells beautiful. Dad had the same problem, and Abraham? Well, God made him meshuggeh so was he ever gonna be a good dad?...
Mameh was, well she's just Bubbie, still sitting around the campfire, one hundred... what the fuck is it now, sixty-seven? sixty-eight? Always up in your business and mine. Nothing's ever good enough for her but she cares, and look, even if we've spent the last hundred twenty years bickering I owe her a lot. She let me live on the land for seventy-seven years before I got to Kharan and made my money, Before I was 'Israel Abramowitz' to the world I was just the 'idiot son Yaakov' who needed setting up in business.
Oh god, what a n'dot it was getting to Lavan. Dealing with that ganav was bad enough, but the journey there was the worst part. If you think the trip to Egypt is bad, try getting to the Armenian highlands. You gotta go through the Surian coastal mountain range, climb one, then the next, then the next. They're beautiful: trees on all of them with lots of green valleys and farmland, but you don't give a shit when you're exhausted and mosquitoes are eating you up everywhere, the animals you kill all have fleas and you've got athlete's foot from getting sandals wet that were already falling apart.
So I went to sleep early that night. I guess I had a sleep deficit, but it was at a very high altitude, I wasn't just tired, just feeling loopy all day. It was one of the few days on that trip I wasn't hella depressed, and I was making very good time. But my neck was bothering me like you wouldn't believe from field dressing all that Surian brush-tailed moose. It was just a miserable time generally but that was frankly one of the better days. Maybe we all should have settled in the mountains...
So I gather a bunch of rocks as an 'orthotic pillow' and I go to sleep. A bunch of rocks became one rock. I've never been a sleepwalker but I have my own theory what happened... but you'd think from the way the Children of Babel acted when I told them about it that Hashem himself was making a cameo. The next night, it did seem a bit like he was making a cameo. Not him, but everybody else: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Abdiel... all the el's... and they were just... doin' their thing, up and down. You'd think they'd have somewhere better to be, but no, they just hang out on a latter. Maybe it's an exercise thing...
But that wasn't the memorable moment, and here, Binyomin, I'm gonna tell you something I think nobody's ever known, unless the angels were still there, which I guess is always a slight possibility. Everybody thinks it was an angel. I never thought it was an angel, I pretended to agree with everybody, but here's the truth...
A few days later, another mountain, this time around the Armenian border, around sundown I spot a hermit in the mountains. He must have been about the same age I am now. Pure white beard and wither, and he was naked. You saw every bone on him, and he looked unmistakably like Zaydie, right down to where the skin cancers grew. But he had food, and he prepared it: deer, gazelle, and yeah, the usual goat. Don't tell anybody but I ate the deer... that's not the secret don't worry...
For a hermit, he was a surprisingly chatty guy, and for an old guy, surprisingly spry, but he seemed more than a little crazy. All those hermits are, what can you do, and with our august lineage we're not exactly in a position to judge... All the usual questions go back and forth about where we're from, and he claims he's from Levanon. I asked him what he's doing around here, and suddenly he goes very quiet. So I change the subject and we start talking about our old days tending sheep and the various techniques we got good at, but when he heard that I'm from the family of the one true god, dude had a freakout. Just pacing around the fire, practically running, and screaming to himself, not in Aramaic or Akkadian, in Hebrew! Talking about how Hashem has finally found him and is going to complete the sacrifice.
Sacrifice? What sacrifice? Another sacrifice? Another HUMAN sacrifice? Everybody knows that elter-Zaydie went meshuggeh and tried to kill Zaydie and stopped at the last minute, and then he went to get a ram.
Yeah your elter-Zaydie was meshuggeh and kind of a schmuck: as you know, this is often what fathers are. His mind was already slipping at that point, but it was right around then that he had the stroke and semi-vegetative for a couple years. So, what happens?
I asked him, are you the son of Abraham? I'm nearly as freaked at this point as he is, but instead of saying yes or no he starts bleating like a ram. So then I have no idea why I'm asking this, but I ask, 'are you Isaac?' The bleating gets louder and he starts crawling on all fours.
I have no idea what to do at this point, but by then I thought I'd lost the birthright and the blessing to Eliphaz, I'm as penniless and homeless as this guy and had no more chance of going home than he does. I was running from a father who never paid much attention to me and running to relatives my mom always said were dirtbags.
What am I supposed to do in that moment? I am face to face with the man I think is Isaac which means my father is either not my father or not at least who he says he is. Something in me was breaking, and I asked him to bless me. He stopped bleating and said no. I said 'bless me' again. He said no. He suddenly stands up and says he has to leave.
I'm not letting this guy leave. Not without either the truth or without a blessing. So I block him. He tries to run away, I run after him and catch him. We wrestle for... what? Forty minutes? An hour twenty? I was exhausted by minute 4, but this ancient apparent uncle of mine had the strength to wrestle the whole time. At one point I was sure he broke my leg but somehow I could keep going.
Finally the sun was coming up, and I said 'we gotta stop this and I have to get on the road. It's been real.' So he stops and at this point he says that there's no point after all this for not blessing me. He told me since I'm from Israel, call myself Israel, the land will bless me and he misses it.
I hope you miss us Binyomin. You've been a hostage now for 100 days, we think you're still alive but we have no way of knowing, and I'm going to keep writing you these letters until you come home.
Love,
Abba
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