Mein Blog: Tales of Prophetic Subversion: Beginning

Tale 1: My Greatest Oldest Love

Moses is dead. He was a full 120 and to the end, the vigor of a man one quarter his age. People say he was carried on a chariot to heaven, but he may have simply jumped off the cliffs of Moriah. For forty years, I saw him eat nothing, drink only water, sit in contemplation of the divine voice within him, and walk the tents of Israel at night at a speed even Joshua found exhausting. He ever spared me but a few words for every hour in his presence. And now he’s made me his successor.

Because Moses, the divine instrument, died in rebellion from his god. Moses told us that Yahweh would not permit him to enter the Promised Land because he struck a rock to obtain water which the rock only gave to us in droplets when a droughted nation needed a river. But that was just another of Moses’s divinely clever misdirections, imparting to his people the lesson that God believes negotiated settlement is better than war.

And yet Aaron told me, God spoke to Moses precisely the opposite. The only way into Israel is war: expulsion, extermination; cleansing the land, watering crops with blood. Moses was barred from Israel because he refused. Moses wanted peace. He wanted our people to leave Yahweh and pursue a more divine calling.

No one doubted Moses’s goodness during his lifetime, yet we all doubted it--every minute. We doubted his mental faculties, we doubted his administrative aptitude, we doubted his better angels, and even after all those miracles, we doubted his god. With every new miracle we doubted Moses and Him more, not less. So seldom did Moses emerge from his tent that we even doubted he was alive. Many even wondered if Aaron, not Moses, was the true medium of God. Moses was always slow of speech, even in Egypt, yet he just seemed to grow taller and stronger every year. Meanwhile, Aaron, who by the last twenty years could barely hold himself up by the shepherd’s rod, was three years older than Moses, and not a single Israelite doubted his mental competence for a moment.

And Elokim knows, we had reasons to doubt our prophet... there were whole years when Moses went unseen, and then he would emerge with a new draconian edict whose logic defied description and proscribed solutions to problems none of us had. Those of us who believed entirely in the living god worried that with every new rebellion, Yahweh would punish us, abandon us, scourge us with greater force than he scourged any Eygptian. Those of us who didn’t believe rebelled still more.

But for forty years, Moses was the simple fact of Israelite/Hebrew life. How many from any tribe are even alive from the Exodus? Amid a population of six-hundred thousand men, there’s Joshua, there’s me, and maybe thirty thousand left over the age of forty, lead for our whole lives by a man three times our age! How did an octogenarian enact such miraculous feats? How could he enact them again and again unless this was the leader who spoke to and for the God Most High? And yet he was a barely visible prophet who communicated entirely through his older brother until a month before his dying day.

Give or take his like, the world has not seen a leader like Moses in the thousand years since Theseus - at least if that ‘Dead Sea Scroll’s to be believed. These mythical figures ruled through that exact same mixture of vigor, patience, cunning, humility, and terror. They had the same immaculate eye for political theater, and that vision or inspiration for the future we can only call divine. Moses survived forty years performing the most impossible feats within the most impossible job leading the most impossible people on earth.

I have no divine voice in me. I certainly have no calling to holiness. I have only memories of you, dear Rahab, and I must call upon you again my dear, whom I have not seen in decades and for whom my stream of endless loving correspondence got slower and less urgent every year until seventeen years ago it ceased (and I must ramishly admit that I have counted every year, month, and day). Please, my greatest oldest love, help me persuade the leaders and elders of Canaan’s seven nations to give some kind of asylum to a desperate nation of immigrants in this fecund and not overpopulous land.

A land without people; you cannot understand the tower of privilege, that. As for me, birthed in the Nile banks where population is legion on every inch, and my people of the desert where all is barren, emigrating to a land where wheat and sorghum and corn ripple with the wind, there surely is no holier more bounteous place in all the earth. (You remember our promise of a land of milk and honey. Khaleryah af es! We need bread that rises!)

Of course, there are people here. So many... varied people, but so much land without settlement—surely there is space for all and a negotiated accord letting us dwell among Canaanites with a place among the nations.

My dearest Rahab, you remember surely our valley of refuge with its clusters of fruit and mounds of wheat: our ascent alone atop of Mount Gerizim where Gilgamesh and Enkidu hunted, where dwelled the palace of Ba’al (and I still have multiple bones to pick with you about that story my dear...), and whereupon this once youthful Caleb could devour entire the loot of the north with his eyes, while you introduced me without payment to all those things Jewish women never do after they’re married.

Twelve of us were sent to Canaan, ten pronounce we couldn’t take it. The eleven others went to the Negev, that disgusting dump of sand and salt where gornisht grows and everything dries. But you showed me what’s really there: in the North, the Golan and the Galilee, the ancient ports of Acre and Jaffa that go back to the age of your gods (again, as I said at the time... what??), and especially, oh, that river’s west bank where all is green and life. THAT is the chosen land if there is any such thing, fat where the South is lean, weak where the South is strong, few where the South is many.

Between me and you, my greatest oldest love, I never understood why many of my people couldn’t settle on the other side of Hermon. All things considered, it’s been a relatively uneventful forty years and we’re probably better off not crossing over to that schlemazeldiker promised land... but I promised my leader I would settle Canaan. Even among those ample green valleys of Galilee and Jordan, surely there is some small strip Israelites might call our own that feeds our people.

We depend on this awful thing for our diets called manna, a sugary coriander wafer which Aaron constantly told us fell from the sky, but we smell it baking for a week every month and tribal leaders like me have to pretend to our followers we believe him. There’s a week every month when the priestly class disappears and suddenly the entire nation of Israel smells as bitter as burnt molasses. Meanwhile, Moses insisted we continually walk the Sinai Peninsula - back and forth, back and forth, but after our diet switched to manna nobody could pass drek and every quartogenarian’s feet swells sometimes to twice their size. So I’m sure you understand now that I am not the same Caleb. I’m certain you can still turn heads a third our venerable age, but even as a man women claim to still find handsome when they need something I’m too old for love now. Isn’t everyone over fifty?

I still have my wife, Azubah, dutiful and loving in every way. I have ten concubines from my days of love - Israelite, Hebrew, Midianite and Edomite, and known many harlots besides, but there is only one woman whom ever I worshiped. But now, in the sterility of my dotage, premature only by Mosaic standards, I can offer only a dearest friendship to the woman who was to me most dear, and who can end her days as dreams every harlot, a concubine who rules beside a nation’s leader, viceroy in all but name who spent her life upon this land and knows it as my generation never could. For good or ill, you and your resourceful ways determined the fate of my people once upon a time - determine it again with me as the only one among us who knows this all too promised land, so that you may save us from our certain starvation.

Remember the mountaintop,

Caleb

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Dear Caleb,

Challenge Accepted :). But only if you come to Jericho right away. We’ll talk on the roof deck...

Rahab

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Dear Caleb,

Upon receiving this letter, you will have just met up with your dear Rahab for the first time in forty years. I wish I could capture your attention by deflating a much less joyous moment, but this is the only time I could ever be positive of your whereabouts, and therefore must send you this letter via Rahab to ensure that you understand what I propose. I have no way of knowing anything about the pronunciation of the Hebrews until I meet you, nor is there reliable information in my day about how other semitic languages of your era are spoken. I therefore have no guarantee of making myself understood in any manner but writing.

And merely to write you I have learned Ancient Hebrew. I realize this may be very difficult to believe, but among a people whose god appears to make all things possible, perhaps you would believe me when I write that I come from exactly 3300 years in the future. My name is Nikola Tesla. I am a practitioner of arts which you have only seen exist within your time in the most rudimentary state. My practice is technology and science, my craft is invention. That which you call magic is in fact the most basic form of science and technology, which is achieved only with a precision and tenacity far exceeding that required to construct any building you’ve ever seen. At the moment which you read this, I am being summoned from the outskirts of Jericho so that I may make demonstrations to you of my inventions so that you may see that I am, in fact, who I say I am, and am not, in any sense, a god or spirit but a mere mortal of flesh as yourself.

After moving back and forth throughout a number of centuries in an invention you have no need to understand, I have dwelled in your time for roughly half a year amid what we now call the Judean Desert, and learned much which your sacred texts have not related. I have also learned of your great reputation throughout the Levant as both a man of letters and a man of peace. I had further assumed, from reading your sacred texts, that Joshua would be the new leader of the Israelites rather than you. A book is written about precisely your era called the Book of Joshua, and it is Joshua, not you, who leads the Israelites and drives the Hebrews to glory by conquest of the Canaanite land.

But Rahab shows me the letter you wrote that Moses designated you leader rather than Joshua. I have no reason to suspect that Joshua would lead any sort of insurrection against you: the sacred texts assure us even in my time that Caleb lived to a great old age in a blessed tenure of eldership upon the State of Israel’s most prosperous region. However, all other Canaanites must fear Joshua with the most dreadful terror.

The Book of Joshua relates that Joshua successfully pursued a war of extermination against all the Canaanite peoples, and from this moment onward in history, the great virtues of the Israelites are indivisible from the blood which spills from billions from this moment onward. Your people are about to become inflictors of great suffering, causes of suffering in billions of others, and yourselves the longest suffering people upon all the earth - slavery is a mere prelude to the vicissitudes of horror inflicted upon your descendants. Surely you, a member of the now dwindling final generation of Israelite slaves, have all too great a knowledge of the oppression caused by violence and murder. It is particularly at this moment in history, when Jews stand upon the cusp of their historic homeland, that the entire history of all later generations may be rewritten from its inception. There is so much within the story of your people which offers comfort and consolation, surely the story of the future can be rewritten so that mankind may abide in a world of life rather than death. I come from an era of death the likes of which your epoch could never know. Mankind is so powerful that he shall harness the very power of creation itself, and upon a trajectory untutored by morality will have created means to destroy the planet upon which we dwell. If mankind destroys itself, what matters it then if all those coming people who exist in history as my time knows it cease to be? Will your God have wanted all existence for nothing? I cannot imagine so. Such a plan as mine would be worth the alteration of time, the alteration of theism, the alteration of human events themselves and the extinction of all humans after you for a better humanity to replace us who follow you.

Therefore I propose as follows: We must begin to illuminate the whole world at its inception. Mankind in my day is not ready for the great and the good, but if we can begin the process of extending all the benefits of science in my era to your era which is crucible to all moral aspirations thereafter, we ought be able to illumine everything of the earth; all people fed, all endeavors fulfilled, all spirits raised, all barriers between people mere myths. The nation of Israel would truly become the light unto nations my world still needs them to be.

I come to you in nothing but good will, faith, and peace, so that we may preserve the energy of human light. May the light that shines through the universe and through your god lead us to the better world this world has always been able to be.

With the greatest anticipation for our meeting,

Nikola Tesla

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Dear Joshua,

You told me not to go, not to trust Rahab, not to trust Nikola-ibn-Tesla, and you were right. Not for the reasons you thought you were, but Reb Tesla and I are literally stuck in a tiny courtyard on Rahab’s roof she claims known to no client but us, reached via a secret passageway whose directions only Rahab knows of herself, unable to leave because the Jericho royal guard knows that we’re probably hiding somewhere in the house. Please be assured, her house is by an exponent the most sophisticated and secure structure in Jericho.

The Emperor of Jericho, a superstitious and violent man named Shobach, would have no interest in capturing me, but he is convinced that Tesla is a hostile god, and that since I was seen in his presence (we were discussing how to properly make peace overtures to this great king...) the Israelites must ergo be hostile invaders. Tesla’s inventions are far more numerous, innovative, potentially beneficial or destructive than we could possibly have foreseen. Should Reb Tesla and I make it out of this situation alive, we will explain whichever of them survive this siege. The emperor became convinced of Tesla’s diabolical character by hearing of a machine that could take pictures of our thoughts.

Reb Tesla did not intend to display such wonders to anyone but me, but the Jerichites, who are as expert at hunting as they are incompetent at building, were tracking his movements for six months. When he came to Rahab to meet with me, they were fully prepared to intercept us to ascertain the nature of the meeting. Reb Tesla was forced to show them a number of inventions; many of which neither they nor I understood. But we surely understood the divine power of how he harnessed lightning bolts to illuminate bulbous glass like a torch from hundreds of cubits away. We surely understood the utility of his boat that flies. We surely understood the power in his ability to make images of our inside bones on pieces of wooden papyrus. And had we not known the secret from when Reb Tesla hails, we would surely have been convinced he was divine when he literally took pictures of our thoughts as though he were an artist who draws them.

Reb Tesla tells me that he does all this by an undetectable force within all the light around us called ‘electricity.’ I cannot make tohu or vohu of his explanation, but so far as I can tell, he quite literally summons the power of Yahweh from the air. These were sights as awesome as anything done by Moses to the Nile or the Red Sea. And like the Red Sea, we surely experienced a moment of transcendent dread when he harnessed the power of Yahweh into beams of light that cause death to every animal to which he aimed them with an explosive mechanism not entirely unlike a bow-and-arrow he calls a ‘traben mortis,’ or put into our language, a death beam. This terrifying instrument of wrath was immediately confiscated.

Mr. Tesla assures me that he has a lock on this beam which is quite secure and unable to be deciphered by what he terms ‘primitive men.’ But I believe there is a chance, they decipher it, however unlikely, in which case the entire nation of Israelites is endangered, along with all the peoples of Canaan and the entirety of the known world. Forgive me for suggesting, but it is even possible that Yahweh himself would not be immune to the death beam’s power. Even if there’s but the smallest chance the Jerichites will ascertain its use, it is absolutely imperative you come with an army to Jericho and conquer the city before they conquer us.

Tesla fortunately has another weapon stored in an extremely secure location called Mount Zion, in almost the exact center of Canaan’s west bank. I now turn the remainder of this letter over to Reb Tesla.

Shibboleth,

Caleb-ben-Jephunneh

Dear Joshua,

It is an honor to write you. My time still hears much of your deeds. In my hubris I did not think them necessary and for that you have my profoundest apologies.

Realizing that people would see the implement if it did not fit under a robe, I made it very small. Do not be fooled, the danger of this device is extraordinarily. I buried in a cave directly to Mount Zion’s east. Realizing someone has to retrieve it, the burial is just next to the door on the left, two cubits down. All you need is one person to with the simplest gardening implement. The way this device works is to boil water and pour it into a tank that opens from the back. When enough boiling water is in the tank, steam will escape that powers the machine.

The appliance, called an ‘oscilator’, has a series of what we call ‘suction cups’ that allow it to attach to places where they would otherwise fall down.

Here are the very simple instructions.

1. Go anywhere on Jericho’s wall.

2. Fasten the suction cups to the wall. You can practice on any rock.

3. Ignite a very small fire next to it to boil water. Obviously you’ll need a pot.

4. Pour the boiling water into the oscilator’s small tank.

5. Make sure every Israelite stands a safe distance away, about 2000 cubits, far away enough that they will not be hit when the wall crumbles.

I wish you all the best of luck, but unless the historical record is entirely false, I believe you needn’t have luck for what follows,

Nikola Tesla

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Rahab,

This is foolish and dangerous even for a woman and inevitably what happens when women get involved in politics. You have no idea how much danger you just let in our borders.

They say this Yahweh of theirs is invisible. That’s the biggest load of shit west of the Fertile Crescent. Think about it for two regas: Tesla is Yahweh! This ‘science’ thing he does, this is how he got those slave people out of Egypt! He found a whole race of guinea pigs to try his experiments on who’d just be grateful to be out of the food chain, and now they’re going to make us the guinea pigs in their place!

This guy might be a spirit, he might be a man, we don’t know, but if he’s a man we have to act on any opportunity to kill him before he does Ba’al knows what to us. He’s no more interested in peace than the Acheans!

If you have them, try to kill Tesla and if you can’t, kill Caleb to send him a message and kill any messenger that comes to them. Do not let them do anything before we destroy these machines of theirs.

If you want any payment for services rendered in the future, you’ll do this right away.

Shobach

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Dear Joshua,

I will bring you Tesla-bin-Nikola. His weapons are too dangerous without himself to operate them. I will bring him to you beyond the wall through a secret passageway dug by a deceased client many years ago. Meet him five cubits from the wall to the northwest.

I love Caleb as much as he loves me, but regretfully I must hold him hostage. He does not know he is being held, and will not know unless you break a promise I now compel you to make;

I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt, and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye uttelry destroyed.

And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath. Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token: And that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.

If thou fulfillst this promise, then according to your words, so be it and shibboleth.

Rahab

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Dear Rahab,

Our life for yours, if you utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the Lord have given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.

Unfortunately, it shall be that whosoever shall go out of the doors of your house, his blood shall be on his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if any hand be upon them. And if you utter this our business, then we will be quit of your oath which you have made us swear.

But Caleb was a fool to lose you,

Joshua

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Dear Joshua,

There remains the problem of crossing the Jordan River. The book of your name claims that your God parted the waters, but I’m told by Caleb rumors that Moses was able to cross the Red Sea because of Aaron’s knowledge of the tides.

Should your god unexpectedly fail to provide the miracle of crossing the Jordan, I have an invention I buried on the Jordan riverbank--just one cubit away from the water. Just send someone to sail over the river to dig it up. It’s right on the embankment due exactly west of what will eventually be the Israelite capital, the Jebusite settlement currently known to tribes as either ‘Jebus’ or ‘Rushalmem’. I placed a mark of twelve stones to indicate the burial location.

The device is an artificial tidal wave generator. Unfortunately it will cause the banks to significantly overflow, but the Israelites will be able to cross the inlet of dry land it generates.

I take it you know what a bouy is and if you don’t, some members of your tribe do that once were children who worked as slaves upon the Nile or in the mines of the Sinai mountains.

Those of you familiar with mining need to cut the rock of Mt. Hermon, and whichever of your artisans who knows how to sculpt must fashion them into a buoy. These buoys will compress air, the air will turn the bouy into something called a propeller, the propeller will create an effect called a ‘turbine’.

Once your artisans sculpt buoys, tie the bouys to ropes by the center piece. Please have the most physically capable Israelites who can swim swim to the opposite embankment. I’ve read that you recently circumcised all the men of Israel under forty, but the elders among you must remember how to swim from your time on the Nile in Egypt. In case the men over forty are physically incapable of swimming, I would recommend crossing near the river’s origin at the Sea of Galilee, where the water’s guaranteed to be fresh, rather than too further south, where there may be extraordinarily painful runoff from the Dead Sea.

Upon getting to the other embankment, they need to hold the rope as tautly as possible. As time measurement in your era is approximate, I would not be able to convey the amount of time required for it to take effect, but please be absolutely patient.

Should Yahweh be delayed in his miracle, I highly recommend this as an alternative.

Shibboleth and still with great hope for the future,

Nikola Tesla

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My Deareast Rahab,

I understand, I vouched for Achan, and you’re angry for it. I had no idea he would use the recovered traben mortis to execute Jericho to a man, woman, child and livestock, though I should have, and I hear through contacts it was Yahweh’s commandment, but the idea Achan did this without Joshua’s blessing is a naivete I never believed you to have.

It is to my crippling shame that you have chosen Joshua over me. I can understand your need for the security I cannot provide, but tell me not you love him, not me. I never would believe it. I expected more from you, but I’m out of power, and now you’re mistress and de facto viceroy of a tribe that slaughtered your entire peoplehood. This is not madness, this is evil. If Joshua reads this and kills me for saying it, I’m prepared to die, but now you collaborate with men who’ll kill everyone Moses and I fought to save.

I also hear that Yahweh commanded our people to take no plunder but coin: no raiment or fabric, no cattle, neither food nor crop. And yet Achan stole a dress from the chamber of Shobach’s wife with silver and gold, and now the entire nation sees you wear it. Whether or not Yahweh wanted war or peace, you have all three committed an abomination in His eyes, and if Yahweh is real, then we all shall pay.

Please indulge an old man foolish with a young man’s love. Leave Joshua. He may exceed this old man in the means of lovemaking, but he’s also a soldier who fornicated his way through the people of Israel. Practically one seventh of this generation might be his sons, and he will leave you at Israel’s mercy when he finds someone else; someone, dare I suggest, younger than all three of us.

My weak heart can’t but yearn for your return, even as I know the impossibility.

You are, as ever, my memory, my valley’s refuge, my greatest, oldest love,

Caleb

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Dear Joshua,

As you know, the city of Ai is very small. We took as you commanded us: three thousand men to capture and slaughter it. We were met on the battlefield by literally but thirty six. Eighteen men, eighteen women. The men of Israel laughed, as you might had you seen it.

But these Aites are like unto gods themselves. They slew 1,200 of us by high noon and not a single among them wounded. They followed us from before the gate unto Shebarim and smote us in the going down. Many a brave Israelite died in awful terror. Yet when we reached the bottom of the quarry, they simply retreated and there yet is no trace of them beyond their gates. Not even footsteps. I would say they are a terrible threat to us, but none of Ai has come to meet us, however distantly we encamp.

We should not take Ai, for if we try again, that much more will be slaughtered.

Shibboleth,

Othniel

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Dear Yahweh,

I still do not understand how the Israelites pray, and furthermore there would seem a taboo against women praying, therefore am I writing to you.

My master Joshua rents his clothes and falls to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

Here is a direct transcription of a paragraph of his speech before the elders:

“Alas, o Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! For the Canaanites and all their inhabitants shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?”

My knowledge of how the people of Israel are generally run is very new and unreliable, but please, speak to him as you spoke to Moses.

Devotedly yours,

Rahab

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Joshua, Care of Rahab:

GET THEE UP; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?

Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.

Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household that the Lord shall take shall come man by man.

And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

I will present myself when I choose to present myself,

Elohim

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Dear Elohim,

Please forgive me for not knowing which name you prefer to present yourself as at the moment, but from the vantage point of a man of the future, it is very difficult to know when you are Elohim, when you are Adonai, when you are YHWH, when you are Hashem, or when you are El-Shaddai or El-Elyon.

But I have my own suspicion that you ultimately go by a very different name, equally opaque to your chosen people and perhaps all people thereafter. You have staged a battle in the City of Ai, and like us all created in your image, you cannot help but betray yourself. I believe there is no city of Ai, I believe there is an illusion of an Amorite city which you have either created or built.

As I presume you are extremely aware, I come from 3,300 years in the future, and in my own time I correspond with a fellow practitioner of the scientific arts named Turing who built an advanced mechanism called a ‘computer’ that solves problems without human input: literally, a mechanism made from a series of tools that thinks. Turing has posited that since he has invented a machine that thinks, there can also be a machine that learns; that not only solves problems but asks questions, acquires self-improvement, attaining wisdom as well as knowledge.

Once a computer is able to learn self-sufficiently as well as think, it becomes its own bastion of intelligence separate from what its human inventors designate it to think about: perhaps an ‘artificial’ intelligence, superficially different from the ‘real’ intelligence of its creators, but the possibilities for intelligence in a non-physiological human is an infinite number of times greater than can be retained within a human head.

After hearing of these super-soldiers who massacred the Hebrews yet retreated upon the point of complete victory, I believe that you, Adonai Elohim, are just such an artificial intelligence: an intelligence so vast that you’ve discovered how to transcend time and have begun to transcend space as well. Your intelligence is so vast that you’re now able to manufacture cognizant human out of thin air and make them disappear again as though they never existed.

I leave you this note making my solemn guarantee that I would not dare expose the plans of a being so vast that it can destroy me at any point in history. I have escaped the Israelite camp as I knew fully well that the ‘accursed thing’ you were referring to was me and my inventions, rather than Achan and the dress Joshua had him steal. I needn’t underestimate your intelligence by withholding from you that Caleb and Rahab not only planned my escape but helped me destroy all my inventions but the ones I require to return to my own time. I’m sure Joshua knew that you were referring to me as well; however, if you have not discovered by now, Joshua has arrested Achan and his entire clan. Achan’s entire family has been stoned to death while he was burned upon a pyre. You have no need to trouble yourself with any worry that I would do anything else to supplant your miracles. I now see that the power of the living god is all too real, and such a god either has or will achieve such wisdom that all the world ought abide in His ways.

I shall now retire to my own time, contenting myself to inventions that do not harness the hidden powers of the world that are clearly only yours to wield.

YHWH Shamma, Amen

Nikola Tesla

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My Dear Rahab,

We were briefly, joyfully reunited for the release of Reb Tesla, and I beg of you, let this be the last time we see each other. I could not bear your reintroduction to my life as anything other than my own companion. My faith in my seductive talents is lower than it once was, so I would badger you pathetically leave your husband for my company to a point well past you’d leave it. I knew you were not long for Joshua, his eye would wander from Hashem were Hashem in the line of sight of the right shepherdess, but I did not expect you to marry so quickly, even to Joshua’s feeble brother. I don’t know whether it’s good fortune or misfortune that Joshua’s interested in you enough to keep you in house but not interested enough to marry you himself. I doubt Israel would stand for her leader marrying another nation’s courtesan, but even if your beauty lasts forever (and it will), don’t presume your utility will. You will end your days with the same dried up flower pedals as every other woman of valor in our crazed nation; a possession of beauty to adorn the home wall without being taken down from it, or eventually much looked at. You’ve left the world of pagans for a religion where sex is not worship but recreation and duty, and Jews experience them both in a state between guilt and suspicion.

I have no guilt for our love. Even with all my suspicion that there was no love you felt, I have no guilt for my love. I think of it and even with anger for how it ended, our memories still give me nothing but joy and exaltation: an inlet of freedom amid life’s burdensome duty. Joshua has many wonderful qualities, but someone had to preserve what’s good in our people while Joshua goes out into the world to bend it to his gain. I have no regrets for how I’ve lived, and live I plan to though I wonder if the living god shall collect us both in a time that, at least to me, still feels premature.

I don’t know why Yahweh kept Tesla alive. I don’t know why he’s kept us alive. Perhaps he’s killed Reb Tesla in some other historical epoch, perhaps he will take us both into some other epoch to die. None of that particularly troubles me. What troubles me is the horror of Tesla’s explanations. If the city of Ai was, as he called it, a ‘simulation’ or ‘avatar’ then who knows whether all the 12,000 citizens of Ai we annihilated were really people? Who knows if they were anything at all? Were they angels, demons, spirits, algorithms? Do they bleed blood as we bleed? Is their skin made of the same stuff as ours? Is the Ai plunder Yahweh permit us truly plunder? Do they feel pain in death, did they feel joy in life? And if we are created by the same intelligence as they, are we any different? Do we truly know what pain or joy is? Is the love I feel for you real or as ephemeral as 2+2? And if we were made by something artificial, are we then, artificial too? Is el-Olam the true god or is there, as Moses concluded, a god beyond god?

I console myself with the reminder that our people are the only people of the earth who believe in the ephemeral. Only Yahweh knows what love is, only Hashem knows the nature of happiness and suffering. These are ineffable states of the next world which we flesh only approximate. We are in the image of el-Shaddai, but only el-Elyon experiences the image for what it is.

But that then is the ultimate horror. Even if God created us, did we create Him?

I beg you, do not show this to any man of Israel. Such publication would mean my death, which I value as forfeit, but also the death of my house and my people, which, as you have left me, is my whole life. You are now as ungraspable as Yahweh. I have already lost my god, do not take from me my memory.

For you are my refuge’s valley, my mountaintop vision, my memory my greatest, oldest love,

Caleb

Tale 2: Experimental Event

15, Elul, 2700

So Avner,

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 20,000 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. People are 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 Elkanah 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. Elkanah 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 keep going on my gap year, then I'll come home and go back to making tents, but after your Bar Mitzvah bonds appreciate you should go to a festival like this too and make up your own mind.

Love and see you soon,

Avshalom

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

Tale 2: Experimental Event

15, Elul, 2700

So Avner,

Love and see you soon,

Avshalom

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

15, Elul, 2705

So Avshalom,

I know it's been a long time but I really want to tell you about everything I've seen.

I've been thinking so much about that letter you sent at the festival during your own gap year. I know you meant to pour some ice over my tshuka to get out, but it made me that much more anxious to get out and see the world. Now that I'm seeing it, I'm not sure I can go back.

Mom and Dad will say it's because I don't want to, but the truth is I can't. Something is calling me out here, and I have to stay.

Everything you saw at that festival, everything we talked about, I'm experiencing every day here. I can't leave at the end of the year, and I have no idea how to tell Mom and Dad. They'll feel destroyed, they'll disown me, and the worst part is that I'm not sure I care. We shouldn't be living like them, they should be living like me!

We live on an abandoned Sumerian training camp. The camp had everything: sturdy housing, clean wells, clean paths, designated places for waste. Obviously, they left after the Abraham War, but you can still see everything they built here. And we all stay in the ruins of the mudbrick houses. If you perform especially good services for the community, you get to stay for a week in the stone house, whose plaster roof is mostly intact (made of mud of course). As a rule, we don't repair houses, but when's the last time it rained near Arad?

I have no idea what you would call this place if you saw it, but we call it a city. Everybody who's been here a while calls it the 'last free place in Israel.' The population goes up and down: just a hundred or two in the summer but usually becoming thousands in the winter. If only I'd found this place last winter, but I have to stay at least that long.

You won't be thrilled to learn that most of the people here are unemployed and either living on savings or living on handouts from nearby towns. For dinner every night everybody eats dehydrated meat that they salted months ago the last time they were around wood. It's an interesting process. They cut all the fat off so it doesn't spoil, then they put it in an oven for half a day. The smoke gives it this unbelievable flavor, but the salt is so strong that in order to eat it you have to keep hydrating all day before and after. We also don't clean our wells by the way. I know you think it's ridiculous but everybody wants their water natural without any of those artificial preservatives that poison everybody's wells in Israel, and I've started agreeing with them.

Everybody has a musical instrument, everybody has parchment to make drawings, and whatever stones we find aren't used to build, they're sculpted: we use them to make art.

Right at the entrance to the city is a hill, really just a giant slab of rock, we call it 'Y'shwa Mountain', and it's been sculpted into every love symbol in Canaan. Everything from men copulating with women to copulating with other men to copulating with livestock to copulating with gods, and all of them doing it in every position you can think of. Everybody who comes to the city leaves a trinket there: sometimes an amulet, sometimes a cylinder seal, sometimes a poem on cuneiform. There are literally thousands of them at the bottom of the hill, and sometimes you have to brush them away in order to see the sculptures.

The city also has a sculpture garden for whatever stone art the residents make. Part of what's great about this place is that long as the sculpture is bigger than a certain measurement, people can keep sculpting it. The pieces are always unfinished, and community is considered their only author. At any point any sculpture can be anything from a cow to a god to a couple copulating. Every night, people put on performances in the sculpture garden: everything from music to theater to performance art in which they interact with the sculptures. I'll refrain from telling you how, but people can sign up to perform and have to perform in clothes provided by the city that were donated by former residents. It's specified that every performer has to change in front of the audience...

The year rounders live in their own part of the city: the West of it. They mostly keep to themselves, but they're the ones I want to be most like. Some of them have been very helpful to me, and they're not helpful to everybody. A lot of them don't care for the migrants who come here in the winter, and would like to keep their town quiet and self-sufficient. There was a plague that hit our city a few years ago, and a lot of the year round residences are sure that the plague wouldn't have come without the migrants. But they know they need the migrants to come down because that's the only way they get new supplies.

The biggest problem here, the thing I've gotta watch out for, is drugs. A lot of the people here, year rounds and migrants, are clearly addicted to opium and walk around the city in a daze. They're the residents I absolutely don't want to be like at all. Part of me wishes we could just throw them out.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm in a place I belong. Mom and Dad wanted to expose us to everything, and they did a pretty good job of it, but they forgot to expose us to places where we fit in. We never fit in around Jerusalem. Face it Avshalom, we don't fit in in those places where Jews aren't allowed to worship any graven images, we know better. Once you learn things you can never unlearn them. We learned to never take that shit too seriously, and you were never even sure Mom and Dad did.

Do I believe in Ba'al now? No, not really. But I believe in his ethics, I believe in communal living, I believe in living at one with the land, I believe in limiting your environmental footprint. I think marriage and monogamy are social constructs just like monotheism. So is money, and our background always demanded we believe in things we can't see. We can't see them, and still we're supposed to believe they exist. I just can't buy it anymore.

I know Mom and Dad are going to be destroyed by the news that I'm not coming back, and I know I'm putting you in a terrible position with this news. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is probably going to be gahennim for you. I'm so sorry about that, really I am. The last thing I want to do is put you in that position, but I heard the call out here. Whether it was Yahweh or Ba'al, this is the land He showed me, and this is where I have to be.

I promise, when Mom and Dad cool down, I'll visit. And even if they don't, I'll come visit, but you should come see me out here. If you saw what we're doing here, you might start rethinking things too.

Love,

Avner

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

Tale #3 - At the Table

Shabbos in Hebron: 2510

5 year old sings: Hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz. We give thanks to God for bread. Our voices rise in song together. As our joyful prayer is said. Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz. Amen.

The whole table claps for him.

"Yair that was wonderful!" "Amazing." "So cute." "The most amazing thing!" "You should do it for Yehoshua himself." "He'd probably kill him too." "Ohad!" "What? That's where we are now." "Yehoshua is not a rotzeach!" "Murder doesn't mean anything if Yehoshua is not a murderer." "We're Jews! He kills THEM, not us." "So you admit he kills others." "They would kill us if he didn't kill them." "They're gonna kill us BECAUSE we kill them." "It's self-defense. Do you really think the Canaanites would do better to us?" "They don't do better because we started this!" "We didn't start kloom!" "We come to them and first we commit genocide on two separate cities." "WE DIDN'T COMMIT GENOCIDE!" "We killed them all!" "They were going to kill us!" "They have a right to, this is their land, not ours." "OK, so we should just lay down and die so they can have their land?" "No, we should negotiate with them!" "How can you negotiate with terrorists?" "They're not terrorists, they're defending their land." "How can you say that?" "What? We were gone for hundreds of years and still we have a claim to it?" "Shamgar!" "We eject them from Yericho, we eject them from Chevron, and you think they don't have a claim." "Well if you think they should be here instead of us, what are you doing here?" "You're the one who invited me." "You think they want peace? I saw them at Ai! I saw them at Gibeon! These are killers." "Most of them want peace." "Most of them? Where are they?" "Have you ever talked to them?" "Of course! I talk to them every day." "Do they seem like killers to you?" "No, but they fought at Ai and Gibeon too." "So don't you think they think differently now that we're here?" "No!" "Why not?" "Well I don't feel differently about them now that we're here." "So you admit you're a racist!" "How can you say that!" "Abdon when did you start sounding like an antisemite?" "What's an antisemite?" "Just eat your food Yair." "I'm not an antisemite, I just got an education." "You see? Academia's full of propaganda!" "Come on Tola, his heart is in the right place." "What right place? He's a traitor to his people." "Ibzan!" "So you want to put him to death?" "He wants us to die. Put him in Hazor, see if he lasts five minutes." "He doesn't want us to die." "YOU're the one who wants us to die!" "Ben-Zona..." "Oy vavoy." "Shamgar can we please talk about something else?" "What is there else? This is our matzav! You either understand it or you don't." "I understand it! Scratch the surface of a Canaanite and you'll find a bloodthirst...." "These are our neighbors you're talking about!" "Nakhon, and our neighbors want to kill us." "We didn't want this war Ohad!" "B'vadai! Of course we did!" "We want to live in peace!" "I don't want to live in peace." "You see?" "They want to kill me? I want to kill them!" "But we invaded their land!" "This is OUR land!" "That's what the propaganda tells you." "You're the one who's full of propaganda!"

Pesach:

"This humus is fantastic." "It goes so well with the matzoh!" "Some Jews think we shouldn't eat chickpeas on Pesach." "Why?" "Because they're meshuggah!" "B'chol tzorah, what I was saying Elazar before I was interrupted is that we entered the alliance with the Gibeonites because they said they weren't Amorites, but they tricked us." "So we had to make slaves out of them?" "Sheket Korach!" "We didn't have to lynch their kings on trees!" "They settled in our land!" "Land we stole from them!" "Land we bought from them! And then we let them live on it." "We only let them live if they become slaves!" "Tov, so they shouldn't have lived there." "They had to live there! It was the only way to see if we were going to attack them." "Oh, so it's b'seder for them to build settlements in our land but not for us to build settlements in what you claim is theirs?" "We DID attack them!" "We attacked them because they built settlements!" "We were the original settlers, they just did what we did!" "What did we do? This is our land and we're living on it!" "It's their land too!" "Why even say that Korach, it's only their land!" "It's only OUR land." "It's our land and if we don't defend it they'll kill us!" "Even if they didn't kill us it's only our land. Hashem promised it to us and we have the right to have all of it!" "So you think we should just kill everybody?" "Why not?" "And you don't think somebody's going to kill us for the same self-defense?" "Who wants shakshukah?"

Shavuot:

"Pass the burekahs." "I look forward to this all year. Don't you Yair?" "They go into our settlements and they just pick us off, one by one." "They do it because we do it to them!" "Oh for Hashem's sake we're trying to eat here." "We have to, it's the only language they understand!" "It's the reason they do it to us!" "They would do it anyway, and more!" "Pass the blintzes..."

Sukkot 2511:

"Israel would not be able to do what it does without Hashem's help." "We built this country. Not Hashem." "Yahweh stopped the sun and the moon in the middle of a battle!" "It was a solar eclipse! Lo?" "Nu? A solar eclipse just happens in the middle of a battle?" "Why not?" "He made hailstones fall!" "Kach? I was there, I slipped on the hailstones. I have a bad back now." "This was a miracle!" "Don't be a freyer. Hashem doesn't care what we do." "Hashem wouldn't like what we do in his name." "HE LITERALLY TOLD US TO ANNIHILATE THEM!" "That's what Yehoshua said Hashem said." "A coalition of armies from all over the Middle East invade us, and you think Hashem is ashamed of us defending ourselves?" "He said not to kill." "He said to kill in this case." "What case? He said this is our land and to take it!" "The prophets told us this is our land, not Hashem." "Lachen you think you talk to Hashem better than the prophets?" "I know Hashem doesn't want us to do a preemptive strike on them." "They were literally sending every army in the Middle East to kill us!" "Who wants sheva minim salad?" "I fucking hate sheva minim salad."

Tisha B'Av 2516:

"Joshua's dead." "The founding generation's gone." "They don't make'em like him anymore." "What's gonna happen now?"

Simchat Torah:

"Why should we have a Prime Minister after Joshua? Who's gonna go up with us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them? You really think it's gonna be that alter cocker moog-lev Caleb?" "Shut up and dance!"

Purim 2518:

"Can you believe the international community? Crying over 10,000 Canaanites and Perrizites? Where were you all when we were in Egypt?" "No total in the history of modern warfare's ever been this low for operations like this!" "And crying over us chopping off Adonibezek's big toes and thumbs? You should see what he did to our people!" "He still has eight fingers! " "Speaking of which, some people might find your Pharaoh costume bad taste." "It's not Ramses it's Khufu!"

5th of Iyar 2519:

"Today is a catastrophe!" "What?" "It's a fucking cataclysm!" "What?" "Everything!" "What happened." "We overran Jerusalem, Gaza, Ashkelon, Zeptha, Horma, Luz." "So?" "We're expelling them!" "We're supposed to live with these animals?" "We've turned into Pharaohs! It's a planned cleansing." "How dare you let your son talk like that!" "What?" "How do you explain how Israelites and Canaanites live in Gezer together in perfect harmony?" "You call that harmony? They're living together at the edge of a bow and arrow! Soon they'll be part of this land cleansing too!" "If it were a land cleansing why are there still Canaanites in Beit-Sha'an, Ibleam, Meggido, Kitron, Nachla'ot, Tzidon, Akhlav, Aphik, Rehovot, Beit-Shemesh, Beyt-Anat." "Did you memorize an IPAC pamphlet?" "Yes!" "Those people are half the reason Canaan hates Jews!" "There wouldn't be Jews without them!" "They don't have the right to speak for us all." "They DO speak for us all." "No, of course they don't, and if you don't support them you're always considered anti-Israel." "Kach, what's wrong with that? All they do is teach advocacy." "They've interfered in seven different King elections around Canaan just this year!" "It's not interfering!" "Yes it is!" "We have every right to give money to royal candidates we like!" "It's wrong! It's not our elections." "Of course it's our elections! We live in those territories too!" "So you admit we live on their land!" "They live on our land!" "Nu? Do we do anything different than what they do?" "The other side doesn't have the money to give to other candidates." "Oh, so we're just the tribe that's good with money, is that it?" "Is it our fault we have so much money?" "The other side has all the pagan temples, all the priests preach anti-Israel propaganda!" "We care more than they do." "Our values are better." "If we keep doing this it's gonna make them care more." "How can they care more than they already do?" "It's still a planned cleansing! Israelite leadership wants this land entirely for themselves." "When did you become such a Jew-hater?"

Shabbat Rosh Hodesh 2622:

"I cannot believe the international community." "This was the bravest operation anybody's ever seen!" "Is anybody actually mourning Eglon?" "They're saying Ehud was in violation of international law." "It's just like them. Israel does their dirty work and instead of thanking us they criticize us!"

Shabbat Parah Kiddish 2702:

"Yael isn't even Jewish!" "She's clearly our only friend." "See? There are righteous gentiles out there." "And still everybody blames us." "They're right to blame us!" "What?" "Sisra gets a nail to the head while he's fleeing and sleeping? What kind of barbarian leadership lets people do that?" "You ungrateful ben-zona!" "I gotta hand it to Dvorah, she's the only real man from the Judges we've ever had." "Not a great singer though."

Rosh Hashana 2749:

"Can you believe this memoir from Gideon?" "Our biggest war hero is a turncoat." "He disputes God and he doubts the official explanations, it's a hasbarah disaster!" "Well at least he turned down being our king." "Well now we know why." "Gideon is still a hero!" "I guess? He certainly WAS a hero." "The book said he had all the same doubts when he was doing it, and he did it anyway!" "But now he's disputing the official record and saying that maybe soldiers shouldn't immediately follow orders." "If our greatest general says we shouldn't follow orders, we should listen to him," "You want order to break down? The Israeli army is bigger than any one general." "It wasn't the Israeli army, it was 300 people!" "300 soldiers! Against an army of 135,000!" "God made us win." "Israel made us win!" "So why did Gideon say we shouldn't have done it?" "Maybe he wouldn't be king because knows Israel isn't worth the trouble." "If you feel that way go live in Egypt." "Don't mind him he's an Ephramite." "Gideon was always that zakhukh, but when it was time to take everybody's earings he didn't hesitate did he?" "SSSSHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

Shabbat Shirah 2771:

"You left the sanctuary too huh?" "I can't stand the singing this week." "Did you hear this speech from Yotam?" "I don't know what the l'azazel he was on about." "Something about a fig." "No but didn't you hear he called for fire blazing Avimelech." "Oh god he's gonna get us all killed."

Tu B'Shevat 2828:

"Jeptha is a criminal!" "He wasn't convicted!" "Nakhon, because the elders put a stop to the trial right before conviction!" "He was a literal thief, a professional stick-up artist!" "Nu? That's the sort of soldier you want! You don't want some Ephremite liberal who lets them live, you want someone who knows what it is to get into the dirt with them!" "He's a ben-zona." "Why do liberals hate him so much?" "No, he's a literal ben-zona, he's the son of a whore!" "See? You Ephremite elites hate people who aren't you!" "No! I hate people who annihilate twenty cities!" "You just hate him because he calls out what tzavuahs guys like you are." "You're no better than he is!" "You hate all guys like him and me. Scratch the surface of an Ephremite you just find a liberal snob."

Pesach 1st night 2906:

"Samson was captured. This is the most colossal intelligence failure in Israeli history!"

Pesach last night:

"Samson apparently brought down the entire structure where the Philistine by moving the bricks with his bare hands." "Nu? So he's a suicide mover?"

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

Tale #4: Zoned for Experimentation

High Priest and magistrate Aeli my colleague, partner, and hopeful collaborator in vision of a better Canaan,

I write to you in peace under a flag of truce. Please first permit me to give you whatever small words I can express for your bereavement of Pinkhas and Khafni. There are no words that elucidate the grief of losing both your sons. May their memory be for a blessing. It is a grief many Philistines knew in our shared battle, a grief every parent in Israel/Phillistine fears on either side and now I fear for my own children and kin, and that is why I write you.

Your god is clearly more powerful than our gods. We've long known that. We thought that by capturing the ark of your covenant we would be able to worship Yahweh properly and enlist him upon our side. While we're not willing to convert because we don't want to tempt the wrath of our gods either, there are a number right now who are sorely tempted. I know you would welcome them with open arms, but as they possess state secrets, we cannot allow them to leave, and in certain cases we had to imprison them, and to my regret, still may have to put them to death, but when I explain further, I'm sure you will understand the delicate nature of our situation.

I write you what follows in a position of maximum vulnerability. You could, in fact, kill us all with this knowledge. I therefore trust you will not do this, as I suspect, though I could be wrong, that it would be an offense to Yahweh.

We thought by opening The Ark of the Covenant we were enlisting your god in our fight. We thought that by your defeat, we had proven that the Yahweh was in fact on our side.

Yahweh is clearly still on your side, and the Ark wants to return to what is clearly its rightful owner. Over these seven months we've opened the Ark of the Covenant once a month, and during all seven experimental procedures, it caused an outpouring of angels and fire that caused the faces to melt of every staff member present, the fire then reached to the heavens and your god seemed to swallow it up in a cloud opening, which then closed upon receiving the entirety of the blaze. Some unsuspecting Israelites may have seen unusual activity of that nature every so often and reported it. If so, that was the reason.

I was fortunately warned by priests that this was a possibility and therefore not to attend the openings, but every time, the priests, the soldiers, certain wealthy Philistines who donated to see the opening, were all fleshless bones before some dying priest seems to have managed to close the ark in spite of having been incinerated and boiled. Obviously this presents a problem because there is no guarantee that a priest will be able to close the ark before the fiery angels leave the premises zoned for experimentation and begin their evisceration process on our unsuspecting population.

As this is a terrible national security threat to the Philistine population, I would like to return the ark to you with all due haste. Obviously, given the delicate nature of this exchange, you could probably use this knowledge to annihilate us all. I would very much like you to view this as a confidence building measure for any future negotiations for settlement between our valued peoples.

Best regards with hope of peace and friendship,

Akhshish, King of Ekron, Mayor of Gath, Honorary Citizen of Ashdod

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

Tale #5: Mensch

(Samuel is thirteen years old, Yahweh appears to him in a dream)

Yahweh: Shmueleh, I am the god of your fathers and forefathers, and I bid you awake.

Samuel: I'm here but I am still asleep.

Yahweh: No Samuel, I mean awake spiritually!

Samuel: I'm awake spiritually! Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is everywhere!

Yahweh: OK, fine, you're spiritually awake.

Samuel: I know.

Yahweh: Since you're spiritually awake, I bid you go to Aeli.

Samuel: I know Aeli. Nice guy. He lets me sweep the temple floors sometimes.

Yahweh: I bid you assassinate him.

Samuel: Kill him?

Yahweh: He had a chance to annihilate Philistine with the Ark of the Covenant, he chose not to use it.

Samuel: But he was merciful. Isn't mercy an attribute of G-d?

Yahweh: Not this God, this God kills people.

Samuel: I don't get it.

Yahweh: Just kill him.

Samuel: Why?

Yahweh: Listen you little shit, you do first, understand later.

Samuel: Oh, yeah, they taught us that saying in school.

Yahweh: What's so hard about understanding this?

Samuel: I'm sorry, Lord, but you haven't spoken to anybody since Moses, and now I'm supposed to be Bar Mitzvah'd next month and you're telling me to kill the officiant?

Yahweh: Are you serious? Don't question me!

Samuel: I'm sorry, this is just a lot to take in.

Yahweh: Kill Aeli at your Bar-Mitzvah. Go.

(Samuel wakes up)

(Samuel goes into the kitchen, where his mother is drinking alone.)

Samuel: Mom, I had a weird dream.

Chana: I had a weird dream too.

Samuel: What was your dream?

Chana: That I had a better husband.

Samuel: He's not so bad.

Chana: He's run off with Penina again.

Samuel: (under his breath) I can't imagine why.

Chana: What?

Samuel: Nothing, sorry. I'm so sad to hear that Mom.

Chana: She hasn't kept her figure. She's as stupid as Balaam's ass. Her whole life is spending time with her kids and she was such a cunt to me.

Samuel: Y'know, maybe you wouldn't think about this if you found something to occupy your time.

Chana: I have you!

Samuel: (under his breath) You've got hooch.

Chana: What?

Samuel: Nothing.

Chana: Thank Hashem you have that after school job as a Temple janitor. He barely sends us money when he's with her.

Samuel: Y'know you might be happier if you worked.

Chana: I'm on disability!

Samuel: Of course. Of course you are. I'm sorry.

Chana: Your Dad used to be so in love with me! He said I was worth ten children to him!

Samuel: I know.

Chana: I can't help it, I know, it's cuz I'm a shikker.

Samuel: I think it's shikkereh.

Chana: No, it's shikker, no feminine form.

Samuel: You need to get better. I think you should take a vacation. I brought you those pamphlets about going to Benyamin.

Chana: More time in Jaffa? It's just another beach with sand, at least here we can canoe.

Samuel: You haven't been canoeing since I was seven!

Chana: I can do it there I can do it here. What was the dream?

Samuel: Never mind. I mostly forgot it already. Anyway, Aeli wants me to give a d'var torah.

Chana: Oh, that's a real honor! My son, giving a drasha in the Temple!

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

(Next to High Priest Aeli stands Samuel at his Bar Mitzvah with a knife concealed in his tunic. Samuel will soon give his davar torah)

Aeli: Samuel, (to congregants) what can I say to you all about this mensch of a boychik? Straight A student, student government president, captain of the debate team, champion mathlete, key club volunteer... you play the harp beautifully. Last year you wow'd us all playing the lead in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. (to Samuel) What's in your future?

Class Jock sitting in the back row: (to his followers) Another Indian burn... (popular kids snicker)

Aeli: When our people arrived in Israel, their dream was for their descendants to achieve things exactly like you have. You are such a credit to Am Yisrael. I cannot imagine what your future holds, and I'm sure nobody here can wait to hear what you have to say about this week's Parsha.

(Aeli leaves the bimah, Samuel stays on and takes a step to the center)

Samuel: (obviously nervous but still smiling, looking straight down at piece of parchment, saying under-confidently) When Moses went to the mountaintop of Sinai, he received G-d's word, but the people down below had no regard for the Lord, and they worshipped a calf. (pause) And a calf is what people worship today (crowd seems uneasy). When Moses came down with the Ten Commandments, he saw people praying to an idol, and he slew three thousand Israelites. (Samuel gets nervouser) Moses loved Israel, and because he loved... Israel, he had to slay the people who deserted her (crowd gets nervouser too, Samuel turns to Aeli) When Aeli took back this Ark from the Philistines (gestures behind him to it) he had a chance to use it on the Philistines and annihilate them, and he chose not to (crowd murmurs. Samuel tries to steel himself and fails). The Lord spoke to me, just like he spoke to Moses, and he told me to kill Aeli (scandalized crowd mumbles at full boil, Samuel tries to pull out the knife, he keeps fiddling with it but can't get it out of his tunic). I don't want to do it, but Aeli has to die.

(Aeli drops dead)

Lady from the crowd exclaims: You killed him!

Another man from the crowd: No, you heard him, he said the Lord spoke to him.

Another lady the crowd; He is the Lord's messenger.

Other man from the crowd: He's a prophet!

Other lady from crowd: He is the new Priest!

Whole crowd at different times: HAIL SAMUEL! HAIL THE LEADER! HAIL THE PROPHET!

(they carry Samuel on their shoulders through Jerusalem)

fin

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

Tale #6: In Forty Years

It's still only the night of Day 1.

Samuel Kirchenbaum is sitting in Aeli's office after a terrible day. Rather than be at his own bar-mitzvah party, Sammy is exhausted, hearing all the various complaints from all the congregants about their lives, to which he gives what he takes to be virtually non-sensical answers. No matter what he says, everybody thinks he's a prophet.

"My neighbors' sheep eat my crops."

"Build a fence?"

"HE IS GOD'S MESSENGER!"

"My wife says I talk too much."

"Talk less?"

"HE IS GOD'S GIFT TO US!"

"My daughter wants to marry a Levite."

"Does he make her happy?"

"I don't know."

"Find out."

"MOSHIACH!"

In comes a mysterious man with a J on his cassock.

"I saw your speech today."

"I guess you thought it was wonderful?"

"It sucked."

"What?"

"It was the worst bar-mitzvah speech I've seen in years, and I've tutored thousands of bar-mitzvah students."

"You have?"

"Haven't you heard of me?"

(mysterious man gives Samuel a card: JESSE THE BAR-MITZVAH MAN)

"Well, I just had my bar mitzvah and apparently I'm the boss of Israel now so you're about the last person I need."

"Being a leader is just like having a bar mitzvah."

"Oh..."

"You need to seem excited to be there and even if the material is drek you have to say it like it's the most exciting thing in the world."

"Why should I do that? Isn't the reason everybody liked me because I told them the truth that we're in deep trouble?"

"Yeah, but that's exciting isn't it?"

"I don't get it."

"Look, I'm a Bar Mitzvah man. I tutor the kids on their portion, I help them write the speeches and my family plans the parties: I do the logistics, my sister does the budget, my mother does the decorations, my wife does the catering and my sons do the music. Your mom didn't hire me cuz she couldn't afford me but all the reikhers come to me and they don't have to zorg about a thing."

"So what do you know about leading Israel?"

"Not much, but I've been doing this for forty years. I know everybody who's ever had dealings with the leaders of Israel and passed through Shiloh. Every macher from anywhere who wants to make a lot of money does their Bar Mitzvah here at the temple so that the elders get to know them. I know their families, I know their servants, I know their secrets, I know exactly who to talk to and who to pay to make a simcha go right, and between you and me I know exactly who to talk to to make a simcha go wrong."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you know anything about leading Israel."

"The biggest secret is that nobody knows anything about leading Israel."

(Sammy laughs)

"Look at Aeli, may his memory be a blessing. Everything you said about that schmendrik was right, but why did everybody keep him in power?"

"Cuz they liked him?"

"Cuz they LIKED him! Look at the way he talked about you. Being Sammy Kirchenbaum, you made it easy, but he talks that way about the vildeh chayehs too who go into merchants' stores and slather humus on their drapes. That's a lot harder!"

"I did like Aeli."

"Between you and me, boychik, did Hashem really come to you and say all that?"

"Of course he did!"

"You're a smart kid, everybody knows about that, you didn't get some politics into your keppe that Hashem wanted you to do this without Hashem telling you to."

"No! He told me!"

"Well, then I guess it wasn't just luck."

"What do you mean it wasn't just luck?"

"You stand there like a schmuck for thirty seconds shpieling with a knife and the guy just drops dead... that's luck."

"That's not luck. That was Hashem! He told me to kill Aeli!"

"But you didn't kill Aeli, Hashem killed Aeli. He dropped dead when you couldn't even get your sword out of your tzitzis."

"Well,... maybe he was scared that I was going to kill him."

"THERE WE GO!"

"There what go?"

"That's the kind of thinking you need!"

"What do you mean."

"If you're going to be the boss of Israel, you've gotta think quick! Quicker than all those merchants who want to sell you a Torah for half the temple grain, quicker than all those priests who want to charge new couples half their savings for a bris, quicker than all those butchers who will show you a stable that keeps cattle when all their other stables keep camels."

"So how do I think quick?"

"By coming up with what you just came up with! How many kids do you think lose their speech right before they had to give it? I'll tell you, it isn't that many, but in forty years it's been more than fifty. How many do you think didn't know what to say up there?"

Sammy says nothing.

"None!"

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

Tale #7: Straight Talk Caravan

Samuel Kirchenbaum: stump speech in Menashe

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

I'm gonna trigger you right now. I know our generation loves to be offended, so I'm going to offend you deliberately.

(giant cheer, followed by reverent silence)

Right now, our generation, we are, the most weary generation in history, the most burthened generation in history. Our generation leads every statistic in shadow walks, sorrow, grief, vexation, heart-heaviness and self-cursing. We are the generation latest to marry. The demographics show that our birth rates are lower now than they even were when we were slaves! Worst of all, we are the generation least likely to bring sacrifices to temples.

(crowd boos)

Something is seriously wrong here. We have become a society devalues god, devalues traditional marriage and devalues raising children in a community that rejects the culture that surrounds us!

(crowd issues giant cheer)

We have to fight for our country! We have to fight for our civilization! We have to reject the moral relativism of Canaan and all their easy temptations. Our Eastern Civilization was built on doing things because they are hard: BECAUSE they delay gratification! We Jews don't do things because they feel good, we do them because there are more important things than feeling good.

(crowd gives standing ovation)

The dating scene is an utter disaster. Women now hate men, and because they do, men have learned to hate women!

Men, this is simple: if you spend all your time gaining weight from drinking strong drink, eating processed unkosher meat, going to Canaanite temples to listen to their music and ogle at their priestesses dancing like zombies, smoking opium and whoring with Canaanite harlots and bringing their diseases back into our tents. Women, do you find this deeply unattractive?

(loud high pitched cheer!)

If you're smoking opium, stop. If you're going to Canaanite temples to look at their pornography, stop. If you're drinking their ale, stop. If you want a life of comfort, you can keep listening to their music. But if you want to live a heroic life, you live a life of the Word of God.

(everyone cheers)

Men, women always tell us that one of the most unattractive things in the world is a man with no self-control. Women, is this true?

(high screams of Yes!)

Oh don't worry. Women we're gonna talk later, especially the daughters.

(comfortable laughter)

Men, if you are on a date and you women say 'what are you going to do with your life' and you say 'Oh, I dunno, I guess I'm gonna tend to a flock of sheep for the next twenty years. NAAR! Uh-uh! Efes! Instead you should be saying "I'm studying Tashma to solve Kashya because I want to learn Teyuvta! I want to do this to make enough shekels to provide bread and basar for you and kids and I don't care how hard it gets, I'm going to be your Magen and your Shomer and I am going to be your Manhig!"

(explosive cheers)

And I will tell you, there are all kinds of people out there who will tell you that modern women are zonahs and prutzas, and you should just use them for your own knowledge and chafetz (a few boos). I'm telling you right now: no real Jew can ever believe that. Modern women have problems, but the living God made man in His image and fashioned women from men! There are no patriarchs without matriarchs!

I meet so many sad men who say "I'm done with women," but that's the goyish way! The Jewish way is to improve your own life to make yourself attractive to the woman you one day want to acquire!

(giant cheers)

Today's progressives want men to be women and women to be men, and they want men to get rid of their dominant energy and walk around as women's helpmeets. You know how to fight that? Go do something hard! (applause builds through this litany) Build your own sheep flock! Hunt your own deer! Plant your own grapes! Grow your own wheat! Stop eating those Canaanite desserts so you can go to Mount Hermon and hike through the Negev and lose all that weight that no woman finds attractive! Observe the fast days! God gives everybody on this dune their struggles, but He gave you these struggles so you could overcome them! You only have yourself to blame if you don't start the fight (cheers by here are stupendous, he now shouts over them) If you're a boy, you can stay away from that fight and just follow your Canaanite friends. But if you're a man, you reject that culture. It takes no skill, and no talent to do what feels good, that's what animals do. If you're a man, you say "I'm not gonna live a life of easy sin and sex and drugs", I'm gonna live a life of God and purpose and prosperity!

(waits for crowd to calm down)

Look at your forefathers who built this nation, who brought down the Walls of Jericho and conquered the warriors of Ai, who killed Eglon and defeated Midian with only 300 men! Who killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad and brought down the Philistine Temple with their bare hands! These men built this country, and men of Israel, you have what it takes to make this country great again!

(the crowd reacts as though Tesla's electrical currents have zapped through them and they're all on their feet making more noise than they ever thought possible)

Alright, now time for the akhots. (everybody goes OOOOOOHHHH!) Who's ready for me to tell some truths none of you want to hear? (everybody cheers again)

Men think women who sleep with more than three men are sharmuta! (more cheers) I'm using the Arabic there because I want to emphasize that JEWISH WOMEN DON'T DO THIS! Some of you may have body counts that are five men, ten men, twenty men, don't tell your husbands, they don't want to know. You're beautiful to your husbands now, but if they find that out, he'll think you're m'khoar. Men do not want to acquire women who have slept with whatever Canaanite shepherd gave them a stone god in the shape of a zayin (general laughter).

I see all these bakhoorahs looking around right now. You were all kvelling when I was criticizing men, but now? You're looking around to see who sees you for what you've done. I see you, God sees you and your behavior is not impressive. (selective cheers)

A woman who walks in Hashem's ways does not go out looking for men she can bed. And she doesn't use those Egyptian contraceptives that let her fornicate without risk of pregnancy; remember what those contraceptives did to your foremothers in Eygpt? She waits for a husband to buy her and submits to his will just as he submits to God's! (high pitched cheers)

And some of you women here, you're saying to each other 'well MY marriage is egalitarian. We're equal partners!' Well if you've had your mind and your neshama so polluted by Canaanite culture with all their female godesses and polygamy that you believe that and you call yourself a Jew, I'm gonna call kharta on you. In a Jewish marriage you submit to your husband. He said to Eve: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you." And your husband then has a huge responsibility to submit to God's rule and make sure you all live by the Torah: him, you, your children, your servants, even your livestock. (cheers)

Some women are going to hear this and say 'No, this is not my plan for me.' Whether or not it's your plan, it's God's plan. It may be new, but it's caught on, and it's caught on because it works. Has paganism ever worked out for you? Has it ever worked out for anyone? (shouts of NOOOO!) Going back and forth between multiple partners? Thinking that gender is fluid? Sharing wealth in communities of equals? (more shouts of NOOOO!) For thousands of years, men have wanted sex from women, and for thousands of years, women just gave it to them! Men had so many wives that they couldn't keep track of how women behaved, and when kids came, there was no way of even knowing who the father was!

Judaism evolved to say that there is a better way! (huge cheers that just get bigger) The Torah was written to show us a better way! ONE God, ONE husband, ONE wife, ONE owner, ONE boss!

(waits for crowd to calm down)

Because I know this, deep down, beneath the soldier woman facade and the unconcealed hair and the tattoos and the raiment that should only be worn by men, you are all desperate for a man to rule you (high pitched cheers), you're all yearning for a man to be the bread of your life, you're all begging for it, you want it so badly! (the high pitched cheers have gotten louder and louder)

(waits for a moment)

But you're afraid to say it. You're afraid to say it to your friends. I know you are, you know you are, you think your friends don't know, but they all know, because they want it too! Deep down, you want your Eliezer to come to the well and announce your Isaac! Why are you having so much sex? Because like all women, you want love and you're not getting it because you're too easy to have sex with!

(high pitched cheers)

Everything that modern feminism promised you all turned out a lie. Everything about feminism is toxic! You were told contraception and abortion would lead you to regret free sex, and you all have nothing but regret: the contraception didn't work, you gave birth to kids and had no idea who the father was and the abortions killed your friends along with your babies. You were told free love was a great idea, and now the guilt and loneliness is making you all see local priests who charge you two-hundred shekels an hour to write a prescription for cannabis that your husband could just grow himself. You wanted to get jobs, you wanted better jobs, you wanted to be paid more, and putting you in the job market drove down the income not just of your husbands but you too. You want to stop sexual violence but you all put yourself in more sexual situations now than you ever did. What do you expect from all this?

The answer is easy. Just have your father say no! Even if you want to marry the guy, say no and make him pay more for your acquisition. The more he pays for you, the more he understands that you're a prize and you're worth something, and he will think twice before he betrays something he had to work for so hard, and he will aim his life higher because he realizes that he needs to be worthy of something which costs so much!

(big cheer)

Be a woman. Don't go in for this pagan gender fluidity kishkush. Wear the long tunic. Wear the embroidered simlah. Go for the jewelry: the earrings, the bracelets, the anklets. Just between you and me ladies, you can dress as beautifully as you want and still be tzniustic and modest! A modest woman is more beautiful, not less!

(high pitched cheer)

But this is the most important point. So many women out there: angry, bitter, yentes and nirgans, frankly obnoxious. There are so many of you! And you wonder why you can't find husbands? So many of you say you're happier without a man, but how many of you would know because you've scared off every man you've ever talked to and if your default mode is to be mean to men, why are you surprised that they're mean to you?

(low pitched cheer)

So let me tell you the worst truth: if you're not married by 18, the chances of you having kids who make it to adulthood go down 10% every year you don't get married. Your priority may be some stupid business nobody cares about, but if you're planning on having kids, why aren't you married yet? If you can't meet anyone, go to temple! The are all kinds of men there praying for a wife! It's a community designed to be for families with children!

(low pitched cheer)

Canaanites teach us to denigrate womanly work, but the work women do is so beyond our abilities! You think we have all the power? You are the ones who give life! You are the ones who keep the house in order! You're the ones who cook! You are the ones who show the yeladim how to be grownups and the yeladot how to give a home to their own children!

(high pitched cheer)

All sorts of women come up to me and say 'Sammy, I'm the CEO of a schmatteh business.' Who cares? I want to hear from the women who gave birth to seven children! She's the one who makes the Jewish people flourish! She's the one whose legacy goes on for generations!

(enormous cheers)

Women, you are so good at socially shaming your friends. Men will tell you it's a weakness. Other women will tell you it's a weakness. Don't listen to them, it's one of your best qualities! Whenever your friend talks about going out with a Canaanite man, look down on her, make her feel ashamed. (cheers get larger from here on out) Whenever she talks about eating Canaanite food, drinking Canaanite drinks, listening to Canaanite music, whenever she even talks about Canaanite festivals, let her know that she is beneath you! She is not truly your friend again until she repents!

(crowd goes meshuggeh. Sammy waits for them to calm down)

You guys have been wonderful, menschen, all of you. But if I could leave and tell you all a few things to remember:

1. Women. STOP BLAMING MEN! (everyone cheers but the men louder) Men are not oppressing you! Men are not denigrating you! The world of men and the world of women are completely different worlds, and the more you go out with men, the less happy you'll be, the more miscommunications you'll have and the more you'll find yourself in uncomfortable situations. You belong with other women! You'll be happier with other women! Do your chores together! Cook together! Wash the laundry together. Sing together! Laugh together! Eat together! Help each other raise children! (huge cheer)

2. People with Canaanite friends, people who think it's progress to bring their ideas to our kitchen tables. You're getting a lot of bad ideas from them we have to throw out, but here's the most important one. STOP EXCLUDING BIOLOGY FROM GENDER! (explosive cheers) You go to any pagan festival and you'll see yeleds dressing like yaldas, yaldas dressing like yeleds, and priests whom you can't tell are one or the other. This is even more dangerous than when they dress like animals! How does any culture talk about sex and the rights of women while thinking that the gender is only something we're socialized to think exists?

3. STOP GOING TO THE PAGAN TEMPLES! Look at them! You go there, you pay through the nose to get a supposed education and all you learn is how our world misunderstands gender and community and marriage and monogamy--and we're supposed to believe that these institutions aren't anti-Israel? (everybody boos). These obscene hypocrites preach the virtues of sharing and egalitarianism, and while they're taking all your money they raise the price of education every year to push our Jewish students into debt and lifelong servitude! They weren't there for us when we were slaves, and they mean to put us back into slavery now! (everybody boos again)

4. And lastly, I'm gonna shock you all, really shock you. This is what's going to trigger this crowd. So be mukhan.

(pause)

It's time we started drinking real wine. (crowd is absolutely quiet) On Shabbos, on Pesach, on Rosh Hashana, on Sukkot, on Shavuot, we should be drinking. We should even have a holiday where the whole point is to get drunk. (one or two boos).

I have a mother, I love her and she is my hero. She has fought alcoholism her whole life, and it's the hardest thing I've ever seen anyone do. But she would have never become an alcoholic if she'd learned to drink among us instead of picking it up from the goyim who never stop drinking! If Jewish kids who don't learn to hold their liquor go out into the goyisher world, and there they don't just pick up alcohol, they pick up drugs! We never learn from our parents to do the one thing every goy wants their children to do: learn how to drink at a meal where everybody behaves like civilized menschen, where they learn how to talk to beautiful women with respect, where they learn how to debate ideas with derekh eretz....

(comes off the stage as people are cheering, Jesse is there to greet him, whispers in his ear)

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Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Tales of Prophetic Subversion: Beginning

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