Here Comes the Messiah: Act Two
[Fiction]
It is early in the morning, the Hampton air is still grey and soft with the end of night. The boardwalk, stretching along the beach’s edge, is empty. In front of me, the Atlantic Ocean rolls up, slapping the sand. There is no other sound. Only a single light shines from one window, at the very top of a hotel to my right. The other buildings are still and dark. Everyone is sleeping.
My hair is tucked under a turban, and I’m wearing a housecoat, stockings and my white flats. Already, the sweat is spreading under my arms and the heat is heavy and thick.
I step off the boardwalk, my shoes sinking into the soft grit of the sand. I walk to the water, like a duck, my feet pushing against the pliant beach, moving ahead. The closer I get, the stronger the breeze is, tickling the sweat on my forehead.
It’s too hot. It’s too hard to walk. I pull off my shoes. I roll my stockings down my legs. There is no one around to see me as my bare toes sink into the hot sand.
The water is delicious. It envelopes me in a cool hug, slipping off all of my anxieties, the nervous rush of my insomnia. My worries for Uri, teaching in the West Bank, that are constantly there, rubbing like sandpaper against my skin, dissolve. I bob around in the waves, grinning, laughing. My clothing is a dark puddle behind me, my laughter, the waves splashing, the only sound for miles.
***
I’m at breakfast with my sister Mali and her four little girls, when the hotel manager comes up beside us.
“For you, ma’am,” he says, eyes wide, placing a small envelope in my hand.
“What is it?” Mali asks, as she wipes a trail of red jam off of Gila’s little chin. She tries to sound calm, tries to pretend like she hasn’t just had a vision of Uri, my husband Uri, blown to pieces by some bomb like Michoel Stauss or Avi Dryer.
I raise my eyebrows and shake my shaitel off my shoulders. I am not nervous. The Rebbe sent Uri on his mission. Uri is safe. He can come to no harm.
Inside the envelope is a crisp card. “Hotel Blue, Penthouse Suite,” it says, in a heavy blue ink. “The Rebbe will see you at 10:20 pm, tonight.”
I drop the card into my lap. “The Rebbe,” I whisper. “The Rebbe wants to see me.”
***
I have been in front of the Rebbe twice before, standing for hours in a line that shuffled forward, receiving a crisp dollar from his hand, his eyes, in that half a second of contact, searing my soul.
The Rebbe looks more gentle than I remembered, his holiness so palpable it fills the room like a warm sun, men in black suits orbiting around him, whispering, shuffling papers. The Rebbe wears the same clothing he wears in every of the hundreds of photographs and paintings and videos I have seen of him: a black suit, a white shirt and a hat. But he looks different to me here, now, so close. More magical. More divine.
I stand at the door of his suite as he dismisses the men with a small wave of his hand, a final sharp directive to his shamash hovering behind him. We are alone. The Rebbe and me. My heart thumping like a hammer against my ribcage.
“Come,” the Rebbe says, and smiles at me. That smile soaks into me, through my skin to my bones. I follow him to the white French doors that fall open at the touch of his hand, revealing a balcony, empty but for a gleaming telescope, pointed at the dark sky.
“Look, maidela,” he says softly, beckoning me to his side. I bend down and put my eye to the glass of the telescope. A soft pressure on my shoulder, a hand, sending waves of electricity pulsating over my skin. The touch so unexpected, so dream-like, as if Hashem himself, reached down from the heavens to rest his hand on me.
“Look,” the Rebbe whispers, as the stars spring into focus, clear diamonds sparkling in the velvet sky.
“Look,” he whispers, the pressure of his hand slipping down to my back. The telescope swings down at the ocean, magnifying the white foam on the rushing ocean. A man jumping, a ball being thrown, gleaming in the moonlight, a woman laughing, diving in the waves. It is all as clear and close as figures on a television screen.
I straighten up, eye level to the Rebbe’s collar. The Rebbe is standing so close to me I can smell him, a faint, leathery scent that fills my nostrils and swims into my blood.
“Look,” he says softly, and brushes my cheek with the back of his hand, soft silk on my skin.
***
I take the test even through I hadn’t gotten my period since I was in the Hamptons in early August, and already the leaves have burned orange, and red, and curled on their branches and fallen from the trees.
I am sitting on the floor of the bathroom. I have one hand on my round stomach. I have tried to convince myself that it had grown fat from too many pieces of kokosh cake.
A white bar, a blue cross marking its window, balances in my palm.
This time I send a note to the Rebbe.
There is no response, but the next morning, my sister Mali calls me and tells me Uri is already on a flight home from Israel. “What wonderful news,” I tell her, keeping my voice steady and calm. I put down the phone.
I go to my bedroom and pull a girdle up under my skirt, so it presses down my on belly. Then I go to the cleaning closet and take out all of the bottles and sponges and wipes. I get to work making the house clean for my husband.
At midnight, I am scrubbing the walls of the shower with a bleach soaked rag, and Uri has not yet arrived. There is one moment, the smell of bleach so strong in my nose my head spins, that I balance the bottle in my hand and wonder how painful it would be to send the clear blue stuff down my throat. How quickly death would come. But then I notice a hair curled around the drain and I get back to work.
Morning finds me scraping ketchup stains off the stovetop. I am still alone. I haven’t seen Uri since Pesach and yet the day after he lands in LaGuardia, he’s back on a place, back to the West Bank, without even a phone call to me. Mali tells me she had heard from her brother-in-law, who learns with the nephew of the Rebbe’s shamash that Uri had left. She said the Rebbe had called Uri, the Rebbe himself, directly, that’s why he came back to Brooklyn. Now he is gone.
I sit on the chair by the phone, my skirt stained, my tichel slipping back on my hair, my girdle cutting into my stomach, my hands open in my lap. Outside the window, the light dims and darkens and night falls. Still I sit, my body a block, glued to the chair, heavy and hard.
The phone rings, slicing through the silence. Slowly, I lift my hand and bring the receiver to my ear.
“Basi?” The voice is deep and male and unfamiliar. “This is Rabbi Moskowitz, from Moshav Menacham Mendel in the West Bank.”
I nod silently.
“Basi? I have some – news. There was an attack, here, a car bomb, Uri – Uri is gone.”
The phone falls out of my hand as my body slides off the chair and falls to the floor, a scream rips out of me, an animal cry tearing out my chest. The tears pour out, the cries fall into the dark room, an endless thunder of pain slamming through me.
When the cries slow, hours, days, years, an eternity later, the quiet fills up my home. My body sinks into the linoleum, every muscle loose, my breath slow and empty.
In the sudden clear stillness, I feel a kick, as my baby flexes its muscles against the wall of my womb.
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Wow this one took me way longer to realize who the charachters are, great job.
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batsheva was already divorced when david married her….
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It was only technical, she was still hoping for him to come home.
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I appreciate the tales mocking accounts of t’anach. But, does a specific person have to be a part of the story. Couldn’t the story simply be about a Rebbe without implying which Rebbe.
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That baby died eventually…
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I got that allusion pretty much at skinny dipping, but then I knew her style – so no big accomplishment from my end. (Fool me once…)
No big accomplishment from the writer’s end either, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Retelling biblical tales with a modern twist – could be funny … once. (The same joke told twice…)
I’ve heard the Goldilocks story retold in a complicated mature manner, analyzed and discussed to death. It didn’t make the story any smarter.
In the same vein, mocking a tale that one doesn’t fully grasp, doesn’t make the story foolish. Just the storyteller.
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I’m not interested in mocking anyone.
My point is to explore how the modern religious world would react to the heroes of the Bible if their stories happened today.
My point is to reveal how our common heritage has been appropriated and exploited by a few.
These aren’t “O. Henry”-type stories, although guessing the twist might be fun. It’s an exploration of the realities of our ancestors, without the softening veil of time.
I have a great deal of affection for the Biblical characters — less so for those who claim exclusive interpretive ownership over a history we all have a right to.
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Tzippi:
“Mocking a tale that one doesn’t fully grasp…”
Which part exactly do you think the author doesn’t “fully grasp,” and on what authority do you pass that kind of judgement? Furthermore, where does such “grasp” or lack thereof show itself in this story?
(Or was this just your standard knee-jerk MO — a practice that is as thoughtless as it is mean-spirited — of putting down the messenger when you don’t like the message?)
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In order to complete the analogy, the Rebbe would have to take her as a wife. How would that work?
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I like the series, no matter how obvious (Tzippi, the Title is the first clue).
And don’t forget, “whoever says that the Rebbe Sinned, is only mistaken!”
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“My point is to explore how the modern religious world would react to the heroes of the Bible if their stories happened today.”
I just don’t think stories from tanach are really that translatable. The culture of the time was simply too different from ours. I first realized what you were doing in part one when the main character married her brother-in-law. I remember thinking, “but wait, we don’t do yivum any more.” These stories cannot happen today, not in the same way they did then. Retelling these stories in this manner only seems to be judging a society by the standards of our own. That just seems wrong to me.
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A. M.,
Here is the issue I have with your literal understanding/ translation, in tandem with a modern moral perception of these biblical stories.
If you take the position that these episodes never occurred, why would the author chose to portray his heros in such a debase and depraved fashion?
If these stories actually did happen, don’t you think there would be tremendous outrage? You think a rabbi/ leader today would get away with such behavior?
Would historians/record keepers today record these incidence involving their reverend leaders for posterity, without at least trying to sugarcoat the story?
I don’t propose having any answered to these puzzles, but I do believe that the issue isn’t as simplistically black and white as you seem to believe.
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I just don’t think stories from tanach are really that translatable. The culture of the time was simply too different from ours.
Precisely. Because the cultures are so diverse, the setting needs some serious upgrading. But the core plot, the human follies and guiles, remain unchanged. By rendering the story in modern light, we can appreciate the motives from a closer angle.
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Would a Rabbi/leader get away with such behavior? Quite possibly. it’s you and I who wouldn’t.
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Hozen,
It’s so irrelevant whether this Unpious author believes in the historicity of the story. All that matters is that the Biblical author believed in the story, nay that he related the story, and turned it into a biblical narrative.
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Mis Yavni,
It might be irrelevant to you, but it isn’t to me. If we go with the premise that these biblical stories did not actually occur, it adds to the perplexity of our understanding of the ancient zeitgeist.
Sara, would a rabbi/ leader (of such prominence) get away with *such* behavior?
Absolutely not.
Will a rabbi/leader get away with *some* behaviors that you and I would not get away it?
Perhaps.
But that just proves the point that the *such* of yesterday is equivalent to the *some* today.
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Hozen,
I fail to see how the historical veracity would matter one bit. All that matters is that narrative exists in folklore, and that it did so during the time of the author.
Regarding public outrage, there is no indication the scandal ever leaked out from within the royal court. And even if the public was aroused, what could they have possibly done? David was no weak king.
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BTW This behavior has been the norm of leaders throughout history. In decrying it, perhaps the Biblical author is ahead of his times. (As they sometimes were). He’s not telling a story of especial debasement. He’s telling a story of repentance and redemption. Excuse the Christian lingo.
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One thing is certain, the Biblical author is way ahead of Chazal who try to invent halachic technicalities for David, as if they were an excuse.
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As HR has said a couple o’ times, it all boils down to whether you believe or not. If you believe, than presumably you also believe in chazal, and they have said “kol ha’omer dovid chotoh…” and other statements to that effect. Furthermore, the psukim themselves repeatedly make it clear that Dovid was the chosen one, and that hasn’t changed afterwards. Hundreds of years after his death, the prophets summing up other righteous kings, end off saying, “but they weren’t as righteous as their ancestor Dovid.” So if you believe, all that is left is to try to understand, and that wouldn’t bother me too much. I have spent countless hours on such issues, and the answers are IMO more than sufficient. On the contrary, it helps us understand many of the underlying “workings” of Judaism’s entire philosophy.
On the other hand, if you’re not a believer, what is there to argue about? We don’t even know for certain that King David existed, let alone the legends about him, so why would we want to debate the fine points of a fairy tale?
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If you believe, than presumably you also believe in chazal
Non sequitur. Apparently you forgot about the one billion Christians who read the Bible without the one and only true interpretation revealed at Sinai. And that there were a great many Jews who did not adhere to the rabbinic sect, not to mention the Sages themselves disagreed with each other.
Furthermore, the psukim themselves repeatedly make it clear that Dovid was the chosen one, and that hasn’t changed afterwards.
And that proves exactly what? That God is playing favorites? That Saul was kicked out for the heinous crime of showing compassion while David gets to kill, pillage, and philander yet manages not only to stay in power but to establish of kingdom of eternity? It certainly doesn’t prove David hasn’t sinned. The text outright states he did, and even got his four children sacrificed for atonement.
Hundreds of years after his death, the prophets summing up other righteous kings, end off saying, “but they weren’t as righteous as their ancestor Dovid.
There were no prophets plural, but a single author, and that’s according to Chazal that Jeremiah worte Kings. And the author rated both, Davidic and Israelite kings, by one criterion only: centralized worship in Jerusalem. Even if he was up to his nose in sin, David would still come out the superhero for conquering Zion and drafting the plans for the construction of the Temple.
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this one sounded like it tried too hard. the tamar and yehuda story flowed better. in the words of leonard cohen hallelujah!
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Misyavni, I think you’re misinterpreting my comment.
For example: And that proves exactly what? That God is playing favorites?
You know what the Kotzker told someone who complained that he doesn’t understand God’s ways: “azah gut vus ich ken farshtein, nem ich nisht far kein gut.” What in the world would it mean that “God is playing favorites”? If you don’t believe in God, what does it mean? If you do believe in God, is that supposed to somehow weaken your belief? Him being a god, by definition means that he is on an entirely different level than us, so how silly is it to ask such questions. You won’t necessarily understand everything, or better yet, you necessarily won’t understand everything. Add to that that these questions are directly addressed in gemara and other chazals, so whether you understand the answers or not, shouldn’t by themselves be a reason to stop believing, or perhaps believing that “God is a bad guy”. (And if he IS a bad guy, what’s there to do? He is stronger than you, so you probably don’t want to get him mad….)
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If He is playing favorites, God is not just. One can still believe in His existence, in His prowess, yet acknowledge His Holy unfairness. As the good book says, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. Exodus 33:19.
You mentioned the Davidic Covenant to buttress the claim that David came out clean, or else how could God conceivably promise him a pot of gold. But of course that’s a fallacy. As God Himself said unto His trusted prophet, merit and virtue shall not come before mine throne; nepotism and whim will dwell in the heavens.
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Misyavni, are we arguing here whether the God that we don’t believe exists, is a just one?
Actually, the God I don’t believe in is one that I love very much, I feel very close to him, I know him very well and how he works, and it’s a shame he doesn’t exist.
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Who do you include in “we”? Why do you insinuate I don’t believe in a God? And whether I do or not, how is it of any relevance? I was talking about the God from the Bible. I was describing a characteristic of His in a purely biblical context.
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Misyavni,
Because as I said, if you’re a “believer”, whether frum, christian, or muslim, these aren’t issues that would usually bother you. There are sufficient answers to those questions, and it’s just the non-believers that ask those IMO silly questions.
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The questions come first, then the beliefs. And answers, however sufficient, is not enough. It’s the truth that matters.
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Nice idea. Nice Story. But it wasn’t really nice to make The Lubavitcher Rebbe play the part of David. The Lubavitcer Rebbe had lots of issues, but womanizing wasn’t one of them. Couldn’t you have made to story about some generic Rebbe?
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Is there some Rebbe out there with a reputation for womanizing? That could have added a neat twist to the story…
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sn’t the Lubavitcher the Messiah? If so, he is an incarnation of King David, and he wasn’t just randomly chosen to play David.
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anon, does it have to be a rebbe, or would a reg rabbi be enough? I’ve got plenty for you
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He wasn’t a womanizer but he is the Rebbe that would have been able to get away with it more that any other. And he flirted and interacted with women far more than any other Rebbe.
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Lubavitch has never built any settlement on the West Bank AFAIK.
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