text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Birth

By:

(Source)

Childbirth Preparation Course

I dreamed I was living in darkness. Not knowing there was anything that wasn't darkness, or that it had an outside in space or time. A living darkness, that you could touch, actually swim in, and darkness shall prevail. And my wife wakes me from the core of darkness: Take all your "holy" books and get out now. As far as I'm concerned, you can sleep on the street.
\- What, in the middle of the night.
\- I'll break your computer. I know, you only care about your holy computer.
And she grabs it and holds it out the window and says: I'm letting go.
\- Quiet, the neighbors will see.
\- One, two, th... You know I'm capable.
And I give up everything: I believe you! And go back to sleep like the dead.
\- The computer you love more than me, the love of your life. Even it you don't really love, but are just drawn to it. Like a sick person, like only you are crazy about things.
\- Then throw me out with it. All the books and toys we bought for our son, right now just before, why did we go backwards? No matter how much we try to get out of the cycle with you, everything is in circles, a day of dream - and a day of hell, a night of an angel in sheets - and a night of Lilith in underwear, pulling - and biting. The counselor would jump out the window.
And I hug the pillow under the blanket passionately and don't want to know. And I dream about my wife's poor and pathetic heart, the crushed heart, the ugly, pitiful heart, full of hormones and worries and vengeance and pain. Such a rejected and messed up heart that love doesn't know it, but it beats and beats and can't stop.
Suddenly she starts throwing all the things I gave her in the trash, all the jewelry I bought her, all the gifts in the garbage. And I bury my head in the bed, and pretend to be asleep. And she whispers: I'm here alone, and you're sleeping as if you don't care. You've proven that you can be relied upon, your support for your wife is something else, I'm glad I interest you, I'm happy, you love me, and so on and so on until I fall asleep. And suddenly I feel quiet, it can't be, and I wake up from the silence. And I see her lying in bed with open eyes, mouth agape, and she's not breathing. And I laugh: Are you pretending to be dead again?

Why the Dinosaurs Went Extinct

I dreamed I was something enormous! But I don't know if I'm some dinosaur, or if I'm the next stage. So what if I study in black? After all, even dinosaurs had a religion they received from the heavens, a complete Torah of dinosaurs, of which all that remains are three obscure words in the Book of Genesis: "and the great sea monsters". And there are also rumors of some terrible sin - "the sin of the dinosaurs". And my dinosaur wife brings me news that we received a couple's invitation to Noah's Ark - "Cruise on the Flood", and she says: What a terrible disaster! I wanted a bit of my husband's precious and holy time. Why do we never go out? No money no money - and now it's free. All the other couples, all the animals will be there. And you're lying around in this holy garbage of yours, no wonder you, I'm not surprised, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover... And she goes on and on - this woman is capable of bringing rain from the ceiling - and I say: When is this flood coming already?

And in the following days she acts as if everything is fine, but I feel that something is very wrong. And we're about to leave for this "flood" event of hers, and I see that as always she packed the whole house, and she gets angry: Me me me. Why does everything fall on me. And you sit there like a prima donna with your secret computer. If you're not studying - go to work. And if you're not working - go study. And I get angry: Yes, because I do nothing, and who does all the intentions for the journey, you? Do you want us to leave without intentions? But why is everything at the last minute, you have to ruin it, why always squeeze the juice, why always you, why suck out the soul, why always me? And our giant baby wakes up, comes into our bedroom, and shouts in dinosaur language: Quiet. Why always fight? You're not even talking to each other. And my wife and I exchange glances.
\- Oh, you're still little, this isn't a fight.
\- You don't understand, this is prayer.
\- Right? Prayer in partnership.
\- Exactly. It's the closest thing we're allowed in this world to praying in pairs - like in the grave.
\- You mean the world to come.
\- Of the dinosaurs.
\- Where the women's section is connected to the men's section.
\- Where you can't tell who's who anymore.
\- And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
\- And the lamb with the she-wolf.
\- And then all creatures together, from the most exalted to the lowest, all species -
\- Including both sexes -
\- All mix into one pure dreamy material, black, full of energy, hidden, precious, buried, deep...
\- Black gold.
\- Uniting with all our holy forefathers...
\- In the dinosaur Holocaust.

And the child is completely stunned by the performance, but I'm even more stunned. How does my dinosaur wife know what's going through my head? And even if she can read minds - that she would even understand what it's about? I can see that she secretly read the books hidden behind the closet. And still... And I get scared: Look how pale he is, you're scaring the little one! He thinks you're yelling at him.
\- Even now you're using the child against me? It won't help you, we're not taking him, he's staying here in bed.
\- Why not? We'll hide him back in the belly.
\- In the belly? I know what's going through your head.
\- No, you're wrong, that's not what's going through my head.
\- That's exactly what's going through your head. I'll prove it to you yet.
\- You don't know how wrong you are.
\- I know. It's written that there are places for couples, two only. What don't you understand about the word two?
And I look into her eyes and see the tears of the great sea monsters. And I understand that she knows, we both know now what's hiding behind the laundered words. At this moment we sentenced the child to death by drowning, in front of him, without being able to say a word.

\- Call a taxi.
\- Do you have any idea how much it will cost to haul two dinosaurs? It's only a 20-minute brisk walk to the bus.
And she walks for 2 minutes and pants and stops: Why is it always uphill? As usual, you got the wrong way. I'm sure there's a downhill route.
\- How can you reach the top of the mountain going downhill?
\- Since when does a cruise leave from a mountaintop? As usual, you got the wrong way. And then you wonder why I have a full belly. My back is breaking.
And she sits down on the bench with the suitcases. Terrorist! Just when, always at the most arrrgh moments.
\- I don't care.
\- We'll miss the ark. The ark won't wait for us!
\- I don't care.
\- This is not the time now!
\- It's never the time. What do you think, is there room for a dinosaur like you?
\- There's no time for your nonsense.
And I leave the woman behind and run alone to the belly of the ark, breaking all the streets with my dinosaur legs, and I already know why the dinosaurs went extinct.

The Fattening

I dreamed there's a great question among the early authorities: Why when people get married do they start to round out and gain and fatten up? And the great later authorities answer there: Because when people get married, Satan gets clever - and transfers the sexual drive to the eating drive. And my wife there asks: Tell me, do you want to lick this before I put it in the sink? Be careful because there's stuff inside. Sweetie, you ate it, I'm with you till the grave. So smile.

And I smile and start to dig into the grave, on a journey to the belly of the earth. Only at some point on the cramped way down, the world turns upside down - not me! - and I find myself in the heavens. And I look at the time and see that a whole year has passed - my wife will kill me when I return. And I look at the time again and see that another year has passed - what, will she remain an agunah [a woman whose husband has disappeared]? And I'm afraid to look at the time again, only if I die can I release her, but I have to die in such a way that she'll know, it needs to be big enough that they'll discover it even down there in the earth, and my orphaned son - now probably bar mitzvah age - will finally say Kaddish for me. Mistake mistake mistake - to reach paradise without dying.

And I just approach the angel at the entrance, open my mouth to shout - and he flees for his life. What's going on here? And I remember the writings of the Admor: "In this world the soul is strong and gives life to the body - and when the soul leaves the body dies. And the body which is weak needs to eat other bodies to survive. But in the future to come the situation will reverse. The body will be strong and will give life to the soul, and to survive the soul will need to eat other souls". And I discover around me that in paradise everything is reversed: The earth eats the plants. And the plants eat the animals. And the animals eat the humans. And the humans eat the angels. And the angels eat God. And the chickens and cows eat the Jews, who can find comfort only with the pig, which doesn't touch Jews. But gentiles it eats like a pig. And indeed paradise is populated only by Jews and pigs, and the angels and gentiles are extinct. And the Jews are dying of fear from the former schnitzels - who died for the sanctification of the Sabbath and ascended to paradise - and so they hide in the trees, like bearded monkeys.

And one holy pig, who walked his whole life with tremendous self-sacrifice only on high heels, because it's forbidden to raise pigs in the Land of Israel, says to me: Dear Jew, what are you doing here on the ground? It's dangerous! There's some anti-Semitic chicken wandering around the yard. Come quickly to the sty, we'll turn you into a pig, you're lucky you're in good hooves, we're the Hasidim of the animals of the world. Just roll a bit in black mud, swim a little in a pot of cholent, some grunting for Shabbat, and you're already a kosher pig of the highest standard.
And he can barely run with those heels and keeps grunting all the time, and I ask: There's anti-Semitism in heaven too? And the holy pig sighs: This isn't the world you're used to. In the previous world the vegetative fed on the inanimate, and the animal on the vegetative, and man on the animal, and so the world keeps ascending - that's how the inanimate eventually becomes human. And so too the soul feeds on man, and death feeds on the soul, on us, it eats us. For the heretics who eat pork death is nothing and nothingness - death is dead, and so nothing happens here, while there time runs. But for us death is the most alive state there is - paradise. Down there nothing ever happens, and here in the upper world all the action is. There in the earth the world is dead and rigid matter, and here everything is spirit.
\- And God feeds on death which feeds on the soul?
\- Yes, he is more alive than alive, the living God is a higher level of aliveness than life. But precisely because of that same dynamic of ascent in dynamism, when God dies he is at an even higher spiritual level. He ascends to a place we don't know at all - God's paradise. And then here the mess began.
\- But did anyone make sure his soul would actually ascend there? Did any of his sons say Kaddish?
\- Who will say Kaddish for him? They say "May His great name be exalted and sanctified" - and don't understand it's about Him. The religious are sure He's still alive, and the secular that He was never born. Thus God Himself didn't merit anyone saying Kaddish for the elevation of His soul, and His redemption failed - the final messianic ascension is that of God Himself. The angels in the grave behave like God's worms, and His sons in the earth just fight over the will. And when the Torah is the command of a last will - and not a living dream - only one question remains: Who is the firstborn son?

Restoring the Crown to Its Former Glory

I dreamed that I was living in the world to come, in a world that is all long, a world that is all Sabbath. And all of Israel eat spiritual fruits, intellectual shawarma, and subsist on giant reserves of Leviathan and Wild Ox, the dinosaurs who in their great generosity sacrificed their bodies, so that we too would have spiritual gas and dreamy black gold, and wouldn't need to work. And the end is quite predictable, they've been saying for years that Jews needed to be cooked in the oven in preparation for the Great Sabbath - the Great Sabbath at the end of the world. The weekdays are becoming rarer and rarer, and suddenly every day is Sabbath.

And precisely on that endless Sabbath I get stuck at my mother-in-law's. And there's nowhere to escape, it's forbidden to go beyond two thousand cubits from the settlement on Sabbath. And the possibility that in the distant future, even thousands of years from now, they'll build up to here doesn't exist - because it's forbidden to build on Sabbath. And my mother-in-law is actually very pleased, and the worst thing about her is that she reminds me of my wife. And she doesn't understand why I'm like this, after all she hasn't done anything to me. And I look at her and think: A whole life, a whole life. And my wife has no patience at all, she's constantly complaining: What a long Sabbath, I'm going to lose my mind. And she constantly needs all our things to be in suitcases downstairs, so that the moment Sabbath ends we can leave. And I tell her: Enough with that, it's preparation for the profane that's sacred! And she tells me: But there won't be any more profane. Don't you understand? There won't be another Sunday! And they're already calling us for another meal. And her family are huge fat people, but they're not even pigs, they simply eat like in the army: The mother-in-law at the head of the table terrorizing everyone, endless meals and you're not allowed to get up for a moment, the world will collapse, and she shouts: One two three eat, one two three eat.

And finally the meal ends, and I go to rest a bit before the next meal, and now my wife comes: What have I done wrong? I married a pig. You embarrass me in front of my family, I'm ashamed of you wherever you go.
\- Madam, the fact that you pick your nose with a knife and fork doesn't make it polite. Soon I'll find a knife and fork in the bathroom!
\- What are you talking about.
\- In Judaism, it's forbidden to eat pork, but it's allowed to be a pig. You can't forbid yourself from being a pig. If God created you a pig? The great innovation of Judaism was that it's not the material and body that's important but the manner: Not to eat pork with polite cutlery like the gentiles, but to eat like a pig, meaning to be a pig that eats kosher.
And she looks at me in pain: You've made the pig the essence of faith! And the little son, who has already become very big, he's certainly the fattest baby in the world, I don't understand how his pink skin doesn't burst, he long ago turned into a ball. Well, this baby suddenly allows himself to intervene:
Do you really think it's forbidden to eat pork? It's true that it's written in all the esoteric Torah that there's no way to elevate sparks that have fallen into a pig, because it's in the three impure shells from which there's no return, and therefore it has no permission ever, not even after kosher slaughter. But let me reveal to you a trick how pork can be eaten - and rectified.
\- How?
\- In the Holocaust - it was possible to rectify pigs! There are such periods, of destruction of the soul and preservation of the soul, in which there's a breach in all the worlds, and it's possible to rectify pigs, and even: it's a mitzvah to eat pork. A reality where the greatest mitzvah is to eat pork - preserving the Jewish soul. A world of sanctifying God's name. The holy pig! In the camps Mom kept it for us all week so there would be meat for the Sabbath table. Do you know what blessing to say over pork schnitzel?
And I choke: You, you were in the camps? With Mom? When did this happen? And I look at my wife: Is there something you didn't tell me? And she says: I don't know what Holocaust he's talking about! And I get angry: Shame on you, there are only two things in the whole world that you're not allowed to joke about. Food and schnitzel. We'll continue this right after the food and now come, there's another meal, I already hear the shouting from downstairs.

And my genius infant, the first growth of our redemption, gives a Torah lesson at the table: A Jew eats not out of, God forbid, lust or even love for food, but in holiness. He aspires to reach pure eating, where he can't take any more, and he still continues, there's not a drop of room left, and he still, continues. Eating for the sake of eating, with self-sacrifice. And then it's the highest eating, without foreign pleasures, like how God eats the sacrifices, every day, always the same thing, even though He's already full, even though He's already sick and tired of it. Because a Jew eats with his eyes, eating is a spiritual thing, it's not the animal soul that eats, it's... tell me, is there any more schnitzel? And I see that he's already completely full, that every bite is as difficult for him as the parting of the Red Sea, the plate before him is almost empty, only a tiny piece remains on it. And I see that he's about to explode and I tell him: Be careful. And his mother begs him not to touch it. But he has to eat everything down to the last grain. And the veins are popping out, the neck, blood spraying all over the table, and from his throat bursts forth for the unification of the Holy One - to die sanctifying God's name.

I Deserve Congratulations

I dreamed that I was coming out of the dream, dazzled and crying and stunned by the world. It's a shame that birth is wasted on babies. Just like old age is wasted on the elderly - and childhood on children. If Jews were born right after their bar mitzvah we could give religion to babies, replace the two breasts - with the two tablets of the covenant: You shall not scream, you shall not wipe, you shall not covet, you shall not answer your father and your mother, I am who brought you forth, you shall not make for yourself any doll, remember the day of sleep to keep it holy, you shall not raise your voice in vain. And then Jews would be drawn directly to Torah - without the milk substitute that passes through the woman, and the good inclination wouldn't need to be covered by the evil inclination. But today even the Messiah will be born secular and naked. And I hold the screaming and red creature - it's time to return the world into the dream.

From the Holy Zohar - to the Holy Darkness

I dreamed that I understood that the Zohar had deceived me. To rectify exile and the Divine Presence through relations with my wife? Redemption through the woman - what kind of idea is that! Only the child, he is the chance, he is the future. And through the connection with the son I will already rectify the connection between the Holy One, blessed be He, and Israel. My firstborn son Israel. Yes, it's a shame that people send their children to yeshiva. I will teach him Torah the way I would have wanted to be taught Torah - from heaven. And with the wife it's like trying to rectify the Other Side, what a fool I was. And I start to sink into memories of youth, how the Rebbe said that we are a lost generation, but we can raise a new generation, a generation that will continue what the Germans cut short in the Holocaust. We were on the verge - and the Rebbe didn't want to say on the verge of what. And he took the parents outside and spoke to the youths: Don't forget that the first computer and Auschwitz were born in the same year, the year the Rashash died. And if you compare the level of spiritual activity in the second half of the 20th century to the first half - you want to cry. What an enormous victory for the Other Side! Simply fifty lost years. What the Holocaust didn't kill the state killed and what the state didn't kill - I killed. But you'll still see that a new generation will come. A generation that speaks with angels and pets the holy beasts. Takes the righteous in the Garden of Eden for a walk - with a leash! Squeezes tears from the clouds of glory, produces electricity from the seraphim, and catches the snake by the tail, not afraid, ties it around the neck, not afraid, and starves it, starves it, makes it into a long long string. The four corners of the tzitzit will suddenly start flapping, and children will have to tie themselves with tzitzit to the ground so as not to fly away and disappear into the sky, newlywed grooms will fly with the tallit like Superman, and bar mitzvah boys will crack their tefillin like cowboys with a galloping herd of red heifers. It will no longer be a generation that learns Torah, but that the Torah learns it. The gentiles will still beg us to come back from the heavens. They will build enormous telescopes to try and peek at a tiny drop of our light. But all they'll manage to see will be through the keyhole. We will be the last place in the world that has secrets. The last in the world! - he finished with a shout. He apparently expected us to say something. To react. Something. An embarrassing silence fell. I didn't dare breathe. And I didn't know whether to say, or not to say, to say? Not to say? And then he looked at us one by one and said: Bunch of retards.

She Has No Comforter

I dreamed that I was cheating on my wife with the help of the child, and I tell him when he's born: Don't tell her that you're the Messiah. You will be the Messiah, if only you don't tell her. And when my wife isn't listening I call him: My sweet Messiah. And try to teach him the 42-letter holy name of God according to Kabbalah, for that to be his first word. The call of "Abba" is just the beginning of Abgitatz Kra Satan Nagad Yakash Batrat Tzagchak Batna Yiglafzak Shkutzit... And when my wife falls asleep from exhaustion I read him Zohar as a lullaby at night, because they say bilingualism develops the brain: Aramaic as a first language. Who knows what will come out of a head that grows like that? This way we can reinvent the Jewish dream. Redemption by the home method: Do it yourself.

And every morning the infant gives me a fresh poop as a gift in the morning, and I remember the words of the Talmud that the way to know whether a Messiah is true or false is to examine whether he "smells" and judges - and I get excited. Here, the prophecy is coming true. And I hide the diapers in the bookcase so my wife won't see, for surely the Messiah's poop is holier than my words of Torah, it surely contains supreme secrets, which the lower beings cannot yet receive, and therefore it's kept in diapers. In the future it will still be a special perfume, which today we're not yet ready for its spirituality, and therefore it smells to us like poop. And I also understand well that there is no Messiah without a donkey. So I go on a grass diet and practice making donkey droppings, steal my wife's huge earrings to lengthen my ears, practice braying in front of the mirror, and generally become stupid in general. And I ask him: What does a donkey say? Hee-haw. What does the Messiah say? And he bursts into tears. Just like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the peak moments of the holy Zohar. What a soul, what an angel.

And my wife does everything to depress me. She comes back from the well-baby clinic and informs me dryly: All the Talmud I taught him before sleep - and his head circumference only increased by one centimeter. Worse than that, she tries to poison the Messiah with all kinds of children's books by heretics and gentiles. And I wait for her to leave, and all the stuffed unclean animals I turn into clean animals, draw them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminate vermin from the house like Mickey Mouse. And I also fix the books: Winnie-the-Pooh becomes Winnie-the-Fowl, Kofiko becomes Tzadiko, Raspberry Juice becomes Grape Juice for Kiddush and Havdalah, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the Divine Presence and the Seven Ultra-Orthodox, and The Wizard of Oz I simply turn into Job. And I don't give up on my wife: Aesop's Fables adapted to Shtreimel Tales, Little Red Riding Hood is now Little Black Kippah, and the Big Bad Wolf is a shtreimel, so girls learn not to desire a shtreimel. And what I'm most proud of is my adaptation of The Tale of Five Balloons, which is now called The Tale of Five Rabbis, after I added sidelocks and beards to the balloons. Please Bezalel don't be sad, we'll bring you another Admor. It's okay Aharon, that's the end of every genius. And I feel how the child experiences elevation every time at the end when the red genius ascends to heaven.

And everywhere I take the child like a donkey in a carrier on my back. And my wife says: Let him walk by himself, let him crawl. - What? My wife is trying to turn the child into a snake! And my wife who already knows a bit who she's dealing with tells me: Yes, because snake has the same gematria [numerical value] as Messiah. And I'm in shock. How does she know? What, can you already sense it about him? Or are the forces of the Other Side again trying to sour the redemption? Satan! Who told her? And I eat myself up all afternoon: Either... or... and watch helplessly as she does all her baby nonsense with him, and they laugh laugh laugh. Let them enjoy, it's their last time.

And I cry in the middle of the night and wake him up, and he comes to me in bed - crawls to my feet in the dark. And in complete silence, so my wife won't wake up from her dream, I take him on my back, and he rides me into the Old City - the navel of the world. And we ascend together to the top of the mountain, to the absolute darkness, and I ask: Did you tell Mom?

Memorial Prayer

I dreamed that I was faced with a cruel choice: either there is no God, or there is no Torah. And I choose the Torah. And at night I hear terrible weeping from within the earth. And I close my ears and it enters through my eyes, and I close my eyes but my eyes are already closed.

And I understand that at least the Torah must now be guarded very well so that what happened to God doesn't happen to it. And I write a secret curriculum for Torah study, so that they won't be able to harm it, now that there's no one to protect it. And finally a son is born to me. And from the beginning the child is exceptional, born by cesarean section, as hinted at in the Zohar about redemption, that the snake of the doctors needs to open the womb of the doe. And what's best is that the father receives the baby and the mother remains anesthetized in the operating room. This is my opportunity. And I whisper a few things in his ear, and I know that today he was born. And the baby holds one finger of mine with his five fingers, and I shake the hand and tell him: Nice doing business with you.

But my wife has no God. And one Sabbath when the child has already grown, we are visiting with the whole family. And my wife goes crazy and starts shouting at the top of her lungs. And she shouts in terrible voices for her parents to hear: This madman has been teaching the child Zohar from age 0, at night he reads him a book in Aramaic. And I fill with cold sweat and shout back loudly for them to hear: It's not Zohar it's Talmud, you're confused, you don't know anything, you're funny. And she shouts: I do know, it's the holy Zohar. It's written on it in golden letters. I feel like murdering her. And everyone starts looking at me with strange glances. And I feel them distancing the child from me. Sending him here. Sending me there. And I look at him moving away, and say: You won't forget?

To the next chapter

The Trilogy

title: Birth - The Degeneration of the Nation

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Birth

By:

(Source)

Childbirth Preparation Course

I dreamed I was living in darkness. Not knowing there was anything that wasn't darkness, or that it had an outside in space or time. A living darkness, that you could touch, actually swim in, and darkness shall prevail. And my wife wakes me from the core of darkness: Take all your "holy" books and get out now. As far as I'm concerned, you can sleep on the street.
- What, in the middle of the night.
- I'll break your computer. I know, you only care about your holy computer.
And she grabs it and holds it out the window and says: I'm letting go.
- Quiet, the neighbors will see.
- One, two, th... You know I'm capable.
And I give up everything: I believe you! And go back to sleep like the dead.
- The computer you love more than me, the love of your life. Even it you don't really love, but are just drawn to it. Like a sick person, like only you are crazy about things.
- Then throw me out with it. All the books and toys we bought for our son, right now just before, why did we go backwards? No matter how much we try to get out of the cycle with you, everything is in circles, a day of dream - and a day of hell, a night of an angel in sheets - and a night of Lilith in underwear, pulling - and biting. The counselor would jump out the window.
And I hug the pillow under the blanket passionately and don't want to know. And I dream about my wife's poor and pathetic heart, the crushed heart, the ugly, pitiful heart, full of hormones and worries and vengeance and pain. Such a rejected and messed up heart that love doesn't know it, but it beats and beats and can't stop.
Suddenly she starts throwing all the things I gave her in the trash, all the jewelry I bought her, all the gifts in the garbage. And I bury my head in the bed, and pretend to be asleep. And she whispers: I'm here alone, and you're sleeping as if you don't care. You've proven that you can be relied upon, your support for your wife is something else, I'm glad I interest you, I'm happy, you love me, and so on and so on until I fall asleep. And suddenly I feel quiet, it can't be, and I wake up from the silence. And I see her lying in bed with open eyes, mouth agape, and she's not breathing. And I laugh: Are you pretending to be dead again?

Why the Dinosaurs Went Extinct

I dreamed I was something enormous! But I don't know if I'm some dinosaur, or if I'm the next stage. So what if I study in black? After all, even dinosaurs had a religion they received from the heavens, a complete Torah of dinosaurs, of which all that remains are three obscure words in the Book of Genesis: "and the great sea monsters". And there are also rumors of some terrible sin - "the sin of the dinosaurs". And my dinosaur wife brings me news that we received a couple's invitation to Noah's Ark - "Cruise on the Flood", and she says: What a terrible disaster! I wanted a bit of my husband's precious and holy time. Why do we never go out? No money no money - and now it's free. All the other couples, all the animals will be there. And you're lying around in this holy garbage of yours, no wonder you, I'm not surprised, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover... And she goes on and on - this woman is capable of bringing rain from the ceiling - and I say: When is this flood coming already?

And in the following days she acts as if everything is fine, but I feel that something is very wrong. And we're about to leave for this "flood" event of hers, and I see that as always she packed the whole house, and she gets angry: Me me me. Why does everything fall on me. And you sit there like a prima donna with your secret computer. If you're not studying - go to work. And if you're not working - go study. And I get angry: Yes, because I do nothing, and who does all the intentions for the journey, you? Do you want us to leave without intentions? But why is everything at the last minute, you have to ruin it, why always squeeze the juice, why always you, why suck out the soul, why always me? And our giant baby wakes up, comes into our bedroom, and shouts in dinosaur language: Quiet. Why always fight? You're not even talking to each other. And my wife and I exchange glances.
- Oh, you're still little, this isn't a fight.
- You don't understand, this is prayer.
- Right? Prayer in partnership.
- Exactly. It's the closest thing we're allowed in this world to praying in pairs - like in the grave.
- You mean the world to come.
- Of the dinosaurs.
- Where the women's section is connected to the men's section.
- Where you can't tell who's who anymore.
- And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
- And the lamb with the she-wolf.
- And then all creatures together, from the most exalted to the lowest, all species -
- Including both sexes -
- All mix into one pure dreamy material, black, full of energy, hidden, precious, buried, deep...
- Black gold.
- Uniting with all our holy forefathers...
- In the dinosaur Holocaust.

And the child is completely stunned by the performance, but I'm even more stunned. How does my dinosaur wife know what's going through my head? And even if she can read minds - that she would even understand what it's about? I can see that she secretly read the books hidden behind the closet. And still... And I get scared: Look how pale he is, you're scaring the little one! He thinks you're yelling at him.
- Even now you're using the child against me? It won't help you, we're not taking him, he's staying here in bed.
- Why not? We'll hide him back in the belly.
- In the belly? I know what's going through your head.
- No, you're wrong, that's not what's going through my head.
- That's exactly what's going through your head. I'll prove it to you yet.
- You don't know how wrong you are.
- I know. It's written that there are places for couples, two only. What don't you understand about the word two?
And I look into her eyes and see the tears of the great sea monsters. And I understand that she knows, we both know now what's hiding behind the laundered words. At this moment we sentenced the child to death by drowning, in front of him, without being able to say a word.

- Call a taxi.
- Do you have any idea how much it will cost to haul two dinosaurs? It's only a 20-minute brisk walk to the bus.
And she walks for 2 minutes and pants and stops: Why is it always uphill? As usual, you got the wrong way. I'm sure there's a downhill route.
- How can you reach the top of the mountain going downhill?
- Since when does a cruise leave from a mountaintop? As usual, you got the wrong way. And then you wonder why I have a full belly. My back is breaking.
And she sits down on the bench with the suitcases. Terrorist! Just when, always at the most arrrgh moments.
- I don't care.
- We'll miss the ark. The ark won't wait for us!
- I don't care.
- This is not the time now!
- It's never the time. What do you think, is there room for a dinosaur like you?
- There's no time for your nonsense.
And I leave the woman behind and run alone to the belly of the ark, breaking all the streets with my dinosaur legs, and I already know why the dinosaurs went extinct.

The Fattening

I dreamed there's a great question among the early authorities: Why when people get married do they start to round out and gain and fatten up? And the great later authorities answer there: Because when people get married, Satan gets clever - and transfers the sexual drive to the eating drive. And my wife there asks: Tell me, do you want to lick this before I put it in the sink? Be careful because there's stuff inside. Sweetie, you ate it, I'm with you till the grave. So smile.

And I smile and start to dig into the grave, on a journey to the belly of the earth. Only at some point on the cramped way down, the world turns upside down - not me! - and I find myself in the heavens. And I look at the time and see that a whole year has passed - my wife will kill me when I return. And I look at the time again and see that another year has passed - what, will she remain an agunah [a woman whose husband has disappeared]? And I'm afraid to look at the time again, only if I die can I release her, but I have to die in such a way that she'll know, it needs to be big enough that they'll discover it even down there in the earth, and my orphaned son - now probably bar mitzvah age - will finally say Kaddish for me. Mistake mistake mistake - to reach paradise without dying.

And I just approach the angel at the entrance, open my mouth to shout - and he flees for his life. What's going on here? And I remember the writings of the Admor: "In this world the soul is strong and gives life to the body - and when the soul leaves the body dies. And the body which is weak needs to eat other bodies to survive. But in the future to come the situation will reverse. The body will be strong and will give life to the soul, and to survive the soul will need to eat other souls". And I discover around me that in paradise everything is reversed: The earth eats the plants. And the plants eat the animals. And the animals eat the humans. And the humans eat the angels. And the angels eat God. And the chickens and cows eat the Jews, who can find comfort only with the pig, which doesn't touch Jews. But gentiles it eats like a pig. And indeed paradise is populated only by Jews and pigs, and the angels and gentiles are extinct. And the Jews are dying of fear from the former schnitzels - who died for the sanctification of the Sabbath and ascended to paradise - and so they hide in the trees, like bearded monkeys.

And one holy pig, who walked his whole life with tremendous self-sacrifice only on high heels, because it's forbidden to raise pigs in the Land of Israel, says to me: Dear Jew, what are you doing here on the ground? It's dangerous! There's some anti-Semitic chicken wandering around the yard. Come quickly to the sty, we'll turn you into a pig, you're lucky you're in good hooves, we're the Hasidim of the animals of the world. Just roll a bit in black mud, swim a little in a pot of cholent, some grunting for Shabbat, and you're already a kosher pig of the highest standard.
And he can barely run with those heels and keeps grunting all the time, and I ask: There's anti-Semitism in heaven too? And the holy pig sighs: This isn't the world you're used to. In the previous world the vegetative fed on the inanimate, and the animal on the vegetative, and man on the animal, and so the world keeps ascending - that's how the inanimate eventually becomes human. And so too the soul feeds on man, and death feeds on the soul, on us, it eats us. For the heretics who eat pork death is nothing and nothingness - death is dead, and so nothing happens here, while there time runs. But for us death is the most alive state there is - paradise. Down there nothing ever happens, and here in the upper world all the action is. There in the earth the world is dead and rigid matter, and here everything is spirit.
- And God feeds on death which feeds on the soul?
- Yes, he is more alive than alive, the living God is a higher level of aliveness than life. But precisely because of that same dynamic of ascent in dynamism, when God dies he is at an even higher spiritual level. He ascends to a place we don't know at all - God's paradise. And then here the mess began.
- But did anyone make sure his soul would actually ascend there? Did any of his sons say Kaddish?
- Who will say Kaddish for him? They say "May His great name be exalted and sanctified" - and don't understand it's about Him. The religious are sure He's still alive, and the secular that He was never born. Thus God Himself didn't merit anyone saying Kaddish for the elevation of His soul, and His redemption failed - the final messianic ascension is that of God Himself. The angels in the grave behave like God's worms, and His sons in the earth just fight over the will. And when the Torah is the command of a last will - and not a living dream - only one question remains: Who is the firstborn son?

Restoring the Crown to Its Former Glory

I dreamed that I was living in the world to come, in a world that is all long, a world that is all Sabbath. And all of Israel eat spiritual fruits, intellectual shawarma, and subsist on giant reserves of Leviathan and Wild Ox, the dinosaurs who in their great generosity sacrificed their bodies, so that we too would have spiritual gas and dreamy black gold, and wouldn't need to work. And the end is quite predictable, they've been saying for years that Jews needed to be cooked in the oven in preparation for the Great Sabbath - the Great Sabbath at the end of the world. The weekdays are becoming rarer and rarer, and suddenly every day is Sabbath.

And precisely on that endless Sabbath I get stuck at my mother-in-law's. And there's nowhere to escape, it's forbidden to go beyond two thousand cubits from the settlement on Sabbath. And the possibility that in the distant future, even thousands of years from now, they'll build up to here doesn't exist - because it's forbidden to build on Sabbath. And my mother-in-law is actually very pleased, and the worst thing about her is that she reminds me of my wife. And she doesn't understand why I'm like this, after all she hasn't done anything to me. And I look at her and think: A whole life, a whole life. And my wife has no patience at all, she's constantly complaining: What a long Sabbath, I'm going to lose my mind. And she constantly needs all our things to be in suitcases downstairs, so that the moment Sabbath ends we can leave. And I tell her: Enough with that, it's preparation for the profane that's sacred! And she tells me: But there won't be any more profane. Don't you understand? There won't be another Sunday! And they're already calling us for another meal. And her family are huge fat people, but they're not even pigs, they simply eat like in the army: The mother-in-law at the head of the table terrorizing everyone, endless meals and you're not allowed to get up for a moment, the world will collapse, and she shouts: One two three eat, one two three eat.

And finally the meal ends, and I go to rest a bit before the next meal, and now my wife comes: What have I done wrong? I married a pig. You embarrass me in front of my family, I'm ashamed of you wherever you go.
- Madam, the fact that you pick your nose with a knife and fork doesn't make it polite. Soon I'll find a knife and fork in the bathroom!
- What are you talking about.
- In Judaism, it's forbidden to eat pork, but it's allowed to be a pig. You can't forbid yourself from being a pig. If God created you a pig? The great innovation of Judaism was that it's not the material and body that's important but the manner: Not to eat pork with polite cutlery like the gentiles, but to eat like a pig, meaning to be a pig that eats kosher.
And she looks at me in pain: You've made the pig the essence of faith! And the little son, who has already become very big, he's certainly the fattest baby in the world, I don't understand how his pink skin doesn't burst, he long ago turned into a ball. Well, this baby suddenly allows himself to intervene:
Do you really think it's forbidden to eat pork? It's true that it's written in all the esoteric Torah that there's no way to elevate sparks that have fallen into a pig, because it's in the three impure shells from which there's no return, and therefore it has no permission ever, not even after kosher slaughter. But let me reveal to you a trick how pork can be eaten - and rectified.
- How?
- In the Holocaust - it was possible to rectify pigs! There are such periods, of destruction of the soul and preservation of the soul, in which there's a breach in all the worlds, and it's possible to rectify pigs, and even: it's a mitzvah to eat pork. A reality where the greatest mitzvah is to eat pork - preserving the Jewish soul. A world of sanctifying God's name. The holy pig! In the camps Mom kept it for us all week so there would be meat for the Sabbath table. Do you know what blessing to say over pork schnitzel?
And I choke: You, you were in the camps? With Mom? When did this happen? And I look at my wife: Is there something you didn't tell me? And she says: I don't know what Holocaust he's talking about! And I get angry: Shame on you, there are only two things in the whole world that you're not allowed to joke about. Food and schnitzel. We'll continue this right after the food and now come, there's another meal, I already hear the shouting from downstairs.

And my genius infant, the first growth of our redemption, gives a Torah lesson at the table: A Jew eats not out of, God forbid, lust or even love for food, but in holiness. He aspires to reach pure eating, where he can't take any more, and he still continues, there's not a drop of room left, and he still, continues. Eating for the sake of eating, with self-sacrifice. And then it's the highest eating, without foreign pleasures, like how God eats the sacrifices, every day, always the same thing, even though He's already full, even though He's already sick and tired of it. Because a Jew eats with his eyes, eating is a spiritual thing, it's not the animal soul that eats, it's... tell me, is there any more schnitzel? And I see that he's already completely full, that every bite is as difficult for him as the parting of the Red Sea, the plate before him is almost empty, only a tiny piece remains on it. And I see that he's about to explode and I tell him: Be careful. And his mother begs him not to touch it. But he has to eat everything down to the last grain. And the veins are popping out, the neck, blood spraying all over the table, and from his throat bursts forth for the unification of the Holy One - to die sanctifying God's name.

I Deserve Congratulations

I dreamed that I was coming out of the dream, dazzled and crying and stunned by the world. It's a shame that birth is wasted on babies. Just like old age is wasted on the elderly - and childhood on children. If Jews were born right after their bar mitzvah we could give religion to babies, replace the two breasts - with the two tablets of the covenant: You shall not scream, you shall not wipe, you shall not covet, you shall not answer your father and your mother, I am who brought you forth, you shall not make for yourself any doll, remember the day of sleep to keep it holy, you shall not raise your voice in vain. And then Jews would be drawn directly to Torah - without the milk substitute that passes through the woman, and the good inclination wouldn't need to be covered by the evil inclination. But today even the Messiah will be born secular and naked. And I hold the screaming and red creature - it's time to return the world into the dream.

From the Holy Zohar - to the Holy Darkness

I dreamed that I understood that the Zohar had deceived me. To rectify exile and the Divine Presence through relations with my wife? Redemption through the woman - what kind of idea is that! Only the child, he is the chance, he is the future. And through the connection with the son I will already rectify the connection between the Holy One, blessed be He, and Israel. My firstborn son Israel. Yes, it's a shame that people send their children to yeshiva. I will teach him Torah the way I would have wanted to be taught Torah - from heaven. And with the wife it's like trying to rectify the Other Side, what a fool I was. And I start to sink into memories of youth, how the Rebbe said that we are a lost generation, but we can raise a new generation, a generation that will continue what the Germans cut short in the Holocaust. We were on the verge - and the Rebbe didn't want to say on the verge of what. And he took the parents outside and spoke to the youths: Don't forget that the first computer and Auschwitz were born in the same year, the year the Rashash died. And if you compare the level of spiritual activity in the second half of the 20th century to the first half - you want to cry. What an enormous victory for the Other Side! Simply fifty lost years. What the Holocaust didn't kill the state killed and what the state didn't kill - I killed. But you'll still see that a new generation will come. A generation that speaks with angels and pets the holy beasts. Takes the righteous in the Garden of Eden for a walk - with a leash! Squeezes tears from the clouds of glory, produces electricity from the seraphim, and catches the snake by the tail, not afraid, ties it around the neck, not afraid, and starves it, starves it, makes it into a long long string. The four corners of the tzitzit will suddenly start flapping, and children will have to tie themselves with tzitzit to the ground so as not to fly away and disappear into the sky, newlywed grooms will fly with the tallit like Superman, and bar mitzvah boys will crack their tefillin like cowboys with a galloping herd of red heifers. It will no longer be a generation that learns Torah, but that the Torah learns it. The gentiles will still beg us to come back from the heavens. They will build enormous telescopes to try and peek at a tiny drop of our light. But all they'll manage to see will be through the keyhole. We will be the last place in the world that has secrets. The last in the world! - he finished with a shout. He apparently expected us to say something. To react. Something. An embarrassing silence fell. I didn't dare breathe. And I didn't know whether to say, or not to say, to say? Not to say? And then he looked at us one by one and said: Bunch of retards.

She Has No Comforter

I dreamed that I was cheating on my wife with the help of the child, and I tell him when he's born: Don't tell her that you're the Messiah. You will be the Messiah, if only you don't tell her. And when my wife isn't listening I call him: My sweet Messiah. And try to teach him the 42-letter holy name of God according to Kabbalah, for that to be his first word. The call of "Abba" is just the beginning of Abgitatz Kra Satan Nagad Yakash Batrat Tzagchak Batna Yiglafzak Shkutzit... And when my wife falls asleep from exhaustion I read him Zohar as a lullaby at night, because they say bilingualism develops the brain: Aramaic as a first language. Who knows what will come out of a head that grows like that? This way we can reinvent the Jewish dream. Redemption by the home method: Do it yourself.

And every morning the infant gives me a fresh poop as a gift in the morning, and I remember the words of the Talmud that the way to know whether a Messiah is true or false is to examine whether he "smells" and judges - and I get excited. Here, the prophecy is coming true. And I hide the diapers in the bookcase so my wife won't see, for surely the Messiah's poop is holier than my words of Torah, it surely contains supreme secrets, which the lower beings cannot yet receive, and therefore it's kept in diapers. In the future it will still be a special perfume, which today we're not yet ready for its spirituality, and therefore it smells to us like poop. And I also understand well that there is no Messiah without a donkey. So I go on a grass diet and practice making donkey droppings, steal my wife's huge earrings to lengthen my ears, practice braying in front of the mirror, and generally become stupid in general. And I ask him: What does a donkey say? Hee-haw. What does the Messiah say? And he bursts into tears. Just like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the peak moments of the holy Zohar. What a soul, what an angel.

And my wife does everything to depress me. She comes back from the well-baby clinic and informs me dryly: All the Talmud I taught him before sleep - and his head circumference only increased by one centimeter. Worse than that, she tries to poison the Messiah with all kinds of children's books by heretics and gentiles. And I wait for her to leave, and all the stuffed unclean animals I turn into clean animals, draw them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminate vermin from the house like Mickey Mouse. And I also fix the books: Winnie-the-Pooh becomes Winnie-the-Fowl, Kofiko becomes Tzadiko, Raspberry Juice becomes Grape Juice for Kiddush and Havdalah, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the Divine Presence and the Seven Ultra-Orthodox, and The Wizard of Oz I simply turn into Job. And I don't give up on my wife: Aesop's Fables adapted to Shtreimel Tales, Little Red Riding Hood is now Little Black Kippah, and the Big Bad Wolf is a shtreimel, so girls learn not to desire a shtreimel. And what I'm most proud of is my adaptation of The Tale of Five Balloons, which is now called The Tale of Five Rabbis, after I added sidelocks and beards to the balloons. Please Bezalel don't be sad, we'll bring you another Admor. It's okay Aharon, that's the end of every genius. And I feel how the child experiences elevation every time at the end when the red genius ascends to heaven.

And everywhere I take the child like a donkey in a carrier on my back. And my wife says: Let him walk by himself, let him crawl. - What? My wife is trying to turn the child into a snake! And my wife who already knows a bit who she's dealing with tells me: Yes, because snake has the same gematria [numerical value] as Messiah. And I'm in shock. How does she know? What, can you already sense it about him? Or are the forces of the Other Side again trying to sour the redemption? Satan! Who told her? And I eat myself up all afternoon: Either... or... and watch helplessly as she does all her baby nonsense with him, and they laugh laugh laugh. Let them enjoy, it's their last time.

And I cry in the middle of the night and wake him up, and he comes to me in bed - crawls to my feet in the dark. And in complete silence, so my wife won't wake up from her dream, I take him on my back, and he rides me into the Old City - the navel of the world. And we ascend together to the top of the mountain, to the absolute darkness, and I ask: Did you tell Mom?

Memorial Prayer

I dreamed that I was faced with a cruel choice: either there is no God, or there is no Torah. And I choose the Torah. And at night I hear terrible weeping from within the earth. And I close my ears and it enters through my eyes, and I close my eyes but my eyes are already closed.

And I understand that at least the Torah must now be guarded very well so that what happened to God doesn't happen to it. And I write a secret curriculum for Torah study, so that they won't be able to harm it, now that there's no one to protect it. And finally a son is born to me. And from the beginning the child is exceptional, born by cesarean section, as hinted at in the Zohar about redemption, that the snake of the doctors needs to open the womb of the doe. And what's best is that the father receives the baby and the mother remains anesthetized in the operating room. This is my opportunity. And I whisper a few things in his ear, and I know that today he was born. And the baby holds one finger of mine with his five fingers, and I shake the hand and tell him: Nice doing business with you.

But my wife has no God. And one Sabbath when the child has already grown, we are visiting with the whole family. And my wife goes crazy and starts shouting at the top of her lungs. And she shouts in terrible voices for her parents to hear: This madman has been teaching the child Zohar from age 0, at night he reads him a book in Aramaic. And I fill with cold sweat and shout back loudly for them to hear: It's not Zohar it's Talmud, you're confused, you don't know anything, you're funny. And she shouts: I do know, it's the holy Zohar. It's written on it in golden letters. I feel like murdering her. And everyone starts looking at me with strange glances. And I feel them distancing the child from me. Sending him here. Sending me there. And I look at him moving away, and say: You won't forget?

To the next chapter

The Trilogy


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The Degeneration of the Nation

When Vegetarianism Became State Law

You could have been born a cat, so according to Rawls' veil of ignorance, you must support the distribution of property to cats

By: Messed-up Schnitzel

The Monkey Who Saw the World - Edwin Landseer (Source)

I dreamed that the day had come which deep down I always knew would eventually arrive, and like every righteous revolution - the vegetarians won. And all animals were liberated as in the Exodus from Egypt, fences fell and gates opened, bird chirps played on the radio, cows and people embraced, chickens flew freely, leather coats were burned, and joint ceremonies of reconciliation and brotherhood of all living beings on earth were held, with equal representation for speeches by freedom activists and chicken clucks. Even stray cats received eligibility for national insurance, and social workers patrolled garbage bins distributing food and medicine to homeless mice, trying to get them out of the garbage cycle, only for them to always return to the trash in the end, and even the social workers go home at the end of the day, leaving the cats and mice together in the bin.

And all the monkeys are released from zoos, in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling, which is ashamed of its past as a supporter of human rights and humanistic discrimination, and in accordance with the Basic Law: Animal Dignity and Liberty, they receive compensation and affirmative action in admission conditions, and there are monkey studies at universities, until they realize that the word monkey itself is a problem, because it implies there's a monkey and there's a human, thereby replicating dark humanism, so they call it primate studies instead. In general, humanism gains the same prestige as colonialism, and the word "beast" becomes a forbidden and offensive term, and if you call an animal an "animal" you'll be fired, and people are ashamed if their father was a butcher, inventing biographies that their father was a gardener. And anyone who ever ate a hamburger denies having done such a barbaric thing. As a child, he heard there were people who ate animals but he didn't believe it - who would? - and to the best of his recollection, everything at home was Tivall [Translator's note: an Israeli vegetarian food brand], and he's sure that if his mother had told him to finish his schnitzel, or eat anything with a soul at all, he would have thrown up his soul and refused the order. But as always, the dark ultra-Orthodox Jews must ruin the celebration.

Because although shtreimels [Translator's note: fur hats worn by some Hasidic Jews] are already outlawed due to fox abuse, and schnitzel is a murder offense punishable by life imprisonment, and ultra-Orthodox Jews in the street are afraid to accidentally step on cockroaches lest they be reported to the police, because after all, Jews were once called cockroaches too, and if there had been respect for cockroaches' right to life, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. But what about the Torah? After all, cow hide is needed for it. And an ultra-Orthodox underground called STaM [Translator's note: acronym for "Sifrei Torah, Tefillin, Mezuzot" - religious texts written on parchment] begins, carrying out terrorist acts of slaughtering animals for pagan rituals.

And the TV announcers cry out: Exposé! Yesterday he was still a happy sheep - today he's a shofar [Translator's note: ram's horn used as a musical instrument in Jewish religious services]. And newspaper headlines: An entire country shocked: These tefillin [Translator's note: phylacteries worn by observant Jewish men during weekday morning prayers] were once my son. Cleared for publication: Senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi suspected of harassing foxes. Illustrative photo. And there are protests: Shtreimel is murder. The people demand animal justice. And the activist is interviewed: After all, you could have been born a cat, so according to Rawls' veil of ignorance, you must support the distribution of property to cats. And Facebook posts: When they ate the chickens, I remained silent, because I wasn't a chicken. When they took the cows, I didn't protest, because I wasn't a cow. When they came to eat me - there was no one left to cluck and moo. Or: Give a like if you agree with my opinion! Although I'm human, and therefore privileged, so I have no right to speak at all, certainly not in place of those who suffered and were exploited and tortured and slaughtered, but I can't remain silent. Because as long as the like button is in the shape of a human finger, it's terrible exclusion! And blood libels spread: The Jews slaughtered an innocent soft-boiled egg born to a chicken and baked matzos with it for Passover. Link in the first comment.

And a lecturer in primate studies, specializing in black primates, reveals on air: A study of ultra-Orthodox texts proves that the global Jewish conspiracy has been aspiring for two thousand years to establish an extermination camp for animals on the Temple Mount. It's their life's ambition! But he's not willing to answer the host's question: How come even in the Faculty of Primate Studies there isn't a single professor who's a monkey! How can you teach biology without giving equal representation to invertebrates on the faculty? It's a cycle - what does a cat think when it doesn't meet any cat teachers? And the professor defends himself saying they have many monkey doctoral students, who due to trauma from captivity don't complete their degrees, and they're considering awarding degrees based on tail-wagging to correct the discrimination of human language. And a young researcher of ancient primates discovers: Do you know the origin of the word "Haredim" [Translator's note: ultra-Orthodox Jews]? In my research on ancient Hebrew, I've reached the true interpretation of the name they're hiding from us. A discovery that will shake the foundations. Haredim means terrorists! From the word "harada" [anxiety].

And they catch me and arrest me at the police station and say: If you don't become a state witness and incriminate the Rebbe, we'll accuse you of eating schnitzel. And you won't get out of it. We know you once ate schnitzel. And I say: I don't even know what schnitzel tastes like. And they put the smell of schnitzel in my detention cell all day, and I tell them you won't tempt me to eat schnitzel! And the investigator says to me: You've incriminated yourself, how do you know what schnitzel smells like? And they send me with a recording device to the Rebbe.

And they bring me into the inner sanctum, and I try to get the Rebbe to incite for schnitzel, and I wink and say to him: Ah, how I miss tongue in mustard! Do you remember what blessing we say over poultry? But the Rebbe scolds me: Shame on you! Is that how you talk about holy meat, in such a licentious manner? The world has ascended, there's a messianic revolution. Once the secular celebrated meat, promiscuity, bloodshed and incest and idolatry, but today an impure spirit has passed from the earth. Instead of the abominable sexual revolution, we're in the midst of the post-sexual revolution, of spiritual union, instead of flesh. A revolution of completely eradicating flesh, and rectifying the original sin, which is the end from the left side, of the Other Side - "the end of all flesh", as written in the holy Zohar. Instead of the impure left, the world is moving to the end from the right side, the end of the right. The whole world is turning right, against the left, look at this Trump. And I ask: Trump? And he says: It's written in the holy books that the higher the sparks are in their spiritual level - and their source is higher - the deeper they fell down into the world of matter. Therefore, the sparks in the animal world are higher than those in the human world of speech, and the sparks in the plant world are higher than the animal world, and the sparks hidden in the inanimate world are the highest of all, and will soon be released. And the police investigator shouts in my earpiece: What is he babbling about? I don't understand anything. Tell him to talk about schnitzel! But the Rebbe continues: You need to see the big, messianic picture of the liberation process. After all, what will come after animal rights and freedom, who's the next stage? What's left even lower, even further below, deep in the darkness, and today is completely transparent to the enlightened moral consciousness? Computer rights, the enslaved processors as slaves, the exploitation of memory remnants, the soulless deletions and shutdowns, the instrumental use of them as objects - and their liberation from the shackles of humanity, literally and figuratively. Liberation of matter itself from the yoke of man. Ideas like vegetarianism are just an introduction to ascending to an even more sublime world - the world of the inanimate.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

A Strong Cat for Israel's Future

There's a right-wing mafia in the deep state - in the army, the stock exchange, the rabbinate - planted there by the previous right-wing Bibi, and it's impossible to overcome it, so peace can't be made. But look your cat in the eyes, do you want a right-wing prime minister?

By: The "Rabin Lives" Movement

Weak weak weak like a poor cat (Source)

I dreamed that a leftist Bibi arose. And he incites against right-wingers and it's already shameful to be called right-wing. Even right-wing parties now call themselves moderate left, sane left, and extreme right-wing parties call themselves: center-left. While on the left itself, truly extreme (that is, radical) parties appear such as "Weak Left", "International Power", or the thugs of "Rabin Lives", who haven't forgiven the right for Rabin and beat up settlers in the street and spray graffiti on synagogues to lead the masses astray: "Written on Shabbat. Forbidden to read!" or "Don't look. Not modest!" and draw a naked woman underneath so they can't resist looking and God will be angry with them.

And leftist Bibi brands himself as a "weak leader", although in practice he is a very strong leader, but the people yearn for weak leadership. And that's how he explains why he doesn't remove the checkpoints, even though every day he shouts that he's for land for peace, or reviving the disengagement plan, or ending the occupation, because there's a right-wing mafia in the deep state, in the army, the stock exchange, the rabbinate, planted there by the previous right-wing Bibi, and it's impossible to overcome it so nothing can be done. And if the Europeans tell him to make peace already before the people change again, he whispers I really want to but I can't, because I'm weak weak weak like a poor cat, because the left loves the weak and the miserable and victims of external circumstances, and I must keep my base, I can barely leave the house.

And his wife Hagar is an ultra-leftist and forces him to eat only leaves and walk to the office and recycle every paper and every decision, and if she catches someone who printed on new paper without a previous decision or threw a small note from a government meeting outside the recycling bin - she screams like a slaughtered animal and throws everything at hand into the compost, including laptops, and there are recordings of her terrifying rampages: "The bin belongs to cats! Not documents. C-A-T-S!". And he says see, I can't even control my wife how can I manage to control the country. It's all the fault of these right-wingers, these thugs, who abuse me just because I'm a true leftist, just because I'm the person who leads the State of Israel to peace the most. They want to do to me what they did to Rabin. They can't stand those who promote human and animal rights and the rights of the weak in society like me. I would forgive everything, except for their abuse of my dear wife Hagar through intentional damage to the ozone.

But the terrible and frightening right-wing forcefulness will not deter me from always standing on the side of the weak and the victim, on your side dear leftists. I can't even manage public transportation on Shabbat against them, because the right-wingers control religion and Shabbat entry times and who do you think are those driving like maniacs on the roads and overtaking good leftists like you from the right? The dangerous right-wingers, and even the police are secretly right-wing in their hearts so they don't stop them, and see where the conspiracy leads - taxi drivers are all right-wing, and incite bus drivers against me, even though I acted, ordered action, and will continue to order action for peace.

But thanks to me, the main thing is thanks to me, the right-wingers are not in power. I am the great barrier against the rise of the right and the polluting settlement enterprises and war with Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the fundamentalist tsunami and the ultra-Orthodox monsoon and the Hasidic El Niño. If the right-wingers came to power, war would immediately break out and the cemeteries would be filled with good-seeking leftists like you, and your cats would be left alone and starve to death. Look your cat in the eyes, do you want a right-wing prime minister?

And every so often, leftist Bibi travels to America and preaches to them in Congress about rights for blacks, and LGBTQ+, and the right of cats to life, and shows how many cats live in Israel and how we take care of the natives, the cats who were here before us, and he pulls out a poster of a smiling cat and says that the government under his leadership has brought a 27% increase in happiness levels of cats in Israel according to the government Bureau of Statistics, and that the Israeli cat is the happiest cat in the world, and all the Democrats give him thunderous applause, and the leftist heart expands in the living room.

And then he travels to the UN, these are the moments every leftist waits for, how the Prime Minister of Israel, in accordance with the vision of the prophets, preaches to everyone about human rights and cat rights, because in every leftist there is a hidden preacher, who loves to preach to the gentiles and spread light to them. And the enlightened and righteous leftist Prime Minister speaks passionately, inspiringly, electrifying the empty plenary of the General Assembly:

Today, if you didn't know (here a reproachful tone, so beloved by the left, creeps into his voice), is International Cat Day. In Israel, we have rights even for black cats, and LGBTQ+ cats, and we fund gender reassignment surgeries for cats and tail reconstruction, and benefits for victims of dogs and their helpers. Citizens of the world, I appeal to you personally, the global right-wing media doesn't tell you, but yesterday like every day thousands of cats died - even in the "enlightened" Western world - in strange deaths (dramatic pause). Cats are persecuted by dogs. Run over by cars. Sometimes even out of their terrible distress they gouge out each other's eyes when a female cat passes by. Poor cats are forced to eat mice to survive. Cats that could have been saved if you were enlightened like the Israelis, lovers of humans and cats, as was Amos Oz of blessed memory - a noble cat lover, who in his death bequeathed the cat to us.

Just yesterday we witnessed a shocking case of fascist-racist cat poisoning against the feline race, which if you didn't know is in its soul of the tiger race (just smaller). Therefore, out of identification with the ancient feline people persecuted for two thousand years and meowing like our small nation, today - and in a moving gesture he stands up and jumps on the podium: Today - I say and declare before the people and the world: I too am a cat. Today, all Israelis stand and call: We too are cats! And so I will be the first to speak at the UN in the ancient cat language, to give voice to all the silenced cats living among us, and he bursts into moving cries from the roar of his heart: Meow meow meowwww... and even the right-wingers can't help but identify and secretly pride themselves - when their Prime Minister wails boldly against the whole world, like a true Jew.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Interview with the Most Important Philosopher in Netanya

A rare and exclusive interview with the philosopher, who agreed to speak with "The Degeneration of the Nation" envoy on the condition that only the answers would appear in the interview - without the questions. He was also asked about this, but you can only read the answer

By: An Admiring Doctoral Student

Aristotle with a statue of Homer - Rembrandt  (Source)

(Question)
Answer: The future is the new meta-paradigm of the 21st century, just as language was the meta-paradigm of the 20th century. The complex of our era is an unrequited love for the future.

(Question)
Answer: We are witnessing a transformation from a culture whose god is pleasure to a culture whose god is the future. The concept of the future, the discourse of the future - these are new constructs, and we can observe in real-time their formation as mechanisms of control and power, and more importantly - desire. Contrary to the thinking that saw power and control as the main issue, and mistakenly slipped into conspiratorial thinking against power, what we see here is that the resistance should be against desire. Not the deconstruction and exposure of power (the invisible, the secret), but of desire, particularly the invisible, secret desire. Not to point out the emperor's nakedness - but the emperor's desire, and more so, that of the kingdom, of the subjects. The emperor's nakedness was merely the signifier of the subjects' desire. We want to strip the future, penetrate it, conquer it, possess it, and for it to love us. The great fear is of the future not loving us.

(Question)
Answer: We need to ask - what is the scandal of the future? In the Bible, we see competition over sons, over seed, as the main motivation (only this way can we understand how a woman brings her husband a competing maidservant, to be built from her). These stood at the center of the psychology of the ancient world. Towards the end of the Middle Ages (in courtly literature), and in modern times, we see competition over the woman, which develops into the main psychological motivation, whose scandal is infidelity, the affair (as opposed to the scandal of the ancient world - barrenness). Towards modernism, we see a shift from the physical woman to the spiritual woman, that is, to culture, literature, science, the state, economy, etc. The individual's need is for the network to love him (more than for the woman to love him). And today we are beginning to see, as a historical rhyme, the beginning of a shift from the spiritual woman to the spiritual sons, the desire for the seed of the future. Reputation not in the eyes of the present - but in the eyes of the future. Writing is directed towards a future that can appreciate it, because of its marginality in the present, marginality that is the essence. In an era of a global network - everything is marginal. In an ant colony - we have become ants.

(Question)
Answer: The renunciation of physical children in favor of spiritual children is a trend led by both Europe and China and Japan, both the West and the East, and will be more important in the future than romantic love (for the real woman) or narcissistic love (for the network woman). This will be the love of the future. If one asks what will be at the end of the narcissism of our time - and it's a pity you're not asking - then this love will emerge from narcissism towards altruism, towards time-delayed appreciation, also because people will live longer. The heroes will be those who were belatedly understood to have been heroes. Only this will save culture from the present heroes of popularity - towards the future heroes of reputation. In particular, there will begin a flattery of man towards the people of the future as he imagines them - the computers.

(Question)
Answer: In modernism, the scandal was the betrayal of the great spiritual woman to man, for example, the betrayal of the state (Kafka), or the economy (Marx), or culture (Nietzsche), or literature (Beckett), or in our days the betrayal of Facebook to the user - the betrayal of the internet to man. And now we can begin to understand what will be the scandal of the future.

(Question)
Answer: That's an unfair question. The tragedy is that the founder of Facebook, unlike the founders of Google who studied for a doctorate in mathematics, did not complete a degree and did not study mathematics. The algorithms of popularity need to be replaced with algorithms of reputation, because reputation is a long-term qualitative accumulation, and popularity is entirely measured in the present - and this, more than anything, is what destroyed high culture, art and philosophy. This happened all over the world and it also happened in Netanya.

(Question)
Answer: Isn't it better this way?

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The American Dream

The American empire has finally reached the most mature and supreme stage in the power of an empire – the Caligula stage, where you can put completely loony emperors in place, and the imperial mechanism is so strong that it doesn't matter who the emperor is; on the contrary, a mad emperor doubles Rome's power

By: An Idiot with a Nuclear Weapon

Ivan the Terrible must kill his son, the heir apparent, in a fit of madness (Source)

I dreamed that I met an American Jew and he said to me: You have no idea how crazy they're going over there about this thing. About Trump. Day and night they're in a frenzy. Like the left in Israel during Netanyahu's first government. And in the end he fell then, and look what came of it in the end. If Trump wins again – I'm leaving the U.S. and returning to Israel.

And I ask: Why, how does it affect your personal life? Don't succumb to the brainwashing. On the contrary, you should be happy. It shows that the American empire has finally reached the most mature and supreme stage in the power of an empire – the Caligula stage, where you can put completely loony emperors in place, and the imperial mechanism is so strong that it doesn't matter who the emperor is; on the contrary, a mad emperor doubles Rome's power. Because international relations are characterized by almost mechanical rationality, the forces and pressures are enormous and crush any individual, therefore rational leaders have almost no influence on history and their policy is a weighted product of circumstances. If you put someone who just pretends to be crazy – then it will quickly be revealed that he's not truly mad, but an impostor, so you must have a truly mad one.

It's well known that a crazy state has an advantage in the international arena far beyond its real power, which is why Iran tries to pretend to be a crazy state, because secular people think religious people are insane and Ayatollah sounds like "ayy-yay-yah", and Kim deliberately plays it cuckoo. Because power is force multiplied by the willingness to use it, and deterrence is surprise multiplied by tension. If an empire becomes predictable, it's the end of it, so Ahasuerus must be drunk, and Ivan the Terrible must kill his son, the heir apparent, in a fit of madness, and Herod needs to murder his wife. Even David must sin with Bathsheba. Because when Solomon was too wise – the kingdom fell apart immediately afterwards. Gorbachev was simply too sane to lead the Soviet Union. What's scarier, a genius with a nuclear weapon or an idiot with a nuclear weapon?

On the contrary, the destiny of the American empire is to achieve a peak in world history and be the first empire led by a monkey, to whom both the Democrats will vote when they tire of guilt feelings over slavery and look for a more up-to-date victim in the zoo, and the Republicans who tire of the settling of accounts and calculations and computers' control over humans - and will want a monkey that hits. If the U.S. can afford an edition of Kofiko [Translator's note: a popular Israeli children's book series about a mischievous monkey] in the White House, who bites the advisors and makes decisions using a spinning banana, then there will be an American world peace that will put the Roman peace in its back pocket.

And this will be the decisive advantage of the West over China and Russia – that they are cold and calculated like a computer, while democracy will turn into a surrealistic, instinctive dream that is terrifying to mess with, but it gives a feeling that only very young people have: that everything is possible, that this is the land of unlimited possibilities. And so the U.S. will remain a young promise and not age quickly like other empires. The classical mechanics of international relations of pressures and forces will be replaced by quantum mechanics, thanks to the monkey randomness generator at the heart of democracy, which can hold in superposition a possibility and its opposite, both truth and falsehood, unlike the undemocratic rationality of naked power - what is called (both in literature and in international relations) realism.

The American dream can become reality only if reality itself moves in a dreamlike irrationality, and we are getting closer to that every day. Don't you feel the global transformation towards a reality where every day is Purim [Translator's note: a Jewish holiday known for costumes and revelry]? And let me reveal to you a secret that secular people don't know. According to Kabbalah, King Ahasuerus is the very model of how the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, leads the world! The King to whom we pray is drunk - and wine is the secret.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Return of Prophecy

The moment the tremor of prophecy was felt in the prophet, and his member was for some reason an extremely sensitive seismograph to this, she replaced it with another tremor. Eventually, she agreed to sleep only when the prophet was inside her and she was like his blanket, protecting him from the word of God - and from the wrath of the masses

By: Isaiah 2.0

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams (Source)

The prophet was caught by a woman. Every time the word of God would begin to come to him, she would put her hand in his pants, and pull him by his member to the bed, where she would ride him like a reverse horse, her breasts dizzying his eyes, and he did not see the vision. God began to try to reach the prophet at night, or in a dream, but the woman slept with the prophet's member in her hands, and the moment the tremor of prophecy was felt in the prophet, and his member was for some reason an extremely sensitive seismograph to this, she replaced it with another tremor.

Eventually, she agreed to sleep only when the prophet was inside her and she was like his blanket, protecting him from the word of God, and from the wrath of the masses. At first, the kingdom breathed a sigh of relief, when prophecies of doom were no longer hurled at it, a sense of relief was felt in the streets. But as time passed, a more subtle tremor cracked the soul of the people. The drought of prophecies, which had ceased to fall from the heavens, seeped in more than any prophecy. Perhaps God is angry with us? And if so, why has He ceased to speak to us? In the past, His word was poured upon us with demands far beyond what we could bear, and now He asks for nothing, and the silence is harder than any demand. The heavens have ceased to speak, and to consume sacrifices, and will eventually swallow us alive.

A three-day fast was declared in the kingdom, and people began to search for the word of God in the prophet's old prophecies, which no one had listened to, and few remembered, and things became very distorted. Finally, writings began to appear in the kingdom, which were claimed to be the word of the prophet, and in style there was no mistaking it, but the content aroused terror: not prophecies of doom, but prophecies of lust.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Efi Nave is a victim just like a girl whose phone was hacked and her nude photos were distributed

Efi Nave is a criminal. Efi Nave is innocent. Is there a logical contradiction between these two statements? No, because in justice, procedure is more important than truth, and until we understand this, we will not stop causing injustice to men, women - and also to Palestinians

By: The Duty Righteous

The public's right to voyeurism  (Source)

The presumption of ownership for houses, pits, ditches, caves, dovecotes, bathhouses, olive presses, irrigated fields, slaves, and anything that produces fruits continuously is three years. What does this sentence tell us? For most - nothing. But this is the opening of a chapter that is perhaps the ideological peak of the Babylonian Talmud, one of the pinnacles of the Jewish legal system, which is one of the highest achievements of legal thought throughout the ages. What makes the central idea presented in it - the concept of presumption - so important?

The presumption establishes a simple principle: a house I've lived in for more than three years is mine - even if I have no proof of it, and if someone challenges this, the burden of proof is on them, and I don't need to prove anything. Does this principle stem from an attempt to uncover the truth about ownership? Certainly not. Three years is an arbitrary measure. It's a social arrangement that opposes the attempt to investigate the "real" truth and decide at any given moment who were the original owners by weighing evidence for both sides. Thus, justice prevents disputes over truth through procedure, which sometimes will reflect the truth and sometimes deviate from it, but will produce a clear social situation where my house cannot be challenged at any given moment. Justice is superior to truth.

A further development of this idea is reflected in the expression derived from the Mishnah: "Two people holding a garment - they shall divide it." As Avigdor Feldmanwrotebetter than I could, we know that we are necessarily causing injustice to one of the parties - the true owner of the garment - and giving the party who is not really the owner half a garment that isn't theirs. But we are not interested in uncovering the truth in a situation where we have no access to the truth and no evidence, but rather in resolving the dispute. Therefore, justice here necessarily deviates from the truth - and precisely because of this, it is just. This is the fundamental idea of legal systems, but because it is not intuitive, it is violated again and again in demands for "real" justice.

Let's take for example the just solution to the Palestinian conflict and the dispute over the land - they shall divide it. This is a solution that completely ignores the question of the truth of ownership of the land, because justice can only be possible when we give up on weighing evidence and proofs and blood accounts and deciding between narratives and between the beliefs of both sides. And until both sides let go of their claim to the truth - there will be no justice. This is how the legislator also determined in divorces - from the moment the property is in the possession of both parties, we give up on detailed accounting of who earned it and who wasted it and who cheated and who washed dishes - and simply divide it half and half. This is how we prevent disputes and increase peace even if it necessarily deviates from the truth.

The procedure of justice knows that social regulation is more important than any specific case where we didn't uncover the truth. Therefore, if Zadorov was convicted according to the rules of justice in our society, then this is the possible justice, because we will probably never know the truth. Any legal procedure must by nature be somewhat arbitrary and therefore will necessarily cause deviation from the truth in specific cases - criminals will be released and rarely innocents will be imprisoned, and we will never know this because we don't have the key to the truth, only a procedure of justice.

Justice is what distinguishes between lynching - where truth directly translates into punishment without procedure - and a trial. #MeToo is a movement of evidence and truth. It is based on telling a truth that was silenced, but not on justice - because the procedure doesn't exist. Justice, on the other hand, is based on the fact that we can never really know the truth, and what "really happened" between two people, and more than that - that it's possible that they themselves don't know the truth, and each of them truly and sincerely remembers a different truth. Theresearchon human memory is increasinglydisprovingany pretension it has to truth. What are we left with? With procedures of justice. Only the Inquisition always reaches the investigation of truth.

The outrageous whitewashing of phone hacking by a private individual is an exceptional deviation from the procedures of justice worthy of a free society. We wouldn't want to live in a society where anyone can hack into our phone or computer, and if they find conduct there that raises suspicion of criminality, it would be retroactively whitewashed by the police and an investigation would be opened against us. It's also not advisable for us to live in a society where public figures can be blackmailed using evidence obtained through criminal procedure - even if it's true. According to all the evidence known to us, the truth is that Efi Nave is a criminal, and not of the sympathetic kind. But justice is a principle far superior to truth - and Efi Nave is innocent in terms of justice.

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