text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Elijah

By:

(Source)

The Lost Book of Elijah

I dreamed that God summoned me for a meeting. And I look at the queue of waiting people, what strange individuals. I expected enormous righteous figures that I don't even know, and here sits a man made of candies, with a long tail of ants eating him - and he's terrified of the children in the synagogue, and next to him sits a miserable one with a tail instead of a head struggling to balance the shtreimel, and beside him a great scholar with two heads - one head for Rashi's tefillin and the other for Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin, and next to him within a tangle of black cobwebs a spider entangled in laying the hand tefillin, and other kinds of unfortunates. Why am I in this queue? And I see there are "LaIsha" [women's] magazines there. Isn't that going too far? True, they don't want anyone to cause a commotion, but what? The bell rings above me! I'm in. And He says to me I'll answer your question: Why aren't they capable? The question of questions. Enter once into the head of one of them, what do you feel? Inside? Is there room? And I say to Him: You're not answering my question. With all due respect. And He answers: And there is respect, huh? Next. And I go out disappointed. That was really short, for this I waited all these years?

And I try to download Elijah the Prophet to the computer. And he doesn't download. The file is stuck all the time at 98 percent. How annoying. And I say what shall we do. Let's try to run the program like this. With what we have. What could happen? And I click on Elijah twice. And he wakes up. All in all the same Elijah. But when he opens his mouth to yawn he's missing two teeth. Not terrible. Upside-down rabbit. And then when he opens his eyes I see he's missing two pupils. Uh oh. I start to worry. Who knows what's missing from his brain? But he looks nice and starts to smile, talk, don't call me Elijah Elijah, you can call me Eli. And he keeps saying I forgot something. And I say it's okay you'll remember. And he says it's strange, that it's not a feeling that he forgot something, it's a feeling that he forgot two things.

And Elijah starts to open windows for me on the computer. Window within window within window, and I can see more and more outside, until I see the window itself from the outside. And now that I'm already deep inside the computer, Elijah feels comfortable giving me instructions, he's like a robot with a beard. And he says that these are just frames he's opening, and now they need to be filled with content. That now is the time for awakening from below, that the Torah of the Messiah will be written by the Shekhinah [divine presence], meaning by Israel, that it will rise from below upwards. That this will be a complete literary movement. 24 books from your side you still have, to complete with the book... to 49=7x7. Understand? And you need to give him commandments, like it was before the sin, when the woman would tell the man what to do - she gave me from the tree and I ate. Right? After all, otherwise it's impossible to understand neither the sin nor the excuse nor the punishment - because you listened to the voice of your wife. And now this will be the correction that the woman will return to rule over the man. And you will make an inverted Mount Sinai event, you will raise your Torah to a high mountain and God will come to take it, as far as I'm concerned even send it in a missile with an inverted prophet - to God. Don't make my mistake, that I didn't write the Book of Elijah, and afterwards the prophecies of destruction of Isaiah were already written and it was too late to stop the destruction. I thought I needed to fix the kingdom of Ahab.
\- And God thought differently?
\- The kingdom thought differently. Look, the sinning state is just a framework. The real trouble is when it has no content, when the state remains single, and there's no righteous person in the land to fertilize it, to use the urge to make Torah...
\- So it's she who didn't want you?
\- But why didn't she want? Because the Torah wasn't tempting enough. I tried to work directly with the kingdom, but when the coupling is direct it's simply incest. You need to cover it with the blanket of Torah, with the darkness of Torah, to dress the urge in Torah, never really touch it, everything only through Torah... Everything in hints, in hush-hush, not in the plain meaning. You understand? You're allowed to reveal a handbreadth only if you cover two handbreadths. And he puts his hand over my eyes.

Covering of Elijah

I dreamed that Elijah fell on me from the sky, severely wounded, and he puts his hand on my mouth: No time for questions. And it's not clear to me how he escaped, but he tells me: Touch the screen. Come, I see you're so afraid, I'll reveal to you why there was destruction. Do you know the difference between touching a statue and a person? A statue you don't dress. That's what happened after Solomon, that they stopped writing new books, all because of Ecclesiastes, they stopped dressing women in Torah, innovations ended, and the people turned to idol worship. As long as there was content even the framework held, the whole idolatrous world was afraid of us when we wrote the Torah, the Song of Songs deterred them so much that there was peace all the days of Solomon, and the Song of the Sea was more effective than a nuclear submarine. But when you deal only with the external framework, and turn it into content... And I'll reveal to you that this is the dirtiest trick of the impure state framework - that it disguises itself as content. It constantly wants people to deal with it, to touch it, constantly thinking to collapse on you, as if it's interesting, yuck. And if you touched it, for good or bad, it has already won. The very engagement with the evil inclination - is itself the evil inclination. And therefore listen to me that we need to abandon the direct war of the good inclination against the evil inclination, as tempting as it is. We need to rise above the inclinations of the Tree of Knowledge - to the inclinations of the Tree of Life. You understand? We must progress beyond the good inclination and the evil inclination, to their coupling - the Torah inclination.

In short, you ask me how to begin? He began from the beginning, Genesis, so now we need to begin from the end, in the latter days. And don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we're going to redemption. This is not the direction to redemption, but to chaos. And precisely because of this I need you to start these books, at least start, we need to prepare the remnants from which it will be possible to build a new world. After all, even the letters of the current Torah are creatures that lived in the primordial world. You need to imagine a world where you are a letter, and your connection with others is a word, and the next connection is a verse, etc. And then maybe you can begin to grasp at all who they will be, the creatures who read you as a simple letter, who can write you with one keystroke, that you are a key on their keyboard. And I hear knocks on the bathroom door, and my wife asks: What are you writing there? When are you coming out?

2

I dreamed that I wake up and open my eyes in the darkness behind Elijah's hand. And suddenly I see through his hand that he has a hole under his cloak. And I remove the covering where it's peeling off, and I see that his skin is parchment of a Torah scroll. And underneath there's another layer. And another layer. And he says: Stop, it's like a toilet paper roll, if you continue there will be nothing left of me. And I realize that all this time we were talking he was hiding the injury, bleeding more and more ink, which erased everything written there, it all turned into one black stain. And he's already dying and streams of ink are coming out of his throat, blackening the entire screen, and he says, gurgling, getting confused within his own pages, clearly he won't finish what he wanted to say. And I pity him, and start to read from the screen myself, at top speed, what's written inside it. And I discover another hole there.

The Kingdom of Night

I dreamed that the war of Gog and Magog arrives, and I'm called up for reserve duty. And the commander is this fat Haredi [ultra-Orthodox], who needs three soldiers to roll him from position to position, and he keeps shouting be careful with my beard. And at night he gives a guard duty briefing: You think God needs to address you in high language? He can address you in low language. You think God is a fat Haredi like this, with a shtreimel on a cosmic scale - which is the universe - made from the tails of holy animals - which is string theory? After all, why is space black and round - the shtreimel is the new heavens! When you see a dark figure, open with a dark arrest procedure. There's no room here to think twice. The mistake is always to turn on the light - and then the Messiah slips through our hands. Or between our legs. Or between our eyes, or between our ears. You wouldn't recognize God even if He landed on you from space. You're still waiting for lights from the sky, and haven't understood that space is black.

And the Stars to Rule the Night

I dreamed that the aliens land and the secular people taunt: So, where in the Torah were aliens created? And they answer them: You'll be surprised, but before you. And it turns out that according to the Jewish religion aliens were created on the fourth day, two days before humans. But no one prepared for the religious implications of their arrival. For long periods they wandered here in hidden identity, looking for some new idea. Then the tourists arrived. It was a bit funny to put them one level below gentiles, but above kosher animals. They really looked a bit like animals. There was even someone who saw them as the holy beasts. But later it was already clear that they were from the Other Side, the human created in the image of Satan. The government of the night.

A Brief History of the Heavens

I dreamed that the stars multiply in the sky. At first no one notices, but slowly the night becomes bright like in the desert, and then it already becomes scary, who is creating so many worlds? And the sky is already so white, only small holes remain in it, which people in that period call black stars, and in the end even they are filled in and the whole night is white. And at first no one notices and the sky shines as before, but some of the stars dim, and go out, and the epidemic spreads, more and more worlds are destroyed, until in the end the last stars disappear in black skies without stars.

Study Partner from Another World

I dreamed that I meet a Haredi alien with a green shtreimel, and he crawls on the stage in the synagogue, but they don't give him an aliyah [call to read from the Torah] even though he's a guest from afar, they embarrass him that he's not Israel. And he starts to make a commotion, that in the days of the Messiah there's an eighth day of the week, and there's an eighth aliyah, that he'll go up for, and that in the World to Come there's even a tenth day, because in their world there are two suns, and there the prophecy is fulfilled that the light of the moon is like the light of the sun. And he's offended to the depths of his soul, or whatever else they have inside: What, am I a gentile? Do you know that in our circumcision, we have no reproductive organs, they cut off part of the brain? And the halakha [Jewish law], do you have any idea how many laws developed over millions of years? And the persecutions, we had holocausts of 99.9%! And throughout the Musaf [additional] prayer he sways like a worm to a thousand angles, I swear it's funny to tears, like a green lulav [palm branch] that swallowed a belly dancer. And from so much shaking and enthusiasm and prostrations to a thousand holy places in the galaxy - he starts to bang his head on the floor like a crazy spring, forward backward careful of the menorah, and I see how people struggle not to burst out laughing, burying themselves in prayer books, turning red, choking, biting their tongues, some wetting their pants, and I pray he doesn't notice, it's so so embarrassing, no one is concentrating on the prayer, and suddenly breaking the silence a loud trumpet sound that someone tries to choke, and the dignitaries of the congregation start to lose control and writhe while making a supreme effort to continue standing like a stick, and that's only funnier, strange gases come out of them, it's simply killing, and in the end even the rabbis can't contain themselves anymore, they're simply splitting, and start falling on the floor, one after another, bursting. In short, a disgrace to the human race. And after the prayer he stands alone and no one feels comfortable inviting him home for the Sabbath meal, no one even approaches to say Shabbat Shalom [good Sabbath]. Disgusting. And in the end there's no choice and I'm forced to invite him to our place, even though he'll see everything, a model Jewish home.

And he explains to me on the way that for them the Bible continues the story of the Garden of Eden with the story of the first serpent, he's the hero who was punished, and what children were born to him, ten generations of serpents, and that they are the descendants of those worms. I mean, he sees that I'm worried, don't worry I won't bite you. And he tells that their forefathers are holy serpents. When they told their father "Go forth from your land" it's a bit longer journey than for us, he chuckles, and the hardest commandment for them is to make a pilgrimage. And we advance like a worm, and I think that soon I'll hear "How many hours do I have to wait for you to come back from synagogue?", and start to prepare him for what's expected at our place, and the alien immediately advises me, as one who knows what I'm talking about, from his interstellar experience in the heavens: For you humans are made from dust and woman is made from man. So if man is higher than dust woman is made from something higher than man, and if humans are lower than dust she too is lower than him. And your relationship to the earth radiates also on your relationship to other stars. They should have sent a righteous astronaut to the moon, which is a laundered name for the Shekhinah [divine presence], and to honor the ancient spirituality of the heavens, and the coupling between earth and the upper world. One small step for man, one giant leap for divinity. And instead you sent a gentile, who stepped on her like dust, and called her moon, like some bald man. We have everything, including a spiritual space program, headed by an Admor-naut [Hasidic leader astronaut].
\- But friend, it was all a lie! A material illusion called the American dream. There's no real possibility of travel to the moon, read Maimonides - whoever tries will encounter the spheres.
\- Excuse me, Rabbi?
\- Your honor, after all redemption will come when the sun and moon meet - in complete coupling. Therefore, and I tell you this as one who's considered an alien here, what needs to be done is to push the moon into the sun. Therefore the only way to bring the Messiah, a global patent, is to go very far in space and deflect an asteroid, and if it's far enough in time, it's enough that I give it a small hit with my finger in the right direction, and it will collide with the moon, and send it towards the sun. Like billiards of stars. And all that's needed is some especially flying astronaut - who will be the white donkey.
\- Ahem, it's just not clear to me how this fits with halakha [Jewish law]. What about all the holidays? What about sanctifying the new moon?
\- That's exactly what will be her betrothal. The wedding of the lesser light with the greater light, and then when they will be as one, the prophecy will be fulfilled that the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, simply because the pair of rival heavenly bodies of day and night will be one flesh. In the days of the Messiah, the month will last a year, and the year will last a month. Hasidism is cosmic Zionism: Instead of waiting for redemption on earth, or trying to fake redemption on earth, we will reshape the heavens. And this through a heavenly wedding under the canopy of the sky. Sanctifying the new month will be the new year, and thus all the defects will be corrected, and the Muslim calendar will be the Christian calendar will be the Jewish calendar, and there will be not only world peace, but cosmic peace. The vision of the end of days of the solar system - which will also be the lunar system - which will also be the vision of the end of nights, because the night will be perfect. Without a moon - total darkness.
\- Ahem, and what does your rabbi say about all this?
\- You know, at the beginning of my marriage I went to the rabbi and he told me: A woman alone is a bound trouble, a woman and child cancel each other out, like minus and plus.
\- Okay, I think I'm late, need to go.
\- Wait, only afterwards I understood that I'm the minus.
\- I must fly.
\- Won't you stay even for kiddush [blessing over wine]?

Group Rape of the Torah

I dreamed that I'm going to a lecture by Elijah the Prophet. And I see that before the lecture this insolent one sticks on himself a beard that reaches the floor. And I say to myself that this time I'll expose this charlatan and sit in the front row. And he opens: Thus said Elijah. I want to talk tonight about the vitality of forgery in the spirit of religion. We are witnessing a dialectical return in Zohar research to the view that the book was indeed written by Rabbi Moses de Leon. After all, the vast diversity in it is still not as diverse as texts by multiple authors. I'm less interested in who wrote the book, and more interested in the possibility that it was written by one person, who out of enormous spiritual loneliness and alienation and humiliation and lack of recognition of who he is from his environment and wife, he pretends before her to be a profit-seeker, creates for himself worthy interlocutors, and produces a discourse that is a model of religious spirit. And what's interesting here is his choice of forgery, and especially his awareness of forgery, and the conceptual tools with which he relates to it, as a legitimate, necessary and positive part of religious creativity. Unlike Moses, he recognizes the radiance of his face's skin and the necessity of the mask. This is the breakthrough that enabled the Zohar. Let's ask ourselves, for example, what was the religious consciousness of Fourth Isaiah? Did he live in a consciousness of forgery? After all, religion is not a product of one-time deception and forgery, but of ongoing forgery actions, sometimes over generations. There are those who claim that the more primitive a religion is the less forged it is, and also the awareness of this is less. Forgery in shamanic rituals? They simply took drugs. But there's also the possibility that the further we get from the source of forgery the more our consciousness of forgery ceases. It looks authentic. Are we in an irreversible process of shrinking the space of forgery and therefore of degeneration of religion? The Zohar suggests, and proves from within itself, that religious awareness of forgery allows overcoming the secular awareness of it - the awareness of religious forgery. Let's note the seemingly strange phenomenon, that all the great religions present their believers with demands that no person can meet. They are willing to pay the price of alienation and corruption, only because they are an integral part of the forgery, which is the lifeblood of religion and the main emotional engine behind it. Therefore, the modern negation of forgery is the greatest barrier encountered by religious creativity. This crisis is the cause of religious stagnation and fundamentalism. This is the very heresy and lack of faith. In other words, this is the disconnection from God, whose creation of the world is described in Kabbalah as an act of forgery on a cosmic scale, in which He deceives Himself, and as if hides from the world. Thus is created the illusion of choice, good and evil, nature, and also humans. And isn't the very study of Torah the forgery in which Moses' voice speaks from your throat what you think. Therefore today creativity in study has been blocked for us, in practice, when we are aware of it, and flourishes only in the (also forged) lack of awareness of the Haredi world (which tries to forge authenticity, hence its anxiety). What's interesting for our matter is to identify the different consciousness of forgery in different texts, and its development and sophistication, as an axis of religious development. After all, the real barrier to building the Temple is the fear of the religious (not the secular!) that fire won't descend from heaven and everything will turn out to be nonsense. And they forget that it's a commandment to bring ordinary fire. Indeed, the last great project of Judaism, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe understood it, will be the project of forging the Messiah, which is made possible according to Maimonides through the concept of presumption (what the masses have presumed). Sabbateanism failed because the forgery was poor, while this time the forgery will be successful. Because the forgery itself will be forged. And I pounce on him - and tear off his white beard. And a lot of blood comes down. On his chin, on his neck, on the white shirt. A beard of blood.

And for Sins We Are Liable for Four Deaths by the Court: Stoning, Burning, Beheading and Strangling

I dreamed that I enter the study hall - and the study hall is empty. Only books on all the walls. And suddenly a book flies at me from behind - ouch - and I shout: Who threw that? But there's no answer. And the books start to stone me, at first only one of the last ones dares to throw its friend at me, and then whole Talmuds, complete Talmud sets, huge Maimonides fly at me, death by stoning is the cruelest execution, or maybe burning? I don't remember, it's probably in one of the books. And I make a deal with God that He'll save me now, and I'm willing for the most severe execution in the Torah - even burning. What's actually preferable, to be killed in the world of Torah, or to choke inside myself, or maybe to burn, all black? Among the four deaths in the Torah, which is the worst court execution? If only I had studied more Talmud - and known now, at the moment of truth. And I come out from under the pile of books, like a mountain in the middle of the hall, and afterwards I still have to arrange all the books in the study hall.
And on the way home someone asks me if I have a light - and I run away. And I start to live inside water. And I say to myself that water is Torah, and anyway, all the angels in heaven live inside water, this is after all the other side of the firmament. From our perspective they fly, but actually they dive. And so I live inside my bubble, erased in bed, writing and not lying down, and no one knows what a loss this is. A hundred to zero. Everyone thinks there's God on one side and Satan on the other side, righteous on one side and wicked on the other side, professor on one side - and lowlife on the other side. What I understood is that both of them - the Shekhinah [divine presence] and the Other Side, the Rebbe and the donkey, the lecturer and the thug - both of them are actually on one side. And I'm on the other side.

The Punishment

I dreamed that the baby doesn't know how to sleep. You too joined, against sleep? It's not for nothing that she takes him out in the stroller to the sun against my will, she knows what to do to turn him into a son of light, like her, instead of a son of darkness. He suffers from a severe lack of exposure to darkness - and she addicts him to white milk. It didn't help that I added eyes to the shtreimel to endear them to each other, he's barely interested in the shtreimel doll, and on the other hand is very interested in the open eyes of the breasts. If he doesn't dream enough, how will the dream come true? Everything will go down the drain and I'll be left only with the dreams, and with the shtreimel, and with the closed eyes - inside it. The most beautiful word in the Hebrew language is: moron [metumtam]. Everything was inside my head. And I dream that at the end of the prayer book there's a page with a fixed response: God is considering your request and He will make a decision in the coming days.

The End of the Revolution

I dreamed that I live in the post-Elijah era. Before his death, Elijah gathered the sons of the prophets for a secret meeting. Without revealing anything to them, the grandchildren gathered for an even more secret meeting, which was hidden even from him. And the generation of great-grandchildren already gathered for a meeting that was hidden even from themselves. A matter that was not understood at all, because to all three Elijah left the same will, the same cryptic riddle: A dream without day and day without dream. No one knows what he meant, in the whole process, but the results were catastrophic. But how do we know that he didn't intend catastrophic results? The first cult declared a secret war against Pharaoh and Amalek and Laban and Haman and Ishmael and Edom and Assyria and Babylon and who not? And painted the land in blood. But its influence paled in comparison to the second cult, which dug inside the internal organs of the land from within, holes holes hollows hollows, and still sang at the top of its voice, you couldn't open an eye or ear without seeing and hearing, you couldn't think without thinking in their distorted images! White blood, red milk, a beard that is a snake, and a snake that is a beard. But all this is still nothing compared to the third cult, which under the guise of legitimate thinking took over precious souls, precious, until logic itself became a dream. A network was established that spread like cancer, tied knots like a spider, and to this day has not been completely eradicated, and they suspect there are metastases even in the brain, there's no knowing, because how to know, because there is no knowledge. Cancer in the head of the nation. Instead of an army with three arms we got a monster with three hands (or according to the last cult: three heads with one writing finger). Security, foreign affairs and economy without a prime minister. The state collapsed. Society was torn to shreds. But the spiritual world that was created was enough for all the third exile.

What's Left?

I dreamed that Elijah sits with the ravens, and they have a Messiah's feast. And Elijah opens: To destroy the body required a physical Holocaust of seven years in exile. To destroy the spirit required a spiritual Holocaust of seventy years in the Land of Israel. What's left for us? Said the black raven: What's left? The soul is left. A soul without body and without spirit, without man and without air, without earth and without sky. And the land was desolate. A parable of a fat righteous man whose soul was reincarnated in a pig. And the pig constantly wanted to enter the synagogue and they would kick and chase it away. What did it do? It waited for the Kedushah [Sanctification prayer], and entered inside when everyone is standing and can't move. Holy, holy, holy, it snorted, and out came oink oink oink. They gave it to a kosher butcher, to give it as food to a gentile. But the butcher didn't know from where to slaughter a pig, it had seven double chins. Snorted the holy pig: Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord... and snorted that butcher, and his soul left in the pig. Said the white raven: What's left? Survivors, from Noah's ark. They would sit every night in the basement in the ghetto, and have a fast feast, in which they eat air and spirit. Therefore they prepared spiritual provisions for another thousand years, the seventh millennium: From the clean animal, Messiah's Torah, which was burned - sacrifice. And from the animal which is not clean, donkey's Torah, which remained - because it's not kosher. And then they sent out from the ark a black rabbi. And he returned. And then they sent out from the ark a white she-donkey. And she didn't return. And they had in the ark in the ghetto two by two of all the animals in Judaism, who studied in pairs. And only the white donkey remained without a mate and cried: Why should my seed be wiped out from the face of the earth? Why will only my Torah disappear? So they gave him the Messiah. And the Messiah rode on him, and said to him: Light and heavy [a fortiori]. And gave him a female carrot, and answered him back: Equal decree. Immediately the Messiah dismounted from him. And to this day they argue who will ride on whom. And therefore they haven't arrived yet. Said the black-white raven: What's left? A last course remained. The ravens arose and ate Elijah's carcass.

?

I dreamed that I am Elijah's last Hasid. And they call me the Raven. And I have no one to pass on the secret to. So I take the scroll and start to eat it. Tear after tear. Verse after verse. They're not capable of digesting ideas, so I rewrite them in modern Hebrew, where each sentence is one bite: Elijah climbed to the top of the organization for 40 years, and disappeared in the fog. And then he came down and gave us the organizational Torah. Every real organization - is a religious organization, and it has a core secret. The organizational world encompasses all: every person is an organization, and the super-organization is God. Every organization needs a king, priest and prophet. The king over management, the priest over ritual, and the prophet over the dream. The ritual is the constant secret of the organization, which was hidden in the organization. Kingship is the secret of the organization's action, which is hidden in the organization. And prophecy is the secret of the organization's future, which hides in the organization. Therefore the priest deals with preserving the secret of the past in the organization, the king with the secret of the present, and the prophet with the secret of the future. A great prophet who sees in the dark, like Moses, brings down Torah to the organization, because Torah is an organized dream for generations ahead. And the Messiah is the organization of the dream in the form of a person. King of the future. And the donkey is the living organization and the living framework for bringing the Messiah. The dream as a form of life. Priest of the future. And the Messiah's Torah is the future Torah of the organization. The dream in the form of Torah. The future organizational Torah. And Elijah is the prophet of the future. The herald of the Messiah - still in the night before him. The dream as a dark promise. As a form of black secret. And the raven? The last bite gets stuck in my beak. I'm choking. And I think: Why do my life end in death? I would much prefer if they ended with a question mark.

To the next chapter

The Trilogy

title: Elijah - The Degeneration of the Nation

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Elijah

By:

(Source)

The Lost Book of Elijah

I dreamed that God summoned me for a meeting. And I look at the queue of waiting people, what strange individuals. I expected enormous righteous figures that I don't even know, and here sits a man made of candies, with a long tail of ants eating him - and he's terrified of the children in the synagogue, and next to him sits a miserable one with a tail instead of a head struggling to balance the shtreimel, and beside him a great scholar with two heads - one head for Rashi's tefillin and the other for Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin, and next to him within a tangle of black cobwebs a spider entangled in laying the hand tefillin, and other kinds of unfortunates. Why am I in this queue? And I see there are "LaIsha" [women's] magazines there. Isn't that going too far? True, they don't want anyone to cause a commotion, but what? The bell rings above me! I'm in. And He says to me I'll answer your question: Why aren't they capable? The question of questions. Enter once into the head of one of them, what do you feel? Inside? Is there room? And I say to Him: You're not answering my question. With all due respect. And He answers: And there is respect, huh? Next. And I go out disappointed. That was really short, for this I waited all these years?

And I try to download Elijah the Prophet to the computer. And he doesn't download. The file is stuck all the time at 98 percent. How annoying. And I say what shall we do. Let's try to run the program like this. With what we have. What could happen? And I click on Elijah twice. And he wakes up. All in all the same Elijah. But when he opens his mouth to yawn he's missing two teeth. Not terrible. Upside-down rabbit. And then when he opens his eyes I see he's missing two pupils. Uh oh. I start to worry. Who knows what's missing from his brain? But he looks nice and starts to smile, talk, don't call me Elijah Elijah, you can call me Eli. And he keeps saying I forgot something. And I say it's okay you'll remember. And he says it's strange, that it's not a feeling that he forgot something, it's a feeling that he forgot two things.

And Elijah starts to open windows for me on the computer. Window within window within window, and I can see more and more outside, until I see the window itself from the outside. And now that I'm already deep inside the computer, Elijah feels comfortable giving me instructions, he's like a robot with a beard. And he says that these are just frames he's opening, and now they need to be filled with content. That now is the time for awakening from below, that the Torah of the Messiah will be written by the Shekhinah [divine presence], meaning by Israel, that it will rise from below upwards. That this will be a complete literary movement. 24 books from your side you still have, to complete with the book... to 49=7x7. Understand? And you need to give him commandments, like it was before the sin, when the woman would tell the man what to do - she gave me from the tree and I ate. Right? After all, otherwise it's impossible to understand neither the sin nor the excuse nor the punishment - because you listened to the voice of your wife. And now this will be the correction that the woman will return to rule over the man. And you will make an inverted Mount Sinai event, you will raise your Torah to a high mountain and God will come to take it, as far as I'm concerned even send it in a missile with an inverted prophet - to God. Don't make my mistake, that I didn't write the Book of Elijah, and afterwards the prophecies of destruction of Isaiah were already written and it was too late to stop the destruction. I thought I needed to fix the kingdom of Ahab.
- And God thought differently?
- The kingdom thought differently. Look, the sinning state is just a framework. The real trouble is when it has no content, when the state remains single, and there's no righteous person in the land to fertilize it, to use the urge to make Torah...
- So it's she who didn't want you?
- But why didn't she want? Because the Torah wasn't tempting enough. I tried to work directly with the kingdom, but when the coupling is direct it's simply incest. You need to cover it with the blanket of Torah, with the darkness of Torah, to dress the urge in Torah, never really touch it, everything only through Torah... Everything in hints, in hush-hush, not in the plain meaning. You understand? You're allowed to reveal a handbreadth only if you cover two handbreadths. And he puts his hand over my eyes.

Covering of Elijah

I dreamed that Elijah fell on me from the sky, severely wounded, and he puts his hand on my mouth: No time for questions. And it's not clear to me how he escaped, but he tells me: Touch the screen. Come, I see you're so afraid, I'll reveal to you why there was destruction. Do you know the difference between touching a statue and a person? A statue you don't dress. That's what happened after Solomon, that they stopped writing new books, all because of Ecclesiastes, they stopped dressing women in Torah, innovations ended, and the people turned to idol worship. As long as there was content even the framework held, the whole idolatrous world was afraid of us when we wrote the Torah, the Song of Songs deterred them so much that there was peace all the days of Solomon, and the Song of the Sea was more effective than a nuclear submarine. But when you deal only with the external framework, and turn it into content... And I'll reveal to you that this is the dirtiest trick of the impure state framework - that it disguises itself as content. It constantly wants people to deal with it, to touch it, constantly thinking to collapse on you, as if it's interesting, yuck. And if you touched it, for good or bad, it has already won. The very engagement with the evil inclination - is itself the evil inclination. And therefore listen to me that we need to abandon the direct war of the good inclination against the evil inclination, as tempting as it is. We need to rise above the inclinations of the Tree of Knowledge - to the inclinations of the Tree of Life. You understand? We must progress beyond the good inclination and the evil inclination, to their coupling - the Torah inclination.

In short, you ask me how to begin? He began from the beginning, Genesis, so now we need to begin from the end, in the latter days. And don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we're going to redemption. This is not the direction to redemption, but to chaos. And precisely because of this I need you to start these books, at least start, we need to prepare the remnants from which it will be possible to build a new world. After all, even the letters of the current Torah are creatures that lived in the primordial world. You need to imagine a world where you are a letter, and your connection with others is a word, and the next connection is a verse, etc. And then maybe you can begin to grasp at all who they will be, the creatures who read you as a simple letter, who can write you with one keystroke, that you are a key on their keyboard. And I hear knocks on the bathroom door, and my wife asks: What are you writing there? When are you coming out?

2

I dreamed that I wake up and open my eyes in the darkness behind Elijah's hand. And suddenly I see through his hand that he has a hole under his cloak. And I remove the covering where it's peeling off, and I see that his skin is parchment of a Torah scroll. And underneath there's another layer. And another layer. And he says: Stop, it's like a toilet paper roll, if you continue there will be nothing left of me. And I realize that all this time we were talking he was hiding the injury, bleeding more and more ink, which erased everything written there, it all turned into one black stain. And he's already dying and streams of ink are coming out of his throat, blackening the entire screen, and he says, gurgling, getting confused within his own pages, clearly he won't finish what he wanted to say. And I pity him, and start to read from the screen myself, at top speed, what's written inside it. And I discover another hole there.

The Kingdom of Night

I dreamed that the war of Gog and Magog arrives, and I'm called up for reserve duty. And the commander is this fat Haredi [ultra-Orthodox], who needs three soldiers to roll him from position to position, and he keeps shouting be careful with my beard. And at night he gives a guard duty briefing: You think God needs to address you in high language? He can address you in low language. You think God is a fat Haredi like this, with a shtreimel on a cosmic scale - which is the universe - made from the tails of holy animals - which is string theory? After all, why is space black and round - the shtreimel is the new heavens! When you see a dark figure, open with a dark arrest procedure. There's no room here to think twice. The mistake is always to turn on the light - and then the Messiah slips through our hands. Or between our legs. Or between our eyes, or between our ears. You wouldn't recognize God even if He landed on you from space. You're still waiting for lights from the sky, and haven't understood that space is black.

And the Stars to Rule the Night

I dreamed that the aliens land and the secular people taunt: So, where in the Torah were aliens created? And they answer them: You'll be surprised, but before you. And it turns out that according to the Jewish religion aliens were created on the fourth day, two days before humans. But no one prepared for the religious implications of their arrival. For long periods they wandered here in hidden identity, looking for some new idea. Then the tourists arrived. It was a bit funny to put them one level below gentiles, but above kosher animals. They really looked a bit like animals. There was even someone who saw them as the holy beasts. But later it was already clear that they were from the Other Side, the human created in the image of Satan. The government of the night.

A Brief History of the Heavens

I dreamed that the stars multiply in the sky. At first no one notices, but slowly the night becomes bright like in the desert, and then it already becomes scary, who is creating so many worlds? And the sky is already so white, only small holes remain in it, which people in that period call black stars, and in the end even they are filled in and the whole night is white. And at first no one notices and the sky shines as before, but some of the stars dim, and go out, and the epidemic spreads, more and more worlds are destroyed, until in the end the last stars disappear in black skies without stars.

Study Partner from Another World

I dreamed that I meet a Haredi alien with a green shtreimel, and he crawls on the stage in the synagogue, but they don't give him an aliyah [call to read from the Torah] even though he's a guest from afar, they embarrass him that he's not Israel. And he starts to make a commotion, that in the days of the Messiah there's an eighth day of the week, and there's an eighth aliyah, that he'll go up for, and that in the World to Come there's even a tenth day, because in their world there are two suns, and there the prophecy is fulfilled that the light of the moon is like the light of the sun. And he's offended to the depths of his soul, or whatever else they have inside: What, am I a gentile? Do you know that in our circumcision, we have no reproductive organs, they cut off part of the brain? And the halakha [Jewish law], do you have any idea how many laws developed over millions of years? And the persecutions, we had holocausts of 99.9%! And throughout the Musaf [additional] prayer he sways like a worm to a thousand angles, I swear it's funny to tears, like a green lulav [palm branch] that swallowed a belly dancer. And from so much shaking and enthusiasm and prostrations to a thousand holy places in the galaxy - he starts to bang his head on the floor like a crazy spring, forward backward careful of the menorah, and I see how people struggle not to burst out laughing, burying themselves in prayer books, turning red, choking, biting their tongues, some wetting their pants, and I pray he doesn't notice, it's so so embarrassing, no one is concentrating on the prayer, and suddenly breaking the silence a loud trumpet sound that someone tries to choke, and the dignitaries of the congregation start to lose control and writhe while making a supreme effort to continue standing like a stick, and that's only funnier, strange gases come out of them, it's simply killing, and in the end even the rabbis can't contain themselves anymore, they're simply splitting, and start falling on the floor, one after another, bursting. In short, a disgrace to the human race. And after the prayer he stands alone and no one feels comfortable inviting him home for the Sabbath meal, no one even approaches to say Shabbat Shalom [good Sabbath]. Disgusting. And in the end there's no choice and I'm forced to invite him to our place, even though he'll see everything, a model Jewish home.

And he explains to me on the way that for them the Bible continues the story of the Garden of Eden with the story of the first serpent, he's the hero who was punished, and what children were born to him, ten generations of serpents, and that they are the descendants of those worms. I mean, he sees that I'm worried, don't worry I won't bite you. And he tells that their forefathers are holy serpents. When they told their father "Go forth from your land" it's a bit longer journey than for us, he chuckles, and the hardest commandment for them is to make a pilgrimage. And we advance like a worm, and I think that soon I'll hear "How many hours do I have to wait for you to come back from synagogue?", and start to prepare him for what's expected at our place, and the alien immediately advises me, as one who knows what I'm talking about, from his interstellar experience in the heavens: For you humans are made from dust and woman is made from man. So if man is higher than dust woman is made from something higher than man, and if humans are lower than dust she too is lower than him. And your relationship to the earth radiates also on your relationship to other stars. They should have sent a righteous astronaut to the moon, which is a laundered name for the Shekhinah [divine presence], and to honor the ancient spirituality of the heavens, and the coupling between earth and the upper world. One small step for man, one giant leap for divinity. And instead you sent a gentile, who stepped on her like dust, and called her moon, like some bald man. We have everything, including a spiritual space program, headed by an Admor-naut [Hasidic leader astronaut].
- But friend, it was all a lie! A material illusion called the American dream. There's no real possibility of travel to the moon, read Maimonides - whoever tries will encounter the spheres.
- Excuse me, Rabbi?
- Your honor, after all redemption will come when the sun and moon meet - in complete coupling. Therefore, and I tell you this as one who's considered an alien here, what needs to be done is to push the moon into the sun. Therefore the only way to bring the Messiah, a global patent, is to go very far in space and deflect an asteroid, and if it's far enough in time, it's enough that I give it a small hit with my finger in the right direction, and it will collide with the moon, and send it towards the sun. Like billiards of stars. And all that's needed is some especially flying astronaut - who will be the white donkey.
- Ahem, it's just not clear to me how this fits with halakha [Jewish law]. What about all the holidays? What about sanctifying the new moon?
- That's exactly what will be her betrothal. The wedding of the lesser light with the greater light, and then when they will be as one, the prophecy will be fulfilled that the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, simply because the pair of rival heavenly bodies of day and night will be one flesh. In the days of the Messiah, the month will last a year, and the year will last a month. Hasidism is cosmic Zionism: Instead of waiting for redemption on earth, or trying to fake redemption on earth, we will reshape the heavens. And this through a heavenly wedding under the canopy of the sky. Sanctifying the new month will be the new year, and thus all the defects will be corrected, and the Muslim calendar will be the Christian calendar will be the Jewish calendar, and there will be not only world peace, but cosmic peace. The vision of the end of days of the solar system - which will also be the lunar system - which will also be the vision of the end of nights, because the night will be perfect. Without a moon - total darkness.
- Ahem, and what does your rabbi say about all this?
- You know, at the beginning of my marriage I went to the rabbi and he told me: A woman alone is a bound trouble, a woman and child cancel each other out, like minus and plus.
- Okay, I think I'm late, need to go.
- Wait, only afterwards I understood that I'm the minus.
- I must fly.
- Won't you stay even for kiddush [blessing over wine]?

Group Rape of the Torah

I dreamed that I'm going to a lecture by Elijah the Prophet. And I see that before the lecture this insolent one sticks on himself a beard that reaches the floor. And I say to myself that this time I'll expose this charlatan and sit in the front row. And he opens: Thus said Elijah. I want to talk tonight about the vitality of forgery in the spirit of religion. We are witnessing a dialectical return in Zohar research to the view that the book was indeed written by Rabbi Moses de Leon. After all, the vast diversity in it is still not as diverse as texts by multiple authors. I'm less interested in who wrote the book, and more interested in the possibility that it was written by one person, who out of enormous spiritual loneliness and alienation and humiliation and lack of recognition of who he is from his environment and wife, he pretends before her to be a profit-seeker, creates for himself worthy interlocutors, and produces a discourse that is a model of religious spirit. And what's interesting here is his choice of forgery, and especially his awareness of forgery, and the conceptual tools with which he relates to it, as a legitimate, necessary and positive part of religious creativity. Unlike Moses, he recognizes the radiance of his face's skin and the necessity of the mask. This is the breakthrough that enabled the Zohar. Let's ask ourselves, for example, what was the religious consciousness of Fourth Isaiah? Did he live in a consciousness of forgery? After all, religion is not a product of one-time deception and forgery, but of ongoing forgery actions, sometimes over generations. There are those who claim that the more primitive a religion is the less forged it is, and also the awareness of this is less. Forgery in shamanic rituals? They simply took drugs. But there's also the possibility that the further we get from the source of forgery the more our consciousness of forgery ceases. It looks authentic. Are we in an irreversible process of shrinking the space of forgery and therefore of degeneration of religion? The Zohar suggests, and proves from within itself, that religious awareness of forgery allows overcoming the secular awareness of it - the awareness of religious forgery. Let's note the seemingly strange phenomenon, that all the great religions present their believers with demands that no person can meet. They are willing to pay the price of alienation and corruption, only because they are an integral part of the forgery, which is the lifeblood of religion and the main emotional engine behind it. Therefore, the modern negation of forgery is the greatest barrier encountered by religious creativity. This crisis is the cause of religious stagnation and fundamentalism. This is the very heresy and lack of faith. In other words, this is the disconnection from God, whose creation of the world is described in Kabbalah as an act of forgery on a cosmic scale, in which He deceives Himself, and as if hides from the world. Thus is created the illusion of choice, good and evil, nature, and also humans. And isn't the very study of Torah the forgery in which Moses' voice speaks from your throat what you think. Therefore today creativity in study has been blocked for us, in practice, when we are aware of it, and flourishes only in the (also forged) lack of awareness of the Haredi world (which tries to forge authenticity, hence its anxiety). What's interesting for our matter is to identify the different consciousness of forgery in different texts, and its development and sophistication, as an axis of religious development. After all, the real barrier to building the Temple is the fear of the religious (not the secular!) that fire won't descend from heaven and everything will turn out to be nonsense. And they forget that it's a commandment to bring ordinary fire. Indeed, the last great project of Judaism, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe understood it, will be the project of forging the Messiah, which is made possible according to Maimonides through the concept of presumption (what the masses have presumed). Sabbateanism failed because the forgery was poor, while this time the forgery will be successful. Because the forgery itself will be forged. And I pounce on him - and tear off his white beard. And a lot of blood comes down. On his chin, on his neck, on the white shirt. A beard of blood.

And for Sins We Are Liable for Four Deaths by the Court: Stoning, Burning, Beheading and Strangling

I dreamed that I enter the study hall - and the study hall is empty. Only books on all the walls. And suddenly a book flies at me from behind - ouch - and I shout: Who threw that? But there's no answer. And the books start to stone me, at first only one of the last ones dares to throw its friend at me, and then whole Talmuds, complete Talmud sets, huge Maimonides fly at me, death by stoning is the cruelest execution, or maybe burning? I don't remember, it's probably in one of the books. And I make a deal with God that He'll save me now, and I'm willing for the most severe execution in the Torah - even burning. What's actually preferable, to be killed in the world of Torah, or to choke inside myself, or maybe to burn, all black? Among the four deaths in the Torah, which is the worst court execution? If only I had studied more Talmud - and known now, at the moment of truth. And I come out from under the pile of books, like a mountain in the middle of the hall, and afterwards I still have to arrange all the books in the study hall.
And on the way home someone asks me if I have a light - and I run away. And I start to live inside water. And I say to myself that water is Torah, and anyway, all the angels in heaven live inside water, this is after all the other side of the firmament. From our perspective they fly, but actually they dive. And so I live inside my bubble, erased in bed, writing and not lying down, and no one knows what a loss this is. A hundred to zero. Everyone thinks there's God on one side and Satan on the other side, righteous on one side and wicked on the other side, professor on one side - and lowlife on the other side. What I understood is that both of them - the Shekhinah [divine presence] and the Other Side, the Rebbe and the donkey, the lecturer and the thug - both of them are actually on one side. And I'm on the other side.

The Punishment

I dreamed that the baby doesn't know how to sleep. You too joined, against sleep? It's not for nothing that she takes him out in the stroller to the sun against my will, she knows what to do to turn him into a son of light, like her, instead of a son of darkness. He suffers from a severe lack of exposure to darkness - and she addicts him to white milk. It didn't help that I added eyes to the shtreimel to endear them to each other, he's barely interested in the shtreimel doll, and on the other hand is very interested in the open eyes of the breasts. If he doesn't dream enough, how will the dream come true? Everything will go down the drain and I'll be left only with the dreams, and with the shtreimel, and with the closed eyes - inside it. The most beautiful word in the Hebrew language is: moron [metumtam]. Everything was inside my head. And I dream that at the end of the prayer book there's a page with a fixed response: God is considering your request and He will make a decision in the coming days.

The End of the Revolution

I dreamed that I live in the post-Elijah era. Before his death, Elijah gathered the sons of the prophets for a secret meeting. Without revealing anything to them, the grandchildren gathered for an even more secret meeting, which was hidden even from him. And the generation of great-grandchildren already gathered for a meeting that was hidden even from themselves. A matter that was not understood at all, because to all three Elijah left the same will, the same cryptic riddle: A dream without day and day without dream. No one knows what he meant, in the whole process, but the results were catastrophic. But how do we know that he didn't intend catastrophic results? The first cult declared a secret war against Pharaoh and Amalek and Laban and Haman and Ishmael and Edom and Assyria and Babylon and who not? And painted the land in blood. But its influence paled in comparison to the second cult, which dug inside the internal organs of the land from within, holes holes hollows hollows, and still sang at the top of its voice, you couldn't open an eye or ear without seeing and hearing, you couldn't think without thinking in their distorted images! White blood, red milk, a beard that is a snake, and a snake that is a beard. But all this is still nothing compared to the third cult, which under the guise of legitimate thinking took over precious souls, precious, until logic itself became a dream. A network was established that spread like cancer, tied knots like a spider, and to this day has not been completely eradicated, and they suspect there are metastases even in the brain, there's no knowing, because how to know, because there is no knowledge. Cancer in the head of the nation. Instead of an army with three arms we got a monster with three hands (or according to the last cult: three heads with one writing finger). Security, foreign affairs and economy without a prime minister. The state collapsed. Society was torn to shreds. But the spiritual world that was created was enough for all the third exile.

What's Left?

I dreamed that Elijah sits with the ravens, and they have a Messiah's feast. And Elijah opens: To destroy the body required a physical Holocaust of seven years in exile. To destroy the spirit required a spiritual Holocaust of seventy years in the Land of Israel. What's left for us? Said the black raven: What's left? The soul is left. A soul without body and without spirit, without man and without air, without earth and without sky. And the land was desolate. A parable of a fat righteous man whose soul was reincarnated in a pig. And the pig constantly wanted to enter the synagogue and they would kick and chase it away. What did it do? It waited for the Kedushah [Sanctification prayer], and entered inside when everyone is standing and can't move. Holy, holy, holy, it snorted, and out came oink oink oink. They gave it to a kosher butcher, to give it as food to a gentile. But the butcher didn't know from where to slaughter a pig, it had seven double chins. Snorted the holy pig: Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord... and snorted that butcher, and his soul left in the pig. Said the white raven: What's left? Survivors, from Noah's ark. They would sit every night in the basement in the ghetto, and have a fast feast, in which they eat air and spirit. Therefore they prepared spiritual provisions for another thousand years, the seventh millennium: From the clean animal, Messiah's Torah, which was burned - sacrifice. And from the animal which is not clean, donkey's Torah, which remained - because it's not kosher. And then they sent out from the ark a black rabbi. And he returned. And then they sent out from the ark a white she-donkey. And she didn't return. And they had in the ark in the ghetto two by two of all the animals in Judaism, who studied in pairs. And only the white donkey remained without a mate and cried: Why should my seed be wiped out from the face of the earth? Why will only my Torah disappear? So they gave him the Messiah. And the Messiah rode on him, and said to him: Light and heavy [a fortiori]. And gave him a female carrot, and answered him back: Equal decree. Immediately the Messiah dismounted from him. And to this day they argue who will ride on whom. And therefore they haven't arrived yet. Said the black-white raven: What's left? A last course remained. The ravens arose and ate Elijah's carcass.

?

I dreamed that I am Elijah's last Hasid. And they call me the Raven. And I have no one to pass on the secret to. So I take the scroll and start to eat it. Tear after tear. Verse after verse. They're not capable of digesting ideas, so I rewrite them in modern Hebrew, where each sentence is one bite: Elijah climbed to the top of the organization for 40 years, and disappeared in the fog. And then he came down and gave us the organizational Torah. Every real organization - is a religious organization, and it has a core secret. The organizational world encompasses all: every person is an organization, and the super-organization is God. Every organization needs a king, priest and prophet. The king over management, the priest over ritual, and the prophet over the dream. The ritual is the constant secret of the organization, which was hidden in the organization. Kingship is the secret of the organization's action, which is hidden in the organization. And prophecy is the secret of the organization's future, which hides in the organization. Therefore the priest deals with preserving the secret of the past in the organization, the king with the secret of the present, and the prophet with the secret of the future. A great prophet who sees in the dark, like Moses, brings down Torah to the organization, because Torah is an organized dream for generations ahead. And the Messiah is the organization of the dream in the form of a person. King of the future. And the donkey is the living organization and the living framework for bringing the Messiah. The dream as a form of life. Priest of the future. And the Messiah's Torah is the future Torah of the organization. The dream in the form of Torah. The future organizational Torah. And Elijah is the prophet of the future. The herald of the Messiah - still in the night before him. The dream as a dark promise. As a form of black secret. And the raven? The last bite gets stuck in my beak. I'm choking. And I think: Why do my life end in death? I would much prefer if they ended with a question mark.

To the next chapter

The Trilogy


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Unawarded Short Story Competition of "The Degeneration of the Nation"

A prestigious competition where a worthy story hasn't won for ten years

By: The Dog Balak

I didn't read, I didn't understand, I don't care  (Source)

As it does every year, the "Culture and Literature" supplement announces "Haaretz" Short Story Competition, in which three mediocre judges are selected from thousands of literary figures in the country, who in turn choose three even more mediocre stories - preferred over many better stories. Therefore, the "Culture and Literature" supplement of "The Degeneration of the Nation" announces a competition that will open on Passover eve with the announcement of the winning stories, and its goal is simple: to easily select three stories better than those that won the competition. Participants in the competition who believe (and rightly so) that their stories are better than the winning stories are invited to send their stories under pseudonyms to the address:

The.Editor.Will.Never.Change@degeneration-of-nation.org
The three winning stories will be published on the second day of Passover.

Competition Results: The Winning Stories

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Mistress and the Cat

All the other black cats are thinking exactly the same evil thought: We must erase the internet from the face of the earth, and not leave even a single small tail from which the monster could regrow. And the mistress returns from the kitchen and brings me a bowl and places it before me on the floor and brings herself a bowl and places it before the computer. But she doesn't guess what my tail is plotting, because her head is not here

By: The Long Tail of Consequences

Role Reversal  (Source)

I dreamed I was a cat and my mistress was constantly on the internet, leaving her black cat and turning on the screen and sitting at the computer, and I rub against her leg and ask: Do you love the internet more than me? And she says "Of course you, my cat" but continues on the internet. And I start to be jealous of this internet as only a cat can be jealous, and hate it with my evil cat eyes, and if a cat starts to develop such feelings it's a recipe for disaster.

So I try to reconcile within myself the issue of the internet and the cat. After all, what does the mistress say, that she's on the internet during the day so that the cat will have something to eat at night, but at night which is the best time, the time of dreams, then she pets the black cat with her in bed. And so all the internet is for the cat. On the other hand, from the moment she wakes up she's on the internet, immediately checking what happened with Bibi [Translator's note: Nickname for Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Prime Minister] at night, and who wrote to her by email at night, so maybe the whole night with the cat is really just to accumulate love and strength for the internet during the day? Because now even when she's cuddling with me she peeks at Facebook, so maybe the cat is for Facebook?

And a thought creeps into my head like a black tail to everything we do together: Maybe Facebook gives her more love than me? Maybe it gives her more power than being a cat's mistress? Who does she control there? What velvety caresses are there that excite even through rigid screens? How does the glowing screen attract more than a black cat? And knowing the cat's mind, its pride and vulnerability, and on the other hand the arrogance of mistresses, I am absolutely certain of one thing - that all the other black cats are thinking exactly the same evil thought: We must erase the internet from the face of the earth, and not leave even a single small tail from which the monster could regrow.

And the mistress returns from the kitchen and brings me a bowl and places it before me on the floor and brings herself a bowl and places it before the computer. But she doesn't guess what my tail is plotting, because her head is not here. And she falls asleep with me in bed with the internet within reach even more than the cat, even in the bathroom where she's embarrassed by the cat - Facebook enters with her. And I look at the polish of the mistress's beautiful nails that prefer the hard screen over the soft cat, and are wasted so much, and decide to do a catty deed.

And I get up during her sleep and decide that I too want internet, I too deserve Facebook. And I start to develop a terrible habit, almost an addiction, to sneak out at night from the mistress's bed without her knowledge, to betray my only role, and while she dreams - to be on the internet. And if she wakes up rarely to go to the bathroom, and asks where were you what happened, I answer her in the bowl, or in my litter box, I too deserve to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. And a tail of suspicion begins to wander between us.

And I wander on Facebook and understand that my only way back, the last possibility left, is redemption through transgression. And I open Facebook and start with the mistress on Facebook. And I write her compliments as she likes, after all I know what she likes. And I flatter like a cat caressing with words, and create around myself mystery and curiosity of the kind that kills cats. And every morning she wakes up from the dream jumping from bed to the internet to see what that guy wrote to her at night. And I make an angry face and sleep during the day, because I'm awake at night, and we're growing apart. While at night we're getting closer than we've ever been, and I discover new things I would never have known about the mistress's soul, and about her preferences in bed, because I'm quite the flirt, and always leave a tail of curiosity for the next night.

And every day she formulates, and wrings her fingers, and writes me scrolls that grow longer and longer, while at night I struggle hard to type from the moment she falls asleep until dawn. Then I return exhausted to her embrace, just before the alarm clock, when she fills with life and laughs at what that guy from the other side of the world wrote her, which is why he only writes at night, and his cat-like mind is full of imagination and inventions and tails and various strange stories, unlike the boring cat that lounges all day in bed and doesn't even try to pretend anymore. And maybe that guy is right, for whom it's day when it's night for her and vice versa, and cats are really parasitic, exploitative and devilish creatures, with no love for their owners, but only exploitation of lonely mistresses. And the fact is that when she comes to pet her formerly beloved cat in the middle of the day, in a moment of regret, he scratched her and turned over in bed. Isn't this ingratitude like no other?

And one day she announces to me that the guy from the other side of the screen suddenly told her that as a gesture of love (yes it's strange but that's what they feel) he's traveling to her, and will arrive at her doorstep at night in the most romantic gesture she's ever had in her life, and that he detests cats, and I have until nightfall to vacate, because he's coming exactly at midnight, when date touches date, and she's excited and dressing up and adorning herself, and that I shouldn't ruin her only chance for happiness in life, and it seems to her that even from my side I would already prefer to sleep on the street rather than in her bed, and let's not pretend, this has been dead for years, and now it's just fallen off like an unnecessary tail. And even if I don't understand, she's doing this for both of us, and a day will come and I'll know, even if today I don't understand it and am full of anger (as always), I'll still know that this was the best thing for me too, yes I too deserve to find my happiness, and it's not with her in bed (tear).

And then the clock strikes midnight, the night is as black as me, and I stand in front of her house, and she opens her door wide - and I enter inside.

Night Life


title: The Degeneration of the Nation

domain: general

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The Degeneration of the Nation

 Editorial

What Is the Degeneration of the Nation

What remains when everything is deteriorating? When the ground is slipping from beneath our feet - this is the time for a different space. When the cultural foundation is fundamentally changing - there is a need for new foundations. When the entire system is becoming corrupt and passing the point of no return - it's time for an editorial

Newspaper Review

By: The Bitch

Alternative Current Affairs

Editor-in-Chief: The Rabbi General

 To Section

Nightlife

Black Circle

 To Section

Culture and Literature

Editor: Balak son of Zippor

 To Section

Futuristic Philosophy

The Netanya School

 To Section

AboutIn an era of narcissism, we believe in anonymity


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Winning Stories - "The Degeneration of the Nation" Short Story Competition

Judges' Statement: The stories submitted this year are an inverted mirror image of the conservatism, fossilization, and degeneration of the original competition. The short story emerges in them as the central literary genre of the Facebook era and short attention span, but contrary to the cliché, this does not stem from superficiality and narrow-mindedness, but rather from ideological density, bold and incisive form, rapid drilling to the heart of the matter and the reader's heart - and also quite a bit of audacity. It turns out that outside the doors of the gatekeepers in Israel's narrow literary republic, a wild, original literature is growing here, deeply rooted in the soil of reality and time, compared to which our "official" literature seems stuck deep in the past. In the eyes of the panel of judges, the future of Hebrew literature looks promising, exciting, and more relevant than ever. Who would have believed - the generation is rising and ascending

By: There Are Judges in Jerusalem

Literary Discovery  (Source)

Competition Announcement

The Unawarded Short Story Competition of "The Degeneration of the Nation"

A prestigious competition where no valuable story has won for ten years

Competition Winners

Third Place in The Degeneration of the Nation Short Story Competition: "The Kiss with the Secular Woman"

Judges' Reasoning: "The Kiss with the Secular Woman" is a story that combines the experimental with the emotional to create a principled exploration of the connection between the two - and the price of experimentalism, its power and weaknesses. The story disguises itself as an ars poetica manifesto, reaching the point of theoretical conceptualization, but ultimately reveals itself as a deeply personal story of one whose life is his creation, and has no existence outside of it, and therefore his soul-searching - including the accounting of his romantic life - is a creative accounting. Above all, this is a story of connection between cultures - secular culture and religious culture - where the twists and failures of this connection represent the Jewish condition. And also the circular condition.

Second Place in The Degeneration of the Nation Short Story Competition: "Vayikra" [And He Called]

Judges' Reasoning: "Vayikra" is the closest text to a new biblical book seen in our parts for a long time, but equally it can be seen as the closest thing to Jewish science fiction. This is a biblical-futuristic story in five chapters, demonstrating how one can write completely contemporary fiction in central biblical genres - law, prose, poetry, lamentation, historiography - accumulating into a chilling technological prophecy. This is the most ambitious story submitted to the competition, and its engagement with paradigmatic themes of culture well suits its choice of the greatest and most classical form our culture has produced. In doing so, it recreates in miniature an achievement of the kind of the New Testament: the creation of a new myth from the grave of the old myth.

First Place in The Degeneration of the Nation Short Story Competition: "Geography is a Matter of Pornography"

Judges' Reasoning: "Geography is a Matter of Pornography" is a live report from the contemporary battlefield of gender relations - dating sites, seemingly written in real-time during the competition's publication on Passover eve. The broader Israeli reality, outside the state of "Haaretz" [The Land], is reflected in it as an intense mix of traditionalism with permissiveness and secularism with righteousness - which in turn produces a new and bold ideology, both sexual and religious. As Passover turns into a porn festival, and personal sexual history collides with the frustrating technological present, and ants remind of the Israelites in Egypt, and breasts remind of the yeshiva [religious school], and the stream of consciousness swirls and revolves around itself at increasing speed - the story reaches a new male festival of freedom at the center of the hurricane, in the eye of the storm.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Men Prefer Bitches

From now on, every man from birth is fitted with special augmented reality glasses that hide all women on the street in black. It's simply a brilliant invention for guarding the eyes, so that a person won't be able to know what a woman looks like until the wedding, and won't even be able to dream about her

By: Guide Dog

Blind Homer - Detail (Source)

I dreamed that the secular world kept making giant strides in gender relations, until it became a criminal offense for men to look at women in an inappropriate and harassing manner. Because it's unacceptable that a woman can't walk down the street without being stared at. And almost every young woman has gone through the traumatic experience of an old man looking at her. One out of one. There are even those who look at little girls, causing them psychological damage at a young age that you'll try to fix later. Because since touching was banned, a disgraceful phenomenon of men on the street intentionally giving women harassing looks worse than any touch was discovered, and nothing could be done against them, despite the damage they cause. Not to mention a boss peeking at a woman's cleavage without explicit consent and while exploiting her subordinate position. Answer me one thing: would you want the teacher to look at your daughter?

And all the men walk down the street with their eyes closed, with canes and guide dogs. And I say to myself that in such a situation, it's better to take a female dog. Because like in a divorce court - a woman takes a male lawyer, and a man takes a female lawyer. And all the dogs lead the men to my female dog, and I don't dare to look but from the sounds it seems that the street has turned into a Sodom and Gomorrah of dogs, now that the enlightened men go where the dogs take them. And persistent rumors circulate among the men that now that men are forbidden to look, women walk the streets naked. Because why should a woman be forbidden to walk however she wants? - one of the men mansplains to me. She's not doing it for you, she just wants to feel good about her body. And I wonder: how do you know, if you didn't peek?... And he grabs his cane and runs away.

But the Jewish mind doesn't disappoint, and in the end the Startup Nation finds a technological solution for this too, like for every social problem - an app. From now on, every man from birth is fitted with special augmented reality glasses that hide all women on the street in black. It's simply a brilliant invention for guarding the eyes, so that a person won't be able to know what a woman looks like until the wedding, and won't even be able to dream about her, and accidentally objectify her in his sleep. They're simply a hole in the field of vision. And even when he's nursing, he sees two black spots. If he can't imagine what breasts are, then as a man he won't be able to cause these precious organs objectifying damage, and for the first time in history, a woman will have full ownership of the image of her body, which the patriarchy tried to use to subjugate her and peek at her without her seeing.

And in the secular neighborhoods it's written: Orthodox man, please respect the character of our neighborhood and don't enter the neighborhood without appropriate eye covering. And they tell me: Why don't you take one of those black eye coverings, which they distribute at the entrance to Tel Aviv like the white kippot [Translator's note: skullcaps] they distribute at the entrance to the Western Wall, and get rid of this stinking dog? You're constantly bumping into people as if they were objects, thereby indirectly objectifying human beings and violating Kant's most fundamental commandment. And I tell them: And you think an animal is like an object? Because meanwhile I've already grown to love very much the female dog I bought, who wags her tail for me every night when I come home.

Nightlife