On the Worship of an Ass, VIII, Conclusion

WITHOUT BLEMISH OR DEFECT



But most remained and joined Amichai ben Dovid and Rubin of Hebron at the altar of conversion. Once again, rumor filled the breech of fact. It was said that the Gentile lord had offered Amichai the choice of death and Judaism or life and Christianity and without wavering the Messiah chose life and the Cross.

His followers whispered other tales: it was all part of the God’s great plan: Amichai ben Dovid must descend the rungs of sin before he climbs to the heights of glory.


The conversion of so many Jews was a feather in the Gentile lord’s cap, and at the baptismal font he was godfather to Amichai ben Dovid. All the nobles in the region clamored for their own Jew to godparent. These converted Jews took on the names of their gentile hosts. Amichai ben Dovid became Peter Ktzowlski, after his lord. For many generations, these converts were treated as special guests of the royalty and bred with them, both within the bonds of marriage and out, until most of the nobility of this nation could lay claim to some Jewish blood in their lineage.


But listen: there was more: Amichai ben Dovid, or Peter Ktzowlski, did not amend his ways when he traded in the Torah for the Cross. He learned Latin and Greek and began to read mystical texts, made hints that he had heard the voice of God, and that voice had told him wondrous things. He sang and danced with a cross half his size when elated, and when plunged in melancholy, he strippled his back with a switch till he drew blood.


Then one muddy spring day the Jews of Demblin were treated to a curious sight: Peter Ktzowlski, the former Amichai ben Dovid, in disheveled, filthy clothes, and in his stocking feet, carrying the head of an ass he had procured from a slaughter house on a good sized pole.

He held it aloft over his head and a great deal of blood poured down from its open skull and onto his head and jacket. He taunted the Jews in Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and even Greek and Latin, to come out of their homes and worship their god. All the Jews of Demblim, every man, woman, and child, flung stones, mud and dung at Peter Ktzowlski. But before anyone could lay a hand on him, the Gentile lord’s guard seized him and carried him away, the head of the ass and all. The lord had had his fill of his godson and locked him away in the province jail, in the most abhorrent conditions he could arrange. In a month Peter Ktzowlski was dead.


It was just after his death, nearly three years after the birth of the red heifer, that Issur the cattleman noticed a sizable patch of white hairs growing near the udders of the heifer’s belly. The red heifer was red no more. Her ashes would not be fit for use in the rebuilt Temple. But no one needed that sign to tell that the Messiah would not yet come. It was an anticlimax, but one of note.


So what did the poor Jews of Demblin do? They peddled their wares, planted their crops, birthed their babies, and buried their dead, went to the study house, immersed themselves in the ritual bath. What else was there to do? No one speculated that the Messiah would come any time too soon. Everyone hoped in silence and waited in patience. They prayed for a new wind to blow them through this province and ferry them away to the Promised Land.

On the Worship of an Ass, VII

ITS HIDE, ITS FLESH, ITS OFFAL



Amichai ben Dovid’s arrest sent most of his of his most fervent followers into hiding. Those who remained repented and were forced to lay prostrate on the threshold of the synagogue, so the heel of everyone’s boot would trod them, as a symbol of the penitence. Only then were they allowed back into the community of Israel.


After a few months, Amchai ben Dovid’s followers were hunted down by the gentle lord and forced to live on his estate. They numbered nearly three thousand, and lived in cottages near a brook, well within the old wall of the lord’s compound. For many months they neither saw nor heard of their messiah.

And then one confounding day Rubin of Hebron appeared at the camp; he had shaved his beard, so at first no one recognized him. He announced that a wondrous event was about to unfold. And then he disappeared up the slope to the Gentile Lord’s manor house.


Then one Saturday before Easter, there was a freak storm. The Dovidic camp was smothered in a wet, early Spring snow. The inhabitants were in a foul mood. They had thrown their whole lot in with Amichai ben Dovid and his sycophant, Rubin of Hebron, and here they were, chattel on the Gentile Lord’s estate.


Just then, a man arrived in the camp. He wore the kind of tunic which supplicants to the Christian Church don in preparation to conversion. His hair was close cropped, even tonsured like a monk’s, and his face was clean-shaven. It took a few moments to realize that it was Amichai ben Dovid. A gold cross hung around his neck. Rubin of Hebron followed behind him, similarly dressed. For the first time in many months, Amichai ben Dovid addressed his followers:


“God has instructed me to covert to the religion of Edom,” he said in a loud but wavering Yiddish. There was no need for Rubin of Hebron to translate.


As after the abrogating of the law of Moses, a portion of his followers repented and returned to the community of Israel. They took their place on the threshold of the synagogue door, and were allowed once more to dwell in the tents of Jacob.

On The Worship of an Ass, VI

…A JEW, ALTHOUGH HE HAS SINNED, REMAINS A JEW



It goes without saying, that Amichai ben Dovid did not come out and utter such a blasphemy, but as usual, his deeds carried more weight than his subtle words. Most cloak their sins in darkness and lies, but Amichai ben Dovid paraded his around in the light of day. He ate pork on Yom Kippur. He fasted on joyous festival days. He turned the very world upside down, by toppling its foundation stone, the Holy Torah.


The anti-Dovidic rabbis, upon seeing these abominations, immediately excommunicated him and his followers. Some of his followers returned to the Jewish fold, but most remained with their Messiah. They explained away his “sin” bit by bit, one supporting quotation from the Torah at a time, until after a while they had constructed an edifice of lies which, like a house made of sand, they believe to be as solid as stone.


For a while, the Dovidic community and the Torah true Jews existed side by side in Demblin and beyond, but there was great tension, and even some violence. On several occasions, the Gentile authorities had to restore order in the streets, the study house, even the synagogue.

Amichai ben Dovid was little seen in public, but rumors about him spread wildly, both among his supporters, and the loyal Jews of Demblin. He had supposedly married a young Christian woman of dubious repute, and the outrage did not end there. It was said that he “married” her to his immediate followers under mock wedding canopies, to appease the Heavenly Couple, God the King, and his Bride the Shekinah. He also took the wives of his immediate followers for the same nefarious purpose. And of course, the old calumny pursued him: his true god was the head of an ass, in some tellings gold, in some silver or copper.


The final outrage occurred one Yom Kippur, about a year after the Red Heifer was born to Issur’s herd. Some the Dovidic Jews flung pig’s dung into the Great Synagogue during the chanting of the Kol Nidre, and a riot ensued. Jews in their white Yom Kippur prayer shrouds struggled with Dovid’s followers in the streets.

The Gentile guard was called out, and this time, the local lord had Amichai ben Dovid carried away to his estate. For a month, no one saw hide nor hair of this new Messiah to the Jews. Many thought he was dead.

On the Worship of an Ass, V

KNOW WHERE YOU COME --- FROM A FETID DROP, AND WHERE YOU ARE GOING – TO WORM AND MAGGOT


Amichai ben Dovid was a paragon of hope. He forbade all the Jews of Demblin to utter an evil word against God’s most glorious creation, mankind, including Gentiles. Who are we to know the plan of the Most Powerful of Names, he said through Rubin of Hebron.

But one day, as if a dark cloud had descended over his soul, he became deeply gloomy. His expression was foreboding, as if he would lash out and throttle all those who surrounded him. He quoted passages from holy writ where men were compared with worms, and their days on the earth to flitting shadows.

He raged against the people around him, just as yesterday he had proclaimed his love and devotion to them. At other times, he appeared on the verge of tears. Rubin of Hebron took out a small harp, and gently played it a few feet from his master’s ears; this seemed to assuage his sorrow, for Amichai ben Dovid’s tears would dry, and he would sway and hum to the little melodies.


But most of the time he sulked and raged. He had taken two rooms in an inn, and refused to see all the dignitaries who came to him with their various petitions, disputes to settle, lawsuits to judge, ritual matters to elucidate.

Rubin of Hebron stood outside the door of his master’s chambers, and prevented all  from entering. When they asked him why they could not see the master, he spoke much like Amichai ben Dovid, with learned quotations from the Pentateuch, the Gemara, or the responsa. He hinted that it was all of God’s preordained plan.


The Jews of Dembin were in a quandary. Many had already begun to whisper that Amichai ben Dovid was Elijah the Prophet come to herald the coming of the Messiah. A few others, at the level of a deeper whisper, speculated that perhaps Amichai ben Dovid was the Messiah himself, and would soon cast off his disguise and raise the sword of vengeance and smite the enemies of Israel and return the people to Jerusalem in a cloud of glory.


Factions formed: those who doubted that Amichai ben Dovid was sent by God, that he was anything more than an exotic, but learned Jew, or worse yet, some huckster ready to defraud the community. Then there were those who speculated about all of Amichai ben Dovid’s words and actions, and they fit each one into a pattern of their liking, finding Divine support for the man with every one of his gestures.

For those who wished to believe that the redemption was at hand, they became so convinced that Amichai ben Dovid was the anointed one that even his arrival and departure time from the study house had great importance. Even the soup he ate and how much he left in the bowl had import.


With time, the factions polarized and their simmering, secret feud came out to the light of day. Even those who could not decide were denounced by those in favor of Amichai ben Dovid as the Messiah: to not believe was tantamount to denial, to disowning their share in the World to Come.


Throughout all the growing controversy, Amichai ben Dovid remained circumspect. His words continued their elliptical path, but his actions became even more erratic. One day it was noticed that his beard was trimmed, in violation of the Torah. When Tish’b Av came, the day commemorating the destruction of the Temple, and mourned with a fast, he was seen feasting in his lodging with his closest of followers.

It was at this time that the natural world appeared to mirror the confusion of the human: a deluge of snow blanketed the earth in late May, killing the early crops. Then a sudden warm spell arrived, with torrents of rain, flooding the province. An unexpected lunar eclipse one clear night cast a strange, flitting shadow over the blue-green light of the night world.


It appeared, to those who sought such confirmations, that the world was in the last pages of its final chapter. A red heifer had been born; strife and turmoil were let lose in the world and even in the House of Israel in Demblin. And in the midst of this terrible travail, Amichai ben Dovid announced that the strictures of the Torah had been abrogated.

On The Worship of an Ass, IV

I SET MY KING UPON MY HOLY HILL OF ZION



No one knew where Amichai ben Dovid was from, but when he arrived in Demblin, he was an imposing figure. He was tall, a full head and foot above any other Jew in the province, and his hair was as golden as a Gentile.

But there was no confusing him with a Christian: he was as Jewish as Elijah. His mother tongue was not Yiddish, and anytime he tried to speak it he badly mangled both its grammar and diction. Most of the time he spoke a melodious Hebrew of an accent and syntax that no Jew in Demblin had ever heard before.

He arrived with a companion, a small, stooped retainer by the name of Rubin of Hebron, who had a facility for languages, and translated Amichai ben Dovid’s words into a Yiddish heavily inflected with a Lithuanian accent. With his bushy black beard and fuzzy, skewed eyebrows, the proximity of Rubin of Hebron to Amichai ben Dovid made the latter all the more handsome, as a bright sun will dim the moon in the daylight.


Amichai ben Dovid wandered about the province and listened to countless tales of woe. Mothers, daughters, wives, husbands, sons, brothers, killed or maimed or raped; synagogues burned to the ground; Torah scrolls shredded and used as paper in latrines; aged matrons carried off to military brothels… There was no end to the horrors.


Although Amichai ben Dovid could not speak Yiddish, he appeared to understand what was spoken. He only asked Rubin of Hebron, every now and again, to clarify a word. The sorrow of the stories reflected on his mild, placid face, but not enough to mar his splendid beauty. He sat and stroked his long blond beard, sighed and looked to heaven with great frequency.

He was very knowledgeable about the Torah, and he quoted from it freely, along with the Psalms, Proverbs, the Gemara, the commentaries and the responsa. As he made his way through Demblin and its provinces, word spread of this mysterious stranger who  spoke an exotic Hebrew, and crowds gathered around him in towns, and sometimes even on the roads leading up to them, before his shadow even darkened the village gate.


At first the rabbis and sages in Demblin paid little heed to Amichai ben Dovid. Jews from exotic locales often came to Demblin, collecting alms for this or that yeshiva in the Holy Land. They came and begged in broken Yiddish for shekels for the scholars of the Land of Israel, and moved on. But Amichai ben Dovid collected no alms and remained in Demblin and its provinces. He became a regular in the grand study house off market square. When a particularly thorny question required an answer, the students would not go to their teachers, but to Amichai ben Dovid. They would ask him in Yiddish, and he would answer in his deep, melodic Hebrew. The effect elevated Amichai ben Dovid beyond the status of respect scholar.

He also spoke in elliptical riddles, parables and metaphors, seldom answering a question directly. He left broad hints that the redemption was at hand, that the recent wars, pogroms, and famines were the beginning of the birthpangs of the Messiah.

He said that God’s anointed one was chained in a savagely wild mountain range in the east, but that he would soon be set free, and accompany a triumphant army of the Lost Tribes of Israel to set their brethren of Judah, Levi and Benjamin free. The Sabbath River, which had kept them corralled behind its wild cataracts, would soon run dry at God’s command.

Then the Messiah would led the Ten Tribes on a rampage of plunder and carnage against the enemies of Israel, Edom and Ishmael; its 500,000 men strong, infantry and cavalry would march under the banner of a United Israel to avenge the crimes and calumnies of the Christians and the Muslims, and restore Israel to its land and ancient glory.


Of course, he said none of this directly, but through allusion, with pious and learned quotations from the most holy of holy books. And these words fell on the ears of the desperate and grieving.

On the Worship of an Ass, II

ON THE WORSHIP OF AN ASS



As is known, the calumny that Jews worship the head of an ass is ancient. The fact that the opponents of Amichai ben Dovid employed the slander against him shows the acrimony of the dispute. It was a charge made by Israel’s most vociferous enemies. One ancient Greek writer claimed that the Jews refrained from eating the flesh of the hare because of its no small resemblance to their god, the ass.

Another writer from long ago claimed that the Jews, while wandering the in desert for forty years with Moses, one day suffered from a terrible, mortal thirst. As they were just about to die, they spied a heard of wild asses, and followed them to a natural spring. The Israelites were so grateful that they abandoned the God of Abraham to worship the ass.

The most famous slander of all was reported just after Pompey conquered Jerusalem and entered the most sacred chamber of the Temple, the Holy of Holies. There he found the image of a golden ass. He had it removed from its tabernacle and paraded through the streets of the City of David, to shame the defeated Jews by revealing to them the face of their hidden god.


But the most sinister slander was written by a Greek named Democritus in a book composed of lies and fabrications called “About the Jews.” There he claimed that not only did the Jews prostrate themselves in front of the head of an ass, but that every seven years they captured a Gentile, murdered him, cut his flesh into pieces, and offered them to their thick lipped, long eared, gleaming idol.


So when the rabbis against Amichai ben Dovid claimed he worshipped an ass, it was a most grievous charge. It shamed them to make such an assertion. But on the other hand, the deeds of Amichai ben Dovid were so outlandish, that his followers support cast the shadow of shame on them as well. And just before these events the times were hard; it seemed as if such fantastic deeds could be seen on the earth.

On the Worship of an Ass : a short story in eight parts

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: "This is a requirement of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke – Numbers 19:1-2


THE RED HEIFER



When Issur the cattlemen told the rabbis of Demblin about the birth of a red heifer, at first only half believed him. It has been six months since Amichai ben Dovid had hinted that he was the Messiah: both the reincarnation of Shabbatai Zvi, the disgraced self-proclaimed savior dead now one hundred and fifty years, and the fabled David, Israel’s anointed king of old. Every Jew in Demblin and the surrounding provinces held their breath. Would the rabbis declare Amichai ben Dovid the long awaited Messiah?


But many did not wait for the dickering sages to decide. Jewish peasants out in the steppes removed the roofs from their huts in anticipation of the cloud of glory which would usher them to Jerusalem. Very many more began to sell their property and household items. As land and goods flooded the market, prices dropped, and Gentiles bought goods and fields from the Jews of Demblin for a pittance. Why own land and a plow, these Jews reasoned, when any day now we will be residing on the slopes of Mount Moriah?


Then the red heifer was born to Issur’s herd, and the rabbis, who had been debating the half-hinted claims of Amichai ben Dovid, found it necessary to tramp out to Issur’s paddocks and examine the calf. And there, surrounded by mud and dung, the dissension among the ranks of the rabbis of Demblin was plain for all to see.


The birth of a red heifer is a sign of the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of his people, Israel, to their sovereign land. In the days when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the ash of a red heifer was used to cleanse all those who entered the sacred Temple Mount. If a heifer was truly red, without a spot or blemish or even a single hair other than red, it was slaughtered by its third year and burned and its ashes were used to purify Jews who wished to sacrifice in the Temple.

Without it, every Jew is suspected of having touched a corpse, and therefore is impure. Only the ash of the red heifer can insure the purity of those who worshipped in Solomon’s Temple. So, without a red heifer, there could be no rebuilding of the temple. And without the hope of the rebuilding of the temple, the Messiah would likely not come. The birth of a red heifer was viewed as a birth pang of the Messiah.


So when the rabbis of Demblin reached the barn, they studied the beast with great scrutiny, as if pouring over some sacred tome. A mighty crowd swelled around them, so much so that the military guard was called out and kept the Jews back with their truncheons and the flanks of their horses.


When the rabbis emerged from the barn, the division among their numbers was apparent. Half were on the side of Amichai ben Dovid and the other half were ready to declare him a heretic and excommunicate him. A vicious argument broke out right there in Issur’s muddy pens. The rabbis in favor of Amichai ben Dovid declared he was the Chosen one of Israel, and that the red heifer was a sign of the coming of the end of days and the reign of a Jewish King in Jerusalem.

The rabbis against Amichai ben Dovid denounced him with many of infamies and slanders, the most salacious was that he secretly worshipped the head of an ass. Violence erupted. The Gentile guards broke the rabbis apart. There was much screaming, cursing and incrimination. As bad as this scene was, there was worse to come.