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.

Hasidism for Everyone

In Martin Buber’s early career, he set about to translate (into German) tales from Hasidic masters. His translations were later heavily criticized as re-renderings. Buber felt that the stories the Hasidic master’s told had become garbled and corrupted and needed to be cleansed and made viable.  This is probably no more than a half-truth.


In the process of doing this work, Buber became one of the founders of the Neo-Hasidic movement, which sought to bring the treasury of Hasidic stories and lore to modern audiences. He attenuated Hasidism, showing those parts he found decorous and meaningful, and leaving a great deal he did not like out.


This is evident in his “The Tales of Rabbi Nachman” where he presents six stories from the master Rabbi Nachman of Bretzlav. The framing technique is evident. The first 43 pages are Buber’s reflections on Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Nachman, and the stories themselves. The final chapter is an essay by Buber on Rabbi Nachman’s voyage to Palestine and its positive implications for Zionism.


All and all, Buber presents a great deal of material we no longer care about. We can now see it for what it is , Buber’s attempt to create a “cultural” Judaism divorced from Jewish religious practice. But in an odd and fitting way, Buber is doing nothing more than other Jewish writers and interpreters (even Rabbi Nachman himself).  He is taking sources and intentionally bending them to his own view of Judaism. He tries to create a new type of Judaism from old building blocks.

Buber is in very good company here. So although his rendering of Rebbe Nachman’s tales should be viewed with suspicion, we should no longer single him out for a sin shared by many others.

Million Writers Award

My story, "The Incorrupt Body of Carlo Busso," is now in the number one position in the reader's vote for the Million Writers Award.

If you read it, and like it, can you please cast a vote for the story?
Much thanks,
Eric

A Fragment, Never Finished

from the Typology of Place and Soul


The Plow

The people had gone but they had cast a long shadow over the field. The trees which barricaded the flatland of Queen Anne’s Lace and thistle appeared to genuflect toward the curtain of maple and oak, and the tangled veil of vine and shrubs which formed a half-screen of under story. People had scored the land with their marks, but those had reached their half-life. A faded imprint moving semi-formed among those maples, oaks, and Queen Anne’s Lace, set to motion by the idea that people had been here and were now only an after image.


But finding their reflections is easy. Their inconspicuousness, in some puzzling way, only lent weight to the theory of this place. That people had come and gone and would not come again. Yet rust can have a solidifying property. It is a general category to a specific instance and in this place of silences and green filtered light it was like a beacon in a murky, hazy night.


So the plow sat, consequential yet discarded, shrunken but conspicuous, where the farmer of this field had left it long ago. Its placement appeared obvious, even self-critical. At the end of a furrow long overgrown the plow was abandoned. And then that wall of green, slow, deliberate, corrosive, began its counterattack after two hundred years of being held at bay. The woods and fields had the strategic depth and hence the advantage of  retreat and now the offensive could not be halted. Nature, like war, has its own strange momentum and tipping points, its moments when the last moment of one era lingers and then ends, to be replaced by something new, a thing indelible and hence never ebbing.


So we can stand, you and I, and look over this rusty plow, in this long field, stretched out in the hot, shimmering spring day, this unlikely moment of heat. Men had gouged out this earth to plant wheat, barley, corn, and than it lay fallow, a deceptive word. For it is active. Alive and ascending a ladder to more life.

The Rebbe and the Neurotic

Rodger Kamenetz, of The Jew in the Lotus fame, takes on Kafka and Rebbe Nachman in Burnt Books. Kamenetz sets a course to show us the similarities and differences between both men, and most importantly, the points of contact and departure of their respective fiction and stories. Both use parable to advance their own spiritual agendas. Both burned books and manuscripts they felt missed the mark (Kafka) or revealed esoteric secrets (Rebbe Nachman). Both were questioners, doubter, seekers and mercurial.

Kamenetz does a good job plotting these intricate courses, but sometimes gets lost and the narrative get tangled. We go from Kafka to the Rebbe to Kementz’s trip to Uman with no apparent sense. There is a great deal of repetition that could have been eliminated, and in the end, the sheer weight of Kafka’s and Rebbe Nachman’s unbending personalities make us wonder if there really is a connection between these two men worth extended investigation.


With that in mind, Kamenetz has still written a book that raises interesting questions about faith, doubt, and the art of writing. He just takes a while to get us there. 

The Friends of God

Jurgen Wasim Frembgen has assembled an attractive book with full color reproductions of modern Sufi posters from Pakistan. The book shows the wide creative license of the people who created these posters, borrowing freely from the motifs and themes of sub-continent Islam and also the religions of the region, especially Hinduism and Sikhism.

 The abundance of posters comes with commentary, and the specific parameters of Sufism in Pakistan are exaplained. Perhaps Fermbegen's greatest achievement in this work is to show how fluid the world of Sufism in the sub-continent is; borrowing from one saint to another, from one religion to another, is the norm and not the exception in these posters.



Perhaps the great flaw of this work is not enough real or revelatory analysis of just what this borrowing means for Pakistani Sufism. But perhaps that is a topic for another work.