Beware of God (7 page)

 

S
HARON
was rushed to the hospital. Her water had broken, and she was going into labor.

“Insurance?” asked the nurse.

“None,” said Sharon.

“Father?” asked the nurse.

“None,” said Sharon.

“Mmm hmm,” said the nurse.

Drudge was the first to break the story. “Immaculate Conception in Long Island!” shouted his web page.

The response was overwhelming.

“God bless you and the Son of God,” wrote Jesus Lvr1. “May the Eternal bless you as He did the Virgin Mary,” wrote DaPreacher 316. “People like you inspire me,” wrote HornyDevil22, “and BTW, how much do you want for your panties?”

Religious leaders around the world were ecstatic. Mankind was already on the brink of self-destruction; a heartwarming fraud like this would do everyone good.

Reverend Falwell welcomed the reports of the virgin birth, and marked all his merchandise down an additional 15 percent.

The Ayatollah praised the news, calling it the Merciful Hand of Allah, which would soon reach out and destroy Israel.

And Abraham Foxman announced that such a miracle once and for all proved the Jews were the chosen people, and anyone who denied it must surely be an anti-Semite.

Sharon was still without health coverage, but her homeowner's policy included full coverage for acts of God, which her pregnancy clearly was.

Prudential paid for all her medical bills, plus a two-bedroom addition to the house, including a lovely nursery for the baby and a cozy, glass-enclosed porch overlooking the yard.

She was given charity by the 700 Club and clothing and food by the Islamic Society of North America. The UJA provided around-the-clock child-care help in the form of a Filipino nanny named Carmalita. Sean Hannity donated a portion of his Hannitized coffee mug sales to her, and President Bush invited her and the miracle baby to his next State of the Union Address, where he planned to announce a Constitutional amendment protecting virgin births.

And then one day, a few months after Sharon's miraculous delivery, the phone rang.

“Who is this?” Sharon asked.

She could hear breathing on the line. It seemed a long time before the man spoke.

“It's Stanley.”

“Stanley?”

“Stanley Fisher.”

“There is no Stanley Fisher,” said Sharon.

“I'm Stanley Fisher.”

“You're not Stanley Fisher,” said Sharon.

“I'm not?”

“You can't be,” said Sharon.

“I can't be or I'm not?”

“You're not,” said Sharon, “because you can't be.”

And she hung up the phone.

The world was a dark and depressing place in those days. But the baby cooed happily from inside the Graco Lite-Rider Stroller/Car Seat Combo, the deliverymen were carrying in the new Italian leather couches, and the tile man was already hard at work in the new master bath.

C
HAIM
Y
ANKEL
R
OSENBERG
lived in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, roughly 5,693 miles from the remote hilltop somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where a small group of Kabbalists had gathered to figure out the exact timing of the end of the world.

They should not have been doing that.

This was not the Kabbalah of Roseanne or Madonna. This was the mysticism of Maimonides, of the Ari Zall, of Luzzato. This was Infinite God, creation ex nihilo, Divine Providence. This was some heavy shit.

They gathered in a darkened classroom of their yeshiva, surrounded by piles of tattered books, reams of wrinkled notes and gallons of black coffee. The night before, they had stumbled on a hidden code which revealed that at the beginning of creation, God had picked A Number.

It was a deal He'd cut with Himself, nervous as he was about this new venture called Man.

A failsafe, really.

The Number the Kabbalists had discovered buried in the ancient text was the number of violent deaths that God would allow to occur in the world before He got fed up and just pulled the plug.

That's all, folks.

Thanks for playing.

Coming this fall, version 2.0.

It seemed a wise plan at the time, and the angels, never big fans of the Mankind project to begin with, backed it heartily. Recently, though, a growing minority had begun to suggest that instead of picking a number in the high million billions, He probably should have picked a number closer to, say, twenty-two, or twelve, or seven.

According to the Kabbalists' calculations, as of last night humanity was just one hundred deaths away from The End.

The Kabbalists were worried, and to make matters worse, they were completely out of cigarettes. Humanity's only shot—and it was a long one—was peace. No wars, no murders, no exceptions. No gang shootings, no assaults with a deadly weapon, no strangulations.

One hundred chances.

The next morning, they issued a press release to every country, every news agency and every law enforcement organization on the planet.

They sent it to Ariel Sharon, and they sent it to Yassir Arafat. They sent it to the leaders of Hamas and to the leaders of Hezbollah and to the leaders of Al Qaeda. They sent it to Rummy, they sent it to Colin and they sent it to Condi. They sent it to Bush Forty-One, who sent it to Bush Forty-Four. They sent it to the Bloods, who sent it to the Crips. They sent it to the Yakuza who kindly forwarded it to the Italian mafia who kindly forwarded it to the Russian mafia who kindly forwarded it to the Israeli mafia.

Sunday morning, the Kabbalists appeared on
Meet the Press
with Tim Russert. “Will you say on this program,” said Tim, “with the eyes of the nation upon you, that if one hundred more people die of unnatural causes, the world will cease to exist?”

“Yes,” said the Kabbalists.

“One hundred?” reiterated Tim.

“One hundred,” said the Kabbalists.

“The whole world?” reiterated Tim.

“The whole world,” said the Kabbalists.

The following night on Letterman, the Number One Thing the Kabbalists Don't Know was “Where Did I Leave That Damn Remote?” Leno opened with the Dancing Kabbalists, which everyone felt vaguely uncomfortable about, and the next morning Abraham Foxman filed a formal complaint.

The Kabbalists returned home to pray.

The first ten deaths came that very first night: six rapes and four robberies, all ending in homicide. The next five were shootings, which the D.A. swore he would prosecute as hate crimes, which wouldn't make a difference to the final count either way.

The ten after that were all killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Haifa. The United States condemned the bombing, the U.N. censured it and Arafat denounced it. It wouldn't make a difference to the final count either way.

Deaths Twenty-Five to Forty were assorted drive-bys, muggings and stabbings “by a person or persons known to the victim,” while deaths Forty to Fifty Five were unavoidable civilian casualties during a military peacekeeping mission somewhere in Africa. The next twenty were the result of a night of New York City wildings, and another ten rapes and fourteen armed liquor store robberies later, humanity was one death away from The End.

That one was named Chaim Yankel Rosenberg.

The same Chaim Yankel Rosenberg who was, at the moment, 5,693 miles away from the Kabbalists, trembling uncontrollably in a darkened Brooklyn alleyway, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out his wallet for the man holding the steel forty-five-caliber handgun to the back of his head.

Chaim Yankel began to sob.

“Please, in the name of Hashem, don't …”

Chaim Yankel didn't know anything about the Kabbalists. He didn't know anything about the End of Days. He knew he was a father of three small children, and he knew he was married to a frail and frightened woman who would not be able to bear his death, let alone raise their family in his sudden absence. He knew that he wanted to see Yitzi's bar mitzvah and he knew that he wasn't going to, because Chaim Yankel also knew that this meshuginah shvartza was going to shoot him in the head no matter what he said or did.

The meshuginah shvartza, for his part, didn't know anything about the Kabbalists either. He knew that if he didn't get the money for Latrell, he was going to get shot in the head himself. He knew that his baby girl wasn't going to have a daddy unless Daddy came up with the cash for Latrell. He knew that the odds of a black man in America living past the age of forty were something like a hundred to one. He knew for damn sure that if he let this fucking kike live, he'd go right to the fucking police with his fucking lawyer, which in his experience was just another word for a fucking kike.

There was a loud popping sound, and the last thought to cross Chaim Yankel Rosenberg's mind was, “Son of a bitch, he shot me.”

He was hoping to say Shema.

Chaim Yankel was only partially correct. The meshuginah shvartza did shoot him in the head, but later that same night he also killed a convenience store clerk in Queens, shot a liquor store owner in the Bronx and carjacked a couple of accountants in a silver Cadillac Escalade.

All told, according to the police blotters in the next day's
Post
, there were seventeen murders that night. “About normal for a Saturday night,” an officer was quoted as saying.

Three days later, the Kabbalists issued a formal apology for their regrettable mathematical error. In their haste and excitement, they had inadvertently missed a couple of decimal points. They were contrite and sincere. They begged forgiveness and announced that the new number of violent deaths left before the End of Days was exactly one thousand.

“Minus the nine murders, three drunk drivers, the serial killing in Virginia and four Islamic militants killed last night in a retaliatory strike for the previous night's bombing in Haifa,” their press release concluded, “that makes 983 to go.”

Later that afternoon, on a shady hill in the B'nei Zion Cemetery overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Rosenbergs and a few close friends buried their beloved Chaim Yankel.

It was a quiet, respectful service. On their way out, as they passed through the cemetery gates, the Rosenbergs stopped, and took one last look at Chaim Yankel's grave.

The children waved sadly.

Mrs. Rosenberg blew her husband a kiss.

“We shall be together soon, my love,” she whispered to her husband. “I give 'em till Monday, tops.”

A
S
Motty awoke one morning from impure dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a very large goy. In his waking half-sleep, he lazily scratched his hairy chest.

Hairy?

He threw back the covers. His chest had become broad and muscular. A thick coat of curly black hair spread across it and trailed down his stomach. His newly muscular arms and shoulders felt huge in his tank top. Motty didn't remember owning a tank top, certainly not one that said Budweiser across the chest.

Awesome.

He moved his heavy arms up and down, watching the muscles expanding and contracting beneath his suddenly taut skin. Beginning on his shoulder and extending down his arm was an elaborate tattoo of a blond woman in a bikini straddling a large sword that rested in the eye socket of a bloody skull.

He was overcome with the desire to build something with hammers and wood.

He ran to his mirror. From the neck up, nothing had changed. He was all Motty. From the neck down, he was a burly construction worker. It gave the effect of some sort of experimental head reassignment surgery gone terribly wrong. In addition to the tank top, he was wearing a red and black flannel plaid shirt buttoned only to the chest, and faded denim jeans, torn at the knees, from which hung a yellow and black Stanley tape measure marked “Contractor Grade.” Motty unzipped the jeans and looked inside his black underwear. Black underwear?

“So that's a foreskin.”

It occurred to Motty that somewhere out there was a once-burly, previously uncircumcised construction-type person running around with the body of an eighteen-year-old Lubavitcher yeshiva student.

“But,” thought Motty, “that's his problem.” He stopped himself. “That's his
fuckin'
problem.”

Nice.

There was a loud rapping on his bedroom door. “You're going to be late for shul!” his mother shouted. “Motty!” He had completely forgotten it was Shabbos.

Motty swung the door open.

“Ta-da!”

Motty's massive goyish body filled the doorway. His mother's mouth dropped open in a silent scream. Her eyes rolled backward into her head, her eyelids fluttered and she fell face first onto the hard bedroom floor.

She was out cold.

Motty lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom. He put her in bed, installed some ceramic tile in the master bath and left for shul.

With his goyishe legs and powerful stride, it took him only half the usual time to reach the synagogue, but he still walked in right in the middle of the rabbi's midservice sermon.

Everyone turned.

“Who dares to walk in right in the middle of the rabbi's speech?” their faces all seemed to ask.

A tall shaygitz in jeans wearing a yarmulke and a tallis was not the answer they were expecting.

The chief rabbi motioned to the cantor, who motioned to the assistant rabbi, who hurried down the aisle to the man in the jeans and motioned to him to please come outside.

“Are you a guest or friend of a current shul member?” asked the assistant rabbi.

Motty explained it all as simply and directly as he possibly could. He was Motty Aranson. He had awakened as a goy, it was as simple as that, but clearly it was a matter of biology and not of belief, and he didn't think it should change anyone's opinion of him.

Motty asked that he please be allowed inside so as not to miss any more of the services.

The assistant rabbi kindly asked that Motty leave the premises before he was forced to call the police.

The doors opened and Rabbi Epstein and Rabbi Akiva stepped outside.

A discussion ensued.

The central question, it seemed, was whether Motty was to be considered kosher or traif. Motty explained that he should be allowed to enter the shul because religion is based on belief, which is a function of thought, which is a function of your brain, which is located in your head. So, Motty observed, the head was more important than the body.

The assistant rabbi disagreed. “When God prohibits the bringing of the flesh of an unfit animal into the Temple, he specifically says flesh. Why? Because God is telling us that no matter how pure the thoughts of the pig might be, his body is still what matters most. We learn from this that the body matters more than the head.” Motty's body was prohibited from entering the shul, the assistant rabbi declared; however, if they were to cut Motty's head off, they would certainly be permitted to carry it inside.

Rabbi Epstein shook his head. “Even if we knew for certain,” he said, “that a pig had only pure thoughts, and that the pig believed with his whole pig heart in The Holy One Blessed Be His Name, the ancient rabbis still forbid us to eat it.” Thus, Rabbi Epstein held, irrespective of whether they could allow Motty into the synagogue, they were, without question, prohibited from eating him.

“That's utterly ridiculous,” argued Rabbi Akiva. “If the pig believed in Hashem—as it is written,
With all of your heart and all of your mind
—the ancient rabbis would certainly deem the pig kosher.” Therefore, according to Rabbi Akiva, they could not bring Motty into the synagogue, but they could probably eat him. And so it was decided.

“Motty?” the assistant rabbi called out.

But Motty had already gone home.

His mother had still not awakened. He regretted having frightened her so, and decided to prepare the Shabbos lunch for the family so she could rest a bit longer. He also built a second level to the deck and installed some landscape lighting. For entertaining.

He was in the kitchen preparing a kugel tray when he heard his father come through the front door, speaking loudly with a number of other familiar voices.

“I'm in the kitchen!” Motty called out. He recognized the other voices as belonging to Rabbi Brier and Rabbi Falkenstein.

“We didn't see you outside shul,” his father was saying, “so we just …”

The three men stepped into the kitchen and froze at the sight of him.

Motty tried to explain.

“I woke up like this.”

“Shaygitz!” Motty's father spat.

“I'm not a shaygitz!” said Motty, “I'm your son, Motty. Listen! Listen, it's just some kind of a miracle, a Shabbos miracle. I don't know how or why it happened, but I can't see why it should make you feel any diff—”

Motty's father smashed him across the face with his Talmud Bavli. The oversized hardcover book caught Motty just below his left eye, and he fell to the floor.

“Traif!” yelled his father. “You dare to touch our food with your goyishe hands! You anti-Semitic …”

He raised the Talmud up to strike the hideous creature again, but Rabbi Brier and Rabbi Falkenstein intervened.

A discussion ensued.

“Rabbi,” asked Motty's father, “should not a father correct his son? Is it not written ‘Teach them to your children and their children after them?'”

Rabbi Brier explained that while the Torah certainly encourages the hitting of a no-good, rotten child, if the child is traif, you are forbidden from hitting him with a holy book. He suggested that they strike Motty again, only this time with a leather belt, or perhaps a flat piece of unholy wood.

Rabbi Falkenstein disagreed. “Are we not commanded to ‘make for yourself a gate out of the Torah?' Could that not be interpreted as permission to use the Torah for your own defense? And is it not true that the best defense is a good offense?”

Rabbi Brier concurred, but added that, if possible, the blows should be concentrated on the head and face, which they knew for certain to be kosher.

Rabbi Falkenstein praised Motty's father for never once hitting his son below the neck, and they all agreed that Motty's father was obligated to continue pummeling Motty with his sacred book. They shook hands, and Rabbi Brier handed Motty's father the Talmud.

“Motty?” his father called out.

But Motty had already gone.

He was on his way to his yeshiva, hoping that at least his friends would accept him. He already knew from the incident at shul that he probably wouldn't be allowed inside the building, so he stood outside and shouted up at the dormitory window.

“Yitzi! Yoel! Yankel!”

They all came outside to meet him.

Motty offered Yankel a handshake, but Yankel held his hands up.

“Traif,” Yankel explained.

“Come on, guys, check it out,” said Motty, pulling up his sleeve to show them his tattoo. When he flexed his biceps, the woman on the sword seemed to dance. He'd been thinking about getting more ink done.

“Maybe on my back, you know? Eagle wings or something.”

Yitzi stepped forward. “Motty, it's a big question if we can still be your friends.”

A discussion ensued.

Yitzi explained that he was basing his reasoning on the prohibition from Deuteronomy, “Do not intermarry with them, for they will turn you onto their gods.” “If marrying was not allowed,” Yitzi put forth, “can we not also assume ipso facto that friendship, too, is prohibited?”

Yoel disagreed. He pointed out that the greater commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself specifically avoids saying whether the neighbor is Jewish or non-Jewish. Why? “To show us that when it comes to human acts of kindness—such as friendship—religious orientation is of no consequence.” According to Yoel, their friendship wasn't merely allowed, it was obligatory.

Yankel argued. “On the contrary,” he said. “When Hashem commands us to go to Canaan, He says ‘And you shall drive them out of your midst and destroy their idols and images.' What do we learn from this? That not only are we forbidden to be friends with Motty, it is incumbent upon each one of us to kill him.”

“Yes,” agreed Yitzi. “With a sword.”

“Blessed is Hashem,” said Yoel, checking his pockets for a sword. “Motty?” he called out, looking around.

But Motty had already gone back home.

He decided he would just leave. Go somewhere else. Even back when his body was Jewish, he'd often suspected that his mind was not.

He could find a place in the city, transfer into NYU, maybe take a film class.

He could find people who would love him for who he was, not for who he was no longer.

When Motty got home, he was met by several officers from the Rockland County Sheriff's Department. They wanted to question him in connection with the death of his mother.

“May I quickly use the bathroom?” Motty asked.

Officer Landry felt that they should not allow him to use the bathroom, as the Sergeant had specifically commanded them to “apprehend” the suspect.

“Yes,” argued Officer McKenna, “but is it not written “To Protect and Serve?”

In the living room, the rabbis were debating whether Motty should be punished as a Jew who kills another Jew or as a non-Jew who kills a Jew. Motty walked past, went upstairs, tied a rope tightly around the part of his body where the Jewish part met the goyish part, and quietly hung himself in the shower.

 

M
OTTY
sat up in heaven and looked down on his funeral taking place below. A black hearse led the procession, followed closely by his father's beige minivan and a black Lincoln Town Car full of rabbis. They drove all the way to the Gates of Zion Cemetery in Spring Valley, where they were stopped at said gates by the chief of security.

There seemed to be some confusion.

A rabbi from the cemetery office came hurrying down to the gates. His name was Rabbi Pearlstein.

Rabbi Pearlstein was of the opinion that Motty's body could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery because it had a tattoo, though if they were to cut his head off, it would be permissible for them to just bury that.

A discussion ensued.

Motty laughed.

Motty's father looked around. Who was laughing?

“Motty?” he called out.

But Motty had already gone.