The Last Testament: A Memoir (18 page)

⁷
But their children were a different generation, shrewder and savvier; as their leader I chose Moses’s assistant, Joshua; he was brilliant, and hardworking, and completely full of “it.”

⁸
Even better, he came from the tribe of Ephraim, the southernmost tribe; and so spoke with an Ephraimic accent, drawling his vowels and saying “y’all” instead of “ye all”; which gave him broader appeal than the usual breed of northeastern tribal liberals.

⁹
Day by day, week by week, year by year, older Israelites died off, and younger ones rose to take their place.

¹⁰
And these younger ones knew of my vow, that no Jew would enter the Promised Land until the last survivor of the Exodus had perished; and they had seen that I was not inclined to artificially foreshorten the lives of these survivors;

¹¹
And so by the start of the fourth decade of itinerancy, it became a more and more common occurrence for the rapidly-aging pool of ex-slaves to meet with “unusual” deaths.

¹²
There was a sharp increase in the number of accidental spearings; children began waking up to discover their parents’ bodies mysteriously filled with gallons of sand they had swallowed as they slept;

¹³
And during their travels, more and more of their elderly forebears perished on the wayside of exhaustion; the kind of exhaustion that manifests itself, in deep ligature marks about the head and neck.

¹⁴
Lo, even poor Aaron died under mysterious circumstances; for one day when he was leading services, the four young vice-priests holding the Ark of the Covenant above him all somehow slipped simultaneously, causing it to crash down upon him.

¹⁵
(Verily, that Ark was
way
more trouble than it was worth.

¹⁶
Word to the wise: leave it in that crate in the warehouse.)

CHAPTER 13

¹
O
n a beautiful spring morning—40 years to the day after that immortal sunrise when he and I wished the Jews a merry isthmus— Moses stood atop Mt. Nebo.

²
His endless wandering was over; Israel, the country promised to his nation as its rightful homeland, lay visible in the distance; lush, fertile, and teeming beyond the glittering barbed-wire fences of the DMZ.

³
As the great man gazed upon the Promised Land, his heart swelled with a thousand emotions; and long did he reflect upon his many accomplishments: the liberation of his people, the giving of the law, and not the least impressive, his success in maintaining a real private life;

⁴
Something greatly appreciated by Zipporah, his wife of 43 years.

⁵
Finally, Moses delivered unto the Chosen People his farewell speech, the text of which forms nearly all of the book of Deuteronomy.

⁶
He spoke of many things: of how ibexes were unkosher; how enemies’ wives and children were for enslavement, not for killing; how both plowing with an ox and a donkey tethered together,
and
transvestitism, were equally sacrilegious; how the father of a raped virgin was entitled to 50 shekels of silver; how anyone who had had a wet dream had to leave town until sunset; and how when two men fought, and the wife of one came to her husband’s aid by grabbing the testicles of the other, it was mete to cut her hand off.

⁷
Emotional? Absolutely.

⁸
Verily, there was not an unmoistened visage in the House of Israel.

⁹
When he finally finished speaking, he sighed; and walked to the side of the mountaintop nearest Canaan, unto the very edge of the cliff; and gazed yearningly upon the Promised Land.

¹⁰
Yea, I was sorely tempted to revoke my own harsh vow, and allow him to set foot in what he had so long striven for, if ever so briefly;

¹¹
For the God in me saw that that was the right and fair thing to do.

¹²
Yet the writer in me saw what a poignant conclusion to the Five Books of Moses it would be, to have its titular hero pass away in sight of, yet forbidden from entering, the Promised Land;

¹³
And that it would dignify his character with one last air of majesty and tragedy;

¹⁴
And that it would enable me to end the Torah on this note of grandeur and tribute:

¹⁵
“And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the L
ORD
knew face to face;

¹⁶
In all the signs and the wonders, which the L
ORD
sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land,

¹⁷
And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.”

¹⁸
And so, knowing it would furnish my work with a final scene worthy of a tale as epic as Exodus;

¹⁹
And knowing that a man as great as Moses deserved to have his story end with one noble, heroic final line;

²⁰
I yanked him off the cliff by the balls.

JEWED

(“On the Chosen People”)

CHAPTER 1

¹
T
hose 40 years wandering in the barren desert were only the beginning for us, Jews.

²
We have been through a lot together.

³
We have shared triumph and tragedy, blessings and blood libel, hilarity and Holocaust; more on that last one in a moment; I know thou hast a few questions.

⁴
Yea, we have shared a bumpy three millennia, you and I; but we made it through, and after all this time ye are still my Chosen People.

⁵
(Though I must say, that lately I have been forced to bear witness to so many $100,000 Yankees-themed bar mitzvahs—

⁶
Replete with multiple VJs, obnoxious hired dancers dressed like cast members of
The Jersey Whore
, and awful club music amplified so loudly it could topple the walls of both Jerichos, the ones in Israel
and
Long Island—

⁷
That I have been sorely tempted to say unto the Reformed remnants of the Twelve Tribes, “Enough; ye have mocked the ancient rite for the last time;

⁸
I now declare ye permanently unchosen, and withdraw from your presence forever;

⁹
But here, give this check to Ethan; he nailed the haftorah.”)

¹⁰
Retelling the tale of Exodus puts me in mind of the Four Questions, whose answers illuminate what makes the Passover holiday so unique.

¹¹
But on any night outside of Passover, the four questions I am more likely to hear from Jews are far different; and they have gone unanswered ... until now.

CHAPTER 2

¹
W
hy is our faith different from all other faiths?

²
Why are all other faiths only sporadically scapegoated, while ours has been World Scapegoat Champion 3,000 years running?”

³
Because people are jealous.

⁴
It is jealousy, pure and simple; the same schoolyard animus that bewedgies the mathlete be-pogroms the
macher.

⁵
There are simply certain people who see how I have favored your success in professions like law and finance and entertainment, and respond with hateful, hurtful remarks.

⁶
The good news is, most of these people are other Jews.

⁷
But on those occasions when they are not, it is anti-Semitism—or as its advocates prefer to call it, progentilism—nothing more or less than the cancerous outgrowth of a festering resentment.

⁸
Believe me; if
they
could found a secret organization that meets once a week in the basements of local synagogues to control every aspect of law and finance and entertainment, they
would.

CHAPTER 3

¹
W
hy is our faith different from all other faiths?

²
Why do all other cultures see New Year’s as a day of new beginnings, but to us it is a ‘Day of Judgment’? And then just ten days later Yom Kippur? What kind of scheduling is that?”

³
I agree, Jews; that is unfortunate.

⁴
Now that I think of it, nearly all the major Jewish holidays have as their purpose, either “commemorating not being killed in the past,” or “asking not to be killed in the immediate future.”

⁵
But verily, enough with the whining; for I have peered inside thy hearts, Chosen People, and I see therein the truth:

⁶
None of you take this stuff seriously anymore.

⁷
For, Judaism is the first religion to go completely ironic.

⁸
Lo, there may be a few hundred thousand holdouts in Borough Park and Maalot Dafna who did not receive the memo; looking back I should have left it in their Talmuds during Torah study, instead of their car wind-shields on a windy Shabbos morning.

⁹
But for the most part what holds today’s Jewish community together is the collective pleasure of being in on the same joke.

¹⁰
Yea, I love it when the less observant among you claim to be “cultural Jews.”

¹¹
Canst thou imagine being introduced to a “cultural Christian” or a “cultural Muslim”?

¹²
Breaking news from Mt. Sinai:
Judaism is a religion.

¹³
The millions of allusions to me in every single text and commentary and ritual of the past 3,000 years probably should have been a giveaway.

¹⁴
Yet the Jews seldom go to synagogue to visit me these days; neither do they call.