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Pimply Kid

“The will of God is so,” explains the The Kiruv Rabbi in the most non-condescending voice he can muster.

The Pimply Kid before him, plucked from the bottom of the university barrel, nodded stupidly.

“And so,” continued the Rabbi, “It figures by default that the Jews are the most important people in the universe.”

He proceeds to illustrate this point beyond any doubt with a series of squiggly line diagrams and a video clip with a lot of reverb in the voiceover.

“Most of all, the Torah makes us happy,” finishes the Kiruv Rabbi with a flourish, hiding his sadness. “And it brings us close to God.”

It’s been another valiant attempt at convincing the masses.

But there’s an element of doubt. “Is this person’s mother Jewish, which would be amazing, or is she not, which would be a total waste of food?”

“Not everyone is as dense as the Pimply Kid,” thinks the Rabbi. There’s that one guy, The Smart Dude. “We really need to get that guy. He’ll make Great Leader one day.”

Making others into A Great Leader one day is the core mission of The Kiruv Rabbi. It’s the reason he himself is a rabbi. He used to be a really good skier. He used to love philosophy. He was passionate about the environment and human rights. Now he’s a Great Leader.

People rotate through the house like a revolving door. His kitchen has fed so many mouths. His couch has supported so many butts. And his words have enthralled many hearts, but much less than the total number of mouths and butts.

Because the vast majority, eat his food, sit on his couch, and move on. The Kiruv Rabbi tries not to let this get him down. “This is the sign of our generation,” he consoles himself. “They don’t want to hear The Truth. All they care about is social media and how many likes they get.”

In his social media posts, The Kiruv Rabbi tries everything he can. He uses the sexiest women he can find “who still have some clothes on”. Sometimes he has his graphic artist Photoshop some clothes back on to even sexier photos. But it’s frustrating, because sex sells a lot less when you’re severely limited as to how sexy you can be.

So he resorts to good food and a listening ear. “Because goodness knows both of those are hard to find,” reminds himself The Kiruv Rabbi. But it’s not about the actual food or listening ear, he’s not a goddamn soup kitchen. He’s not a fucking psychologist either.

This is a means to an end.

When fresh meat walks through the door on a Friday night, The Kiruv Rabbi’s heart leaps. But there’s an element of doubt. “Is this person’s mother Jewish, which would be amazing, or is she not, which would be a total waste of food?”

Also, will he be a Pimply Kid, who comes back often, or a Smart Dude, who often does not? For a Smart Dude to come back, you need a unique combination of Smart Dude Who is Searching, which not all Smart Dudes are. Some have had a good upbringing. Come from well-adjusted homes. Claim to not need advice about happiness or marriage or morality, thank you very much.

“It’s a numbers game,” the Kiruv Rabbi’s Rabbis taught him during his Great Leader training. “You’ll have to touch thousands, for just a few to be a success.”

There are a couple of levels of success. You can make them not intermarry. You could make them shomer Shabbos. You could make them married in Kiryat Sefer with 12 kids, like the real old-time legends were able to do.

So far, all The Kiruv Rabbi has got in his collection are three people who are “very interested”, one who is studying in Israel, and two who are dating Jews. But they may have already been doing so before they met him, he can’t remember.

The Powers That Be are not too happy with his numbers so far. “This is what we pay tens of thousands of dollars for?” They ask. They, for one, are not convinced by the whole “millennials are bullshit” argument. “Millennials are twice as hard, but we’re paying twice as much, so something is wrong with this equation.”

The Kiruv Rabbi is saddened. He feels the pressure. His family’s livelihood is on the line. This is all he knows how to do, and it’s hard to admit that he’s not the best. He wishes he could play guitar as well as Rabbi Gladstone. Tell stories that made people cry like Rabbi Frampton. Drop scientific facts and figures like Rabbi Schnauder.

That last guy has a freaking Ph.D., which is one of the benefits of becoming religious later in life, when you’ve got some actual knowledge under your belt.

It also makes for a better story.

His story isn’t great. He didn’t grow up in an ashram. Discover the world of God on a mountaintop in the Himalayas. Drop his successful career because he realized it was all meaningless.

He was just some Pimply Kid. Someone who had wanted a warm meal and a place to put his butt while he told someone about his dating woes and study stresses.

Now it’s eight years later. Enough time to feel like his prime is behind him, but not enough to become the person he wished he’d be, the person they’d promised during Great Leader training.

Now his success is all about numbers. So he doubles down and shares another fact about God’s lovingkindness with the next generation’s Pimply Kid.

Chevy Escapade

The Chevrolet Escapade truly is a tiny a vehicle. But it gets great gas mileage. For the first 26 years, the hydraulic pistons in the back of this one would hold open the trunk when you loaded it. Now a broomstick, permanently stored in the back, sufficed for the job.

Mendel Zlotnik shifted his foot on the accelerator pedal. His leg, tunneling through the mounds of Bamba wrappers that threatened to engulf the car from the inside out, rustled as he moved. He wished he could say that this was a 26 year accumulation of snacks. But, he had to admit – the plastic reaching almost to his neck – this was probably all here since last Pesach.

He was pretty sure he’d cleaned the car for Pesach.

He sat in his Escapade, at the very end of Shloffkin, the last street in the neighborhood. To his right, yet another unfished Shul, its black windows gaping from the bare concrete walls like the gaping void in his heart. To the left, the last apartment building in the town that managed to house 76 people in just three floors. Hanging from its tiny balconies, great banners extolled upon him to vote for Shas. And also Gimmel. The Rabbis were specific.

The neighborhood of Ir Tzion is the poorest in Jerusalem. This was literally rock bottom; the place where the city’s social garbage juices naturally flowed and were duly deprived of the usual amenities like street cleaning and garbage collection services. The Talmudic scholars over at city hall had better neighborhoods to worry about. Neighborhoods where people had actual jobs and people actually paid taxes.

Here lived the real outcasts. The Ultra Orthodox Ashkenazim. The Ultra Orthodox Wannabe Sepharadim. The devoutly traditional Arsim, who believed in God as fervently as they believed in soccer. And here lived Mendel Zlotnik for 30 formative years of his miserable life.

30 years with that good-for-nothing Yentle.

Mendel pondered, as he had a thousand times, that a better name could not have been chosen for such a person. It was like a sick joke of the Gods, naming her that. If They had a sense of humor, which he doubted, or if They existed, which he was skeptical about, this would surely be the proof.

It amazed him that someone so weak and frail could still fuck with him so vigorously. That someone so shrewdly aware of their surroundings could be so unaware of themselves. That someone for whom every breath was a struggle, managed to be so full of hot air.

After 30 years, he deserved to have a little fun. That’s what he told himself as he shacked up with Gittle Wafflestein, the gefiltefishmacher’s wife. The time was right after Shabbos morning davening, and the place was the bare cinderblock walls of the women’s bathroom. It was foolproof. No one ever used the women’s bathroom, because women didn’t need to come to Shul. That was the man’s job.

So, while the crowd above pounded Kugel and Cholent, Mendel Zlotnik pounded Gittle Wafflestein.

For a moment, his troubles were gone. Fading away into the supportive concrete walls. Sinking into the fleshy mass that was Gittle – whose semblance was not unlike a Gefilte Fish herself – this was the first time in years he didn’t feel like he was simply surviving.

She tasted better than any herring, that much was certain. He told her as such. She blushed. They were gonna have kids together. Run away to a different street together. Start a new life of joy and love and many other unspeakable things.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the fun was over. As Mendel hurried off to shul one dreary morning, a name caught his eye, plastered in large black block letters on the nearest bulletin board. His name.

Ash has fallen upon our midst. Hear your bones this, and they may shake.

It has come to our attention that the individual known as Mendel Zlotnik has been observed engaging in flirtations of the flesh. Let us not speak of such things, heaven protect us.

A magician never reveals his sources, but we have it from an authority on the matter. And we hereby proclaim, and declare, and announce: leave our camp! Begone from our midst! Do not let death rise up in our windows!

We beseech all members of the public of whom the fear of God still strikes in their hearts, to avoid all contact, both verbal and eye; to harass, harangue, and otherwise vilify said individual at all available opportunities; and to not partake of either his prayers nor his kugel in any public gathering.

Stay strong and let your hearts leap,

– The society for the protection of the purity of the camp

He turned about on his heel and headed home with the same shuffled determination that he’d headed to shul with just moments before.

He should have known that something that good was bound to end. Having your cake and eating it too is not something that mortals got to do in The World That is Not Yet The World To Come. Unless it was shit cake. Then you can have seconds. The little fuckhead Velvel Shtisslefeld had probably seen him climbing out of the bathroom window, and told everyone. The little prick. May his sexually transmitted diseases catch diseases of their own.

For months he stewed, not daring to leave the house for fear of encountering everyone, not bearing to stay for fear of Yentle. Say what you would about her mental acumen, she had definitely managed to read those signs somehow.

Darkness closed in. A vast emptiness that was far more expansive than ever before. He had caught a glimpse of the other side; he had tasted the alternative and then had it taken away. “If ignorance is bliss,” thought Mendel bitterly, “I’m probably the smartest man alive.”

This whole being alive thing was grossly overrated he pondered, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. He gazed straight ahead down Shlofkin, the crown turd of Ir Tzion.

Straight ahead was that fucking caravan, a prefab trailer where the local Arses gathered to engage in smoking and home improvement projects. A group of them were piled together on a bench, a teeming mass of misery and misdirection. Beyond that, the ground dropped dramatically towards The Forest. That’s what they called the sparsely wooded valley below. Hey, you take what you can get.

Picture this, looking up from the forest in the valley. At the caravan. At the Arsim on the bench. At the sun beginning to set above the slummy mountainside. A perfect setting for a final curtain call.

You hear a dull roar. Like a very compact car attempting to accelerate.

The Escapade explodes into the scene, arching cartoonishly upwards over the edge of the cliff. It hangs in midair long enough for you to inspect the scene: a halo of Arsim, gifted with flight by the Escapade that plowed through their bench, expanding into an ever widening shockwave of cheap cologne and cigarettes. The slowly rotating wheels of the Escapade, impossibly small and unusually pointless, like the circle of life. Mendel himself, gazing through the cockpit at the ground below, slowly curving towards him above the hood of the car. On his face, a look of resoluteness which has never been there before.

It’s a magnificent sight. Of defiance. Of proactivity. Of The Pursuit of One’s Dream. But no sight lasts forever and soon the car returns back to human speed, diving nose first into the forest below.

A relatively small explosion rumbles through the trees as a small plume of thick black smoke rises straight into the air. The Escapade, after all, does not have a very big gas tank. A flock of birds takes off and flaps angrily away. Then the silence, the sound of deafening boredom, rolls back in.

On a mountain outpost nearby, an Israeli soldier glances over lazily. Those fucking Arabs from Shalawiya are at it again. Or was that closer to Baal Der Amuq? Of that he wasn’t sure. Of one thing he was sure: it wasn’t worth investigating.

A memorial was held on Mendel’s behalf at three different synagogues. All were as keen to recognize him as a valued ex-member (Plucked from our midst in the prime of his days!), as they were for him to be gone while he still had his life abouts him.

As a neighborhood, Ir Tzion carried on being the shit haven it always was. New Arsim rose to fill the void left on the bench, which itself was replaced with a larger one with greater Arse capacities. Humans are expendable when you manufacture them by the dozen.

But down in the forest, a small black crater in a clearing has become a mecca of sorts during long Shabbos afternoons. A place to gape sentimentally, to drool in dense retrospection. To wonder if maybe there’s more to life than afterlife and cholent.

This, the dim-witted residents all agree, is probably the most interesting thing they have ever seen.

Lost, Not Found

The 80s get a bad rap. For synth music and terrible fashion. Generalized away in three syllables, faster than you can say, well, The 80s.

The decades before it are nostalgic.

60s – when rebellion was first invented.

70s – when it was perfected, exploding with psychedelia and bellbottoms and afros.

But the 80s, I have come to realize, had a lot of personality of their own. The momentum of the seekers on a journey of self-discovery carried right through the invisible line separating 79 from 82.

Backpackers. Osho. Meir Schuster.

There was something in the air.

There was something in the water.

And I want to know what it was.

I want to better understand the ridiculous choices that led to where I am today. I get you were lost and got found in religion. Why Israel? Why Nevey Yaakov? Why Zilbermans?

Why not be religious in America? They have libraries there, you know, and other fancy stuff.

How can someone from a middle class suburb of Toronto move to a garbage strewn slum?

How do you trust a Rabbi who never smiles, or a teacher who believes elbows are the devil, with the emotional well-being of your child?

I have partial answers.

I recently visited Mexico, whose overall infrastructure probably resembles Israel’s in the late 80s. Things function, but they are not fancy. There’s a simplicity, a rawness, unpadded by Western pansiness.

I would live in Mexico in a hearbeat, at least for a time. But what about my children? What would it be like to grow up in a foreign country?

I’d do my best to combine the best of both worlds. Create a customized hybrid of West and South that tries to maximize the benefits of each.

And maybe it’s just not the right place in this stage of my life?

I have experienced the disconnect of living in suburbia, every man unto himself, never truly connecting from either side of the picket fence.

Israelis are much more warm and open. But they are also assholes with PTSD. Even if you dismiss entire cultures like south Americans and parts of Asia for not being Jewish, why not find a warm Jewish community in a country with more manners and less explosions?

Sometimes your life situation changes slowly, and you don’t realize how deep in shit you are until it’s up to your neck.

Sometimes the up-and-coming neighborhood you move to slowly transitions into the perfect backdrop for a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Sometimes it takes months to realize that your son is getting physically beaten, every day, by his abusive teacher and classmates.

When you do realize it, what do you do? Now is the time for massive action. For getting up again and moving halfway around the world. To start again for a better life.

You know what it’s like. You’ve already done it 20 years ago, and pissed off your entire family in the process.

Except now it’s not you. It’s your 6, 7, 8, 9 kids who need to come along. And they’re… happy? Some of them? Some of the time? You’re creative. You could probably distort reality a while longer.

How did your penchant for radical shifts in geography and world view, for rebellion in the face of status quo, not get you out of what they originally got you in to? Are you a one trick pony? You’ve got one good jump in you, and now you’re permanently stuck on the wrong side of the fence?

How come the biggest change you made was also the only change you made? Now you’re halfway around the world, complaining about government offices not answering their phones, wondering what clothes you should wear if you end up in the hospital after a suicide bombing, having your kids write notes to their teachers because you can’t communicate with them directly.

Are you really as open to ideas and discomfort as you say you were? Or did you settle into your own version of comfort, which happens to look the opposite of everyone else’s? Now you sit, like a pig in poop, lamenting all the losers who haven’t joined you or are jumping the fence to get out.

The void in your life that brought you here must have been great. Now, certainly, there must be a new void in its place. This is life. The questions are much better than the answers. The solutions are always partial. The realties always evolving.

Why did you follow your heart the first time and now disregard the urgent texts it’s sending you? Are you stuck in a cult? Should we send help?

If you want to be lost, be lost.

But why, for God’s sake, must you be found?

Teiku

What lost objects are your own, and which must you return to their owners?
Rabbi Akiva says a stack of four coins.
Rabbi Meir says five.
Who is right? Teiku. No one knows.

Schmaltzburg leaned against the fence and took a deep drag of the cigarette.

It burned, this being the cheapest, shittiest brand and all.

But so did reality around him. Here at least, he got to control the pain.

He offset it with a sip of his cappuccino, painstakingly made over many minutes in a shitty yeshiva cup. These cups were the dullest of blues, and had no handle, for easy stacking. If Schmaltzburg could imagine, he’d imagine these were the kinds of cups they had in prison.

In yeshiva, you pursued personal growth. At least as far as making a really good cup of coffee is concerned. By devoting yourself fully to the cup of coffee, you got to do two things: have a good cup of coffee, and not learn.

Not learning is a key part of the Yeshiva Bochur lifestyle, and is actually harder when you think in a city where the most exciting thing is an ambulance taking a woman to the delivery room.

In a place so boring you could lie down on the road in an attempt at suicide only to die of starvation, it’s pretty hard to not get any learning done at all.

So you really dove deep into the coffee making. Added just that dab of hot water to the shitty instant coffee powder. Mixed it incessantly for about 15 minutes while making small talk. Adding the perfect amount of milk and sugar.

Heaven.

If you bruise a weasel on the Sabbath, is it indeed a bruise?
Rabbi Hanania says “it is.”.
Rabbi Shimon says “it is not.”
Rabbi Ishamel says “When Rabbi Hanania said ‘it is’, he really meant ‘it is not’, and the ‘not’ was omitted”

Shulem extracted his smuggled guitar out of its case and stroked a solitary chord on it, letting it ring.

He pondered the nature of his transgression. What was so bad about a guitar?

Yeshiva guys were allowed to play guitar on Thursday nights, staying up late on trips up North or to the Kotel, because Friday was a total wash. You didn’t need to study Torah on Fridays.

But the rest of the week was sacred. How could you waste a precious moment of Torah study? A single word of which is more valuable than diamonds, or some sort of gold thingy. At least that was King David’s view on the matter.

How I love your Torah!

Shulem strummed along as he sang.

All day long it is my conversation!

This wasn’t technically true, because he was singing instead of actually studying. But apparently the thought counts for something (although it was unclear when, exactly this was the case).

His shrill, off-key voice stretched to its highest, most minor registers as he reached the chorus:

How I love your Torah!

All day long it is my conversation!

Mozart this wasn’t. The song contained four chords and twelve words. Somehow the studio recording managed to drag it out for five minutes. It involved many sax hits and choirs: old men for the bass vibes, young boys for the lady bits.

If you repeated it enough though, it started to grow on you. Like a mantra. Or a cancer. It was his third time around and he was really starting to get into things, belting it out with his eyes closed.

When he opened them again, he met the dark, intense, disapproving eyes of the Rosh Yeshiva.

As he stared out of the bus window later that day, his guitar in its case between his knees, he pondered how the Rosh Yeshiva always seemed to know exactly where infractions were occurring. It was like a sixth sense.

He’d gotten off easy, probably because he was a good student overall. Sent home immediately to drop the guitar off, with a reprimand to never bring it back or he’d be toast. The whole shpiel had been accompanied by choice references to key mussar books about his terrible deeds.

“It’s one thing if you do it for yourself, but we’ve heard that other boys have been hanging out with you while you play. How can you do Teshuva over a sin you caused someone else to commit?”

He was a terrible human, he knew, for breaking the Yeshiva’s rules. For Bitul Torah. For wasting another day on earth by not becoming wiser during it.

And all for a stupid guitar.

The guilt stayed with him long after that earworm of a song had faded from his mind.

It was years before he touched an instrument again.

How long must you salt a liver for, and with how much salt?
The Shla says for eight hours, with a handful of salt.
The Ramach says, twelve hours, with two olive sized amounts. Also, it must be in a wooden bowl.
The Rivach disagrees regarding the amounts: he says six hours is enough.
The Ba’al halichos explains that the Rivach only meant it if you use an egg size amount of salt, but the Shutz Hariva says that it applies in all cases.
Nowadays, the common tradition is to soak things for 24 hours, just to be safe.

Hershel Jankowitz took a closer look at the pair of white underwear before him. He held it up under the light, just so, like the Rabbi had shown them, and stared at the spot.

He’d be damned if he could tell if that was a red or brown one. It seemed to literally shift colors as he stared at it. A different watt light bulb would probably throw this whole thing off.

A bead of sweat formed on his forehead. Also because he was wearing a suit in sweltering July, and also because of the enormity of his responsibility.

To pronounce it brown would mean the couple would have sex that evening. And sex with a Niddah woman was about the worst thing you could do.

Kares. Just like that. No afterlife for you. You tried to be a good Jew for 40 years. Kept your kosher. Kept your Shabbat. Refrained from gossip or thinking of other women.

Then once, just once, you slipped up on the whole Niddah thing and boom, you’ve lost your World To Come. Your entire point of existence comes screeching to an abrupt stop. It was though you were set up to fail, and failure was more definite, more far-reaching, than any amount of success you could try to achieve.

He swapped underwear with his neighbor Benji. “What’s your take on this one? I’m thinking blood, but I’m not sure.”

Benji took a closer look, peering down at the underwear through his thick glasses, which had slipped down his sweaty nose. He scrunched up his face in a dual attempt to raise his glasses closer to his eyes as well as see through to the Absolute Truth contained in this underwear.

They were either pure or impure. They just had to find out which.

Hershel envied Benji. The guy seemed totally comfortable on the hard Kollel bench, like he could stay there for another hundred years. Like reading endless tiny words on irrelevant topics was not a mind-numbingly miserable experience for him. He couldn’t say the same thing for himself.

Benji always seemed to be able to rattle off endless Rabbinic opinions on every line of Shulchan Aruch they read. Seemed completely nonplussed when it was time to whip out their wives’ respective underwear and start looking at them under the halogen desk lamps. Seemed to always know exactly what the right thing to do was, halachically speaking.

“Definitely brown,” pronounced Benji. “It’s Kosher.”

Hershel restrained a whoop, but internally his heart leapt. He hadn’t told Benji, because this was supposed to be anonymous, but that was his wife’s underwear. They’d been trying to get clean for a week now. It had been three weeks since they’d last had sex and every time they thought they were in the clear she spotted again.

He tried not to think about the fact that his wife would be getting her period in a week and they’d be through this all over again. “It’s like a monthly honeymoon,” is how the rabbis had explained Niddah laws. “Every time you get back together, it’s with renewed passion and commitment.” He had never been more miserable in his life; this ordeal was straining his sanity, and his marriage, to its limits.

Benji wasn’t a Posek yet. They only got their certificates in the fall. But he be damned if Benji’s word wasn’t good enough for him. Benji knew his shit. He knew his Shach from his Taz. His Rivas from his Rashbams. He’d been taking this workshop for three years now.

Benji had spoken.

There was gonna be sex tonight.

A Life of Service

Avreml Zingelwald kicks off his shoes and jumps into the freshly dug grave. He’s done this a thousand times before. It’s his job.

Yankel Vozserzach hands him the body. They’ve done this so often, multiple times a day, that their movements are fast, mechanical, sterile.

This lumpy body in its shrouds could just as easily be a sack of potatoes. Avreml scoops the stretcher out from underneath it, and arranges a row of cinderblocks above it. They don’t use coffins in Israel, so the body can decompose faster.

When the maggots eat the flesh of a decomposing body, explains the Talmud, the soul feels like it’s being pricked with a thousand needles. Better get that nastiness over with quickly, they say in Israel.

So the body just sits there while the crowd eulogizes it in a singsong voice of anguish that is perfectly calibrated to make you cry. Dead men are covered in a Tallis. Women just have a white shroud.

And you can make out the overall contours of the body, and you can pretend it is just sleeping, not dead; and you can try to guess if they have its arms crossed over the chest or straight by its side and many other musings that your mind conjures up to distract you from the starkness of the moment.

Avreml recites the appropriate verses at the appropriate times.

“He sits in the shade of the Lofty One.” He climbs out of the pit and puts his shoes back on.

“In the shade of Shaddai, he rests.” He uses a trowel to drag some dirt into the grave.

“One thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand on your right.” Sobs emerge from the crowd.

“They can’t approach you.” Avreml carries right along, speaking so quickly only a learned ear can make out what he’s actually saying.

“I shall satiate him with long life, and I shall show him my salvation.”

Kaddish.

Avreml climbs back in to the blue Chevra Kaddisha van with its extra tall roof. Benches line either side of the walls, facing two blunt metal hooks in the center that hold up the stretcher.

He slams the door shut and they drive out of the cemetery.

On the way out, the van passes by the children of the deceased, who have not gone down to the gravesite.

When a person spills seed, each potential sperm that is lost becomes a demon, and greets the person when they enter heaven. “Why did you not give us the gift of life?” Demand millions of incensed sperm-monsters, jealously pointing at the man’s actual children. “They got to live! What about us?”

And so, as to not antagonize them further, the Jerusalem tradition is that children don’t enter the cemetery.

They say attending to a body is the ultimate form of kindness, one that will not be repaid. This may be true psychologically, but economically it does pay quite well, and at this point Mendel dunks the bodies in the Mikvah and cuts their fingernails as stoically as one might prepare a sandwich.

He washes his hands six times, and prepares for his next ultimate act of kindness.

Lifetime Guarantee

Avrumi Zeivald was prepared to meet his maker. Or at least a maker. Someone’s, even if not his.

The Torah, the Rabbis had assured him, came with a lifetime guarantee. It was guaranteed to be true, or he’d be eligible for a full refund. The problem was, that as Avrumi’s soul prepared to expire, the warranty prepared to do so as well. Which opened up to a host of alternate scenarios in which other creators played a leading role.

He lay in his hospital bed at the top of the hill. The most beautiful view he could think of, the most beautiful view he knew. Sparse desolate desert stretched out before him, with the occasional shrub holding on to life for dear life. It was beautiful, in a sparse, desolate kind of way that reminded you just how empty life was. It was enough to make you cry from laughter at the meaninglessness of it all.

Lying in the hospital bed, surrounded by friends and family. 12 of his 14 kids had made it (Chaya Sarah was in the process of giving birth, Shmerkel hadn’t spoken to him in years). 36 of his 62 grandchildren. Many of the local villagers were there as well. He appreciated the gesture. They were performing their civic duty. He neither felt close to them, nor distant. They just were. Part of life, in a village, in a desolate desert.

He always knew he’d die from cancer. It was a feeling he had; and anyway, it seemed like everyone these days was dying of cancer. The doctors suggested chemo and radiation to buy him some time: six months, maybe a year. The thought of getting treatment didn’t even cross his mind. Life wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t that great. Leave the meds and the hospital bed for someone who actually wanted to stick around.

He was religious, but he was his own kind of religious. God was there, but in 40,000 feet above kind of way. Like a corporate vision that didn’t quite translate into day to day company operations. He got himself some of those popular posters of sexy Rabbi heros to hang up on his wall. A mural of 80 year old Rav Shach in a speedo on the beach adorned his sukkah walls every year. The art was not great, as most Orthodox art wasn’t, but it got the point across with a brute, uncreative rawness. He liked the picture, and followed it up with one of Rav Fisher in a mankini, long white beard flowing in the wind, straps strategically hiding his sagging old-man nipples.

“Who will merit to walk the path of life?” The verse asks. “He who beholds the Rabbis.” Avrumi had the photos made into little wallet-sized versions, and carried them around wherever he went. That way, whenever he was buying some kugel or rain boots or Tzedakah points, he was reminded of the Rabbis who reminded him of God who reminded him of the lifetime guarantee and the pointlessness of it all. It made him feel better.

He looked around at the crowd. This was exactly how he’d wanted to go. The Rabbi from the Ministry of Lifecycle Events was there to sign the Premature Death certificate. The hooker was there, to give him his one last blow job. He couldn’t ask for a better sendoff. The nurse handed him his pills, a combination of LSD and MDMA. At 100 times the recommended dosage, he was guaranteed to have a stroke. What better way to go than administering so much dopamine to the brain that it short-circuited itself? He couldn’t think of any.

He popped the pills, and, as the Yeshiva Boys Choir Psychedlc Pesach album began to play, he sank deeper into the bed. He took a big, shuddering inhale and let it out slowly, feeling the weight of it all – the indecisiveness, the lack of clarity, the mundane and the sacred – all if it just melting away. He took a final look at Rav Shach in the speedo and Rav Fisher in his mankini. He’d be meeting them soon enough, apparently. The officiating Rabbi helped him say the final prayer (“Blessed art Thou, God, who has given us life and sustained us until this time”). The hooker tucked her heads beneath the sheets and went to work.

Avrumi closed his eyes one last time. There would be no need for a refund.

Teabagging

There is a tradition, at the Eisenkopp Yeshiva for Fine Young Men, that when you make yourself tea, you fling the used teabag at the ceiling and see if it sticks.

It is called teabagging, and no one knows why it is done. Some speculate that it’s a reminder that all goodness comes from above. Others say it is fucking fun to do and you should try it some time. Regardless, it is tradition, and tradition is sacred.

The ceiling of the coffee room is almost indiscernible amidst the forest of brown, upside down teabags, their strings gently waving in the breeze from the electric fans.

The Rosh Yeshiva is furious about it. The Mashgiac has devoted three shmuzim to the issue this zman alone. But the pattern continues.

Because tradition is tradition.

There is a tradition, at the Eisenkopp Yeshiva for Fine Young Men, that when a Fine Young Boy gets engaged to a Fine Young Girl, that her father should buy you a house.

What kind of house, and where, depends on just how fine a Fine Young Boy you are.

If you are The Illuy of The Yeshiva, known to engage in fierce Talmudic debate over the finer points of Cheftza vs. Gavra with the Rosh Yeshiva Himself, you deserve a penthouse in the middle of Jerusalem.

If you’re a Solid Bchur, boruch hashem, known for diligent and studious traits, some who shteigs over his shtender day and night, you should at least get a nice apartment in the periphery. You can then rent it out and live in the big city.

If you’re the kind of bochur who never shows up to shachris, smokes more cigarettes a day than there are letters in the Torah, and spends most of the day in the coffee room flinging teabags at the ceiling, then alas, you may need to pay for half the apartment yourself.

May Hakodush Boruch Hu, The Holy One Blessed Be He, place you in the first, penthouse category and not in the last, as the verse sayseth “Let us be the head of the fish, and not the tail”.

Amen.

Some Settling May Occur

be a famous guru and change the world
be a renowned therapist in my own city
find a therapist

save the planet
save the date
try to save

be a millionaire
be debt free
pay the credit card minimums

build a business
build a career
try to keep my job

be the world’s best dad
try to be there for the kids
try not to swear at them

fuck all the people
fuck some people
fuck my life

travel the world
explore the town
get outside every day

build a bed
make my bed
get out of bed

make breakfast
buy breakfast
force yourself to eat breakfast

Stare at the cereal box, chewing:
Some settling may occur

The Tree of Undisclosed Fruit

In the beginning, God created throat cancer and eye parasites and rivers for people to drown in. And He saw that it was mighty swell.

“You see that tree?” asks God.

“Yes,” says Adam, squinting.

“Don’t eat from it.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” said God, beginning to lose his everlasting patience. “It’s The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you eat from it, you’ll know what is and isn’t good for you. You’ll know the true nature of throat cancer, and that I created you without any clothes on, as a prank (the angels can’t stop laughing at your pathetic dick).”

“And what if I do eat from it anyway?” inquires Adam.

“It would be very, very bad.”

“What’s ‘bad’?”, asks Adam. Although he speaks Hebrew fluently, that word is unfamiliar.

“Just shut up,” says God.

Fast forward to all of five minutes later. A lot has happened. There’s ladies. There’s talking snakes. There’s illicit snacking.

“Do you realize how bad you’ve been?” shrieks God, absentmindedly destroying the dinosaurs in his fury.

“I do now,” says Adam. “Retroactively.”

God takes a deep heavenly breath and counts to seven, his favorite number. It’s gonna be a long 6,000 years.

Current Weather in Hell

Hell
moderate rain
51.7 ° F
53.8 °
50.8 °
82 %
2.2mph
75 %
Mon
51 °
Tue
68 °
Wed
57 °
Thu
69 °
Fri
60 °

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