Walking across the country and calling the folk to repent, as the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, Jesus of Nazereth was summoned by a man, weeping as few grown men dare to. Try as they might, the men surrounding him, saying unto him, ‘Sorry mate, your daughter’s dead, you ought to learn to accept it, leave the rav be,’ he would not give in and insisted to see him.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘My daughter, it’s my daughter, she’s... she won’t wake up, she won’t move... Please, help her... Help me... She’s everything to me. I am a wealthy man, I can give you anything you want, just tell me, if only you can bring her back to live again... Please...’
He wept in humility before Jesus and fell to his feet in his pleading. Jesus kneeled down unto him, looked into his eyes with a faint smile, and spake. ‘Just take me to her, sir.’
The man’s eyes lit up in hope, and he quickly took Jesus along with him, rushing to his home. The house was made of firm stone and had two storeys, and several servants were walking about, tending to the house, frowning at him. ‘What are you doing here?’ their eyes seemed to say. ‘You’ve nothing to do here anymore, just go.’
The father, now no longer weeping but breathing deep, full breaths, as one does after crying or laughing wholeheartedly, showed him his daughter’s bed. There lay she, eyes shut, hands held together on her chest as if praying, her breath gone. She expected, it seemed, for something, without knowing what it was.
‘This is her. Please, sir, please...’
Jesus looked at her with wide eyes. He did not speak. He kneeled by her bed and looked at her as children do. He gently stroked her face, as a young boy stroking that of his beloved sister. His eyes began tearing, and he whispered:
‘Please, girl, wake up... Come on... Wake up, please... Please wake up...’
He gently shook her body back and forth, as if he were handling a precious treasure, all the time whispering, ‘Wake up... Please wake up...’
Then, the girl’s eyelids slightly slit open. Her eyes slowly opened, finally blinking at Jesus’ face. She was bewildered; she slowly looked around the room to see her father slowly beginning to tear in joy, his legs weakening in elation, barely understanding what just happened. Finally, she spoke.
‘I’m hungry,’ she said.
Jesus drew a sweet red apple from his coat and gave it to her with a big smile. He turned to her father and said, ‘Can you get her some bread and honey, please? Thank you sir.’
Her father quickly left, still weeping in joy, and Jesus granted her a little stuffed cat made of fine, soft wool.
‘Here, take this,’ he said, and told her, ‘wash your hands before you play with it, and don’t ever forget to happily let your brothers and sisters and friends play with it together with you. If you do so, you shall inherit the earth.’
The girl nodded happily and gave him a heartly hug, even though she didn’t understand what he was talking about. Jesus left the house before the father returned, hoping she never will.
So the ‘FestiRabin’ is come and gone, as every year, and instead of giving my personal opinion about this annual farce, now I would like to tell you some about my own experiences with the assassination.
See, back in the day, I was just a four-year-older. I barely knew what was going on around me, not just because of my age, but because I barely had any concept of societal norm and couldn’t decipher what was going on around me. I don’t really remember hearing about the murder, and certainly not about the circumstances, but I do remember how I felt knowing it took place.
I was, and I mean it with no attempt to add dramatic effect or anything to this account, shocked to my very core. Suddenly death was not something that only happened to cartoon villains, it wasn’t something abstract you never actually saw taking place, just somehow knew that’s what happened to some villain or another. Suddenly it was something that could happen, no, will happen to anyone. Premature death was something real, not just for those villains―in theory, if someone wanted to, they might just kill me out of arbitrary malice. As silly at it might sound as first, it took me quite a while to get back to normal and stop being terrified of Yig'al ‘Amir.
I did grow out of it, but I would never be the same again.
Uni is very interesting. Not only am I taking linguistics and East Asian studies, but I’m also taking Intro to Africa as a free listener. It’s very enlightening, and seems to emphasise to some extent my opinion that people are far more divided by social class than by culture―the assumptionthat Israelis are rude and the Japanese are civilised it ridiculous, as high class Israelis are often very civilised (as you can tell if you ever visit TAU), while the Japanese in Ueno, Tokyo can get drunk and fool around on the street or even (Kot forbid!) throw a cigarette on the sidewalk instead of a bin. This also applies to the concept of India as ‘spiritual’, which any Indian can tell you is bollocks, and few Westerners can remember their own abbeys and centres of spiritual study that have existed for ages. In the last lecture in Intro to Africa I was surprised to hear that pre-colonial African kingdoms used a social system similar to that of the Shang dynasty in China. Differences in culture, save being in different stages of advancements due to this or that historic and/or geographic factor (which can be quite speedily overcome, as the Japanese demonstrated in their transition from hunter-gatherer culture back in the Yayoi culture to their situation in the Nara period), can often be explained due to this sort of class system existing and being retained in a culture’s collective memory; Jews are a classic example of this, as this effect is, in fact, expanding the common social dynamics you can find in a kindergarten or a school class. This is just a theory, and I still cannot fully explain the drastic differences between, say, the State of Japan and Islámic theocracies, but I suppose if I studied it I’d see a surprising amount of similarities. But I digress.
My mum and stepdad were afraid I’d make myself the class nudge and make everyone grunt whenever I ask a question. I heeded their warning and decided to limit my participation in classes and lectures to as few questions as possible, comments on what someone else says, and amusing comments and/or questions (almost exclusively with true desire for an answer). So I might soon establish myself as the class clown, which is not that bad a position―comedians have a very high average I.Q.
Now, if I can just get people to stop jinxing me all the time...
When Christ sat down at Bethany,
The home for all the poor,
He told his men, ‘Come, sit with me
Behind this sealed door.’
He sat among his men to dine,
And from the poverts’ hoard
A woman came and oil fine
Brought to anoint her lord.
So humbly him to wash she bent,
And every man did stir
As they smell’d this lavender scent―
By God, what did occur?!
‘Dear rav!’ Spake Judas, ‘Give this oil
To those in dire need!’
‘Dear Judas, must thou still so toil
To honour thy meek creed?
Both poverts hunger and fate’s wrath
This earth shall never shun,
But Jesus, man of Nazereth,
Shall ever be but one!’
...Christ, chosen by the Dove thou wast,
Thy mission was defied;
The Mandate of the Heavens lost,
Thou shalt be crucified.
An Cat Dubh, 14.11.11
Unum diem...
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