Birth

Childbirth Preparation Course

I dreamed I was living in darkness. Not knowing there was anything that wasn't darkness, or that it had an outside in space or time. A living darkness, that you could touch, actually swim in, and darkness shall prevail. And my wife wakes me from the core of darkness: Take all your "holy" books and get out now. As far as I'm concerned, you can sleep on the street.
- What, in the middle of the night.
- I'll break your computer. I know, you only care about your holy computer.
And she grabs it and holds it out the window and says: I'm letting go.
- Quiet, the neighbors will see.
- One, two, th... You know I'm capable.
And I give up everything: I believe you! And go back to sleep like the dead.
- The computer you love more than me, the love of your life. Even it you don't really love, but are just drawn to it. Like a sick person, like only you are crazy about things.
- Then throw me out with it. All the books and toys we bought for our son, right now just before, why did we go backwards? No matter how much we try to get out of the cycle with you, everything is in circles, a day of dream - and a day of hell, a night of an angel in sheets - and a night of Lilith in underwear, pulling - and biting. The counselor would jump out the window.
And I hug the pillow under the blanket passionately and don't want to know. And I dream about my wife's poor and pathetic heart, the crushed heart, the ugly, pitiful heart, full of hormones and worries and vengeance and pain. Such a rejected and messed up heart that love doesn't know it, but it beats and beats and can't stop.
Suddenly she starts throwing all the things I gave her in the trash, all the jewelry I bought her, all the gifts in the garbage. And I bury my head in the bed, and pretend to be asleep. And she whispers: I'm here alone, and you're sleeping as if you don't care. You've proven that you can be relied upon, your support for your wife is something else, I'm glad I interest you, I'm happy, you love me, and so on and so on until I fall asleep. And suddenly I feel quiet, it can't be, and I wake up from the silence. And I see her lying in bed with open eyes, mouth agape, and she's not breathing. And I laugh: Are you pretending to be dead again?

Why the Dinosaurs Went Extinct

I dreamed I was something enormous! But I don't know if I'm some dinosaur, or if I'm the next stage. So what if I study in black? After all, even dinosaurs had a religion they received from the heavens, a complete Torah of dinosaurs, of which all that remains are three obscure words in the Book of Genesis: "and the great sea monsters". And there are also rumors of some terrible sin - "the sin of the dinosaurs". And my dinosaur wife brings me news that we received a couple's invitation to Noah's Ark - "Cruise on the Flood", and she says: What a terrible disaster! I wanted a bit of my husband's precious and holy time. Why do we never go out? No money no money - and now it's free. All the other couples, all the animals will be there. And you're lying around in this holy garbage of yours, no wonder you, I'm not surprised, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover... And she goes on and on - this woman is capable of bringing rain from the ceiling - and I say: When is this flood coming already?

And in the following days she acts as if everything is fine, but I feel that something is very wrong. And we're about to leave for this "flood" event of hers, and I see that as always she packed the whole house, and she gets angry: Me me me. Why does everything fall on me. And you sit there like a prima donna with your secret computer. If you're not studying - go to work. And if you're not working - go study. And I get angry: Yes, because I do nothing, and who does all the intentions for the journey, you? Do you want us to leave without intentions? But why is everything at the last minute, you have to ruin it, why always squeeze the juice, why always you, why suck out the soul, why always me? And our giant baby wakes up, comes into our bedroom, and shouts in dinosaur language: Quiet. Why always fight? You're not even talking to each other. And my wife and I exchange glances.
- Oh, you're still little, this isn't a fight.
- You don't understand, this is prayer.
- Right? Prayer in partnership.
- Exactly. It's the closest thing we're allowed in this world to praying in pairs - like in the grave.
- You mean the world to come.
- Of the dinosaurs.
- Where the women's section is connected to the men's section.
- Where you can't tell who's who anymore.
- And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
- And the lamb with the she-wolf.
- And then all creatures together, from the most exalted to the lowest, all species -
- Including both sexes -
- All mix into one pure dreamy material, black, full of energy, hidden, precious, buried, deep...
- Black gold.
- Uniting with all our holy forefathers...
- In the dinosaur Holocaust.

And the child is completely stunned by the performance, but I'm even more stunned. How does my dinosaur wife know what's going through my head? And even if she can read minds - that she would even understand what it's about? I can see that she secretly read the books hidden behind the closet. And still... And I get scared: Look how pale he is, you're scaring the little one! He thinks you're yelling at him.
- Even now you're using the child against me? It won't help you, we're not taking him, he's staying here in bed.
- Why not? We'll hide him back in the belly.
- In the belly? I know what's going through your head.
- No, you're wrong, that's not what's going through my head.
- That's exactly what's going through your head. I'll prove it to you yet.
- You don't know how wrong you are.
- I know. It's written that there are places for couples, two only. What don't you understand about the word two?
And I look into her eyes and see the tears of the great sea monsters. And I understand that she knows, we both know now what's hiding behind the laundered words. At this moment we sentenced the child to death by drowning, in front of him, without being able to say a word.

- Call a taxi.
- Do you have any idea how much it will cost to haul two dinosaurs? It's only a 20-minute brisk walk to the bus.
And she walks for 2 minutes and pants and stops: Why is it always uphill? As usual, you got the wrong way. I'm sure there's a downhill route.
- How can you reach the top of the mountain going downhill?
- Since when does a cruise leave from a mountaintop? As usual, you got the wrong way. And then you wonder why I have a full belly. My back is breaking.
And she sits down on the bench with the suitcases. Terrorist! Just when, always at the most arrrgh moments.
- I don't care.
- We'll miss the ark. The ark won't wait for us!
- I don't care.
- This is not the time now!
- It's never the time. What do you think, is there room for a dinosaur like you?
- There's no time for your nonsense.
And I leave the woman behind and run alone to the belly of the ark, breaking all the streets with my dinosaur legs, and I already know why the dinosaurs went extinct.

The Fattening

I dreamed there's a great question among the early authorities: Why when people get married do they start to round out and gain and fatten up? And the great later authorities answer there: Because when people get married, Satan gets clever - and transfers the sexual drive to the eating drive. And my wife there asks: Tell me, do you want to lick this before I put it in the sink? Be careful because there's stuff inside. Sweetie, you ate it, I'm with you till the grave. So smile.

And I smile and start to dig into the grave, on a journey to the belly of the earth. Only at some point on the cramped way down, the world turns upside down - not me! - and I find myself in the heavens. And I look at the time and see that a whole year has passed - my wife will kill me when I return. And I look at the time again and see that another year has passed - what, will she remain an agunah [a woman whose husband has disappeared]? And I'm afraid to look at the time again, only if I die can I release her, but I have to die in such a way that she'll know, it needs to be big enough that they'll discover it even down there in the earth, and my orphaned son - now probably bar mitzvah age - will finally say Kaddish for me. Mistake mistake mistake - to reach paradise without dying.

And I just approach the angel at the entrance, open my mouth to shout - and he flees for his life. What's going on here? And I remember the writings of the Admor: "In this world the soul is strong and gives life to the body - and when the soul leaves the body dies. And the body which is weak needs to eat other bodies to survive. But in the future to come the situation will reverse. The body will be strong and will give life to the soul, and to survive the soul will need to eat other souls". And I discover around me that in paradise everything is reversed: The earth eats the plants. And the plants eat the animals. And the animals eat the humans. And the humans eat the angels. And the angels eat God. And the chickens and cows eat the Jews, who can find comfort only with the pig, which doesn't touch Jews. But gentiles it eats like a pig. And indeed paradise is populated only by Jews and pigs, and the angels and gentiles are extinct. And the Jews are dying of fear from the former schnitzels - who died for the sanctification of the Sabbath and ascended to paradise - and so they hide in the trees, like bearded monkeys.

And one holy pig, who walked his whole life with tremendous self-sacrifice only on high heels, because it's forbidden to raise pigs in the Land of Israel, says to me: Dear Jew, what are you doing here on the ground? It's dangerous! There's some anti-Semitic chicken wandering around the yard. Come quickly to the sty, we'll turn you into a pig, you're lucky you're in good hooves, we're the Hasidim of the animals of the world. Just roll a bit in black mud, swim a little in a pot of cholent, some grunting for Shabbat, and you're already a kosher pig of the highest standard.
And he can barely run with those heels and keeps grunting all the time, and I ask: There's anti-Semitism in heaven too? And the holy pig sighs: This isn't the world you're used to. In the previous world the vegetative fed on the inanimate, and the animal on the vegetative, and man on the animal, and so the world keeps ascending - that's how the inanimate eventually becomes human. And so too the soul feeds on man, and death feeds on the soul, on us, it eats us. For the heretics who eat pork death is nothing and nothingness - death is dead, and so nothing happens here, while there time runs. But for us death is the most alive state there is - paradise. Down there nothing ever happens, and here in the upper world all the action is. There in the earth the world is dead and rigid matter, and here everything is spirit.
- And God feeds on death which feeds on the soul?
- Yes, he is more alive than alive, the living God is a higher level of aliveness than life. But precisely because of that same dynamic of ascent in dynamism, when God dies he is at an even higher spiritual level. He ascends to a place we don't know at all - God's paradise. And then here the mess began.
- But did anyone make sure his soul would actually ascend there? Did any of his sons say Kaddish?
- Who will say Kaddish for him? They say "May His great name be exalted and sanctified" - and don't understand it's about Him. The religious are sure He's still alive, and the secular that He was never born. Thus God Himself didn't merit anyone saying Kaddish for the elevation of His soul, and His redemption failed - the final messianic ascension is that of God Himself. The angels in the grave behave like God's worms, and His sons in the earth just fight over the will. And when the Torah is the command of a last will - and not a living dream - only one question remains: Who is the firstborn son?

Restoring the Crown to Its Former Glory

I dreamed that I was living in the world to come, in a world that is all long, a world that is all Sabbath. And all of Israel eat spiritual fruits, intellectual shawarma, and subsist on giant reserves of Leviathan and Wild Ox, the dinosaurs who in their great generosity sacrificed their bodies, so that we too would have spiritual gas and dreamy black gold, and wouldn't need to work. And the end is quite predictable, they've been saying for years that Jews needed to be cooked in the oven in preparation for the Great Sabbath - the Great Sabbath at the end of the world. The weekdays are becoming rarer and rarer, and suddenly every day is Sabbath.

And precisely on that endless Sabbath I get stuck at my mother-in-law's. And there's nowhere to escape, it's forbidden to go beyond two thousand cubits from the settlement on Sabbath. And the possibility that in the distant future, even thousands of years from now, they'll build up to here doesn't exist - because it's forbidden to build on Sabbath. And my mother-in-law is actually very pleased, and the worst thing about her is that she reminds me of my wife. And she doesn't understand why I'm like this, after all she hasn't done anything to me. And I look at her and think: A whole life, a whole life. And my wife has no patience at all, she's constantly complaining: What a long Sabbath, I'm going to lose my mind. And she constantly needs all our things to be in suitcases downstairs, so that the moment Sabbath ends we can leave. And I tell her: Enough with that, it's preparation for the profane that's sacred! And she tells me: But there won't be any more profane. Don't you understand? There won't be another Sunday! And they're already calling us for another meal. And her family are huge fat people, but they're not even pigs, they simply eat like in the army: The mother-in-law at the head of the table terrorizing everyone, endless meals and you're not allowed to get up for a moment, the world will collapse, and she shouts: One two three eat, one two three eat.

And finally the meal ends, and I go to rest a bit before the next meal, and now my wife comes: What have I done wrong? I married a pig. You embarrass me in front of my family, I'm ashamed of you wherever you go.
- Madam, the fact that you pick your nose with a knife and fork doesn't make it polite. Soon I'll find a knife and fork in the bathroom!
- What are you talking about.
- In Judaism, it's forbidden to eat pork, but it's allowed to be a pig. You can't forbid yourself from being a pig. If God created you a pig? The great innovation of Judaism was that it's not the material and body that's important but the manner: Not to eat pork with polite cutlery like the gentiles, but to eat like a pig, meaning to be a pig that eats kosher.
And she looks at me in pain: You've made the pig the essence of faith! And the little son, who has already become very big, he's certainly the fattest baby in the world, I don't understand how his pink skin doesn't burst, he long ago turned into a ball. Well, this baby suddenly allows himself to intervene:
Do you really think it's forbidden to eat pork? It's true that it's written in all the esoteric Torah that there's no way to elevate sparks that have fallen into a pig, because it's in the three impure shells from which there's no return, and therefore it has no permission ever, not even after kosher slaughter. But let me reveal to you a trick how pork can be eaten - and rectified.
- How?
- In the Holocaust - it was possible to rectify pigs! There are such periods, of destruction of the soul and preservation of the soul, in which there's a breach in all the worlds, and it's possible to rectify pigs, and even: it's a mitzvah to eat pork. A reality where the greatest mitzvah is to eat pork - preserving the Jewish soul. A world of sanctifying God's name. The holy pig! In the camps Mom kept it for us all week so there would be meat for the Sabbath table. Do you know what blessing to say over pork schnitzel?
And I choke: You, you were in the camps? With Mom? When did this happen? And I look at my wife: Is there something you didn't tell me? And she says: I don't know what Holocaust he's talking about! And I get angry: Shame on you, there are only two things in the whole world that you're not allowed to joke about. Food and schnitzel. We'll continue this right after the food and now come, there's another meal, I already hear the shouting from downstairs.

And my genius infant, the first growth of our redemption, gives a Torah lesson at the table: A Jew eats not out of, God forbid, lust or even love for food, but in holiness. He aspires to reach pure eating, where he can't take any more, and he still continues, there's not a drop of room left, and he still, continues. Eating for the sake of eating, with self-sacrifice. And then it's the highest eating, without foreign pleasures, like how God eats the sacrifices, every day, always the same thing, even though He's already full, even though He's already sick and tired of it. Because a Jew eats with his eyes, eating is a spiritual thing, it's not the animal soul that eats, it's... tell me, is there any more schnitzel? And I see that he's already completely full, that every bite is as difficult for him as the parting of the Red Sea, the plate before him is almost empty, only a tiny piece remains on it. And I see that he's about to explode and I tell him: Be careful. And his mother begs him not to touch it. But he has to eat everything down to the last grain. And the veins are popping out, the neck, blood spraying all over the table, and from his throat bursts forth for the unification of the Holy One - to die sanctifying God's name.

I Deserve Congratulations

I dreamed that I was coming out of the dream, dazzled and crying and stunned by the world. It's a shame that birth is wasted on babies. Just like old age is wasted on the elderly - and childhood on children. If Jews were born right after their bar mitzvah we could give religion to babies, replace the two breasts - with the two tablets of the covenant: You shall not scream, you shall not wipe, you shall not covet, you shall not answer your father and your mother, I am who brought you forth, you shall not make for yourself any doll, remember the day of sleep to keep it holy, you shall not raise your voice in vain. And then Jews would be drawn directly to Torah - without the milk substitute that passes through the woman, and the good inclination wouldn't need to be covered by the evil inclination. But today even the Messiah will be born secular and naked. And I hold the screaming and red creature - it's time to return the world into the dream.

From the Holy Zohar - to the Holy Darkness

I dreamed that I understood that the Zohar had deceived me. To rectify exile and the Divine Presence through relations with my wife? Redemption through the woman - what kind of idea is that! Only the child, he is the chance, he is the future. And through the connection with the son I will already rectify the connection between the Holy One, blessed be He, and Israel. My firstborn son Israel. Yes, it's a shame that people send their children to yeshiva. I will teach him Torah the way I would have wanted to be taught Torah - from heaven. And with the wife it's like trying to rectify the Other Side, what a fool I was. And I start to sink into memories of youth, how the Rebbe said that we are a lost generation, but we can raise a new generation, a generation that will continue what the Germans cut short in the Holocaust. We were on the verge - and the Rebbe didn't want to say on the verge of what. And he took the parents outside and spoke to the youths: Don't forget that the first computer and Auschwitz were born in the same year, the year the Rashash died. And if you compare the level of spiritual activity in the second half of the 20th century to the first half - you want to cry. What an enormous victory for the Other Side! Simply fifty lost years. What the Holocaust didn't kill the state killed and what the state didn't kill - I killed. But you'll still see that a new generation will come. A generation that speaks with angels and pets the holy beasts. Takes the righteous in the Garden of Eden for a walk - with a leash! Squeezes tears from the clouds of glory, produces electricity from the seraphim, and catches the snake by the tail, not afraid, ties it around the neck, not afraid, and starves it, starves it, makes it into a long long string. The four corners of the tzitzit will suddenly start flapping, and children will have to tie themselves with tzitzit to the ground so as not to fly away and disappear into the sky, newlywed grooms will fly with the tallit like Superman, and bar mitzvah boys will crack their tefillin like cowboys with a galloping herd of red heifers. It will no longer be a generation that learns Torah, but that the Torah learns it. The gentiles will still beg us to come back from the heavens. They will build enormous telescopes to try and peek at a tiny drop of our light. But all they'll manage to see will be through the keyhole. We will be the last place in the world that has secrets. The last in the world! - he finished with a shout. He apparently expected us to say something. To react. Something. An embarrassing silence fell. I didn't dare breathe. And I didn't know whether to say, or not to say, to say? Not to say? And then he looked at us one by one and said: Bunch of retards.

She Has No Comforter

I dreamed that I was cheating on my wife with the help of the child, and I tell him when he's born: Don't tell her that you're the Messiah. You will be the Messiah, if only you don't tell her. And when my wife isn't listening I call him: My sweet Messiah. And try to teach him the 42-letter holy name of God according to Kabbalah, for that to be his first word. The call of "Abba" is just the beginning of Abgitatz Kra Satan Nagad Yakash Batrat Tzagchak Batna Yiglafzak Shkutzit... And when my wife falls asleep from exhaustion I read him Zohar as a lullaby at night, because they say bilingualism develops the brain: Aramaic as a first language. Who knows what will come out of a head that grows like that? This way we can reinvent the Jewish dream. Redemption by the home method: Do it yourself.

And every morning the infant gives me a fresh poop as a gift in the morning, and I remember the words of the Talmud that the way to know whether a Messiah is true or false is to examine whether he "smells" and judges - and I get excited. Here, the prophecy is coming true. And I hide the diapers in the bookcase so my wife won't see, for surely the Messiah's poop is holier than my words of Torah, it surely contains supreme secrets, which the lower beings cannot yet receive, and therefore it's kept in diapers. In the future it will still be a special perfume, which today we're not yet ready for its spirituality, and therefore it smells to us like poop. And I also understand well that there is no Messiah without a donkey. So I go on a grass diet and practice making donkey droppings, steal my wife's huge earrings to lengthen my ears, practice braying in front of the mirror, and generally become stupid in general. And I ask him: What does a donkey say? Hee-haw. What does the Messiah say? And he bursts into tears. Just like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the peak moments of the holy Zohar. What a soul, what an angel.

And my wife does everything to depress me. She comes back from the well-baby clinic and informs me dryly: All the Talmud I taught him before sleep - and his head circumference only increased by one centimeter. Worse than that, she tries to poison the Messiah with all kinds of children's books by heretics and gentiles. And I wait for her to leave, and all the stuffed unclean animals I turn into clean animals, draw them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminate vermin from the house like Mickey Mouse. And I also fix the books: Winnie-the-Pooh becomes Winnie-the-Fowl, Kofiko becomes Tzadiko, Raspberry Juice becomes Grape Juice for Kiddush and Havdalah, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the Divine Presence and the Seven Ultra-Orthodox, and The Wizard of Oz I simply turn into Job. And I don't give up on my wife: Aesop's Fables adapted to Shtreimel Tales, Little Red Riding Hood is now Little Black Kippah, and the Big Bad Wolf is a shtreimel, so girls learn not to desire a shtreimel. And what I'm most proud of is my adaptation of The Tale of Five Balloons, which is now called The Tale of Five Rabbis, after I added sidelocks and beards to the balloons. Please Bezalel don't be sad, we'll bring you another Admor. It's okay Aharon, that's the end of every genius. And I feel how the child experiences elevation every time at the end when the red genius ascends to heaven.

And everywhere I take the child like a donkey in a carrier on my back. And my wife says: Let him walk by himself, let him crawl. - What? My wife is trying to turn the child into a snake! And my wife who already knows a bit who she's dealing with tells me: Yes, because snake has the same gematria [numerical value] as Messiah. And I'm in shock. How does she know? What, can you already sense it about him? Or are the forces of the Other Side again trying to sour the redemption? Satan! Who told her? And I eat myself up all afternoon: Either... or... and watch helplessly as she does all her baby nonsense with him, and they laugh laugh laugh. Let them enjoy, it's their last time.

And I cry in the middle of the night and wake him up, and he comes to me in bed - crawls to my feet in the dark. And in complete silence, so my wife won't wake up from her dream, I take him on my back, and he rides me into the Old City - the navel of the world. And we ascend together to the top of the mountain, to the absolute darkness, and I ask: Did you tell Mom?

Memorial Prayer

I dreamed that I was faced with a cruel choice: either there is no God, or there is no Torah. And I choose the Torah. And at night I hear terrible weeping from within the earth. And I close my ears and it enters through my eyes, and I close my eyes but my eyes are already closed.

And I understand that at least the Torah must now be guarded very well so that what happened to God doesn't happen to it. And I write a secret curriculum for Torah study, so that they won't be able to harm it, now that there's no one to protect it. And finally a son is born to me. And from the beginning the child is exceptional, born by cesarean section, as hinted at in the Zohar about redemption, that the snake of the doctors needs to open the womb of the doe. And what's best is that the father receives the baby and the mother remains anesthetized in the operating room. This is my opportunity. And I whisper a few things in his ear, and I know that today he was born. And the baby holds one finger of mine with his five fingers, and I shake the hand and tell him: Nice doing business with you.

But my wife has no God. And one Sabbath when the child has already grown, we are visiting with the whole family. And my wife goes crazy and starts shouting at the top of her lungs. And she shouts in terrible voices for her parents to hear: This madman has been teaching the child Zohar from age 0, at night he reads him a book in Aramaic. And I fill with cold sweat and shout back loudly for them to hear: It's not Zohar it's Talmud, you're confused, you don't know anything, you're funny. And she shouts: I do know, it's the holy Zohar. It's written on it in golden letters. I feel like murdering her. And everyone starts looking at me with strange glances. And I feel them distancing the child from me. Sending him here. Sending me there. And I look at him moving away, and say: You won't forget?