Land of Strife

And husband and wife argue: And you told me we were wrong to sell the apartment! And she curses: Blockhead, now there will be insane price hikes! And a man grumbles: What bad luck I have in life, right in the middle of sex. And the other one cries to him: You know what hurts me the most? That now the Arabs will rejoice

Prince of Hell - Hieronymus Bosch (Source)

I dreamed that there was something enormous moving in my wife's bed, shaking the entire bed, while I slept like a log. And this enormous thing grows stronger and stronger, and creaks and sighs and groans of anguish rise... and because of this I don't wake up, even though there's an earthquake in the middle of the night, and the huge holy book cabinet next to the bed falls on me and buries me. While my wife, who reads trash before bed and all sorts of newspapers, escapes unharmed. Is this the reward for studying Torah in bed?

And I ascend to heaven and there's a huge line from the earthquake. And we wait for hours and the authorities don't know and can't cope and aren't prepared for so many dead Jews, for each of whom they need to weigh 613 commandments with all their details and minutiae, unlike the seven Noahide laws which are on the express track. And people push and shout: What is this, open more counters. Everything's a mess [Translator's note: "partach" is Hebrew slang for a poorly done job], I'm telling you. Did you see Yossel's successful son? Just to see him here was worth it. And here someone's already starting to sell ice cream, and haggling with the parents: And if the child ends up in hell - won't you buy him an ice cream? And husband and wife argue: And you told me we were wrong to sell the apartment! And she curses: Blockhead, now there will be insane price hikes! And a man grumbles: What bad luck I have in life, right in the middle of sex. And the other one cries to him: You know what hurts me the most? That now the Arabs will rejoice...

And here I see there in the center of the gathering the expert on earthquake prediction, the honorable Professor of Geology from the Hebrew University, the grandson of S.Y. Agnon, who laments:

I'm like the prophets of doom that no one listened to, and now the national home has collapsed on our heads. Ever since my grandfather's house in central Jerusalem was destroyed in the earthquake of 1927 and so we were forced to move to the Agnon House in Talpiot - we've been preparing for the land's betrayal of the Jews. And here in the destruction of the Third Temple we were again caught unprepared. It's genetic with us. After the first tremors, a responsible prime minister should have panicked, and called a press conference with prime-time stunts, with behavioral instructions and an emergency plan for reinforcing buildings and a national earthquake drill. But then there wasn't an earthquake in the end and they would have laughed at him. People are constantly afraid of the sky: missiles, kites, planes, balloons, drones, mosquitoes, air pollution, the sun, the hole in the atmosphere. But they forgot to fear the earth. The earth itself is fed up. And on the day the earth wakes up - you'll stop dreaming.