An Alternative History of the State of Israel

Even if the Messiah comes, he won't resolve the conflict (so it's not worth embarrassing ourselves). In the end, they might think there's no divine plan and it was all a fluke after the Holocaust (as always), or worse - that it's a sloppy and amateurish plan, something like the Exodus ending with the sin of the Golden Calf. So it's time for Plan B

"The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!" (Source)

I dreamed that the angel of history was trying to disrupt history, or save the Jewish people, depending on your perspective. Because God up there decides to wake up from His dreams and intervene in Israeli history, for what didn't succeed in the Biblical era - might succeed in the era of "A Brief History of Humankind". Because everything went wrong, redemption didn't come, not even after the Holocaust, and not even after the establishment of the state, and not even after reciting countless Psalms. And even if the Messiah comes, he won't resolve the conflict (so it's not worth embarrassing ourselves). In the end, they might think there's no divine plan and it was all a fluke after the Holocaust (as always), or worse - that it's a sloppy and amateurish plan, something like the Exodus ending with the sin of the Golden Calf. So it's time for Plan B - but no angel had prepared a contingency plan, because who prepares a Plan B for God? That's heresy. Therefore, to prevent God from looking bad, like a failed writer who doesn't control the plot, we need to go back - and fix the point from which everything happened.

And the angel of the Lord descends from heaven, amidst the falsetto of "Don't Whisper a Prayer", towards the peace rally, to the moment when everything went wrong, to save Oslo, and extends his hand to divert the hand, and Yigal Amir doesn't assassinate Rabin. Somehow the three shots missed (headlines: Miraculously Saved!), and the whole country is in shock, they tried to assassinate a Prime Minister, the head of the Shin Bet resigns, Yigal Amir smiles during his trial, claiming he felt the touch of God's hand, but it's clear as day that this is a legal show of temporary insanity, and he gets life imprisonment, and everyone fantasizes about Margalit's braid who stood by him all the way, and... and... nothing happens. Hamas blows up buses, Bibi wins the direct elections, does the same things, utters the same statements, Oslo leads nowhere, Peres the loser replaces Rabin but is replaced before the elections by Barak, who defeats Bibi, and all of history continues exactly the same. It's all the same garbage. And in the end, Rabin dies of lung cancer, and they give him a state funeral, and Clinton comes and says "Shalom, chaver" (he's really written by Clinton's scriptwriters, this one). And Peres, as usual, forgets to die - not before Rabin badmouths him in a final interview with some scathing remarks, which is a charm for longevity. Cough.

And the angel of history rubs his wings. Perhaps it was too early, and history wasn't ripe, the country was before its maturation, and it didn't have breasts yet. What other critical point was there, because of which everything went wrong? And the angel of the Lord descends again from heaven, towards Sycamore Ranch, where Sharon felt unwell and went to sleep, and wakes him up from his sleep with a gentle tickle in the ear with a feather plucked from his wing (ouch!), and he blurts out confused nonsense that an angel of God appeared to him in a dream, and they fly him to the hospital, and he doesn't even collapse, and his hubris only grows and fattens, and he jokes about the doctors' orders, until three months later, in a spontaneous way that even the angel doesn't foresee, all the blood rushes to his head and mixes with the urine in one big mess, and he grows again in the hospital, and the settlers laugh again: "Do not uproot what is planted" - and... nothing happens. Everything is the same. Olmert is elected. Second Lebanon War. Bibi. Bibi. Bibi. Bibi. Bibi. Until even the angel gets tired. Where is the butterfly effect they told us about?

And the angel understands that perhaps we need to go back much further, to the defining moment of Israeli history's derailment, and prevent the Yom Kippur War. And he approaches Dado and whispers in his ear during his sleep: There will be a war. I, the guardian angel of Israel, am giving you a warning. And Dado wakes up filled with anxiety and calls Zeira and doesn't buy into the conception and does the opposite and sees all the signs and comes to the Prime Minister with a war alert - and Golda says: Excellent, let them start. So the nations of the world won't accuse us of starting. Don't mobilize reserves, and we won't irritate the Americans, so this time it will be clear to the kindergarten teacher who started (them!) and who's the victim (us!), and you good boys, heroes of Israel, will give them a Six-Day War, thanks to the spirit that is superior to force, as it is written "Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword." And as in all of Israel's wars - hubris wins. Siren.

And the angel is completely desperate, and descends to me, who is at the edge of the most marginal corner in the entire country - at the spearhead of purposelessness, a kind of completely detached black wheel that isn't connected to anything in the system, a completely crazy screw, and therefore even if it's missing - the system won't go crazy. And he says: Maybe we should start the change from you? Because maybe we don't need to stop the turn of history in the heart of the hurricane, but we need to make the change from the golem, even before the flutter of the butterfly's wings. That's where the aforementioned effect is. Not in power, but in the mind, that is, in a tiny change in a dream, as God likes to touch history, in a flutter, through an idea, and not through the plagues of Egypt.

And I wake up: Are you kidding me? Do you know how many ideas I have? Like trash. A long, long line of failed ideas. And not just any ideas, wonderful ideas! I'm the most fertile golem in the country. Do you know that I've already written over ten books? And how many people have read them? Do you know that I have more books than readers? What do you think, that these are the Jews of the past, who were interested in ideas? Who said, wow, this is interesting, never heard anything like it, let's sit and read more? My ideas could have changed Israel? They could have changed the entire world. One by one original, innovative, meaningful, oh my beloved ideas, who died before they were born. Poor ideas, whose misfortune it was to rise and hatch in the brain of a golem. And who needs another nudnik in bed who is an ideational laboratory, and an incubator for an entire school of thought, like viruses they contaminate me, and burn my brain - but how far they are from virality, my cute pathogens, that infect me again and again with spiritual diseases - because I infect myself. You're coming to me?

And the angel sighs: So what can be done, let the country deteriorate into another exile? Come on, bring an idea, if you're such a genius. And I get angry: It's not a matter of intellect. The Jews have long ceased to be a people of dreamers. Haven't you noticed that they stopped waiting for the Messiah? That they have no prophets? That they have no more futuristic spiritual dimension? Your mistake, as the angel of history, was to think that politics changes something, but the political realm is meaningless in Israel. The Prime Minister doesn't decide and doesn't make decisions, but he's actually a hat of the state, because unlike other countries, there's no hierarchy here and no government, and law is a joke and halacha is a punchline (because what did the Jews learn, what did they really learn from the Gemara? That every instruction, even from God, is just the starting point of an endless argument). And therefore, for us, a mitzvah comes through a sin, and every exception has a rule, and every boundary has a trick, and every eye-closing is a wink, in short - Jews simply don't know what a state is. You think Bibi is the problem? Bibi is just the hat of the problem. And sometimes you want to remove the hat just to see that underneath there's another hat, and another hat, and another hat, and there's no head. There's no king in Israel. Each man does what is right in his own eyes. The problem is a spiritual problem, not a political one, and it's a problem of lack of a dreamy dimension to reality, of lack of literature - as a way of life. Jews can't live without a book. And for the first time in their history - they live today without a book. The Bible wasn't some by-product of the biblical era, but the biblical era was a product of the Bible. The book shapes life. What went wrong in Israel? That once secular Israel had a book - the Bible (it doesn't have to be. I actually think that the book a modern state could live by is the Zohar. Not a state of Halacha - but a state of Kabbalah). And what went wrong is that today it has no book, and it's not writing any book, and therefore not living a book. The problem is that the People of the Book - has become just a people. And as just a people, it's quite obtuse. If someone writes about God, about myth, or even about the most simple angel - they'll simply snicker.

And the angel of history says: So there are no more points where I can influence? Everything is left to the angel of literature? And I say: There's only one organization in Israel where it still matters who's at the top, and where there's governance, and therefore a lever of influence on reality. If Galant had been Chief of Staff, a war with Iran would have broken out. If Eisenkot hadn't been Chief of Staff, a fourth Intifada would have broken out. If Halutz hadn't been Chief of Staff, the Second Lebanon War wouldn't have broken out. And so you see that when a Chief of Staff enters politics, he's a complete idiot. And you grab your head - how can this be? Because a head can't be a hat. You don't need to be a genius to control people who do what you say. Any idiot can do that. But to be controlled by people, and still contain everything like a hat, to give a feeling that there's a head inside you - for that you need to be a genius like Bibi. I tell you from my experience in the field of writing, for example: it's very easy to be content, but very hard to be form. And head - is what gives content. But hat - is what gives form. And because they never understand what I'm saying, I'll give another analogy. It's terribly easy to be a man. Any idiot can be a man. And even a CEO. But to be a woman - that's real genius. For example, to be a mother, or to reach satisfaction from penetration - that requires truly high spiritual abilities. The ability to contain within you - to be a feminine and controlled man like Bibi - who is controlled by the entire country, is an incredible talent, which only the greatest writers have, who contain within themselves an entire society (it's not for nothing they're called great). Therefore, if you meet giants of the spirit, you understand why they are such giants of the world, not because they are the head of the world, but because they are its hat. And God - is the shtreimel of the whole world. The sefirah of Keter. And therefore the creation of the world was, from God's perspective, an act of tremendous self-contraction and creation of the empty space to contain the world - the action of becoming a hat. Not like inferior angels of history, who are busy with games of heads, and somehow convince the audience of readers and the public of writers that the most important question in life is: who will be the Prime Minister. Because the most important question - is the question of the hat.