The New Judaism

And I wait for her to leave, and I turn all the unclean animal dolls into clean animals, drawing them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminating vermin like Mickey Mouse from the house. I also correct the books: I turn Winnie the Pooh into Winnie the Fowl, Kofiko [Israeli monkey character] into Tzadiko [righteous one], raspberry juice into grape juice for Kiddush and Havdalah [Jewish rituals], 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

A new religious dream - on Judaism's neck lies a sharp choice: if God lives, the Torah will die, and if the Torah lives, God must die (Source)

I dreamed that it couldn't be. After the Holocaust, after the State, after the Internet - it was too much to bear. The time of redemption had come. Judaism cannot remain as it is after the Holocaust. And if the State has disappointed, and if even the Internet, the first flowering of our redemption, has let us down - we must take the Messiah into our own hands. It's monstrous that God continues to sit there in heaven while we rush in the morning to wash our hands and make it to the minyan [prayer quorum]. To pray after Auschwitz is heresy, to continue with commandments as usual is a sin, and worst of all - we cannot continue to dream as if nothing happened about the coming of the Messiah. Fantasy must respond to reality - and the dream must respond to the nightmare. We need a religious answer. And the foremost religious task is a new Kabbalistic worldview - because the previous one is no longer acceptable. And I set out to save Judaism from itself: trying from my bed to save it from spiritual death.

And I understand that we must look the Holocaust in the eye. The intuition of the masses of the people of Israel - the voice of the multitude as the voice of the Divine Presence - cannot be wrong: The Holy One, Blessed be He, was murdered in the Holocaust. Only regarding the Torah are they mistaken - because the Torah is independent. The Torah can live even if there is no more God. Especially if father is dead - continuing him is the ultimate love for him. Judaism today is a mourning custom, an ancestor worship, because the Holocaust was the Kabbalistic event in which the Other Side buried the Holy One, Blessed be He - and with him the old Judaism. Therefore, we must bring the Messiah, so that God will return to the world in the resurrection of the dead or in the World to Come. But if no one raises a child as the Messiah, how can the Messiah come?

And my wife is in her first pregnancy, after so many years and treatments - and I think: why not? And I decide to raise my son as the Messiah. And when my wife isn't listening, I call him "Yanuka [child], my sweet Messiah" and try to teach him the 42-letter holy name of God according to Kabbalah, so that it will be his first word, instead of dad: Abgitatz Kra Satan Nagad Yakash Batrat Tzagchak Batna Ayig Lapzak Shakutzit... And when my wife falls asleep from exhaustion, I read him Zohar at night to his cradle until he falls asleep, because they say it develops the brain: Aramaic as a first language. Who knows what will come out of a head that grows like this? And so we can reinvent the Jewish dream anew. Homemade redemption: do it yourself.

And every morning the newborn gives me a gift of fresh poop in the morning, and I remember the words of the Talmud that the method to examine a Messiah is 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, surely the Messiah's poop is holier than my words of Torah, it must contain supreme secrets that the lower realms cannot yet receive, and that's why it's kept in diapers. In the future, it will be a special perfume, which today we are not yet ready for its spirituality, and that's why it smells like poop to us. 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! A supreme seraph.

And my wife does everything to discourage me. She comes back from the well-baby clinic and informs me dryly: All the Talmud I read to him before sleep - and his head circumference only increased by one centimeter. Worse, 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 I turn all the unclean animal dolls into clean animals, drawing them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminating vermin like Mickey Mouse from the house. I also correct the books: I turn Winnie the Pooh into Winnie the Fowl, Kofiko into Tzadiko, raspberry juice into 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: Fox fables are now Shtreimel [Hasidic fur hat] fables, Little Red Riding Hood is Little Black Kippah, and the Big Bad Wolf is a Shtreimel, so girls will learn not to desire a Shtreimel. And I'm most proud of my adaptation of "The Tale of Five Balloons," which is now called "The Tale of Five Rabbis," after I added a Shtreimel, sidelocks, and a beard to the balloons. Please Betzalel don't be sad, we'll bring you another Rebbe. It's okay Aharon, this is 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 I take the child everywhere 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, says to me: Yes, because snake is numerically equivalent to Messiah. And I'm shocked. How does she know? What, can you already feel it on him? Or are the forces of the Other Side trying again to sour the redemption? Satan! Who told her? And I eat myself up all afternoon: Either... or... And I watch helplessly as she does all the silly things with him for babies, and they laugh and laugh and laugh. Let them enjoy, it's their last time.

And at night I cry in bed, and he wakes up and 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 carry him through the empty and dead streets, to the navel of the world. And we enter with him riding on me into the Old City, climb to the top of the mountain, and I lay him on the rock, tie him so he won't escape, and ask in the absolute darkness: Did you tell mom?