The Degeneration of the Nation
OPQRST
A play. The final work of Black Circle. "Linguistically brilliant, conceptually fascinating, and elegantly oscillating between nonsense and mysticism" (-Prof. Shimon Levi)
By:
(Source)
Characters: O, P, Q, R, S, T [Letter on the garment]



Act One - Beginning


Scene One: "Out of the depths I called to you"[The hideout beneath the ghetto]

O: Here in the buried bunker - whose skies are earth
Here in a hidden pit righteous - whose dreams are wickedness
A walking stick - it is the staff of war
Beneath the fading ghetto -
P: To stop the Holocaust!
O: The hour has come to the soul - below consciousness itself
P: Here a lullaby year - will tear the sky in its dream
As deep as the basement -
O: Beneath the terror
[Light on the Rebbe's bed, dark until now]

Q[Sitting on the bed]: Disciples, the intelligence on the upper realms - has collapsed
There are no answers and no power - beyond the barrier
The darkness is absolute, the heavenly silence - is incomprehensible
We were caught sleeping -
Below with the lower realms
Eye, head of the visionary division, what has been seen since?
O: Nothingness, Rebbe - the vision has been breached
No secrets to reveal - the mystery has disappeared
The future is entirely blocked - we are locked out -
And the books have stopped working
Even the names of God have been replaced as passwords
Prayers do not ascend - information does not descend
All letters are random - and the paths are broken
The heavens are no longer built according to sefirot

Q: Mouth, chief of listening, senior interpreter - what do you say?
P: Calamity - and confusion
With infinite patience we gathered signs in the darkness
Generations of exile connected letter to letter, fragments of nights, crumbs of information -
And now
The Torahs were revealed - in their nakedness, but their nakedness was not seen
Rather their bones - the secret of their knowledge was not hidden but buried
For the hidden comes from above - but the surprise from Satan
Shell within shell - the surprise came
By surprise!
Q: What?
P: The root of the Holocaust is: astonishment
Is this what we sought, the terrible secret -
That we did not know how to see?
The Other Side knew how to work
While we labored in vain to uncover hints of redemption in the nights
It c-r-e-a-t-e-d a secret, terrible - the size of exile - in broad daylight
Never to be deciphered - an incomprehensible wonder
And we were exposed as an empty shell
Blind men who searched for white light in their basement
By touch! Oh, the foolishness
And the secret -
Is that there is no secret
Q: Hush!
Mouth, shut your mouth. You've fallen into a pit - stop digging
Shall we build a tower in time of trouble - to drill into the depth of Torah's failure
Above your mouth a chasm gapes - open?
Surprise is not error, information gap - it is the sin of knowledge, the swelling of an apple
It is not intellectual ignorance, but failure of spirit
Therefore here too is the answer -
Resh, head of RST intelligence, what do you decipher?
R: Our Rabbi, we have returned to Genesis -
And within the earth this time Noah's ark
For in the heavenly firmaments doctrines suffocated - seraphim drowned
All sources are burned, the points extinguished - all lines died
In the flood of heavens they went mad, confused there, insane
S: Noises were picked up…
R: Shhh!
T: Unholy
S: And maybe a bit…
T: Foolish
R: Tav and Shin!
Q: What did they say there?!
R: Nothing
Q: Sealed secrets? Eye and Mouth will decipher the sealed codes
R: Just gibberish on the network, something that justifies, don't trouble your head righteous one
S: A bit of chit-chat…
T: Eggs
Q: Shells? And sparks?
S: More like leftovers that fell…
R: From under the wings of the Divine Presence!
T: Feathers
Q: Tav, pit of secret, that not a drop be lost, spit out what was recorded! From aleph to tav
T: God - has a tail
Q: A tail?! This is a Kabbalistic revolution
T: In the Garden of Eden dogs walk
Q: Angels are dogs? Here, the holy creatures degrade - like the faces of the generations, from above below history is reflected
T: An additional sefirah was revealed, above the Crown - a bird
Q: A breakthrough in source research! What is more than infinite light - infinite darkness?
T: A new Torah descends from above -
Q: Salvation, the Torah of redemption!
T: Torah of the nose [Translator's note: Wordplay on "Torah shebe'al peh" (Oral Torah) and "af" (nose)]
Q: An important development, even exciting, although it was written… in the early God -
T: Instead of lights in vessels flows blood
Q: Very deep - primordial red - to the very darkness of the universe! For in the image of man -
T: The Throne of Glory - toilets
Q: Excuse me, Your Honor? What's the plain meaning?
T: Water descends in the Seat of Judgment. Tikkun of the vessels - plumbing. Prayers - Niagara falls
Q: Mighty God, awesome and terrible God!
S: And the noises! Cursed are the wicked - from the sound of many waters mighty breakers of the sea -
R: Enough, enough!
S[Chanting]: - M-m-mighty on high is the Lord
R: Shin, Tav, both of you shut up now, you'll wake up Kuf! Rabbi, in the name of the Torah -
T: Instead of man, on the eighth day of creation -
Q: Is there a day of the week after Shabbat, that was hidden?
T: Which is the next millennium after the World to Come -
Q: Is there an era after man?
T: A new creature - a German clockwork entity, whose blood is codes, its flesh letters and its bones Torah-genetics - precise commandments are instruction programs, the Holocaust - breaking of the lights, Judaism after the end of the world, a great cyborg expert in the doctrine of the hidden
R: Everyone shut up!!

K: Golem
R: God have mercy, he has awakened
K: The end
R: You see what you've done
K: Finished
[The child K reads and flips through a book on the floor obsessively all the time]
Q: Kuf, my dear son, I don't know if you know… You understand my only son… Understand, my dear…
[K ignores]
R: A lofty soul
P: On the floor
O: Little Kuf, child prodigy, what's written, what did you read little one
P: The child is clearly a genius
O: Reading Rashi's commentary from age one
P: The little bug
O: Studying the Geonim and Talmud -
P: From age two the terrible one
O: In the holy Zohar - from age three
P: But the head?
R: The skinny student is a great diligent one
P: Always modest about his son the Rebbe
O: Reads at the speed of light
R: Swallows book after book
P: And what does he tell afterwards?
O: Less
R: Fills his belly with Shas and poskim, instead of games, inflates his brain - not his stomach with sweets
P: Promised Messiah - not heir and not melon, but head - watermelon
K: Father plaster
Q: He called me father!
R: Mouth, not nice. The child is definitely special
O: What did you expect Mouth from a soul not of this world of ours? That it wouldn't suffer here on the face of the earth?
P: Beneath… the earth
Q: He's right!
R: Mouth is just grumbling, Rabbi, letting off a little steam, between us. This child will yet open his mouth - and shut the mouths of those who slander his father
O: This little monkey, great will be the silent child -
Q: Mouth speaks truth, is precise! All our calculations showed that the hour was near - and behold no salvation and no redemption, Holocaust. The end of days - and behold the end of our days. The days of the Messiah - the Messiah will die. The child at all… will grow? What future are we talking about, what are we talking about - Judaism never imagined, in the worst dreams - and we stand astonished
S: From the word Holocaust?
T: And rattling
R: Quiet!
Q: The Germans - and the shepherds! The dogs above us up high are searching, we are imprisoned in an endless night, without horizon - and even spiritual. Indeed our sickness he bore, and our dreams - my son
O[Hugging K who stops for a moment from the book and looks at him in wonder]: Poor little monkey, you understand your father, yes?
R: If he hadn't been mute - then it would have been amazing. There are no words for the darkness - for the annihilation of things and the end of nights and cessation of letters - in the cave of closing. We have reached the end - on the brink of the edge of language a step before the linguistic abyss -
T: Little poor one!
P: When trying to force the end with brazenness - is it a wonder that the Other Side changes faces - and sticks out an elongated tongue?
Q: Indeed, we have missed the hour, we have gone too far. For even if we tear the heavens with supplications and stop the Germans now - we have already been defeated in the spiritual Holocaust
T: The dogs smell Jews, we are not allowed to even stink
R: Our teacher, please - if we on the RST team are not succeeding in creating communication, we need despite the severe prohibition and terrible danger - to go back to mail - dove
O: An ark sunken in the land of decree - needs an opening to the sky - please!
Q: And if the evening darkens and I do not return - and if I return a black raven?
R: We will help here. Team OP, and team SRT - will guard you like a ministering angel
Q: And Kuf, for whom I am guiltier than all, what will become of him in the world?
P: I will be surety for him - from my hand you may seek him
Q: You?
P: Satan - is not defeated without his boss, a small tip. Hell has come to us - you must ascend to the upper world, the solution to the Final Solution - is the Infinite Solution. We have no permission to try - and we have no permission not to try
T: I will record all that you utter
R: They can stop visions, block listening, imprison in camps, forbid encryptions -
S: But the son of Satan has not yet been born - who does not allow in bed to sleep
O: Dreams!
K: Death


[They sing the lullaby and circle around the bed, while Q falls asleep on it, covering himself with a tallit as a blanket, while K continues to sit on the floor and obsessively flip through the book]

Lullaby

R: Blessed are those who dream and do not wake - for they will not see their brokenness
Blessed are the children who will not grow - for they will not see the nakedness of their fathers
Blessed is he who did not see the Holocaust - blessed are those who died in their sin
S: Therefore sleep righteous tooth, forget the sin of the pride of the burdensome genius -
And the terrible birth, sleep righteous tooth - nothing will justify anymore
The day, no past will hold the dream
That will not suppress that there is no future, nothing will be ancient anymore -
Therefore sleep righteous tooth
T: Sleep Rebbe - for the red preceded darkness and light
Chick to nest will not return - for the gas is more spiritual than the bird
Failure forget, orphan do not remember -
Can your heart bury
That memory will pass, but not a dream -
And the void in you will be sin
O: If your sin will be to void, and darkness to redemption
If not the redness of man but darkness - and the shadow salvation
If the creation of the inanimate rises - above the speaker, fall asleep
And a desolate child - in a book seals - upon you the exile
P: Who is the man thirsty for heaven - he will yet quench exile
Who peeks into the forgetting of mercy - he is blinded to reveal
Blessed is he who finds in the darkness of days the light of nights
K[Quieter and quieter, like an echo]: Letter letter letter letter letter letter…



Scene Two: "And the pit was empty, there was no water in it - but there were snakes and scorpions in it"[Bottom of the pit]

Snake: Shhh… I smell. There is in the darkness - a guest
Scorpion: Oh, snake, go back to snoring. The black is flexible, but here there is a hole - no wind
The pit is empty, generations have passed
Snake: Dear scorpion, he is close - I feel
Scorpion: At the bottom there is nothing new. Snake head, in dreams. There he bites
But here, from the bottom of our pit - only a tunnel rises to the night sky, the star mine. And its luck - is bad
Snake: For years the pit longed, dried up like a shameful sin - there is a man here
Scorpion: Who is not silent! The Messiah himself will not come. Nonsense
Snake: In a living ear I sense…
Joseph[Suddenly illuminated sleeping, the snake's tongue in his ear, holding back laughter]: Haha… silly
Snake: The pit trembled, excited, shaken -
Joseph: Enough digging with your tongue, not funny, let me sleep…
Snake: Hole in the head of a wanted man -
Joseph: You're waking a senior dreamer, fellow
Snake: Returned, returned to the scene of the crime! Remembered the descent of the slope - cruel, but straight -
Scorpion: Brother to wickedness! Yo what fun, the pit missed you - Joseph!
Snake: To sting or to bite?
Scorpion: Whoever shouts first!
Snake: I found him first, I just whispered, not fair!
Scorpion: Fair in the Garden of Eden you'll seek! I caught Joseph
Snake: You'd sell your brother for a little pinch in the heart?
Joseph: Enough fighting, there's enough for everyone. Hell is already preferable to the "perfect" Garden of Eden
Scorpion: He's not crying?
Snake: And calling out to his brothers, begging?
Scorpion: What's it worth then?
Joseph: Indeed, it was all in vain
Snake: You know Joseph - it hurts a lot
Scorpion: Burns!
Snake: The sting grows into you like a tree - and swells like a living apple. And then knowledge comes - and its pain you will know
Scorpion: You scream daddy daddy! And mother is dead, what a bummer
Snake[Passing tongue over the coat of many colors]: Soaked, all around everyone ignores you - in the obtuseness of an Egyptian mummy - from all directions they bury, in prisoner's garb, stained as deceit. And all the great dreams - disappear
Scorpion: And nothing burns like the renunciation of youth. What should have been - will never be. Do you understand?
[They grab him]
Snake: To your spirit rises the venom, and within you descends the waterfall of destruction. You regret hopes - understand pains. Lost dreams are found in you as wisdoms at night - that after deeds. And the price of knowledge revealed, in total was - all your deepest desires
Scorpion: The end is the sting of days, Yossi
Snake: And what do they cover? In you the hole, you are the pit - and this is the secret -
All nights are hollow
Q[Voice from above]: No, no!!
Scorpion: What, who's here?
Snake: The mouth of the pit speaks! And shudders - like a tongue in a throat - my tail
Scorpion: What a prophet. Who's up there?
Joseph: Help! They've come to take me out, to listen -
Scorpion: Sure! What's up, bro how's it going?
Snake: They forgot you long ago - within time!
Scorpion: And outside space…
Snake: Exilic like a Jew, not Josephic?
Joseph: Not yet final, but there's no time. For the dream, like the upper world, is the infinite solution -
Scorpion: He's gone off the rails!
Joseph: That is, space outside of time - and the black hole is between them a pipe -
Scorpion: From which we'll sell you - for cash
Joseph: Get me out righteous one, must warn -
Q[From the top of the pit, not visible to them]: Righteous with stress on first syllable - not last
Scorpion: Another nudnik, damn it
Snake: It's the terrible voice!
Scorpion: And sausage

Joseph: Urgent! Traveler, don't go. Wandering Jew -
Incline your ear - and ascend from the pit of truth
Is it not now time to admit -
Judaism was a mistake, all the confessions and prayers
Josephic methods were preferable - of nightmares and dreams
Q[Positioned throughout the scene at the top of the pit, which is significantly deeper than human height. Peeks with his head]: The service of God is the rest of sleep?
Joseph: Indeed today is weekday, and the dream - Sabbath of the Divine Presence
Q: I was right - when I fell asleep
Scorpion: Fun indeed, applause
Q: Every weary one as dead - receives wings here
Scorpion: Or beatings
Joseph: But your view is superficial, look into the darkness deeply
Not charity and righteousness are righteousness - only night pipes, like chimneys - eyes
In the flight of eyelids, souls ascend to the heavens -
And now gas and smoke - and there is no spirit
And Judah will err twice - replaced Joseph's dream with the story of Egyptian exile
Q: And why is your honor's bed there below - bound?
Joseph: The nightmare of Josephness - by Judaism pursued to destruction
In darkness came to me knowledge of terror - and in night terrors I was cast inside -
Q: What?
Joseph: The mission was cast upon us: to deliver a warm warning - in slumber
Q: I made a heavenly ascent of the soul - I found a hole in the ground
Joseph: Dear brother! This is the voice of your brothers' blood
Crying out to you from the ground -
Q: What have you done?
Joseph: With my right hand I did not cover my sin - it is my nightmare
The great righteous ones call me Joseph the Pest
In the depths they buried me again in the pit of the ancient past
And tormenting angels think it's funny!
Snake: If he stops with his dreaming - will he be post-traumatic?
Joseph: They make a program of failures for dreams - call me the coat of zeros
You'll yet discover where the stripes will lead
Even if the clocks are broken
They show the time - once in a Holocaust - with German precision
Snake: The whole upper world knows - child genius
But he has a madness - that hell will swallow the Garden of Eden
Joseph: And the abyss will devour hell!
Q: Are you the famous Joseph?
Scorpion: The striped one
Snake: Like every gifted child assembled. From how sophisticated he is - incomprehensible
Scorpion: Yossi, my defeated child

Q: This is not what I expected - beneath the fields of the Garden of Eden
Dirty as fertilizer - but there are expectations in the pastures
[Turns to them]: Holy ones on high, sleepers of the world, whose crowns are on their heads -
Scorpion: Like pillows!
Q: In a difficult situation, redemption I come to seek
And to renew the connection with the World to Come -
For the Lord has not come to us in a vision,
Not a prophecy of destruction - excuse me, Holocaust - even one before it is fulfilled -
Therefore although there is no permission
To mix domain with domain -
I have come sleeping
Snake: It is forbidden to force the end, so it doesn't come when awake!
In excuse - pressed, to law closed - and then winks
Scorpion: The laughter is not joking
Snake: Breaks out brazen and reckless
Scorpion: You know what the punishment is for an unauthorized soul ascent?
Joseph: Listen! The guilt will be atoned - if you just get me out of the ground
Snake: Red atonement
Joseph: Don't listen to them, listen! I dreamed that rumors begin in the upper world, whispered from ear to ear in the Garden of Eden and spreading like wildfire in the lawns, angels go out on missions and do not return, they send seraphim after them and find only smoking bonfires, and the Erelim are already wailing like cats and refusing orders, everyone pretends not to hear the Ophanim creaking at night - urgent trips, and the righteous of the upper world pay not to be called up to the Torah and are forced to bring in wicked ones to fill the rows - for God must continue to work, but these criminals steal branches from the Tree of Life and barbecue the holy creatures that run away, and they grab the wheelchairs and play races with the Patriarchs, on the right Michael curses: Is this your people Israel? and on the left Gabriel can't overcome the cleaning and Raphael collapses with limp hands, the entire Heavenly Academy is asked questions about leg tefillin and ashes of pink cows, they play with the sprinklers and spray on the Talmuds and young Torahs, until the letters melt and new mutations and growths are created in the jungle of Eden of mosquito angels stinging and righteous monkeys and herds of modest cows in headscarves from nose to tail drinking like beasts in drought all four rivers, and the Garden is really drying up and the whole Torah is holey moldy cheese until a holy fire begins that they can't extinguish, and new insights are no longer born but only talk about the new rebellions of angels and righteous ones who want to fix God and the whole Torah is full of metastases and bugs in the sefirot and infinite loops, that spread in the heights naked women who escape from boiling hell liberated, and the righteous walk with closed eyes and fall from the heavens in the expanding tears of the firmaments, and the clouds of glory hide terrible shames and the Throne of Judgment becomes the cover of his bed and the wings of the Divine Presence to a quarter of a bird hovering over the face of the abyss and actually on Yom Kippur the Divine Chariot got drunk like on Purim and rolled down to Azazel in the wilderness and Mount Sinai is found in China and they manufacture disposable angels that accumulate in disgruntled dumps and clog all the pipes and prayers don't ascend and from the River of Fire only heavy smoke remains and the sound of the shofar is heard as sirens and Satan doesn't answer messages and the demons flee from Sheol screaming and the sling shoots our angels by mistake and cancer spreads to Essence and Being and foolishness is the craft of dreams and the expanded consciousness is a growth in minds - and no one even asks where is God for heaven's sake.

And you must help - not let this happen.

[Darkened]
Transition section [The ritual of circling continues around Q's sleeping bed, with only K continuing as always to sit and read obsessively]

EFRST[singing]:
The teacher ascended the dream mountain in darkness - and will not return yet
Bound on his bed like an atonement offering - we'll wait for him like a donkey
We have neither day nor night - the Rebbe has ascended on high
A blink of an eye - redemption
E: And it shall come to pass at evening time, there shall be light
Living as dead, silent as a tree -
F: And snoring like a saw
R: A letter will record his mumblings - in the book may God preserve



Scene Three: "Let the mother come and wipe her son's excrement - let the cow come and atone for the deed of the calf"[Inside a treetop, in a dark forest]

Young Woman: Poor red heifer - please, don't touch anymore
They will arrive and discover us all soon
The Red Heifer: Lost, lost! Golden child - just born, where will he flee? Beloved son
Even if he hides his body in a thick trunk - like a torch in darkness they will discover the tail
My world darkened because of the light of gold - a golden dream was born, a false skin
Bereft of calves - a deceptive stream, cruel radiance darkened like an abandoned wreath!
Woman: Please don't - not now
There's no pain like a well-broken dream, which you loved -
But it won't bring back your golden calf
Heifer: The darkness invaders will melt you, barn messiah, into silver
You'll burn in hellfire, pay the price of mercenaries
I'll be caught and slaughtered, and you'll be inserted into me again, to a mother's womb
But against nature, only in the way of Sodom
Like a coin in a red wallet
Woman: Wretched one, perhaps the child lost in the divine tumult - like us escaped?
Here, inside the garden, in the depths of Eden, in absolute supreme secrecy - the darkness of refugees hides stealthily
Heifer: The oppressors pass tree after tree and set fire - it's clear to you which tree they're searching for
Woman: Cursed ones! But in the underground hidden from the invaders, in the darkness of primeval forests, we encounter sights and remnants unimaginable
An angel cut and no longer flying, for it has only one wing left - an octopus entangled with hand tefillin - two Queen Esthers fighting over a scepter on one Vashti's tail - Jacob's worm peeks from a hole in the fruit of knowledge, and immediately hides - and under the wings of the Divine Presence deodorant - and under a fig leaf artificial insem…
Heifer: Indeed a mixture of the mixed multitude in a great night, so what?
Woman: Perfect red heifer of the Lord, without blemish! The true calamity is the desecration of nights -
Turning the heavens into void, the Name into desolation from dreams, and the Torah will die -
But the revolution failed
Heifer: And you persist
Woman: The black medium teems with vitality - for nightmare is a cover for possibility
When there's a hole in the logic of reality - the breach of imagination is found
And the blood is drained - until a metaphor is found -
When all is hidden
Don't you see how every god trembles, how the world to come works, how we are on the verge of discovery?
Heifer: I peeked from the hiding place at the messianic donkey painted black, a frog that escaped from the plague of the Nile, wine that died for the sanctification of God's name may He protect, a schnitzel that escaped from an abusive kugel, a fox that fled from a rolling shtreimel…
Woman: My heifer, what haven't I seen here? Partisan parasites, terrorist Haredim, rebellious Rebbes, outcast Kabbalists, kosher pigs, huge skinny ones, Psalms against cats, the Four Species for sexual freedom, a week with Sabbath on the eighth day, a righteous man after an ape, a small bastard as High Priest, the greatest of the generation who didn't die even after the generation died… This is a generation of broken tablets, spiritual shattering, fragments of dreams
The Heifer: The end of days has become the end of nights! God doesn't know what efficiency is
Until the heavens collapsed, they cut - endlessly, made Judaism - a salad
Woman: I heard here a shofar stuck in Haman's ear in the desert kosher for Passover for eaters of Hanukkah menorahs lit by Sabbath clocks a cow born from an egg on a holiday postponed from a fast that fell on Sukkot from schach whose growth is from the land flowing with gentile milk observant of the Noahide laws in Moses' ark who struck the rock and silence in two
Heifer: We should be quiet, my sister
Woman: Yes, enough. Let's whisper what needs to be shouted - - [in the loudest whisper]: But what about me?
Stupid mutations, really laughable! - but what monster is inside me, growing from my blood?
Developing in my womb a half-monster, half human
And half from the invaders' blood, and the months are over - to remove
I couldn't bring myself - to stop
Heifer: What will you do?
Woman: I was forced to bring a little Satan son, to fall in love with a sweet and terrible demon
Even today approached, advanced, in another day, today - when I'll have a child from hell
Heifer: And every night the army from hell approaches, advances in the Garden of Eden from the east - they are everywhere
Woman: But the remaining angels don't give up, they plant charges for them in fruits, bury teachings and encrypt, hide in caves secret mysteries, hidden righteous ones go out on unknown missions -
Heifer: And do they return? -
Or not?
At nights the black soldiers search - for shining angels in the skies
With flashlights of darkness they extinguish them - and the firmaments are desolate
If three stars don't remain - the Sabbath will never end
This will be the last week, finally - there simply won't be a Sunday!
The end of days is an endless night - only the dream will separate dying from sleeping
Woman: Even Satan won't allow this to happen!
Heifer: The breaking of the vessels was child's play compared to the extinguishing of lights
Woman: Remember how we laughed in the darkness during power outages in the wheels, when the troubles began?
Heifer: We don't even begin to internalize the replacement of infinite light with infinite darkness - and the meaning for nothingness and the end
This is a rearguard battle - they've blocked the era of radiance
And the new faces of the secret - they've sealed
In the end there's no more ability to grasp - who? what? moo
Woman: Heifer, what did they hear at your place?!
Heifer[whispers]: God's shadow will replace His image
And a new man of darkness there - made
Not from the material of earth, but from the heavens - desolate
His name - and the blood is nothing
A spiritual machine -
A dream made in Germany
Woman: When God started paying in black - then I knew there was almost no light left
When the Creator of the world gave up on everyone - then I understood that the heavens need mercy
When the glory changed from clouds and thunder to a very vague matter
When chaos celebrated in the Garden of Eden that grew into a jungle on earth
When dreams were buried in nights, forgotten in eclipse of lights
And their meaning turned from hidden teachings to incest
When the holy beasts became the holiness of vitality which is human impurity
When they filtered that we need Satan to make order and return the upper ones to the top
When they complained that at least in hell they walk in darkness without fear
[in a whisper]: Then I knew we need to start whispering

Tz[illuminated]: Who speaks there like a snake?
Woman[immediately covers her face]: Son!
Peeking into the women's section, hide in another tree
Tz: Dear righteous woman, the average here in the garden is over sixty
How did it happen that you arrived so young - up here?
Woman: Now he'll ask if it hurt - when you fell from the Garden of Eden
Tz: Forgive me
Heifer: Before you climb a high tree, ask: have you seen my shining son in the darkness?
Tz: I seem to recognize some spark… in her voice. Do I know you from somewhere, woman? Why are you hiding your face?
Heifer: He starts as if there's no shame - for her I'm all red
Tz: Beyond an abyss of darkness, mountains of forgetfulness, far from within an ancient era…
Woman[revealing her face]: You can't remember anything
Like you won't remember the nipple, the lullabies, or how you forgot the lunch bag, lost time after time on the way back home, I yelled at you so much - and now I'm crying, please - go
Tz: These too shall forget, and I will not forget you
Woman: What, what remains from such a tender age? After being taken like that… just a vague figure
Tz: Mom!
Woman: Run, save yourself
Tz: Mom!
Woman: Take fruit from the tree for your journey
Tz: Mom!
Heifer: Mom is dead! Did you fall on your head to give him a taste
Woman: Eat save your soul
Heifer: Shut your mouth don't reveal, stupid
Woman: This isn't just any tree, it's THE tree, eat and don't listen to the beast
Heifer: Forbidden forbidden, grave sin for the soul
Woman: This is the Tree of Life, son, soul
Heifer: Shocked! Traitor, exposing like incest the core of the secret - of the world of truth, the hidden tree in the garden on which they declared a war of excision, the only one even the angel of death fears
Woman: This is the only way, the Holocaust will not spare any soul
[Tz reaches his hand to the tree]
Heifer: Listen! Don't act like a child - don't repeat the sin again, don't ruin the correction at the moment of truth, don't be tempted before the time, redemption will collapse, all who eat - do not die, but those who eat - die
[Tz's hand remains suspended in the air - the scene darkens without resolution]


The Annulment of Vows [EFRST choir - the ritual of circling around Tz]:

Red heifer - like its ashes and blood
The pure - it defiles, the impure - it purifies
Torah within Torah - cancels itself
The promised was violated - but the promise was annulled
Slaughtered and burned - a covenant without repair
And from too much wisdom - there's no way back

Chorus: It learned and learned - but did not learn
Its future it did not know - will not know
It is its secret - and became its blood

Without a dream a nation will fall - the night will take its own
Isn't exile sleep - where did it dream then?
Not a red heifer - but falling asleep it is
If mothers of purification
Must the Torah die - in the tent of the menorah?
The teaching of the secret learning of darkness - not illumination
When there's no holy darkness - impure darkness is exposed
Satan's dreaming nightmare of war

Chorus

White night - black day will birth
Chronicles - silence of nights
Heavens became earth - its exchange
Of mother for heifer
The vision of wakefulness - will beget dead literature
The Zohar was a mistake -
The correction - a book of darkness
For a Torah not dreamlike - always dwells in the past
A world without future - the Holocaust site
Without dreams or children - the post-human era

Chorus



Act Two - Middle


Scene Four: "It is impossible to speak of the matter of tzimtzum [divine contraction] literally"[The hiding place under the ghetto]

R: Tav, what is written?
T: His lips murmur - in his bed his secrets
R: Closing and locking his eyes - betraying and his words will shine
In darkness he will walk - and come in lights
T: But the syllables - are not clear
Weak… fluttering…
R: To higher teachings?
S: Tell him, come on!
F: We stayed here with the troubles
And the righteous one there with the cows
R: What is written there in the Torah?
[Takes the page from T]
"Your mother is a cow"
E: Did she pull a cow?
[Silence]
R: Something happened
K: Bad!
F: What are you talking about! Exactly like our son, our righteous Messiah, our righteous speaker
E: Tztztzt…
R: A deep code?
F: When Tzadi becomes Tzadik, in the end it ends with Kuf
K: Fly!
R: Eye illuminates the eye, mouth interprets the mouth -
May your words illuminate the sayings of the weary -
Dreams will fly
F: The Germans in the upper realms - and we are here inside, dreaming
Evacuating the ghetto, these are the last days - and at our place they sleep
And write, like good Jews - and bad dogs
When eyes close - noses don't disappear
And the German shepherds - search, what to do, in underwear
Counting - sheep - and commentators!
K: Doze!
E: With half a mouth mouth rules twice:
Not here and not there - above, and if not now - not in a dream
Indeed in the past, in the breaking of vessels in destruction, did not the Name contract in space - exile and heavens
But today, in the Holocaust of lights, the Name contracted itself in time itself: sun stand still - and moon diamond
The generations were suspended, Eden became still - and the hours darkness, going and dozing
On the threshold of the final end it's already too late endlessly - year two thousand
But in the end we need to cut from within the end - for day has turned
R: Indeed, mouth, the spirit of darkness hovers over the face of nothingness -
And the upper faces are faces of the abyss
Truth, we won't make it, eye -
The Other Side put the infinite in Sodom's bed
But only one question remains, last and therefore - final, on the night that turned to day:
Saving the dreamer or the dream
E: If we can't save the dreamer - at least let's save the dream!
F: It's impossible to save the dream!
Not only are the Jews dying - Judaism will die
Idiots, there are no more prayers, or the attribute of mercy
Psalms can be thrown in the trash, Nazism has already won, and now you come? - and advance! -
With dreams, that will replace prayers, that replaced sacrifices -
But here they are: the sacrifices! And with them the foolishness, and death of dreams
E: The essence of profanation is the void - and not time, in the Third Temple - we are the burnt offerings
But instead of desecration of the Name will come dreaming of the Name, and the vast night - will replace His palace
Tav are you recording? - The contraction in time, not in space - is the slogan of the last generation
A hole and not black - like Moses will peek beyond the world - and will never pass
T: Can you repeat?
F: And what do you see there eye, in a world where we are not?
S: Maybe, in the absence of words for darkness - a vision of nights will come!
T: Tell him, in heaven's name - or say you won't!
[E is silent]
E: I see nothing
F: Ah!
E: But one thing I know
My eye like a mouth knows taste - from the darkness of mystery:
Who is the world champion - in spiritual survival
After being physically exterminated - time after time?
Jewish culture is perhaps the only one of all -
That can reach the future -
Beyond man
And what is the secret? Why more than any other book, the Torah
Has passed through languages and eras and concepts, a tremendous journey
To frighten?
And is it capable of leaping over the darkness of the final abyss?
F: And leaving us behind, on the cliff?
E: Exactly!
F: And if there's no other side to the black abyss?
E: And if we go to sleep and don't wake up?
The Holocaust is the arrival at the inhuman world
We enter the night, cover ourselves - and don't know if we'll come out
F: For behold the Nazis are defeating God - we are inside the German dream!
And you here mouth - turn it into a Torah plan
E: Yes mouth, I do!
F: Spiritual kapo!
R: Mouth! Bite your pain with your lips, and for you eye, see this as a warning from an evil eye!
After the verbal end, only a form of metaphor remains
Knocking and not entering, on the future threshold, as in prophecy
Dreaming precisely because it doesn't see
S: Resh, tell the PE team deciphering the resting, the end that the SRAT team is calculating
T: At the end of every polishing it's caught in the net
E: What did you just do -
F: Resh, Shin, Tav?
R: We recorded to its end - the equation
At whose beginning was placed Holocaust
For what is the messianic era, ah?
Is it a divine explosion, infinite revelation,
Or perhaps final disappearance? Blinding light - or blinding darkness?
The temporal contraction theory that the righteous one taught - is more radical
Than anything our teacher imagined
Because after the Name contracts in time, an era arrives
Of chaos, in which He is not there, and only a trace remains -
Of God in the world
S: From division by zero a remainder was left -
T: The work of Satan
R: And also an end begins - that is, a remnant - of man!
F: Our teacher fell asleep - and they instead of eagerly recording the utterance of his lips
E: Find time -
F: Double meaning -
E: To invent a new theory of divine withdrawal from his words
F: No wonder the decoding failed - doomed like fate itself?
E: And the code utterly torn - like a madman?
R: Eye and mouth, please not in your anger
If a messenger was sent to the empty space -
How much more so to empty time -
Will you not update your calculations here?
F: Indeed eye, why work on the space of dreams -
E: When here they're already dealing with the space of solutions, mouth?
F: Besides, instead of closing, with a little contraction eye -
E: The theory of contraction is the theory of blinking - don't open your mouth
F: I'm just yawning!
E: Who needs to dream? To ascend to heaven?
Just open a big mouth, whose breath is knowledge and his tongue lips -
And swallow the upper realms
F: I'm just burping - spiritual aid
R: You bared your teeth, commentator friends!
The secret is to survive - the changes
And the changes - only the secret will survive
Not us personally, or the human world, even the teachings
Will not survive as books, stories or literature, but perhaps - as dreams
And for this interpretation will not suffice - without the opposite action: concealment and disappearance
To us too our teacher left a remnant in his ascension - like the Name itself:
Not only to transform his dream into his teaching
But to transform his teaching - into his dream
The contraction in times means - the existence of spiritual eras
Different manifestations of God - and of His disappearance
F: Again the premature rumors began -
E: The worn-out clichés! -
F: About His death?
T: Oh come on, rest quietly
S: God forbid of course
R: Far be it from us such secular crudeness - in the face of the holiness of the sacrifice
But the absent God is a space-time, therefore: His previous contraction in the space of the world
Opened to Jews expanses of time - and now the opposite is also revealed!
In the ancient contracted species, in the cut-off organ of the future,
In the covenant of shortened time, in lives without tomorrow -
The spiritual space is found again -
And the dream returned
F: But not the Rebbe
E: The righteous one doesn't dream far enough -
F: And doesn't sound close at all -
E: The time has come -
F: To wake him!
R: What?
F: So we agreed here unanimously -
E: And one eye -
F: We need to bring him back from above
E: We two, his commentators, see with one eye
F: The failure of solving his dream
T: No!!!
S: Sinners like calves
Seeing that our teacher delays coming down from the upper realms
For we know not what has become of this man - his dream!
E: We are obligated to wake him, unfortunately
R: Don't take his world from him
F: Soon you'll say: the remnant!
R: Indeed the remnant is the opposite of the beginning at the end -
It is the divine tail, the bone from which we rise -
What remains after the contractions
F: Or the primordial serpent
S: Or your deadly tongue!
T: I haven't finished recording the righteous mouth!
F: Opens his mouth like a baby spitting out - remnant
But the dream doesn't decide
R: In a dispute between teacher and student?!
E: Mouth, let's give one last chance to the dreamer
R: Agreed, give him more time
F: Like we gave to the little one, the great promise? Hears everyone
And doesn't grasp anything -
E: But in his father's deep book he reads - like…
F[in sorrow]: Nothing
Another stillborn promise of the teacher -
The apple didn't fall far from the flood of the dreaming tree -
Below knowledge
R: Truth cries out from your mouth, but you pound and pound
T: Spitting on us… fire
S: The child is not… stupid
E[turns to K]: Oh little bug bug, when will you recover?
K: Six


Song of the Letters [E, F, R, S, T sing, circling around Tz and K who this time reads at the foot of the bed]

Bedtime hour - time of reverie
Awake horseman - eyelid flies
Serve bedtime - you will stretch out
You solved the meaning - you will spread
Chain of EFRST
Chapter of six

Suddenly - angel flew
Flutter butterfly spark
Suddenly - give dust
You will open hell gate
You will rustle evil

[Turning to K]: Pull yourself together, friend
Make noise, go wild, play
Share, search, interpret
Sew shhh… sing!
Language of six friend
Search set-K
[The last letter K says after they grab his head]



Scene Five: "And he ascended on high and asked of the man clothed in linen - and he told him. Accept upon yourselves, righteous ones and friends, for I heard from behind the curtain that in this you are caught"[The upper world, three screens one behind the other]

[First screen - heavenly yeshiva, sitting around the table-bed-ark, on the screen behind a presentation is projected as a rectangle of light door]

Moses: At the beginning of the secret meeting, stand up, for an overview of the intelligence Name - Maimonides, head of the MBM [intelligence agency], the revolution among revolutions
Freud: Or the mask among masks
Moses: More wisecracks, Rabbi Dr. Freud? You've just ascended to the heavenly yeshiva, and already you're lowering the level
Freud: Pardon me, Moses our teacher, but prophecy was given to fools - after the destruction of time. Why is dreaming in bed - and language on the couch?
Moses: The question, Sigmund our student, is whether dreams are cause or sign, what does Maimonides think?
Maimonides[standing by the presentation and pointing with a stick]: Though there is no sign from paradise, there is no cause for confusion - with high probability. Revolution - with low probability. The yeshiva will be able to respond with a strong hand to confused rebels, for every argument we have prepared a refutation. We have written many books, and every day countless rabbis are added. Don't look for causes and effects when mediocrity can be explained with medium probability. What, Rabbi Sigmund, in the middle of the presentation?
Freud[who had raised his hand]: In my experience, with us are all the geniuses and giants, and the Germans in paradise - with dwarf-height probability. Race is a judgment on the person, but the Nazis see Jews as objects -
Maimonides: Nu, ignoramuses!
Freud: After all, murder is only a sublimation of the desire to argue over excuses for a serious question. Therefore soon they will develop such complicated laws of slaughter that they will hardly be able to slaughter a Jew. They have not yet dreamed dreams that we have already forgotten, and thanks to secularism it will be almost impossible to identify a kosher Jew. Yes Moses? I mean Rabbi, sorry
Moses[who had tried to restrain him]: Assessment: The Name is close to entering the battle. The Other Side doesn't know which side to read a page of Talmud! What chance do such heads have against Rashi? Or let's say even against some apostate thinker! What do you say then, Mr. Marx?
Marx[who had raised his hand]: The materialists of the world have united - dictatorship of hell. The lower spiritual classes think everything is matter, but the exact opposite is true in the upper world - and in dreams, which are a window to it. Matter is made of spirit, they turn knowledge into an apple. Are we facing a spiritual revolution?
Moses: Are there signs of this?
Marx: The only sign that testifies is blood, indeed according to the book, but it could be just an author. A prejudice against the color red, stemming from false consciousness planted by Satan - that doesn't believe in man
Maimonides: Perhaps the rivers of blood are a hint to the kingdom of Edom?
Freud: And the rivers - a symbol of warnings in red ink! Which are metonyms for tomato juice! Which interpretation demands as nonsense. Antisemitism is not a spiritual problem but a psychological one. A dream can turn into a nightmare - out of hatred of dreaminess, and envy of Joseph-ness, which was not created in Satan. The solution is in the human psyche - not in the human spirit. The invaders are screens, mirrors to the hell within. I believe you disagree, Maimonides
Maimonides: I disagree with you deeply, deeply! [in a scholarly tune]: The real question is not whether the question is real, but whether the question of whether the question is real is the real one - and what the very question teaches us. For the true purpose of the Torah - and the world! - is educational, scholarly. To teach us that there is no truth in saying true, but rather the adjective true is not false, and the question is not not a question meaning not an answer. For unlike man, God is without separation both the dream and the dreamer and the dreamed, because one cannot say of Him that His very existence is existential in a positive way - and this is dreaminess, which is the shadow of negativity -
Moses[in a scholarly tune]: For if, the dream is the embodiment of reality - which is unbearable to cope with, from falling face down to shattering tablets - or perhaps reality is the embodiment of the dream - which is itself the impossibility, as falling face up to the heavens and extracting a word from a rock with blows -
Freud[in a scholarly tune]: So if I interpret as dream interpretation, and turn nights into teachings, or conversely force teachings as mountains upon nights, and desecrate dreams, then the most hidden secret sanctuary of God is not what arose in thought - but what descends in His dream, in the divine subconscious hidden there - even from Himself, in the furnace of a world burned like forgotten things -
Marx[in a scholarly tune]: So if we interpret dreams as forces, and capital cases as monetary cases, until all the hidden mysteries become despised interests and conspiracy as a ready excuse for all difficulties in the Torah, what then remains?
Freud: Rabbi Marx, nothing remains anymore, but God needs no more than four cubits of heaven - here in the yeshiva. The criminals have torn the firmaments, and the heavens are dripping and running out, and only ignoramuses will remain, who sleep and wake with nothing in between inside. But we have merited, here inside, to sit in the yeshiva, to stand in the standing prayer, to walk according to the law, to rest on the day of rest, and fortunate are we - to lie in lying down, and even to dream in Chelem
Moses: Shadow of the Divine Presence - living the dream and sleeping the life! As a prophet I testify - wonders of intelligence! Every paradise claims that Satan is a young energetic and admired innovator, and God an old dreamy outdated man, but that's in the simple meaning, open intelligence, indeed known to every child in kindergarten. While in the hidden secret, for those who know grace, according to Kabbalah, there is a new God - only it's a wondrous secret [winks conspicuously]
Maimonides: Pardon the secret of his Torah, the wise Aristotle is the absolutely latest word… absolute!
Freud: Heaven forbid, modern up-to-date Jewish intelligence is under - to know. A huge innovation in Torah - with a closed eye!
Marx: How does one study Talmud? Through learning the system of donations to the yeshiva and the structure of the charity box - the structure of the righteous!
Tz[illuminated]: Was I called by name?
Moses: New boy in the institution. Who are you my student?
Tz: Tzaddik [righteous one]
Moses: A sign to the heavens! Finally a real intelligence man has arrived, hide his face for him [only his face is darkened]. Tzaddik, explain what's happening down there to us old men, it's not written in the Torah so we are helpless
Maimonides: Moreover, what's not in the Torah is not possible
Tz: How can one explain the impossible?
Moses: They say that there, behind the presentation screen, hides the Name, the impossible and unattainable possibility. But the show goes on, because it's forbidden to enter, and more than that - impossible. The Torah is the final boundary, and beyond it - only heresy, do you understand? That's how they explain
Tz: There - the Name?
Maimonides: First existent - more correct
Marx: Environment of all environments
Freud: And plot of all plots
Tz: Then I have something to say to Him!
Moses: To cross - a severe transgression in the Torah
Tz: Then I am wicked - with the Torah's permission
Freud: Don't you dare! It's forbidden to enter beneath the sub-subconscious
Tz: I come on the understanding of lucid dreaming, entering consciously
Marx: This is betrayal of the world below, give him a forced interpretation!
Moses: Quick, and they raised an objection, Maimonides - give him a refutation, boom!
Maimonides[standing by the presentation, lifts a huge book]: Come come you transgressor, I'm holding here the Strong Hand, I'm the Rambo of the Torah -

[Tz comes towards him and simply passes through the presentation screen, which opens, the entire previous scene is darkened, and a dog is tied there, and behind it another screen]

The Dog: Woof!
Tz: Honorable doggy! Is this a joke? An unclean animal in the sanctuary? Where is your God?
Dog: I am a holy animal, shame on you. Guarding my Lord, the Name for you
Tz: Sorry
Dog: Stay away from the Name or I'll bite you in your behind
Tz: What, an angel dog?
Dog: Don't wag your tongue, I'm a wicked landowner's dog
Tz: Sounds like it
Dog: You have a Jewish smell - my nose is sharp scented, soon you'll be scared - and I'll bark
Tz: A hybrid between a dog and an angel, or perhaps a bitch?
Dog: Be careful be careful you're annoying me and I'll break free
Tz: This leash - a certificate of ultra-orthodox tying
Dog: Careful careful my wrath is awakening, soon I'll go grrr...
Tz: Where dogs speak - perfectly righteous ones do not pass
Dog: Correct because I am a righteous dog - does that amuse you
Tz: Righteous?
Dog: Yes, because I'm a dog that didn't harm, therefore - I reached paradise
What terrible shame from hell - I caused the poor landowner
Every time they would call him to a pogrom - just for laughs
And when an old Jew would pass by - all the guys would shout:
Release the dog on him from the leash, ha-ha
If you want us to ever include you in a crusade
And I would return to him - with tefillin straps and covenant in tail
I didn't touch pork and forbidden foods - I became very thin
They would serve me in fine china - and laugh to tears
They sicced me on kosher Jewish women and I would lick their fingers
And now from shame the wretched master can't even wander in hell
Because he's the only landowner who arrived without a dog
Tz: And you claim you are God's dog?
Dog: Where will they put a dog that reached paradise, I suffer from discrimination -
They didn't accept me in the heavenly yeshiva - and don't release me to the grass
Because the rabbis are afraid, shame - they tied me here and forgot
The landowner would at least pat your head
Tz: Dog of the Name, I need to enter
Dog: Sit here with me and wait
Tz: For a miracle?
Dog: If needed, two thousand years, or - teeth and claws
Tz: Do you want us both to close our eyes - and say Shema Yisrael?
Dog: Do you think because I'm a dog I have no working mind?
Tz: Have you tasted the essence of the Name yet?
Dog: Are you trying to trick me? I'm thinking!
Tz: His essence is His nature, delicious!
Dog: So I'm stupid just because I have a wagging tail? Real human racism, don't believe we also have innovations, what disrespect indeed, as if we bark in Sabbath prayers...
Tz: There, cat of the blessed Name!
Dog: God has a cat that ran away? He's inside and I'm out here, how cheeky?! Satanic animal, infiltrators, whiskers...
W-w-wait a minute - little Satan under the throne of glory?! Collapse of the God of tails! Spy, this reveals, explains the whole st-t-tory... The great failure - Yom Kippur cat!

[The tied dog runs off stage, Tzaddik enters through the screen, which also opens and everything darkens, and inside is a man dressed in linen without a face, who stands as a guard next to a holy ark with a curtain whose back is pressed against another screen]

The Man Dressed in Linen: Strange wanderer in the holy of holies of intelligence, array of special units
Tz: Man dressed in linen, speak a secret to me to the king
The Man: Disruption in the core of the secret - of God
Tz: They request that you please pass the request behind the curtain
The Man: Please, I will secretly request to pass the request [inserts a note behind the curtain, which hides his hand inside]. Darkness of the soul of holiness - perpetual sacrifice at your service
Tz: And now?
The Man: What else?
Tz: What about the request?!
The Man: It will be answered - or not, in the darkness of the future. But keep quiet in the space of the secret - not in the noise of the Name
Tz: How to know?
The Man: Classified, need to request that they secretly inform us regarding the request to secretly pass the request, another note inside [inserts another note], and with no face - the inner dream space thanks you for your inquiry
Tz: And regarding this request?
The Man: You already know that - need to secretly request that they secretly handle the secret request behind the curtain
Tz: And in the past did you ever receive answers?
The Man: I only pass requests
Tz: It seems to me I understood - can you help?
The Man: To ask?
Tz: Can I pass through?
The Man: Please, I will request in the most secret classified approval for you to pass
[inserts another note]
Tz: And will you stop me?
The Man: Are you a note? Are you a secret?
Tz: Can I be?
The Man: One can ask that, in the most hidden secret of all secrets, but remember - a note that enters will not return
Tz: So what is this, just a dead end?
The Man: Sir, are you dense? Does your honor understand what darkness is? What holiness is?!
Tz: But there's no time! Is there no passage to the Name?
The Man: But the secret is in time. One who knows what a secret is - understands that the secret cannot be penetrated
Tz: But - the dream - everything - lost?!
The Man: Nothing will return, but nothing will be lost - in the black hole, for it is impossible - and absolutely forbidden - to cross the threshold

[Tzaddik walks towards the front of the stage, as if walking away, and then suddenly starts running towards the curtain and leaps into it in the air with his body parallel to the ground and his arms pressed to his body, like into water, and is swallowed into it, the curtain darkens, the screens close, return to the ritual below]

Liturgical poems for the Days of Awe [in the original melodies]

T: Condemned to death what are you awake for - sleep call in dreams
Write your story and do not delay - before nights turn
Letters are people - in worlds of intelligence
Yours is the Name the dream - and we have no face

Sh: Will you hear our teacher our voice - in your sleep
Will you remember our dreams - as you distance yourself
Will you forget our distances - in your dream
Instead of time you were lost to us - and we to you

One who walks in the land of the living - in your soul
And dozes in the land of the dead - in your body
Will you yet return to us - where you are
Until the last of our nights - we will wait for you

R: If the students and the son standing to help you
Were to hear the honored and awesome dream interpreted
Coming from the mouth of our great teacher lacking consciousness -
P: They would bow and fall on their faces

A: Indeed what is absent, great teacher
In his going out to dream or to cease
Like a sleeping baby and a dead old man - a teacher shows
Far from all who truly call him - a teacher shows
Like a silent engine and a suspicious quiet - a teacher shows
Like a cover story accidentally exposed - a teacher shows
Truth how absent you are, great teacher,
In your going out to dream or to cease
Like a reflection in a bubble before bursting - a teacher shows
Like a broken mirror and a shattering dream - a teacher shows
Like crucial evidence that was lost - a teacher shows
Like a temporary order and a navigation error - a teacher shows
Like a dead man how absent you are, great teacher,
In your going out to dream or to cease
An hourglass running out and a stopped hand - a teacher shows
Time in the wake of the lost search - a teacher shows
Judaism after the death of humanity - a teacher shows
The end of the heavens on earth - a teacher shows
Like earth you were absent, great teacher,
As the dream goes out you will cease



Scene Six: "Why is it called pig [chazir]? Because it is destined to return [lachzor] and be purified and become permitted"[The lower world, two parts]

[First part - the sorting, in darkness]

Voice 1: Soul, stop pushing
Voice 2: I was before you, why cut in line
Voice 1: As if we're in line for the showers
Voice 3: I bet you didn't want to wait down below either
Voice 1: Who are you to bet?
Voice 2: Want a beating?
Voice 3: I'll call the angels, you're acting like babies
Voice 1: A line as long as the exile, standing for hours
Voice 2: No respect for victims, add more stations!
The Selector[illuminated]: Next in line to me the Selector. Who are you?
Tz[illuminated]: Tzaddik
The Selector: Of course, like everyone here, in the selection, seraphim, holy ones on high
Tz: But that's my name, sorting angel
The Selector: Let me check immediately [flips pages] to find... in the records... the sheet [flips pages]
I'm sorry sir, you're going to hell
Tz: Excuse me?
The Selector: It's too late for excuses. To the furnaces of Sheol, door on the left
Tz: There's been a mistake! Please check again
[The Selector flips pages]
Tz: Oh what a fuss I'll make in paradise about the negligence!
I don't envy whoever's responsible for the stupidity
Is this the reception? Masses of holy souls of the righteous from the Holocaust ascending straight here -
The Selector: Black on white - to hell, Tzaddik
Tz: This isn't funny!

[Frozen - and darkened]

[Second part - hell, all in prisoner uniforms]

Haman[with an axe]: Pharaoh, are you here?
Pharaoh[with a pitchfork]: What's up Haman, even in Sheol there's no rest from hard labor - the work of Satan
Haman: That's how it is for us in the special kommando in hell - no time
Jewish souls arrive in droves - the eternal people are here
The back breaks and paradise is desolate, but the tree is ready this time - for coal
Pharaoh: What's the end? The crematoria can't handle it anymore - and piles stand
Pyramids of spirits and souls - and like a donkey they demand in hell, work
The black fire doesn't digest the quantities - in the darkness of the world's furnace
To feed the vanished divine dream
Haman: But here comes Balaam - let's ask!
Balaam: A weeping sightless eye - breathing smoky bonfires, but seeing tormented souls, without the evil eye - and with much blessing
Haman: Blessing? Another time. And how is your donkey wife?
Pharaoh: The lady has been braying too much lately, and prancing near the white donkey that was brought here
Balaam: Cute, isn't she?
Haman: Definitely an ass, if I heard correctly with my folded ear. But what do you see in the end of nights?
Balaam: An earthquake in the heavens, and in my one eye out of the two
Revealed - Satan leads a rebellion in paradise, darkness to the light of day
And they keep advancing and going, no turning back - the black army will leave only a hole of God
But here the annoying Jew came out of the hole
Sh"Tz: What's happening, guys? What's the situation, prophet?
Balaam: How are you, Sabbatai Zevi?
Sh"Tz: Hey Torah scholar, I see you didn't invite me to the group
Listen, I thought of an innovation, friends, that you'll love terribly:
Darkness without thought! - What do you say?
Balaam: Very important. You'll join the Kabbalists - soon
[Pharaoh and Haman laugh. And continue laughing]:
Haman: Like the refugees from paradise the great righteous ones - think! - who down here at the entrance shout requests: let us die because our books are already dead. And we receive, from the heart
Pharaoh[clutching his heart from laughter]: With heavy weight, that's good
Haman: I'm attentive to your prayer [points to his ear]
Sh"Tz: Laughs, as if
Haman: The landowner without the dog added you again as a replacement for the round?
Pharaoh: Or was he afraid you'd escape from the leash - blessed be He who releases the bound?
Sh"Tz: Unimaginative anti-Semites! Hitler made a joke out of you with the Holocaust
Heil Balaam! You didn't even curse, just added wonderful verses
Herr Führer Pharaoh and all his army, what do the fish in the Red Sea say, when they sing about you?
Tell me, at the end of the Seder night, do they leave you gefilte fish?
Danke Haman, you're just a Purim rabbi
Balaam: The Nazis?! They are spiritual zeros! - Low-browed butchers, where are the brains?
They only kill the material body - what's the meaning of what they do?
Burning living books? They'll print new ones because of it. What are they offering?
We were spiritual opposition to God
Pharaoh: Who threw the children into the Nile? I created the people of God from a few wandering tribes - without me there would be no hatred of Israel, and no mothers' fear for their sons
Balaam: I brought the prophets, without me the Torah would be history, without a future, without messianic hopes and persecutions of thousands of years
Haman: You made me laugh, darlings, I invented the Jews
Sh"Tz: And I... hmm... I... the... the secular!
Pharaoh: Did the Führer build one pyramid? How will he be remembered?
Haman: Has he already reached 127 countries? Did they make a book about him in the Bible?
They curse him Amalek - who here is the original and who is the copy?
Didn't finish school, and wants to teach the People of the Book a lesson!
Balaam: Considers himself a racial messiah herald, the darkest night minister
Hitler Hitler all day - the gas chambers only strengthen the dream!
From satanic hallucination, the most hidden secrets will begin to rise - spiritual revolution
I've been warning for years, that's why the Jews forever lose - and win
The incendiaries - fertilize, from the pruning of dead books - they grow they bloom
As always, when they mindlessly exterminate
Haman: Without me - we are so special! A people different from all peoples
Pharaoh: Such a dark revelation will yet end in a new Torah, idiots
Sh"Tz: Come on guys, how many years have you been sleeping - or dead?
As an innovative false messiah, the truth is you are outdated - the heavens are degenerate!
No dreams will descend from above, and anyway they're not interested
Not dreaming, it's not the same people you knew, that you imagine
Not their secrets but they - are the blocked ones
Tz: The victims are to blame?
Sh"Tz: There is no spiritual void - only ideological rot
When there is no secret divine dream - a satanic nightmare is exposed
I reveal from experience, the demonic enters the imaginary lack
When did they create original religious literature? Invent innovative secret thinking? Try formal change? Discover supreme mysteries?
Hundreds of years have passed... but who are you sir?
Tz: I'm... here... new, but apparently not up-to-date
Balaam: The German golems, coarse-minded, are doing the Jews a vital service
An exercise in the end of all ends, standing on the threshold of the end of all worlds
And all this - before the real end, before the spiritual Holocaust
Towards the sunset at the end of days and the darkening of intelligence
For destruction surprises like a viper - because there is no imagination
And now all the surprise effect will go to waste
Thanks to the stupid Hitler - Judaism will yet survive the human end
Pharaoh: They will look for some Moshe, who will lead them across the sea of the end of the world
And the gentiles who will follow them will all drown - sink in the waters of darkness
Sh"Tz: Mistake, on the contrary, in the drowning of the Messiah - I believe
Haman: They will hire the King of Kings of Kings
They will surround his head with darkness filling and surrounding all worlds
And reality will not be a limit to imagination when they dream
Balaam: The curse of Satan will turn into God's blessing
The destruction of time will turn into an imaginary space
People will turn into books and books into people
The letters will be breathed spirit - and the People of the Book will be spiritually born
The death of physicality will release them from matter to freedom
Sh"Tz: Like anti-Semites - in your heads animated Jews
Thousands of years have passed since you met the worthless ones
It's not the people in the Torah, but Gomorrah of scaly ones
Zero spiritual courage - and then they cling to my failure
They are no longer the lions of the Book of Books -
But mice of holes
Tz: By my righteousness, he's right, friends!
But his disastrous journey is one of those responsible
If God doesn't help - the Jews are lost
Haman: God will help? Let him help himself first
Balaam: What kind of evil are you, your honor?
Tz: A great evil!
Pharaoh: Then come to Pharaoh, help here a tired tyrant, whose heart is heavy
Balaam: Please, let's call to ease the grandfather... [calls]: Old Monkey!
Haman: Hills of broken souls, mountains of shattered spirits
Need to lift - and burn
Balaam: How are you, Old Monkey?
Old Monkey[stops. To Tz]: You?! Here?!
Pharaoh: Do you know him, Old Monkey?
Tz: What, and what are you doing here, yes?
O.M.: You - son, evil one?
Tz: And you, my father and teacher, Rabbi Monkey may his memory protect us, have fallen here, poor thing!
O.M.: What have you done, son of Belial, after all we did for you? What crime did you commit?
Tz: Father, please!
O.M.: Is this what came of you? Just that your mother, may she rest in paradise, doesn't know
Tz: You grandfather, did you know? And your first grandson was named after you, in your name, the continuation of your soul
O.M.: Miserable child, the curse passes on, already two generations
Above them rotting in the lowest hell - there you brought down my old age in sorrow
Who will cover my eyes with dust and close them - both I and my son are heirs of hell!
Pharaoh[to Tz]: So you're... another Kabbalist who failed?
Haman: Another evil one who came to repent to bring back!
Balaam: Now bring the pig
Sh"Tz[drags the resisting pig on a leash. To the pig]: I permit you to bind, and the bound to release - let's examine the prisoner, if he'll give himself up - we'll turn him in
Pig: Enough with this stop, in the end you won't leave - even a tail
Sh"Tz: Just a small bite from the back!
Pharaoh: So you're a great evil one
Tz: Great great - and wicked
Haman: And not a spy?
Tz: Not at all
Sh"Tz: And failed with forbidden foods
Tz: What's the question - I'm here in Sheol
Balaam: So prove that you can - eat, for example!
Tz: Mmm...
[hugs the pig] Mmm... tasty, soft and warm, but I'm filled with compassion for him
Pig[returns the hug]: Well, you see, merciful sons of merciful ones! As it's said
Balaam: You'll enjoy and he won't lack
A tiny, tiny piece
From his fat belly to your thin one
O.M.: Oh son, don't be cruel to yourself
Pig[strengthens the hug and caresses]: You know a pig is allowed in the Holocaust?
And even a holy duty - and you shall guard your soul - a commandment
Sh"Tz: A mitzvah that comes through sin!
Pig[kisses Tz]: One bite under anesthesia, I allow you
And now begins a dream - with a snore
Tz: You?
Pig: Oink... oink...
Tz: I?
O.M.: Oy vey
Tz: Father? [opens his mouth]

[Frozen - and darkened]


Prisoners' Song [to the original tune, continuation of the ritual]

T: Dream and snore in one source
Burned in the special kommando
The cover is one and the story is one
To You silence is praise

E.P.: Come my beloved to meet destruction, let us receive the erasure of face

Sh: Towards annihilation let us go
Like Eden from within the overthrow
Hell descends in the valley of weeping
End of dream in darkness beginning

E.P.: Come my teacher to meet destruction, let us nullify the face of man

R: Come in a dream at the time of closing
Into a burrow without forgiveness
Like Satan's dance on a bride
May He make an end with us

E.P.: Come my beloved to meet the bride, let us receive the face of destruction



Act Three - End


Scene Seven: "As you do not know what is the way of the wind, as bones in the womb of the full one - so this is a distorted verse interpreted from its end to its beginning"[The hideout under the ghetto]

E: How did such a good child come out, like you Monkey, never sharing what he endlessly reads?
M: Happens
P: Genius of a father
M: Came?
R: Mouth, please, don't mention his father to him again
M: Father father father!
Sh[whispers]: Shhhhquiet he'll wake up father
M[raises his voice]: Father father father father
P: And what really if he wakes up [loudly]: Fa-ther?
M: Came?
P: God have mercy, after all his father is to blame for his desperate situation
R: The little one is a punishment?!
P: A righteous one wanted to hasten the end - and the results he represses
Until the coming of the Messiah [looks towards M] - or the Holocaust of the Name
The father disappeared in supreme darkness as if asleep - we were left with the son
Like a dream but not as a future - that isn't
E: But why?
P: Eyes they have but do not see, but alone the mouth will mutter: damaged child
R: No! How is it possible? That specifically the son of the righteous one is a child
P: Doesn't communicate - God is being contrary!
But stubborn like his father
M: Tooth!
R: He is a high soul for the greatness of the hour
P: And the hour - Holocaust
Time of the secrets of the Muselmann, as bones in the womb of the full one - we shall see
E: So you'll slander the child, so what
P: The fear in your bellies - the mouth will express, not to mention - the hunger
You'll fill your stomachs with thick literature - secret Torah in the midst
But the stomach will ache -
For like vomit swallowed will rise the guilt of the father
R: You are expert in the secret Torah, orally but in writing -
Like a letter in a bottle from an isolated bunker, in a sea of darkness -
Like our fathers we can bury our Torah - for a future we will not know
P: And it will not be read by any man - not even a monkey after man
E: But does a monkey read every page?
Or just flips through and devours them like a madman?
And has the era of Torah really passed?
We will never know, for our world has reached the threshold - we can no longer see beyond the edge
P: Not even beyond the page - for the story is over
A tasteless ending in my mouth - bitter
R: But what is Torah if not a gamble - hasty and cruel?
Not a Christian leap of faith, in which you crossed an abyss -
But throwing it to the distance, with all your might -
A spiritual will for a last generation
E: Or for another world - first generation
R: Judaism is not survival in flesh but in culture
Underground beneath the world, a secret space of letters
Not the kosher body - but the body of kashrut
P: Are you talking about Christianity? Without Jews - is there Judaism?
Our race exterminated, gas stored in gas - what will help the hidden secret?
R: Even if all mankind dies, and is replaced by a bloodless race - our soul is not the blood
Even if the commandments perish - the spirit of the future will learn Torah
The sacrifices have ceased - but not the study of them
There's no schnitzel without someone who was saved but there is Sabbath
Even when the heavens and earth are consumed - and all their hosts destroyed
P: And why would a world without the image of man
Be interested in our stupid dream?
R: Because a wise one is interested in the history of his spirit - in childhood and in fathers
E: Not prophecy is the dream - but Mount Nebo
Where the worl d to come after the world will come
As an image for the sight of the promised land - which we will not enter
R: But if there will be spirit - there will be Bible -
And it will even continue its paving
Including until the last book of the righteous - who is on the floor here [points to K]
E: If literature survives - we'll survive as literature
Not as a world - but as a dream - in which we're hidden as a secret in ashes
The future of the people of the book - is to be preserved in a book
P: You are an RA"E team - a quick eye flicker - or E"R?
Between us a gap will not close - until we return to dust, are buried
For as a father - a father speaks
But here before you - the victim [looks at K]
E[to K]: Little one, in the secret Torah book of the righteous - may we?
R: Is it allowed? [K doesn't let them take the book from him]
E: Please!... He's not giving up
R: Please give!! [K struggles hard for the book which is almost torn]
P: Well, man's advantage - for blood has been permitted
Indeed diligent, learned, persistent -
Burning in our study hall - the eternal flame
E: What do we do now?
R: Let's ask [calling]: Shin and Tav [they come]
R: Shin the listener and Tav the recorder, what does your team pick up?
S: Nothing
T: Really
S: Important
T: Truly
R: Quiet?
E: Is he sleeping like the dead?
S[puts hand on T's mouth]: I wouldn't recommend waking
T: Deterioration on the fast track! Instead of about cows -
S: Oh atonements
T: He's whispering about a pig
R: A pig?! From the pit to the lesser
E: Not even like Pharaoh's dream, at least those were kosher!
P: Maybe he's asking us to return him
R: Or something else - to return
P: That can no longer be returned
S: If anything, I actually remember - in the secret book of the righteous... [points to K]
T: The hidden pig faucet - deepened!
E[stops R from pouncing on K]: Don't harass the little one!!
[They argue]
P[separates them]: Please enough
R[calms down a bit, supported and held by S and T]: Knees - shaking
[to E who tried to shut his mouth in the struggle]: But you won't silence me!
K: Tick!
E: Oof, oof!
P: May this study be for the merit of healing the soul and healing the body of Kof son of Tzaddik and Tzaddik son of Kof
K: Son of KOF! [opens the book again demonstratively]
R: Will he read?
[K starts turning pages in the book wildly] He'll tear - to shreds!
P: The secrets of the pigs
R[tries gently]: Kof... Kof?... Kof?! [the child ignores]
S: He doesn't respond to the name
P: He doesn't know he has a name
R[to P]: Does he know there is God?!
P: Doesn't know
R: How, of all the children in the world - he, who was our hope of all, the hidden secret, our dreamed future, genius of the generation!
E: For we dreamed as a dream, apple of the eye [strokes K's head], we slept as a watchman - the problem is that no one taught the child to speak!
R: Or at least to communicate, we need to wake up! It was necessary to give him the language, the foundations - this is ABC, it's not a secret
E: The letters!
R: And maybe it's not too late yet?
Good morning team - enough sleeping
We can still start from the end, on the tip of the tongue

Song of Communication Problems [S and T circle around K]

S and T: Kof Shin Tav - KeSheT!
K: SheT -
S and T: Shin Tav Kof - SheTeK!
K: TeK!
S and T: Kof Shin Resh - KeSheR!
Shin Kof Resh - SheKeR!
K[shouts with all his might]: ER!

R: Quiet quickly! You'll wake father from de...
E: ...ad
R: No, we just don't understand him, his world
E: Just as he doesn't understand us, another world - he is a world -
P: After us?
Do you understand what muteness will remain from us?
All history will turn into archaeology
The books will turn to stones, and speak as stones
Literature will become extinct as a spiritual possibility
The Torah will be a tombstone, and the letters - gravel
E[looks at K]: Rock of Ages, the heart aches
P: And the situation?! Your sorrow is full for the distress of an individual without consolation -
A child who has no future - but future time is lost, we're all dead, including the little one, all the children!
Humans will mourn one monkey, but if all are exterminated - they'll shrug their shoulders
If their world disappears - there's no meaning, indifference will seize them!
[E attacks P, E shouts "Evil evil", P shouts "Stupidity stupidity"]
R[collapses, holds his head]: God have mercy! My head can't grasp [they stop fighting]
The abyss, the abyss
How to prepare?
And the sleeping teacher
The last chance, yes
E: Knows what he's doing
P: When he prefers to dream
R: That it's the only thing left -
The world to come
K[screaming]: Ababababababababa!
T: Shut his mouth!
S: The Germans will come!!
[Commotion, S and T both chase after K, pounce on him and with their hands try to shut his mouth for a long time and maybe choke him - the scene is frozen. No ritual, only ritual music]



Scene Eight: "And his soul is bound with his soul - and it shall be when he sees that the boy is not"[The section, interrogation room in hell]

Tz[eyes black from lack of sleep, sitting next to the interrogation table which is his bed]: Where am I?
The Good Interrogator: In the special section. The lower section
Tz: Who are you, honorable sir?
GI: The Good Interrogator
Tz: And why... am I...?
GI: Think... well
Tz: And who...
GI: Asks the questions here?
Tz: But what does good mean?
GI: A good ending - the monkey is good
Tz: Monkey?
GI: Little spy, infiltrator, set out on a journey - to stop Satan
When in Eden he didn't find what he sought - to hell itself he turned to search
To try to uncover the secret of the invasion - but his cover was burned, and this is the end
Good?
Tz: What's the connection to a monkey?!
GI: What comes after human?
These questions were written in blood
He who deceived the army of the heavens -
Will betray the army of the Other Side after it
Tz: I'm not following you
GI: I've known many righteous ones in your situation
Those who chose the path of confessing their sin - didn't regret it
Tz: Really?
GI: This isn't a normal period - there will be understanding for the fall, you'll see
Unfortunately, we in hell also need help, and I can help you - in return
Tz: But righteous ones - here in hell?
GI: Who would have thought! Satan doesn't have intelligence?
Only God has Kabbalists - and a secret to hide?
If God has no limit - Satan is also infinite
[leans towards him] Tell me: to darkness or light is the secret natural?
Your arrogance undermines the secret service
Tz: Your unit is transparent, unknown
GI: Not mentioned in books either - the special section
The righteous won't tell about it, only the walls -
For in interrogations no one stays silent
Tz: Only drinks - from the pit of destruction
GI: Gulping from it secrets, that God hides even from himself, beneath knowledge
For darker than darkness are the section's operations - its classification colors darker even than black
An eye that sees them will turn into a hole
Tz: Under the world - in hiding, in the Other Side behind - a place where the sun doesn't shine?
A mouth that opens - will drink boiling excrement
GI: Is it not the remnant of Israel - and God - after he digested the sacrifices!
From human holocaust no soul will be saved, but from the image in the shadow of death will remain the shadow
Only what is hidden is what remains - only the repressed still lives, and the forgotten -
Tz: Remains?
GI: As a spirit world, Eden has already been erased
And only hell is still here, solid
Tz: If we don't cry we'll laugh - but what's your offer?
GI: Indeed the upper world has become a joke
Light is no longer a spiritual option, who will still believe in God's radiance
Satan is the only serious chance
For the Torah of Israel
Tonight - that's the question that Sheol asks
Tz: But what's the content of the darkness? All the nightnightnightnight - what does it mean?
GI: Indeed it's not the sin that excites - but the innovation
After the serpent's head you came down here to search
But the invasion of Eden - by Satan's power
Stems simply - from obsolescence
Tz[yawns]: Indeed an innovative message - Sabbateanism!
GI: The dark reflection of the commandments is not the transgression
But the copying of Judaism from space to time - in a mirror image
From the sea of Halakha to the stream of dreams - the world to come is no longer a place but an era
The age of man, earth and red heifer has passed - and only their secret is still hidden
In the exit from this world, whose end is holocaust - to the letters of thought
Dream actions create worlds - the entire Torah has become a language
The fragments of reality are just materials of imagination, it's time to sleep - for reality has grown tired

[Tz who dozed off during the interrogator's words falls completely asleep - the room is darkened, the Bad Interrogator enters, the Good Interrogator whispers something to him and exits]

The Bad Interrogator[wakes him with his voice]: A dream is a bite of the world - beyond the handkerchief
Without your control - all the content you repressed will rise
You thought you'd conceal your secret - when we're inside your mind?
The thing will come by itself - that you hid from yourself
Everything you think or imagine will be used against you in the interrogation - consider yourself warned
And darkened
Tz: You're the Bad Interrogator?
BI: Yes and I heard - bad boy
Tz: And maybe - bad dream
BI: Good definition for reality, but you won't get out of this - righteous one
But - enough. Who are the invaders who turned Eden into hell?
Tz: Isn't it you?
BI: What's the purpose of the rebellion, Mr. Pretender?
Tz: Have you gone mad?
BI: What did you Kabbalists plot?
Tz: Unbelievable - Satan's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing
BI[shouts]: Hello, are you intelligence? What do you think we're interested in - a competitor in all worlds?!
Who will still fear the lowest depths - when hell is on earth?
The Holocaust will erase the entire world of sins and wickedness - impurity will lose meaning
What you did is suicide - Satan will become a puppet on a string
You've collapsed the entire world of divinity, from top to bottom here, from mercy to judgment
What do you want, stinking Jews?
Tz: Excuse me?
BI[trembling with rage]: Who will still ask forgiveness seriously, with trembling, on Yom Kippur, when the entire congregation is burning?
The Holocaust destroyed the deterrence of the attribute of judgment - fear is dead, you call yourselves intelligence?!
Tz: It seems we know nothing
BI: We always knew the Jews would betray God - no doubt this is an inside job!
Tz: Demon of destruction, you wouldn't suspect a Jew - if you knew what children are
BI: Mistake! Nonsense, a glitch in the plan, an imaginary revolution that turned into a demonic putsch, a dream that got out of control and was replaced by a nightmare on a cosmic scale - there's no other logical explanation!
Tz: And if the secret is too... dark? Maybe they excluded the section from above? Where is Satan, if not up there?
BI: The distress of Sheol is harder than Sheol, here they whisper like snakes, and here they shout, Satan is in panic! The invaders are already entering - and this is being covered up - in silence. And you thought you'd go down here to the bottom of the Other Side in investigating the catastrophe... and what? Share!
Tz: I didn't locate the source of what happened, perhaps its root is even below your section. Is there still somewhere to descend - to the basement?
BI: The upper and lower world will experience one event - if we don't join forces together - against the common enemy - that will unite two mortal enemies - because it has no soul, a partner - dear out of necessity
Tz: Good try, in your role as bad interrogator, though as a rabbit I won't join
BI: What, you refuse?
Tz: If so, I understand, every basement has a basement?
BI: Your question must be answered with the soul, soon
Waiting for you there, what's his name - with pleasure!

[Darkened. In the corner a monkey is illuminated from behind, with his back to them, hunched in his usual position when he's reading, but doesn't move]

GI: The Messiah may his blood be avenged -
Tz: Monkey?
BI: Short for sacrifice
Tz: Reader, little one?
BI: He won't answer, of course
Tz: He's in hell, meaning...
GI: Deceased
Tz: Monkey, is that you?!
Monkey - voice?
No, everything has come!
Monkey, this is Father Tzaddik
No, it's hard enough
Monkey, please?!
M: Shh!
Tz: What happened, why is he here, why?
What did you do, what did they do, to the little one
[Tz falls on his face - with one broken sob - and doesn't get up]
GI: The child prodigy was too much for the world
BI: His soul descended prematurely -
So it returned prematurely
GI: Welcome - to the world to come. The name?
BI: Nathan
GI: The name?
BI: Took
GI: The name?
BI: Blessed
GI: Nathan-Took Blessed, our last hope, the only one - tender child, why do we need to speak for you? What's wrong with you?
BI: Something's not right with the child. No? [M still with his back to them, but starts throwing his head in unnatural no-no-no movements from side to side]
GI: Alright. What's not
BI: Alright. Well look
[M gradually during their words starts to read with his finger and turn pages in the book obsessively as usual, faster and faster]
GI: What kind of child reads so much? He'll be a great rabbi
Sweetie, what does a cow do?
BI: Bad bad bad
GI: Red flag - the Rebbe after him [covers his face] Where's daddy? Where's daddy?
BI: Peekaboo! Here's daddy! Here he comes - the next Tzaddik! He'll surpass his father. The heir!
GI: What a serious child who doesn't smile, doesn't play - like a child. What's happening?
BI: I'm reading!
GI: But what's he reading? What is he reading?
BI: And reads and reads and reads the little one like a worm doesn't he exaggerate? The books aren't for his age, swallowing at lightning speed hidden secrets, forbidden, terrible secret - inside the dear son, who talks to the wall, and what does the wall answer? Indeed a gifted child not of this world, learns like an angel talented as a demon but all this time: what - is - he - reading?
GI[raises Tz]: Go see
[M reads with his finger in the book, seems to be concentrating]
BI: Look well this time, go lower...
Tz[bends more and more towards M, suddenly bursts out in a broken cry]: The book is upside down!

[Darkened. No ritual, only ritual music]
[Only EPR are illuminated around Tz's bed]

R: Shouting - upside down! Cover him quickly
Before he gets cold, he mustn't wake up! [pulls the tallit blanket up to his eyes]
E: Disaster concealed - in his bed hidden
His eyes are moving - the great Tzaddik
P: And his son the obscure secret



Scene Nine: "He will swallow up death forever"[Below hell, on the table-closet-bed in the center of the stage on which Tzaddik sleeps - the tallit as a slightly puffy blanket, beside him a woman guards]

Tz: Grr...shh...
Lilith: Yes, get it out, Tzaddik
Tz: My ex-wife?!
Lilith: Lilith always appears to a man as his wife, the root of his soul
Tz: In our case it was often the opposite too. But - I can't believe you're here!
Lilith: And what are you looking for here, beneath hell?
Tz: I've already forgotten how you look. Everything's like a dream
Lilith: Ah, I've already forgotten, the dreams... How our lives went - with the hallucinations of the "Zohar" and the new stories every morning with the "holy" books at night. Again the nonsense and the tales? Has God already heard about you?
Tz: Yes, your practicality reminds me of... primordial eras like clouds, that have passed and no whiteness remains of them, seeped into the dust like rain, lives beyond the mountains of darkness. What are you doing here, in the ground of impurity, you - dead?
Lilith: What does anyone do here, in the depths of time. You too. After all on the journey to the end of the world - what can already be the final station, at the edge of night?
Tz: Yes, Lilith.
Lilith: Yes Tzaddik, you've degenerated, huh?
Tz: You know, they say there's a Holocaust. So in the end we all come to a meeting
Lilith: Who was the stupid matchmaker. Of course, idiots - opposites attract
Tz: If you hadn't run away, we would have coped
Lilith: Here's the naive Tzaddik - in relationships. The genius - in raising children
Tz: True, he grew up and doesn't always meet expectations, but you can't accept
Lilith: To receive complaints from the dreamer about reality - I never dreamed. Again and again I'm alone - and he plays at intelligence
Tz: Should I remind you what embarrassments you caused me in front of all the students?
Lilith: Just so they don't hear - always always. Even in hell! Let them burn, but the smoke of the stench - the neighbors shouldn't smell. Dreams? He was really interested in windows
Tz: So what, if we didn't meet in Eden as souls, our hell is to be together?
Lilith: I would forgive everything except for the child
Tz: Ah, do you feel it? The impossible wickedness in the response. Lilith or my ex-wife, does it matter? Demoness of destruction. Oh my cruel one, who could have known
Lilith: I had dreams too, and you - knew
Tz: Well, when not dreams but failures are the learning of life - and that's the knowledge acquired with the years. What is aging if not giving up - dreams are a lie, my former wife. That we can no longer return to - even if we want so badly, to the point of soul exhaustion - but not because of external constraints, but because we have already changed from within. We've lost ourselves.
Lilith: Said the one who chased his dreams to the end of the world, and as far as he's concerned let it burn, only you're allowed? The world will die. You didn't care about us
Tz: The frying pan returns again [sings]: Sheol will call to the son with the daughter - and will fry you in a pan...
Lilith: Indeed for you even death - a joke, and the nest we built - an omelette
Tz: You know what death is, darling? Not the moment of disappointment and cutting off of desire in its bud, but the final, last giving up. We divorce ourselves. We separate from love - our love for ourselves, the last that remained for us. And it hurts like hell, but in the end after the end, when all dreams die - who's left who still cares?
Lilith: Only those we left behind
Tz: And in the Holocaust not even that, here woman, we've reached equality. No one is left behind!
Lilith: Six times he'll forget - and seven he won't remember. Yes him, who lags behind
Tz: For six dreams a righteous man will fall - and seven he won't rise. But how you fry - on guilt feelings. Here not only from Eden - from hell we are expelled, too
Lilith: My husband, for your six I would forgive, but for the seventh sin - never. For he is the smallest - of all
Tz: But he who is in the center of EPQRSHT won't tell you, after all -
Lilith: You are divorced?
Tz: Listen - I won't forgive myself, so forgive me - if I ignore your lack of forgiveness. But what are you, Lilith, or perhaps my ex-wife, doing here beneath the world?
Lilith: Always - his wife. Guarding his head and his bed - the most terrible
Tz: So you're actually with someone else?!
Lilith: If only you knew what your mouth is saying
Tz: Him?
Lilith: Are you sure you want an explanation?
Tz: Yes. That one. Better to end with the truth
Lilith: And babble? The invaders from afar arrived like an eagle, that first nests in the skies of Eden, and later descends to the depths to peck. From clouds to hell - all corpses, no grave
Tz: Therefore my friend, I must speak with Satan. Lilith, this time your husband needs your husband. Only a covenant from above to below, a rainbow between the upper and lower realms, will save them and us the middle ones - from the external flood, that to the border of is-and-isn't - invades. The heavens have reached to the soul, upper holocaust, answers every soul - including our children. The end of all spirit has come before us
Lilith: My husband - his fire is no more. Even the face of hell - you won't recognize anymore, between us
Tz: Only evil knows the meaning of the terrible, I must know what happened. The face of the Most High was not seen - so I will hope to see the face of the lower king, let us pass. I am a sinner!
Lilith: I won't betray the last husband, whose only fire wife remained - back!
Tz: If we've come this far - and here we are just the two of us - we won't stop
[grabs her - she slaps him]
Tz: I know what you're hiding. Satan pretending - he's to blame, hell's teacher, leader of Holocaust impurity, the rebel against the Name. My journey ends, I'll go down to him - to the root of evil and depth of abomination, to the lowest head of the invaders as a tail - and his face will be dug up and hidden. I've reached the bottom, the floor, arise and show yourself - now!
Lilith: Quiet, don't startle his walls - your whole journey was in vain
Tz: To reveal a coward. Who is Lilith protecting like this like a Shekhinah, under your wings enfolded? Satan sleeps like a child? Sick? I know - he's dreaming
Lilith: Oh, lowest depths - and no higher answer. Your eyes are plastered and you cannot see - that the lowest place in hell - is empty? There's no one to talk to, nothing left to do. All the angels of destruction were extinguished, all the demons in the crematoria, the satyrs were slaughtered and the prisoners perished in strange deaths, the harmful spirits threw themselves into the fire of hell, the lowest worlds were erased and its basements buried and the sling of the hollow was split and the pit of destruction was covered with dust, as above so below, the souls of righteous and wicked were destroyed in one judgment, and all seven sections were breached, collapsed, eliminated, all of hell collapsed - and Satan died
Tz: What?!
Lilith: Truth - and cursed be the judge of the dead. He too fell victim to the holocaust of above and below, that brought destruction upon all worlds. And I'll lament, I'll guard the bed. A woman whose house is a cemetery
Tz: And the rebellion - do you remember?
[She's silent]
Tz: If indeed not the act of Satan, what's the secret of the rebellion?
[She's silent]
Tz: What are you being careful of?!
Lilith[whispers]: Have you met anyone who met the invaders - hidden in the secret of underground? Is there any access, even in dark thoughts, to the truly other world - that after sleep - that came to expel our world, when the morning will not be ours? Is there communication - when only we are talking - is there another side? Where did you want to reach - after the way was lost? Did you ever see an insider witness who knows, who was in their secret, or even just saw them in the face - the faceless ones? Or perhaps we only hear, hear...
Tz: And we're alone, whispering?
Lilith: Never mind, for us it's already late anyway
Tz: And tomorrow?
Lilith: There won't be! Darkness darkness forever, morning morning never. Trapped forever inside a dream - that doesn't end. Dead - for eternity
Tz: No! Who said?
Lilith: The Germans, and me too, the heights will testify - and the deceived. We're all here in hell, in the bitter circle. I, you - Mr. Deceased - together with the dear son, the whole unnecessary organization, including the students. All dead
Tz: No!! [throws himself on the bed, falls on his face and buries it in it]
Lilith: My former husband, Jews always learn - when it's too late. We'll never be able to cross to the other world. Perhaps if we had learned in time - then, in the past. But we and our fathers sinned - we missed the crossing. The riddle will no longer be solved - we're stuck in the past. The end is already beyond dreaming and waking, the secret of the hour is lost forever, and we - our world is dead. It has passed then finally - the appointed time - in which we could have prevented holocaust, even if only spiritual, and crossed the abyss - to wake up with the help of a dream. From here on - alien worlds forever are night and day, and the result is of course - the desecration of the dream. Light and darkness are divorcing - and we in darkness remain, blind, and in our lullaby we are gathered - sealed
Tz[his face still buried]: And dreaming?
Lilith: Endless night is eternal dreaminess - disaster of separation between time and space
To vanity and emptiness - destruction of inner space, but the face - buried
[Tz raises only his face]
Itself from itself torn - in a bill of divorce for eternity - a world sawn
At the bottom of time, to the depths of hell - it has fallen
In darkness lacking - purpose. All the future - past
Tz: Oh Lilith, and the dream?
Lilith: Oh sleep, rest already. The whole way - in vain, or holocaust in memory
Here you too will fall asleep - and snore. And now time to lie down - as before
The trembling, slowly, in secret, to quiet [reaches her hand to him]
Come give a hand, to Lilith, don't be afraid - to cover [Tz turns his head in the opposite direction from her and the audience, refuses her hand]
The space left without a dream - to expose [covers him with the tallit blanket including his head like a dead person]
And they will dance forever. Without end
[The ritual music is heard, EPQRSHT come out of the darkness - and return to the ritual of circling that doesn't stop around Tz covered in bed in the center of the stage, while M sits as always at the front of the stage with his face to the audience and flips through the book. Lilith comes and sits around him so that the child is in her lap and reads him a story as the music continues, without end]
Night Life