Joshua Cohen - Witz

Vergessen, going and gone, Israelien’s to be made verboten territory, shtum…though rumors passed among the least respectable and rearmost of pews have Him surfacing next in Europa, scattered reports probably dubious (whispers during the Silent Amidah, jokes told during the final recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish), Apocryphal meaning hidden in Greek though its ramifications evident in any language evidenced here, on the tips of tongues intact and attached, placing Him in Portugal at the same time as Spain, then in Paris, too, living south to the sea, on Mediterranean time: misnomers, misnomrim, this season’s Polandland has Him gone and turned, according to some, fryzer’s apprentice in this sinkhole once known as Kazimierz, though others hold by yesterday’s Zamość, or a secondhand to a onehanded cowhand at what was once Sandomierz, what a pit; with only the ignorant swearing to the city formerly known to us as Warsaw…devotees and even Casualist cartographers marking the maps they’d salvaged from burnt books, ripped from outdated encyclopedia sets still mentioning — what else — Galicia, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Carpathia, Sub-Carpathia, Sub-Sub-Carpathia, Ruthenia, the only atlas ever to mention Yehupetz…in the courtyards and converted parkinglots of their services holding up evidence of antique postcards, German pastels, Bohemian black & whites, forgeries upon expert inspection, others stamped what’d been Vilna and Kovno, Litvakworld up toward Riga to the north, Sweden then the Pole. Anybody who’d expected to make a killing at auction’s left sore, though that might not be from disappointment alone: all of the kollectible kitsch, the ephemeral paraphernalia, the swag and the junk, it disappears overnight, mandated, maybe, on orders of, perhaps, but also consciously forgotten, in a mindful attempt to displace, to revise, always rewrite. Whoever they ever are to smash the plates of In Hanna’s Kitchen (Binder’s & Sons, 0 A.I., ISBN#: 0-394-53258-9), of Israel’s Unabridged Deposition Transcripts (Loot of the Frum, 0 A.I., ISBN#: 0-671-76089-0), Introduction & Notes by Doctor Elisha Abuya & Reb Shimi Schreiben, the Nachmachen, with a new Afterword by Dr. Allen Sherdowitz PhD…how they rip off the covers of the remaining copies killing any value in resale, then torch the remaindered stock because they can, that’s that. Icons are put out on firesale, then put out to fire, too, ash and then trash. All His Signs & Wundas (S&W in Industryspeak, referring to the entire Israelien family of products) are taken down and warehoused un-cataloged, secreted in the underground vaults of the Garden with a vast trove buried up in the Bronx dugout beneath the infield of Yankels Stadium turned perfidious genizah, and the whole image fades, is effaced, thumbedaway with fists, rubbed out with knucklespit, ghostly tongued in a great if painful schmearing: of laity’s laxities into potholes, into the sewers and subway tunnels, down into the inner guts — the gutter intestinal seething with a depraved deprivation, making room for a vast gastric disburdening to empty…there, the lower home of those who are or who have willed themselves to the life of the indigestible, the rumbling fate of the unassimilatable, those with no interest in observance, any next incarnation, shirking that whole dominant paradigm shtick — not so much goyim voluntaries as rat and roachlike people plagued with huge families both immediate and extended if not by sympathy then by appetite’s ravage: they’re hauling subterranean their keepsakes and stray kinder napped from streetside, fleeing the flood of Affiliation, the threat of Metro Gestapo, word making rounds of what’s still to face, whispers of renditions and roundups, lineups, mass detentions without representation, violations no one questions of rights now left to the dogs…

Upon the New Year, which this year, this last year as a year, falls upon the Shabbos, today, everything will become changed. We will atone, and our vows will be nullified in the eyes that are not eyes per se, only anthropomorphic evocations of a sense that remains far, far scarier, we fear, and yet still unknown. All over, throughout the city’s darkness, waiting in the shadow of the newest moon: Die has undercover, plainclothes (gabardine to yarmulke) menschs staked outside every synagogue, every shul, and their associated shtibls, then inside, too, they’re pewed and shtendered standing at the ready at every conceivable place of congregation, waiting for Him to make His entrance, any prayer now, surely He would, we’ve brought Him up so well, everyone has and should, mostly does, Amen. B’s always the exception, though, has to be. And so, a noshow. Maybe next year — in Jerusalem, say. Do me a favor and save me a seat. Hold my place, what page. From the beginning as from the end, turned white and blank and over — the New Year’s weather thick, a clumping cover, the sky’s lump settled heavily where the air once flipped and skimmed: pure pile up against every berm and curb, firn, and sidewalk slabs of hoar, livestock scuttling escape wildly across the lanes, slipping then righting themselves. The city’s float a glacier and its Park, a bergschrund, as if a scar slit at its stomach. Stores are shut through Yom Kipper’s fast (crumbs have been picked from sidewalk cracks, breads crusted forbidden: manna’s theological mold — O pity the mensch whose mouth opens onto a flood of even mixed precipitate while going amongst his brethren this day!), ten days of abnegation wasting from the New Year, days withering of privation, of abjuration and abstinence, with only denial fulfilled: a holy week then a Shabbos more of businesses closed, with nothing transacted until after the annulment of vows then the closing of the book, the ledger, the final pages the heavens of the sky — most concerns to be opened only holiday hours following, to allow their owners and employees ample time in which to contract their sukkahs: strung maize, decorative squash like goiters, burnt carbuncles, blinking colored lights…then, there’s that holiday celebrating a new cycle of Torah, nachas shepped around, all that dancing and singing in observation of the beginning of a new cycle of Law and life, and an ordering of the final preparations for what should be total conversion, what will be: old plates and silverware cleaned out to the pareve trash if not miserly kashered, decreed contraband after a period of grace, the very selfsame, selfreflective ten days, possession of which objects after the Day of Atonement is to be made punishable by stoning, they’re still debating that, at least a modest fine.

Forget the forgetting, though, the Garden directives say, there’s only one way to settle the mind. It’s Him, and if they don’t find Him, don’t produce Him right quick, gevalt — they don’t want to think…Doctor Abuya proposing B’s sacrifice, if ever He’s found, maintaining that His blood must be spilled, to quell the masses, and the restlessness, also, of an Administration increasingly hostile. At the Temple, which up and having passed inspection is, without Him, functional for nothing: an eidolon’s idol with no one to worship it or at it, within it, the same — with His name devalued to inexistence, His image forbidden soon forgotten among even those who’d like to remember, their own craziness, betrayal: as fallen as the gates of the Temple stand tall, stilled in ice as weather itself — and so the New Year opening’s postponed, is rescheduled tentatively for the Anniversary upcoming in what’d once been December, the yahrezeit next, what would’ve been Xmas Eve, which we’d do better to forget, as well, burn that tinseltime wreathe. And so for those ten days between the New Year, which is called Rosh Hashana, which means, literally, as the billboards explain up and down the pitstopped coasts, The Head of the Year , the Garden, if quietly, puts the word out for His own lesser head, names the price: with the Temple ready for patrons and pilgrims, visitors and press, sheep, goats, and cattle are out of the question, they’re not big enough draws; what’s required for us to stay relevant is Him, fattened for the slaughter already, you with me? We shouldn’t be doing this, I know…Die’s saying to Mada over the phone, longdistance from the warmth of Palestein as an honored guest of its ruling family, the venerable Abulafias. Superstition, keep up. But it’s not like we have a choice. You think I haven’t thought this through? It has to be done, though. I love the schmuck, me more than anyone. Believe me. But this is the way it’s supposed to happen, even if it’s wrong (they’ve got the replenished ranks of Saperstein & Saperstein going over the particulars; as for the priests necessary to this procedure, with its intricacy of knife and neck and slitting prayer — they’re still in training Uptown, urge patience). All I’m hearing is they don’t want it, but I’m saying they don’t know that they do — they’re afraid of themselves, of their power: we’re talking old instincts, dormant, slow to revive; they regress, I’m sure, on their own time…we’ve taken a loss, no doubt about it, our numbers are down, people’ve lost confidence, interest, they’ve been told to lose interest, grown bored beards and dulled. As the lions pace the grounds of the Park, nervous and idle, paws sliding klutz across the Reservoir frozen, Mada and Gelt are occupied rehearsing a processional plan, its vast decoded scroll unfurling their steps down the stairs of the Temple’s ascent through the Park then out and into the streets — that’s if they can meet deadline still alive: a procession replete, they plan, with salaried hecklers and pelters, trash, too, and unsavory stuffed vegetables (the vendor menus include holishkes, or golubtsy — cabbageleaves seeded with triple paprika to spite with their spice); a slow ascent up the steps, one ritual or another now, this they’re still working out, then the slicing itself in fullview: the Mayor himself to serve his city as the day’s ceremonial High Priest with a rubbery gag knife to B’s throat, painless, humane, that’s the idea. They’ll never accept immortality, whether it be corporeal or that of His reputation, and with the favor they’re in, they can’t afford to, either. But to find Him first, that’s no question of spectacle or public, of Parkside ingathering, a herding in of the flock you’ve been fleecing: no, that’s kept low, underground and there inquired of in only a whisper, a flutter of the moneytongue, refused…this hushed informality of information exchange, humbly but casually asked — it’s personal, a question of honor…Mada, Die says over the phone, I want you to deal with this. We have just over a month, if we’re lucky, until the Administration gets involved — I’m sure of it, Shade that gonif, ungrateful, he’d just love to shut us, whether up or down…I’ll let you know which, I’ll call back in the morning.