Rabbi Moish knocked on door. "Are you finished your important call, Chaim ben Shlomo? I have a thirst-quenching lemonade and a mouth-watering jelly donut to raise your spirits."
No point leaving this pissy garbage can around. That would be rude. Harry tossed it out the window.
"Two seconds, Rabbi Moish, " Harry said while slamming the window shut.
It never happened.
Harry opened the door. Rabbi Moish was standing there with a glass of lemonade, a platter of oily jelly donuts alongside Gomez, who was chomping with a full mouth. Harry passed on the
donuts but quaffed down the lemonade with gusto.
It never happened. It never happened.
"Oy vey, Chaim. You don't look so good. Perhaps some fresh mountain air and a spirited horah dance to clear the soul?"
Before Harry could resist, Rabbi Moish took Harry's hand and led them down the hall towards the entrance of the building. A young man with a red beard, wild sidelocks and a yarmulke embroidered with 'Grateful Dead', was studying Talmud at the reception desk.
"Yankel," Rabbi Moish called to him. "Time for a break. As King Solomon wrote, 'Too much study is the weariness of flesh. Come join us for a joyful horah my friend!"
Yankel, previously known as Jaz Goodman in LBG (life before God), didn't need any coaxing. He barely understood a word of the Hebrew text that he was looking at -- not studying. He was simply fascinated with the layout of the Talmud page; the dense arrangement of sidebars and paragraphs in different sized fonts. The pattern of letters and words came alive and appeared to be scurrying to and fro like ants on the page. Almost as trippy as the Grateful Dead posters that decorated the walls of his bedroom. Yankel née Jaz closed his musty Talmud and rose from his chair.
"Count me in righteous rabbi. Like Jerry says in Scarlet Begonias, 'Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.' "
"Wonderful, but another way to express the words of Moses," Rabbi Moish proclaimed. "The Torah lives and breathes relevancy, chaverim yikarim, my dear friends!"
"Mind if I bring along a little music to horah to?" Yankel née Jaz suggested.
"By all means, Yankele! Let this be a complete sensory experience!"
"Right on, righteous rabbi!" Yankel née Jaz exclaimed. He grabbed his boom-box loaded with his favorite Grateful Dead bootleg tape, strapped on his yak-pack "pouchie" stocked with his personal peyote supply, or "veggies" as his preferred to call them, and followed Rabbi Moish outside.
A magically clear night, a blanket of twinkling stars, a waxing moon. Rabbi Moish studied the sky with a sense of wonder as if discovering it for the first time in his life.
"Magnificent! The new moon, a symbol of rebirth, a messenger of the Shekhinah, reminding us that we hold change within us. As it is stated in the Talmud by Rabbi Yochanan, "Those who recite the blessing over the new moon in its time is as if they greeted the presence of the Shekhinah." A perfect night for us to revel in the glory of HaShem's creation with a Kiddush Levanah, a blessing over the moon. Please excuse me for a few moments while I go back inside to gather a minyan so that we can celebrate this moment in it's full glory."
Not a problem for Yankel née Jaz as he dipped into the veggie supply in his pouchie. He popped one into his mouth and then offered some to Harry and Gomez. "Time to trip on some veggies."
"Veggies?" Harry asked.
"Think I'll pass," said Gomez."Gives me too much gas. I'm on an all carb diet now."
"Not these veggies, man," Yankel née Jaz replied. "This is top grade peyote."
"Peyote?" Harry repeated.
"Best way to open up those righteous gates of perception. C'mon dudes you're not gonna let me trip alone. Partake, it would be a mitzvah."
"Peyote?" Gomez said with a mischievous grin to Harry. "Could make this exhausting trip more tolerable."
What-the-fuck time.
"What the fuck," Harry said. "What the fuck."
And they popped the peyote like a couple of kids taking Flintstone vitamins. Yankel née Jaz turned on his boom-box transforming the still air into a wall of a Grateful Dead concert.
No comments:
Post a Comment