malkah ascends the chariot

Someone called Malkah a mystic the other day. But I don't think so. Just because she romps around with letters of the Hebrew aleph-bet... Just because she's more comfortable in the cosmic... Just because she can't hold a pshat conversation, even about a movie like say Little Shop of Horrors (or a TV series like BSG)... Just because she sees people acting out letters of the Tetragrammaton and taking them on as archetypes... All that and more does not a mystic make.

Malkah once asked her mother, Mrs Tzaddik, what she had wanted for her when she grew up. It was a question Malkah had just never thought to ask before, but now was curious as hell. Ask it now or never. Mrs Tzaddik was not going to be long for this world.

"How could I have wanted anything for you?" Mrs Tzaddik told her, voice raised in operatic frenzy.  "You took drugs in the '60s!"

Ah. And there it was. No achievement was ever going to be good enough for Mrs Tzaddik, was it? Malkah took drugs in the '60s.  And actually, thereafter as well.

Malkah was calm about Mrs Tzaddik's outburst. As she was calm about just about everything. Equanimity was her primary practice.

She said, "Ma, everyone took drugs in the '60s." It was just a fact.

But Mrs Tzaddik was too steamed up in the tragedy of her own disappointment to hear it. And she didn't like facts.

I want to say "what happened in the '60s stays in the '60s" but you and I both know that's just not true. Berkeley in the '60s, and San Francisco in those days engaged a generation to see beyond the veil. And this was not just about pretty colors on the wall, or politics, or what the music really means. Malkah and her generation weren't just lying around reading Carlos Castaneda all day. They were also reading folks like Thomas Kuhn. The '60s were paradigm-shattering.

Now Malkah had been raised on storybook tales of how the Hebrew letters searched desperately for the Queen of Heaven, aka the Sabbath Bride, aka the Shekhinah, who had disappeared from the world. The letters were alive in those books when she was a child. And that didn't change. It was pure animism. She was raised with a living alphabet. Hebrew at her school was in the morning—vibrant, exciting, and alive. English was in the afternoons—dead as a door nail, just making words and nothing more. The English letters didn't run off trying to bring the Shekhinah back to Earth so that the world could be healed. They told baseball scores.

Something much later led her back to the tales of her childhood. The tales her father had told her. She needed to rethink them. Malkah discovered that these were no mere children's stories made up by imaginative children's authors. Instead, they were rooted in baudy ancient stories and serious medieval texts about the birth of God and the emergence of pre-biblical Creations. In other words, they were 'raw data,' and 'primary sources.'

And what those tales did was make Durkheim extremely dull. Durkheim, yes. But not Weber. Weber was all about charismatic figures rather than statistics.

Don't get me wrong.  LSD did not make Malkah religious or anything. God forbid. No. It just made her a better academic. It made her take those mystical texts seriously—as treatises on the miracles of grammar, ancient languages, and the formation of words.

Malkah became a better academic. She had fun with the material. And then she got out there and made something of herself. And Mrs Tzaddik was confused. Proud (sometimes), but grudgingly so. You can't possibly do well if you took drugs in the '60s.  Right?

So. On this election day, my vote's for Malkah's-no-mystic. She's just a product of her times. She seeks the whole above the particular. She privileges ancient tales over current events. And she loves the letters of the aleph-bet because they're still opening doors to the mysteries of Creation.

Along with Scientific American.

this is going to end badly, she said

Malkah woke up, and she was healed of her despair. Her body felt light, like it could just float up into the ether — except for the fact that she already resided there to begin with. Her spirit was lighter too for a change. It was an indescribable feeling. She had even slept. Slept like a newborn babe in arms. Slept like she was cradled in the arms of God.

She was in love.

God himself had descended upon her and healed her. I mean, everybody knows this, right? What else could have happened?

The Almighty One saw her. Really saw her. He took it upon himself to enter her with Infinite Light and penetration of spirit. The Angel Gabriel himself attended, blowing his trumpet. I'm actually not sure about this last part, but that's what they say. What do I know from angels?

The point is, that Malkah was healed.

She decided to leave her place of occultation and descend into the realms of the living once more. She had been in exile so long in her despair over the actions of the humans below. The Earth had been rended by the warfare and bigotry, by ignorance and hatred one against the other. The Lord had brought down upon the Earth his own catastrophic wake-up call to humanity, to no avail. They had glanced up, joined hands briefly, and then had returned for their weapons lest someone else amass them while they were busy helping out a tsunami or two.

"Wake up!" the Lord had said. "See this disaster? May it teach you to be cooperative, one brother with the other." The Almighty had been reading Kropotkin again.

And the Shekhinah just left the world. Again. She couldn't take it.

Humans had tried to coax her back with ritual. Especially the Sabbath. Do the ritual correctly, and she would descend (however briefly) into the hearts of men, and they'd feel the awesome force of the beauty of Creation.

And then, they'd start bickering over the remote. Over a perceived maldistribution of goods. Over territory. "This land is my land —" they would shout, like it was a good and righteous thing to do. And she'd be sick of it again, and depart. She could hardly wait for Havdalah to get herself out of here.

But now. Now was different. She was (quite literally) floating on clouds. Peaceful, if not happy. What did she know from happiness? It wasn't her department. But she felt the buoyancy of possibility, and it felt good.

"This is going to end badly," she said.

Of this she was quite sure. 'Love' always ended badly. Always ended in loss, for there was death. The death of one led to the anguish of the other. The illness of one did the same. The hurtful feelings. Abandonment. Betrayal. Moving on. The higher the resonance, the harder the fall when it was gone. These were the invisible little parasites that inhabited the soft, delicious pelt of love. It was a force of nature. Part of the Law of Gravity itself. Grave, indeed.

But there it was. That dreaded love.

She tested it out. Tentatively seeking out the tendrils of her being. Nope. She still felt euphoric. She felt so good, she could barely contain herself. Endorphins of the Almighty.

A great pessimism descended upon her, but it couldn't quite penetrate the armor of her joy.

And then, out of nowhere, a vision.

The tzaddik came to her and spoke. His presence made her shake and cry, She was overwhelmed. Not even the Almighty Himself had this effect on her, so powerful was his sight.

"You must love," he said. "You must love whom you will."

"You must trust," he said. "You must trust — not that it will be alright — no. Not that, no. But that it will be worth the cost, no matter what you pay. You do not bargain with this one. Love is worth the price. Rather that, than go without."

And in that moment, the Shekhinah knew love, and named it thus. Tears flooded down her face, and rain poured down upon the land below.

She turned, and walked upon her way.

She was not, after all, ready to descend to the planet below.

the shekhina and the shikse goddess

The shekhina and the shikse goddess walk into a bar...

I know. It's not funny. And it didn't happen that way, anyway. It's so much easier to think of the two of them separately. As if they just don't belong inhabiting the same paradigm. But there they are, deep in conversation. It doesn't really matter how or where they met.

The shekhina. She's remote. Unattainable. Melancholic. Removed. Horrified at what we've done to the place. Her world, her dominion. The dominion of malkhut. With the shekhina, what you see is not what you get. Or rather, you don't get to see at all. We are blind to her. We've blinded ourselves with pollutants. I'm not sure if her role is to make us feel guilty for-what-we've-done-to-the-earth, or to inspire us to diligence.

One of the strange things about the shekhina that I think about a lot, is that a correlative to her name are the shikunim — slums and housing projects — the urban wasteland. And it's precisely this that grieves the shekhina (at least these days).

When I was little, I had a storybook about the aleph-bet. In each tale, the Hebrew letters go off looking for the shekhina, the sabbath bride, the queen of god. And they cannot find her, for she has disappeared from the world, in her sadness. And when I was older I realized that she had gone into occultation — just like the 12th Imam, although his reasons differed.

Shekhina means 'residence' — the residence of the divine on earth. The dwelling place of the divine on earth. She takes up residence, but then discovers what we've done with the place, and bam, she's gone till we clean up our act. Or maybe she's just gone for good.

But no. She returns. She can't help it. She's drawn back into the dreams of the righteous. Drawn back in at Friday, sundown. She comes to those places where harmony is used to knit the world back together. Voices blend. Or bodies resonate together. For 24 hours, we bring back holiness.

That's what they say, anyway.

I don't think she'd exactly be drawn to the tyranny that the sabbath has become for many of the glat orthodox — a full day cycle of restriction and rigid rules. That's not the spirit of the shekhina, as far as I'm concerned. I think she likes it better when we pick up trash on the beaches, dogshit on the cliffs. But even that's not enough to bring her back into the world any time soon.

Shikse goddess: Now she's quite different. She is of the earth itself, and not beyond. She lives here, she breathes. She has some foreign ideas. She's not running away from anything. Right?

"Take some amaretto," she said, knowing that I do not drink.

"I'm not making fruit salad," I replied, confused.

"Something to drink. You need a drink," the shikse goddess said.

She's an alcoholic. That's what she says, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. She doesn't drink. She hasn't had a drop in almost twenty years. She has 'sobriety birthdays.' And when she reaches exactly twenty years, I think she's going to go out and celebrate. That part actually I just don't get. How can you celebrate sobriety with a drink? But her eyes light up at just the thought of it. And the thought just doesn't go away. Scary.

"You've had a bad day," she says. "A trauma. That's what a good cocktail is for."

Is that some kind of joke?

I stare at her. I know she's trying to help. But the fact is, I've never had a 'cocktail' in my life. I'm still staring at her. She means me well. I know that. I do.

"I'm Jewish," I reply. Which seems to you a non sequitur, but she knew what I meant.

"A cocktail helps you feel what you feel. Connect with your emotions," she said.

"That's what a therapist is for," I answered.

I mean, what would happen if you picked up a cocktail every time you had a bad day? I mean, where would we be then? The shekhina's already in despair over the state of the planet.

The shikse goddess replies, in all her wisdom:

"Maybe what the shekhina needs is a good stiff drink."

rabbity babbity and the neti pot

In her seventh HP book, JK Rowling introduces us to yet another children's book she hadn't written yet— The Tales of Beedle the Bard — and then found that she had to actually write the thing and come up with stories that matched the titles that she had so 'carelessly' tossed into HP7. I seem to have conflated two of her titles into one. I'm not here to tell you either of those tales. You've probably already read them yourself, like everything else that Rowling has written. Or if you haven't, ask the next person you set your eyes on. They have.

No. I want to tell a different tale.

There once was a Shekhinah in the world, and she had a perpetually sniffly nose. And worse than that, she couldn't breathe through it, either. And worse still, it was all bent out of shape — from the inside out. And the right side didn't work at all unless she pulled at her face to keep the passage open. Almost all photos of her show her looking studiously to the side, one hand supporting her jaw. It's a trick, you see. She's not trying to be studious at all: No. She's just trying to breathe.

One day, this witch came into her life. A witch who only appeared in a special looking-glass, with a slender titanium frame around it. The looking-glass could show the Shekhinah absolutely anything she wanted to see, on earth or off — but instead, quite magically, it brought her this witch instead. Unasked for. Right out of thin air.

And the Shekhinah is no conjurer. God forbid. She takes no responsibility for the witch's appearance at all. Cackle all you want.

And a really witchy witch at that. Custom made, it seemed, to cast a spell upon the Shekhinah, who was really someone else in disguise. I'm not sure who, though. I mean, hell, it's the Shekhinah — who else could it be? But it sounds like the story should go that way.

So. You know witches. They're yentas of one kind or another. Just can't mind their own bloody business. Have to go around stirring up trouble. And this witch took the form of the most seductive irresistible thing the Shekhinah had ever experienced: the tall, butch dyke incarnation of shikse goddess. And threw in 'musician' as well, just for added effect to keep her spells aimed to kill.

And kill she did. She hit the brain and the heart with one fatal blow — on YouTube, no less — with a private spell with one aim: to fling her sincerity right through the looking-glass screen so that it should slay the Shekhinah instantly. And so it came to pass. The Shekhinah was writhing on the ground, cracking up, and could not catch a single breath.

"You slay me!" she tried to say. But no breath. No sound.

And in this way, the Shekhinah passed out of this world into the world to come.

It was the spell of the Neti Pot.

For the witch advocated, in email after email, and in that final YouTube blow — that the Shekhinah take up use of the vile contraption. She gave argument after argument. Day after day, and night after night. She set her enchantments to music, and forced the Shekhinah to listen — nay, to hear — the seduction of the neti pot. Her advocacy was relentless. And there, on YouTube, were little two year olds adding to the argument, and creepy guys, and businesses all hired by the witch to cast her spell.

She used the ultimate spell of 'rationality' figuring that it would work the best in this case.

Her arguments included, (if I recall them at all):

No. I've blanked every single one out. I don't remember a thing. Not a thing!

But they were rational when you read them, or looked into those sincere faces, with a contraption — the neti pot itself —up one nostril, and water sincerely and magically pouring like Vernal Falls down the other nostril. Can I throw up now?

And they all look so innocent. And healthy. And clean.

And I decided that for sure, it's a cult.

And they lure you in with rationality and health claims, and how you'll breathe better, and sleep better, and never get sick again.

And they have the same look on their face. That cult look of utter guilelessness and honesty. That you-can-trust-me look.

And it might as well be J.K. Rowling selling you HP8 or Beedle the Bard. You know that you're just doomed. That you're gonna join the cult — eventually.

But in the meantime, you're going to resist with every fiber of your being. Anything, you cry out. Anything, but the neti pot!

And you know that once you're hooked, you'll walk around with that dumb-ass glow on your face, wreaking of health and happiness, and sound-sleeping nights that you can't even imagine. And a free neti pot of your very own to take home with you, if you sign up right now, maybe in blood.

And that the one thing that you don't get —absolutely not — is a free butch dyke of your very very own, thrown into the bargain. Instead, the story always goes, she runs off to indoctrinate someone else, poor soul.

And then she goes home to her wife.

Babbity Rabbitty has a better ending:

"... and ever after a golden statue ... stood upon the tree stump, and no witch or wizard was ever persecuted in the kingdom again."

Don't you just love J.K. Rowling?