The Jerusalem Inception - By Avraham Azrieli Page 0,44

He saw Major Buskilah signal his men, and three things happened at once: The policemen rushed forward, Lemmy put his foot aside and tripped Redhead Dan, and the men of Neturay Karta fled.

The policemen circled the two of them. Redhead Dan got up, clenching his fists, and the major swung his truncheon and hit him on the side of the head. As he fell down, the truncheon landed on his back and thighs, again and again, making a sickening, hollow sound, while Redhead Dan screamed.

“Stop it!” Lemmy lunged toward the major, but two policemen restrained him.

The beating continued until Redhead Dan stopped screaming.

Major Buskilah gave him a kick, which produced no response from the unconscious man. The major turned to Lemmy, panting, his face red, the truncheon clutched in his hand. “Who’s laughing now, punk?”

“Satan, probably.” Lemmy didn’t lower his eyes.

The major holstered his truncheon, took Lemmy’s arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his black coat, exposing the red skin left by Redhead Dan’s grip. He showed the mark to his men. “Looks like evidence of resistance, boys?”

They laughed, and Major Buskilah shoved him. “Go home, boy. Tell your father that the Zionist police treated you fairly. Go on!”

Lemmy picked up his hat. “What about him?” He gestured at Redhead Dan.

“We’ll take care of him,” Major Buskilah said. “Go home!”

Chapter 18

Elie Weiss waited until Monday night, allowing Redhead Dan two days to stew in pain and fear in the windowless cell at the police lockup. Major Buskilah’s deputies pushed Elie into the cell, where he collapsed on the floor, wrapped up in his beggar’s cloak.

The young Neturay Karta man was sitting in the corner on the concrete floor, cuddled in his black coat, mumbling Psalms from memory. A light bulb hung from a wire, illuminating his bruised face.

Elie shuffled to the wall and propped himself up to a sitting position. “May God burn their souls in hell!”

“Amen.” Redhead Dan coughed. “What happened to you?”

“The Zionists.” The fake beard itched, and he scratched quickly. “They don’t like what I have to say.”

“They arrested you for talking?”

“Beat me up, too. With sticks, for speaking the words of the Prophet Ezekiel: And He said to me, prophesy upon these bones, and tell them: Listen, dry bones, to the word of God!”

Hearing the biblical words intoned in the manner of a learned scholar seemed to reassure Redhead Dan. “But why did the Vision of the Dry Bones upset them so much?”

“They said the prime minister couldn’t sleep, that I was keeping him up.”

“You recited Ezekiel by his house at night?”

“Is he home during the day?”

Redhead Dan described his own painful experience. Elie’s sympathy was forthcoming as he listened to a lengthy rant against the state and its sinful ways. He steered the conversation to personal facts, asking the ultra-Orthodox man about his life in Meah Shearim, his family, and his studies. Elie reciprocated by sharing his own version of personal history, a mix of fact and fiction, of growing up in an Orthodox family in Germany, embracing modern socialist ideas, running away with a Zionist group to start a kibbutz near Lake Kinneret in Palestine, farming the land, fighting the British army for independence, and risking his life in the wars against the Arabs in 1948 and 1956. But Elie’s invented biography veered off the common path of secular Zionism when he had supposedly regained his faith in God and started observing the Sabbath. The kibbutz expelled him with nothing but a few items of clothing and a sandwich, which he couldn’t eat as it was not kosher. He settled in Jerusalem, working in construction and preaching Ezekiel, which had presently landed him in jail.

They spoke about the heretic Zionists, who were about to legalize abortions. As their discussion went from conceptual ideas to concrete facts, Elie led Redhead Dan to the eventual conclusion that, as the ultimate leader of the Zionist state, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was responsible for a legislation process that would cause the murder of unborn, yet viable, Jewish children. “It’s driven from the top,” Elie said. “The prime minister must be made an example for all sinners!”

The Talmudic scholar in Redhead Dan emerged, and he quoted a whole section of Jewish law dealing with the concept of Rodef, where Talmud required the preemptive killing of a Jew who is actively attempting to hurt other Jews. The blood of such a pursuer must be spilled under the concept of collective self-defense before he succeeded in his attempt to hurt