One Hundred Philistine Foreskins by Tova Reich

Author:Tova Reich [Reich, Tova]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619022041
Publisher: Counterpoint

Part III

Haya

They Have

Gone Astray

in the Land,

the Desert Has

Closed in

on Them

Over the seven days of mourning for the murdered baby, Kook Immanuel, stunned citizens from all across Israel, many with their children in tow, set aside their fears of venturing into the wild West Bank and flowed into Hebron to offer comfort to the bereaved parents—and, in the process, to demonstrate with their bodies their outrage that such atrocities were possible in their own land that was their God-given birthright. From common folk to dignitaries at the highest spheres of government and the religious establishment, they made their way defiantly through the treacherous streets of the Jewish people’s second holiest city up to the military base on the hilltop, almost every tree and wall along their route plastered with heartbreaking black-and-white posters of the baby’s shockingly innocent face overlaid with streaks of bright red blood gushing down like tears along his chubby cheeks from the black hole in his forehead like a third eye, and the stark words electrified in lettering evoking death camp barbed wire, SLAUGHTERED BY TERRORISTS, shrieking the savage tale.

So great was the number of mourners who kept streaming in that the shiva was moved from the family quarters to the synagogue, the largest tent on the compound. Temima sat on the floor in her stocking feet in the women’s section to receive the female comforters, an army blanket thrown over her head that she did not raise for the entire period of the seven days of mourning, her lips moving as she rocked back and forth, reciting Psalms from memory but no sound emerging from her mouth, voiceless like the barren Hannah praying for a child in the Tabernacle so that the high priest Eli concluded she was a drunk.

In the far more capacious men’s section of the synagogue tent, her husband, Haim Ba’al Teshuva, scribe and phylacteries maker of Hebron, his arm still in a sling, his head still bandaged in gauze, sat on the floor facing a throng of men packed tightly together undulating like a giant beast stirring in hibernation whenever one or another of them sought to push his way through to make his presence known to the chief mourner and offer the requisite words of consolation. Only when the prime minister of the State of Israel himself, surrounded by his bodyguards with faces as if carved from granite, arrived in a black bulletproof limousine did the crowd part like the Reed Sea to create a passage for his eminence as the first lady who had accompanied him set a silk scarf loosely over her helmet constructed of hair and made her way alone to the women’s section. Howie was so overcome by the honor of the appearance of so prestigious a comforter that in violation of religious protocols he rose from his place of mourning to greet him, flushing crimson with gratification at being singled out for such public recognition, to his everlasting shame and regret failing to seize the moment to

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