the purpose arrived. I got a message from my old friend Jim. I hadn’t heard from him since my wedding. “Marc, it’s Jimmy. I’m in Israel, man. I got a job out here working for the ambassador. I’m engaged to an Israeli girl named Oriella. You and Kim ought to think about coming out. I got diplomatic plates on the car. We can go anywhere, man. Oriella speaks Hebrew. You guys can stay with us. We’ll take two four-day weekends and see the whole country. It’ll be beautiful. So, if you can, man, swing by.”
What I heard underneath Jim’s invitation was God reaching out again. God was using Jim and my Panasonic answering machine as conduits. That’s when I was infected with full-blown Jerusalem Syndrome. I had had symptoms before, but had thought,
Israel, Jim, how clear does it have to be? There are no coincidences. I’m Grandma Goldy’s number one. I’m the Kol Nidre kid. I had gone too far. This is the further instruction I was waiting for. Finally!
I believed that if I were to go to Israel, there was a real good chance that God would assign me a task of a biblical level. He would pass on some information that I would bring back to the people and possibly change the course of the world. I’m serious.
I didn’t know how it might happen. Maybe stone tablets in the Sinai; or perhaps God keeps up with the new technology and I would be delivered a divine disc. As long as it wasn’t Mac, I could run it.
It didn’t seem unreasonable to me. God used to talk to people all the time. Hell, he’d spoken to me before, just not recently. Read the Old Testament, the New Testament: Every other day it’s “Abraham, this is God. I need you to do something for me. I need the kid. Thanks, I knew I could count on you. Bring him to the mountain, that’s it, lay him out on the altar. Good. Raise the knife up. Good, good, now—wait, just kidding. Just testing you, Abe. Thanks for playing along. You’re okay by me.”
Who’s God talking to now? I don’t know. Once when I was walking through Times Square, I thought maybe God is talking to those guys you see roaming the streets talking to themselves. You know, those guys that are throwing their arms up in the air, screaming, “I can’t! I can’t, you bastard. No, I can’t.”
Maybe the other side of that conversation is God bearing down on them, saying, “You’re the new leader.”
“I can’t. No. I can’t!” they scream.
They’re not crazy. They’re reluctant prophets. Better give them a quarter.
God has chosen bad Jews before. Weren’t they all a little bad? I mean, Noah must have done something wrong to get that job. Forty days and forty nights on that boat walking around saying, “It smells like shit on this boat! Not just shit! Every kind of animal shit. Times two! Look, I’m sorry I fucked her. Can we dock this thing? Soon? Please?”
I believed God had chosen me.
Of course, I didn’t tell my wife this. There are some things you just don’t tell your spouse. If I had said, “Honey, we are going to Israel and there’s a real good chance that God is going to choose me for an assignment of some kind,” I know what would’ve happened. There would’ve been a long conversation about medication, and I didn’t need it. So, I just said, “Honey, we’re going to Israel. Won’t that be fun?” She was excited. She’s a little Jewier than I am.
Everything was confirmed the night after I talked to Jim. I had a vision. An honest-to-God, kicking-it old-school biblical-style vision. No magic powder involved. That was behind me.
I bolted up out of sleep, covered in sweat. My heart was pounding, and I was breathing fast. There was a strange white light filling the bedroom. There it was, floating over my bed in a swirling blue mist, about the size of a small car, turning slowly around: a giant camcorder. Floating next to it was a very old man with a long white beard wearing a pointed hat and a coat of stars that seemed to blend in with the sky. He was
What I heard underneath Jim’s invitation was God reaching out again. God was using Jim and my Panasonic answering machine as conduits. That’s when I was infected with full-blown Jerusalem Syndrome. I had had symptoms before, but had thought,
Israel, Jim, how clear does it have to be? There are no coincidences. I’m Grandma Goldy’s number one. I’m the Kol Nidre kid. I had gone too far. This is the further instruction I was waiting for. Finally!
I believed that if I were to go to Israel, there was a real good chance that God would assign me a task of a biblical level. He would pass on some information that I would bring back to the people and possibly change the course of the world. I’m serious.
I didn’t know how it might happen. Maybe stone tablets in the Sinai; or perhaps God keeps up with the new technology and I would be delivered a divine disc. As long as it wasn’t Mac, I could run it.
It didn’t seem unreasonable to me. God used to talk to people all the time. Hell, he’d spoken to me before, just not recently. Read the Old Testament, the New Testament: Every other day it’s “Abraham, this is God. I need you to do something for me. I need the kid. Thanks, I knew I could count on you. Bring him to the mountain, that’s it, lay him out on the altar. Good. Raise the knife up. Good, good, now—wait, just kidding. Just testing you, Abe. Thanks for playing along. You’re okay by me.”
Who’s God talking to now? I don’t know. Once when I was walking through Times Square, I thought maybe God is talking to those guys you see roaming the streets talking to themselves. You know, those guys that are throwing their arms up in the air, screaming, “I can’t! I can’t, you bastard. No, I can’t.”
Maybe the other side of that conversation is God bearing down on them, saying, “You’re the new leader.”
“I can’t. No. I can’t!” they scream.
They’re not crazy. They’re reluctant prophets. Better give them a quarter.
God has chosen bad Jews before. Weren’t they all a little bad? I mean, Noah must have done something wrong to get that job. Forty days and forty nights on that boat walking around saying, “It smells like shit on this boat! Not just shit! Every kind of animal shit. Times two! Look, I’m sorry I fucked her. Can we dock this thing? Soon? Please?”
I believed God had chosen me.
Of course, I didn’t tell my wife this. There are some things you just don’t tell your spouse. If I had said, “Honey, we are going to Israel and there’s a real good chance that God is going to choose me for an assignment of some kind,” I know what would’ve happened. There would’ve been a long conversation about medication, and I didn’t need it. So, I just said, “Honey, we’re going to Israel. Won’t that be fun?” She was excited. She’s a little Jewier than I am.
Everything was confirmed the night after I talked to Jim. I had a vision. An honest-to-God, kicking-it old-school biblical-style vision. No magic powder involved. That was behind me.
I bolted up out of sleep, covered in sweat. My heart was pounding, and I was breathing fast. There was a strange white light filling the bedroom. There it was, floating over my bed in a swirling blue mist, about the size of a small car, turning slowly around: a giant camcorder. Floating next to it was a very old man with a long white beard wearing a pointed hat and a coat of stars that seemed to blend in with the sky. He was
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