Read Online One Hundred Philistine Foreskins by Tova Reich - Free Book Online Page B

point of noting that no one to this day knows the exact place where Moses Our Teacher was buried (by God himself, as Rashi the commentator-in-chief notes—or, even better, Moses buried himself, as we all do), lest they turn it into a shrine and prostrate themselves before it. And then Temima, in her bed in the Bukharim Quarter that had become like a prison to her, had the dream that directed her how to go.
    It was a dream in threes, like the dreams of Pharaoh’s head baker and head cupbearer that troubled them one night in the dungeon of the king’s chief steward, the dreams that revealed to them who will live and who will die, interpreted with merciless prescience by their fellow inmate, that show-off, that suck-up, that crybaby, that pretty boy Joseph, possibly a closeted homosexual. In Temima’s dream there was a house with three impossible entrances—one was so low that only a flat cart could fit through, the second was even lower and much narrower to give access only to a small animal, the third was high up with no way to get to it—but there was no door to this house in the expected place of a size or shape that a normal human being could reach or pass through. In her dream Temima was either inside the house trying to get out, or outside attempting to get in—she herself did not know which. Though her form in her dream was that of a fetus, she knew with utter certainty it was she, she never questioned this at all in her dream or even experienced it asstrange. Inside the womb of the fetus that Temima recognized as herself was another fetus that she knew was her mother, and within the womb of her mother fetus there nested yet a third fetus, an even more miniature Temima—like matryoshka dolls, homunculi, golems within golems. The skin of all three fetuses was transparent so that Temima could clearly see through them one inside the other. The tiniest fetus was struggling to get out of the mother fetus, who was laboring to get out of the biggest Temima fetus, who was attempting to get out of, or perhaps into, the house—but it was all in vain, they were helpless, as if stunned, paralyzed, again and again they were sucked back into the space they were struggling to escape from as into a vacuum or a black hole.
    It was so horrifying that Temima squeezed out a stifled scream that brought Cozbi and Paltiel, in bedclothes hastily thrown over their naked bodies, flying to her room to cut the cord and liberate her from this nightmare. But in the last second before she woke up, through the transparent skin of the largest fetus that was herself, Temima could see the heart beating, with its blood vessels lit up in red and blue like the street map of a city. This was the map on which Temima traced the route she was destined to follow on this day.
    When she arrived now at the vanguard of her procession to the end of Radak Street and the house of the president of the State of Israel was revealed as if on a stage before them, Temima received the final confirmation that she had chosen the correct path. They had reached the third major station on their road, the last preordained stop before she would come to her destination, when, at one and the same moment, she would enter and exit.
    For the first time in her journey that day Temima poked her head fully out through the window of her aperion, to the great exultation of her people whose cries of Te-Tem-Ima-Temima-from-Brooklyn grew even more rousing at this glimpse of her craning her head out to try to view for herself, as much as was possible through her clouded eyes and the veil fluttering in front of her face and the talit hooding her head, the events unfolding before them that Kol-Isha-Erva at the head of her school for prophetesses was reporting from the scene into Temima’s cell phone bulletin by bulletin.
    The president’s wife is standing on the upper story balcony of the house, leaning against the parapet, Kol-Isha-Erva was reporting. Her