ADL

Passover season has historically been the time of the Desecration of the Host (see this post before proceeding). At some point one has to declare, "The END is near!" Get off our butts and expunge this darkness. In response to these parasitic allegations, I propose to form the ADL (Anti-Defecation League). The office of the presidency must be filled by a charismatic and very enemated individual. His primary function would be to execute all offending beings in an almost anal manner.

The search itself would necessitate the traditional spoon and feather technique to unclench for search and rescue. Ten samplings are a must but somehow one insidious one always seems to go missing. The next morning would be the ideal time to destroy the critters by burning them at the stake while roasting a steak or shank bone concurrently. That night, at some hotel, preferably in California, the family would gather for the feast (Seder) but inevitably word would leak that they just couldn't kill the beast. Repeated hand washing, sometimes without a blessing, sometimes with. Questions would be asked, libations imbibed, choruses of 'DIE, DIE-Anus' and off-key chants would be sung recalling the ass-busting labor our forefathers endured before Me-ben-dazole (the proper pronunciation for the ineffable YKWH) released us from this torture and took it out of us in Egypt.

Most of us recount the 10 plagues, but some of us actually choose to be plagued in one form or another based on the dictum that we must view ourselves as if we actually experienced the redemption from Egypt. And I do mean experience.

Hark, me thinks I hear a knock at the back-door. Something makes me believe Elijah wouldn't be caught dead entering through there. So instead we toast his memory and pass out in a drunken stupor.

Sometimes one Seder would be insufficient to complete the task and a repeat rite must be performed. Eight days of doo-diligence and then once again we can make Passover the season of redemption rather than desecration.

Exile

It has been said that exile is a form of death. You are uprooted from your family, friends, from familiar surroundings and a predictable environment. Things and people that brought you comfort and support, disappear in a flash. Image being kidnapped, blindfolded, and transported for what feels like an eternity and dropped off in the middle of some unknown city with just a candy bar to get you through the dark, rainy night. You have no shelter and no hope. Perhaps you speak the local dialect, perhaps not. How will the locals treat you? With suspicion, perhaps as a competitor for resources. Will you survive the tougher elements of the street? What's worse is you suddenly realize that it was someone close to you, someone you have always counted on, that did this to you. But you can't fathom why and you just want to get home but which way and how long and how many untold obstacles stand in your way? What if you never get home and if you do, how will you be welcomed? Hope fades fast as all these thoughts cross you mind in an instant.

I had a choice. I could take the cat to a shelter where they said he would be destroyed because he was sick with worms or I could send him into exile and give him a fighting chance. He is a tough outdoor cat and I want to believe he will find another family to help him or at least survive. But what kind of life will that be, going from all food cares handled to utterly on his own? He has brought me presents of mice and birds in show of appreciation for the food and affection the kids and I have shown him and this is how I repay him??? It tears my heart out that I had to make a living being especially one close to me suffer but he has brought a plague upon me and (some of) my children. I gave him worm medication but he will keep getting reinfected by his contaminated feces and other critters will be our next woe. So if I had to choose between my children's health and the cat. As much as I love my cat, I chose my children. (See if I say this when I tear the last hair out of my head when they go bonkers).

Last week, I tried to put him in a box but that effort failed so today I purchased a pet carrier and off we drove in the pouring rain. Cats hate car rides, in case you don't know. He was moaning and crying for the half-hour ride. I cried with him albeit not as loud. I just drove. I had tried to make a plan earlier in the day as to the best drop site but nothing materialized so I just let the car take us. Tali lent me moral support for the journey if I may name-drop. I let him off in a residential area and poured some cat food by the curb. He was happy to be out of the car and cage. Before I turned around he was gone.

It struck me on the way home that I had let him off in Babylon, of all places. The namesake of our first exile. And so it was, I displaced my beloved cat as the Babylonians had displaced our forefathers oh so long ago. How they must have felt, how my sweet cat must be feeling now. I cried the whole way home and my computer screen is a shimmering fog right now. Do you know, that now that I come to think of it, I might not even have a picture of him? I was going to put him here on the blog as a lasting memory but I can't. I'll be able to conjure his image but will the kids forget him? No, not him but at least how he looked. Will they ever forgive me if they find out? I'll have to make my own peace with this but I tell you it really hurts.

What went through his mind when he watched me drive off into the night leaving him stranded and all alone? He was alone and scared. His hopes faded, replaced by dispair. As I pictured him looking at my car driving off into the distance, rivulets of water streaming down by the curb, I could not help hearing the words (In Hebrew) "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept as we remembered Zion..."
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Dream Believer

"I had a dream," my pappy told me. That, of course, was long after MLK Jr. had his unrelated vision. It was a relatively mild summer the year my brother was to be married. I was just a kid then, but I felt the need to instruct him in all things sexual that I had only recently learned. He smiled and messed my hair a bit and said thanks. He gave me a coke and I smiled.

Just after his engagement, he came down with hepatitis so graciously shared from cup to cup at a rebbe's tish. Even though he was feverish and weak, thankfully he was able to drag himself to the Brooklyn HIP center. There the top notch physician wrote him a script, which he diligently went to the pharmacy to fill. The pharmacist told him this was an Rx for a placebo because the doctor thought he was a drunk. Instead of accepting this miracle cure, he chose to check into a local hospital where his condition deteriorated. That's when pappy had his dream.

As I recall it being told to me directly, pappy had seen his friend, Joe, appear to him at night in a dream. Joe was the first of his childhood friends to pass to the other side. Joe solemnly informed my dad that tonight Joe was to take his son (my bro). I don't know how my dad comes up with this stuff so fast, I guess he was FAST asleep but his response without hesitation was, "Take the cat as a Kaparah (atonement)." With that the dream ends and the laws of the universe are forever altered.

Come morning, the cat was found dead. Zoinks! I have a sneaking suspicion my dad sleepwalks but I have not seem this myself. When talking with my brother, he claims that, that night he gave up and prayed to be taken away but somehow things took a turn for the better the next day. For him, that is. I'm sure the cat would have an entirely different perspective and now after umpteen years of marriage I don't know if my brother would have taken that deal.

Many years passed. I was dorming at YU when I noticed my next cat crying outside by my seventh floor window. I was dreaming of course. I let her in and she seemed relieved to see me and climbed on my bed and went to sleep with an apparent grim as if she was comforted being my presence. There was a knock, so I opened the door only to find two cats, looking just like her, beckoning her to come with them. She did. They walked down Rubin hall together and just faded away.

A few days later, I got a call that my kitty had disappeared (coincidentally) the night I had the dream. Can you figure it out yet? Not only had the cat died but my uncle was mysteriously cured from an ailment that no doctor could successfully identify or cure! He had suddenly developed an uncontrollable diaphram spasm causing him to hiccup incessantly. They actually had to start his heart a few times as a result. Apparently my dad had a dream that night as well. In his dream, he was saying to himself, "As much as I love the cat, I choose my brother."

The only thing my family could figure was that my grandfather, the butcher, used to feed all the neighborhood cats to rid the area of mice. As a zechus (merit),these cats have come back to sacrifice their lives for our holy lineage.

I'm not a big believer in stuff like this when people tell me but there truly is something about cats and my family. The main thing really is that if you're a cat, stray far far away. I do have sleepless nights wondering if someday, if we are not careful, they may issue a cat-wah against us.

We are finally coming to the real point of all this. I told my son that I was feeling very ill because of the cat-asstrophy. I apparently made a bit of the show of it to discourage him from playing with the cat. He took it to mean that I was seriously hurting. And out of the mouth of babes..."Dad, if you want to feel better, someone should dream about the cat and you'll be OK!"

That'sa my boy (Italian inflection)
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The Eleventh/Second Plague

For all you skeptics out there, beware because God is listening and his vengeance is mighty. At first I couldn't pinpoint the source of my transgression, I scratched my ass wondering. Then it occurred to me that I had to go and rant about soap use on Passover. Well, for our blog-reading God, this was not taken as good clean fun. In fact, the punishment fit the crime. I ended doing Passover cleaning as SECOND time and I will be cleaning a few more times.

I wish the plague was blood, boils, beasts, power outage, or the like. Lice would have been unbearable but the cleanup from this was remarkably similar. The plague I speak of, the one that descended upon my house (me really), was frogs. But not your garden variety of Egyptian frog. It was more in line with the toad family. The NEMATODE one, to be specific. I was playing with our outdoor cat the first days of the holiday. It's a stray we took in after our white-trash neighbor kicked its teeth out. It is so friendly and it apparently didn't mind climbing and resting on my lap. Lo and behold, the wrath of God began in a place of darkness. 'Yea, though I squirm through the valley of darkness, I shall fear no evil.' The itch from these PINWORMS was quite titillating. Actually, this is not the kind of itch one should let his girlfriend scratch. It was driving me so crazy that I went to First Med and paid out of pocket just to be told that they can't look at the exceptional specimen I had so digitally gathered thanks to Scotch tape (wait, is scotch kosher for Passover?). It had to be sent to the lab. It upset me that they were prepared to let me go 3 days while the lab processed the results. So I just Rx-ed Mebendazole for myself and family ASAP rather than let a higher contagious and extremely annoying organism have free reign of the netherlands.

Clean-up was Passover-Obsessive Plus. Blankets went to the cleaners ($100+), sheets washed daily, some of my silkiest undies trashed. All my pants to the cleaners (now's a good time to visit me at work if you want a sight to see), clothes laundered daily, floors mopped, toilets spit-shined, carpets vacuumed (eggs survive well in the dust). No more scary movies with my bud because nail-biting is out since eggs do well under the fingernails. Everything is so clean you can practically eat off my as.....floor.

Now what to do with this fifth column, this seemingly pleasant sojourner cat? I believe he is a first born and as such, I wish the appropriate plague upon him. And I don't mean nematodes.

Gut Reaction

Now I don't know if I believe in life in the great beyond or in communication between that world and ours but something made me stop and think. I was pondering what happened to me shortly after my engagement to be married. I was struck with a bad case of hepatitis of unknown etiology. I was out of commission for a week but sad to say I recovered without learning my lesson. You see, my brother also contracted this nefarious condition just after he proposed as well. He too recovered but not before praying for his release. Until this day, I thought he meant release from the pain of this world during the darkest moments of his illness but in truth he meant release from the bonds of marriage. I was discussing this with a friend who pointed out that he got pneumonia after his sheva brachot and another of his friends developed diabetes at his engagement party.

I'm starting to see a pattern here. Is it a message from beyond, a warning from a higher being as to the cost of this ungodly enterprise? Or perhaps this is a visceral aversion borne out of evolutionary forces against monogamy. Shall I place my eggs in one basket, I ask myself? I'm leaning towards the latter proposal (if I dare say that word in public).

If you survive the gut wrenching warning klaxons and choose not to heed them, doom is on the horizon. One ritual gives a glimpse into your future. When the bride walks seven times around the groom, it symbolizes his impending downfall like that of the walls Jericho after seven circuits. Whether you fall to the warning message or fall for the bride, you will certainly have your kishkas eaten out of you.