One day an angel said, "you may ask one question." This meant I could ask God one burning thing on my mind and so I asked,
"Why did you let the holocaust happen?" And from there all spiraled downward.
I did not know about the four scholars then; they had gone to the orchard of forbidden knowledge and had seen the answers. One died, one went mad, one turned away from religion, and one went away content. When I think of them now, my empathy is complete. I too heard and saw and it drove me from religion and made me a believer and I died and went mad. It makes you wonder if the four scholars from the Talmud were the warning, which I read too late. But what should I have said to the angel? Better to have asked something benign rather than combative. Does God love me? Will I be rich and famous? Is the world real? Something God could have smiled at and answered in the usual cryptic code. But instead I asked why did the holy one allow such evil, was the holy one helpless to stop it? It is like my son who used to ask,
"Why did you have to yell at us so much?" negating all the good and all the love and leaving me wondering, "yes, why did I have to display such anger? Why did I yell so much?" It closed the door on a lot, it left me justifying my single parenting rather than... oh rather than smiling benignly and patting the creation on the head. "There there," I could have said, "All will be revealed soon enough. Wait till you have children."
Shimon ben Zoma said that a person is rich if they have all they want. If all they have is all they wish for. And so my mistake when the Angel called out to me, "You may ask one question," was to ask for anything at all. Better I should have remembered Shimon ben Zoma's remark and said nothing. But I did not know Shimon ben Zoma then, I only learned about him this year when in my search and study I came across him and his three companions. They were wandering in the orchard and they told me their story. I saw right away ben Zoma was the mad one. "We are alike, you and I" I said to ben Zoma. "We longed for understanding and wisdom in a mad tea party world and went mad with the knowledge."
Rabbi Akivah turned to me and said, "The cost is very, very high." I nodded assent. Overhead, a monarch flew by, its enormous wings bright as sunlight. Which reminds me, I did not see an angel, I only knew an angel. I mean to say it is like they say of the people at Sinai. "They saw the voice." I cannot explain it better than that.
Sometimes I drive through orthodox neighborhoods looking for wisdom. I don't know what I think I can absorb driving by in my car, but I go anyway, and I look out with longing at the people walking with great purpose through their streets. Do they contain the truth?
Some afternoons I walk to the park and sit on a bench and read about the Baal Shem Tov or about Hillel or sometimes I just wait and listen, hoping the voice will materialize again.
One time I drove through a Hasidic neighborhood on Shabbos night and a car with very bright lights followed me where ever I went. Someone said the neighborhood has their own police and that I was violating their laws. Once my uncle told me he threw a rock at a car driving on Shabbos in Jerusalem. I was shocked. He is 90 years old and he too went the way of Shimon ben Zoma only he did not go the orchard, he just got wrapped up in the Mishna.
I used to babysit for a little orthodox girl who's name was Gabriela. I told her, "that is the name of an angel." And she said, "Jews don't believe in angels."
If I had been that angel, and that angel me, I would have said, "Ask away, but stay away from the questions regarding good and evil, for that orchard belongeth to God alone." But when a human being is offered the curtain or the box, they will always ask for what is behind the door. We are Eve, and Pandora and the four scholars. We long because we long. If we were not vessels of anguish and longing, perhaps we would not seek the great cure. Is it our fault afterall, that we want to know and know and know more? My children used to sneak through the house before Christmas (sorry to admit we celebrate everything...) to peek at what I bought them. Under the bed, in the closet, high up on shelves. They would find it. One year I put everything in to one mostly unused room and taped the door. "Don't go in there!" I said with fear on my face. "There is a wild animal in there and I am trying to catch it..." They were so afraid that they never once peeked that year.
"If you eat that apple you will surely die," God said. "If you go in to my orchard you will go mad. If you peek one more time....."
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