It was a simple argument. What the leader was recommending as a lifestyle for himself and all of his celebrity would only make absolute insanity of our lives. The more he asked us to be like him, the more horrible life became for everybody.
The people simply have to live separate from royalty and it’s intrusion. They are a negative net on us and their armies are made of us. We must strip them of their powers.
Moses is playing games with the water again. He wants power. He is crazy for it. From the moment Miriam was no longer alive, his desire to feel alive became unquenchably for blood. Why? Drugs. To have some sense of satisfaction of flesh. To satisfy his flesh. To satisfy his need for flesh because Miriam’s flesh was no longer his.
It’s as if he doesn’t even realize how wealthy we are without the meat business. We have made the desert bloom. As long as the irrigation ports are kept clean, we have life! We grow everything. We live in abundance and we save for the future. We are perfect! He must see this. We are perfect even if we can’t stand eating meat. We are just as beautiful, maybe even more. We don’t need meat! He knows this. He knows this is true.
This war is destroying everything. We have no poverty. Everyone eats. We have education. We are teaching the children to read and many people are writing stories about the glory of god that allows us to be the only animals on earth who do not need to kill for their food. Literally, we are the children of god and god has been with us for forty years! I mean, nature and manmade irrigation and we are fat!
I will tell him though. I will tell him when we make this new addition to the book. I will tell him of the great fields of grain we have. When I tell him of the great things we’ve done in the last 40 years to create a civil society for all. All of the wonderful things that happened in those 40 years when he was away need to be known. I could show him my newspaper. I could show him our book of desert agriculture. That was not a book like his book of course. But it was a book everyone was interested in. Everyone loves reading my books and when I make a new chapter, people read it to everybody everywhere.
Now I am just a war correspondent. He says we are to write but he won’t stop acquiring land the most brutal way possible. He is covered in blood. And at his age. This is not war. This is the insanity of the despot. It is such a waste. It’s just so unfortunate. I don’t understand why this sort of journalism is needed and I don’t know why any human being should have the power to create such massive devastation on everything. The people want to eat. The people want to live well. We want to be helpful. Entertaining maybe. And maybe to spread the word about the word being so wonderful and that it makes us so smart because it helps us figure out all of the problems for ourselves. And the last thing anyone wants is a group of murderers coming up the hill. We already know them. They are our friends. We trade together.
I’m going to tell Moses about how beautiful our society is without him. I will try to stop him and ask him to go away without war. We don’t need it. I’m going to tell him. I promise. Even if it means we put an end to his book one way or another.
From Chabad.org: Balak in a Nutshell
Numbers 22:2–25:9
The name of the Parshah, “Balak,” refers to Balak, king of Moab.
Balak, the king of Moab, summons the prophet Balaam to curse the people of Israel. On the way, Balaam is berated by his donkey, who sees, before Balaam does, the angel that G‑d sends to block their way. Three times, from three different vantage points, Balaam attempts to pronounce his curses; each time, blessings issue forth instead. Balaam also prophesies on the end of the days and the coming of Moshiach.
The people fall prey to the charms of the daughters of Moab, and are enticed to worship the idol Peor. When a high-ranking Israelite official publicly takes a Midianite princess into a tent, Pinchas kills them both, stopping the plague raging among the people.
1
I don’t understand. Why can’t I just murder him and take everything he has? I am big and he is small.
Sir, I keep telling you that it’s about politics. They are our paisans. We have been friends and agricultural partners. They don’t want to fight with anybody. That’s what they’re trying to tell you. They are already God’s people.
What do you mean they are God’s people. They are not God’s people. I say who God’s people are.
Well, we all know that as well and that’s part of the problem. Technically you just have to understand that the land is already ours because we bargain amongst ourselves in the marketplace. We push them to plant certain things and therefore we are wise to them. They are pretty happy already without the heavy hand.
They will stab you in the back the way my people have stabbed me in the back a thousand times.
No not really. It’s really not like that once you quit putting meat into the equation. If you stop killing each other, it’s more like mutually beneficial deals are the best. We don’t want to hurt each other. It’s really kind of a delicate thing.
Who do they think they’re kidding. Do they think they can just pick anybody and say that they are a prophet? Do they really think anyone can be a prophet? Every town has its own prophet? I am the only prophet.
Sir, I think what we are all trying to tell you is that you are a much different person when you’re eating meat. Some of us liked you a lot better when you agreed to go vegan.
That 40 years was a waste of time. It was like I wasn’t alive. Now I eat meat again and I know that this vegan business is lies. People are made to eat meat!
It’s a matter of moral and ethical hygiene. The meat simply isn’t kosher, sir.
I was very clear in my laws about meat.
Sir, the only clarity is that it’s a psychotic episode at best. You yourself commented at the end of the book that there was a non-ambivalent relationship between meat, dead people and how unclean both of them are. You said the answer was water. That was the end of the book and this is what everyone took to be the law.
But that was then and this is now.
That’s what we are saying. We really should not be using the book anymore.
That’s where you are wrong. You have to understand my plan. They are plotting against me. They say they have a prophet who speaks from God. That’s where I have them. I’m going to write about them in the book. Do you understand. It is about when people think they are more powerful than me.
No, sir. Everyone agrees there is no one more powerful than God. I think they are just saying that perhaps it’s easier to be a messenger than one would think. It has something to do with accepting God as being greater than us. That’s why we follow the law and we don’t kill. Kosher means agricultural without animals. It means to be wise on the planet Earth. We learn to grow our food in such a way that does not harm our environment. We are beautiful. We are maybe the most beautiful people in the world. We don’t understand why you are parading us like whores in the marketplace and playing with us. We’ve become a great people without war. Why are you doing this to us?
You just write what I tell you in the book. There will be an episode. We will put it in the book and then we will see what happens.
Have you seen my blog?
Scribe, I’m sorry. I really have more important things to worry about these days. I’m sure it’s wonderful. Now get to work.
2
Don’t you get it?
I get it. Basically the story is that they bankrupt themselves trying to get what is probably a deal maker of a situation for the prophet.
Right. It’s allegorical. It’s just a little bit of religious thesbianism. We have to make sure people know that I am the only prophet.
Oh, I get it. You are the original prophet that makes all the other profits phonies.
That’s right. Now you get it. That’s why we wrote the book.
You wrote the book to stop carny hucksters from stealing the minds and fortunes of the people.
That’s right. That’s what I’m talking about.
Yes, sir, if it was simply a work of literature, you would indeed be the greatest writer of all time.
I am the writer. No one will ever be a better writer than me. I am the source of all writers to follow. I am the first to break the land.
Well, technically, as a writer, you’re more of a political despot.
You are jealous scribe. You are jealous of my fame.
No. Sir, I would never be jealous. I don’t want your life. Nobody wants your life. This is what we are trying to tell you. You just eat a lot of meat and cover yourself in blood but it’s not really your blood. It’s our blood. We don’t need to eat meat and we don’t need to make meat and we don’t need to turn people into meat. We don’t need the meat business at all and you know this.
Don’t you get it? You have to write at the end of the book after 40 years of peace that it came again and the last was as unquenchable as it was a miserable thing for all people.
Because the desire to eat meat will always win?
It’s the smell, scribe. You know it’s a party.
Sure, maybe 40 years ago. We went vegan collectively and it was amazing. We all found God. We all found the energy we needed. We all felt much better with what diseases we had. We started getting smarter about diseases and we taught our children about them. Your book has been great. But we just don’t do this anymore. The book ended without one more psychotic episode of teaching. Your desire to live needs to have less meat in it, sir. Just for a man your age but really, for a man of any age. Sir, let my people go. For the love of God, let my people go from this war and this insanity. We don’t need to play these stupid games anymore. Let us go home and be with God in our gardens and let us go back to living abundant lives without the hell of war.
You know, that’s very good stuff. You have talent.
Do you think so? I kind of hoped that you were at least reading my voice. Vox populi. It’s the world you gave me. I had always hoped you were listening and that our stories made you happy. It’s for the good of everyone.
Yes, I never really noticed how talented you really are. The book would never have been the same without you. Get these chapters right. Don’t worry. We will all be happy in the end.
3
Don’t you get it?
Yes, sir. For the thousandth time I get it.
He’s a donkey fucker.
Yes sir, I get the joke.
Yes, he puts his pee pee in the donkey.
The inference was quite clear the first five times you said it.
Balaam fucks donkeys! Balaam fucks donkeys!
Yes sir, I get very much what you are doing here with the pages of the sacred book.
It’s pasture humor. You have to be a goat herder to understand it really. But I think the wisdom of the humor sort of translates.
Yes but why are we using the Torah for this? This is just doing something to physically dissuade people from listening to the other. You’re just corrupting his image.
Are you accusing me of practicing slander in print?
Okay, fine. Laugh at me. Can’t we at least have something like journalistic ethics? I mean, you left us with a clear choice about eating meat. You said that it was basically unclean and this was the last thing you told us. All of the war and all of the killing and all of the craziness and all of it in conflict with the basic rules of life that we all agree we’re given to us by God. My words technically but that’s not the point.
Isn’t it? Isn’t it exactly the point. I told you something. You took it and made something nice for yourself. You say that only the words that I wrote on the mountain were good and everything else that I did was bad. But what I did wasn’t bad because it gave you a group of people yearning to be free. I gave you your voice and never forget it.
Yes, sir, it is about power. Why are we inflicting ourselves as a fascist nation? Why are we demanding to dominate the landscape? We have already made friends with nature. We have already made friends with God and our neighbors. We are a very civilized group of people. Why are you doing this?
It’s because I’m not dead yet. Make sure they get it. It was a she goat. I know you think it is redundant but put it in there exactly like I said. It’s a good joke. They will never listen to a false prophet again.
I understand. But if we weren’t there demanding that they acquiesce to us, none of this would be necessary. Not the bankrupting. Not the public humiliation. None of these punishments you are handing out makes anyone happy. It’s just public death spectacle. Sir, we are not really carnivores anymore. I don’t think you understand.
Don’t worry. There will be plenty of meat in the marketplace. You don’t have to worry about anything. There will be plenty of meat in the marketplace just where it should be.
4
So you are showing that they are in the meat business.
You see, scribe. You don’t believe me. When I tell you what to write in the book, it is because it is the right thing to have in the book. I’m the writer here. You’re the scribe.
Okay, I understand the juvenile humor of this all. You are using your book to slander any future usurper to the throne. But it is a power game about killing. We are going to kill each other unless something happens. We are choosing words as weapons of war here but these are words of humiliation. What I’m saying, sir, can’t we just talk about keeping the trade routes open and clean and making sure that everyone is working for the good of all? Because that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 40 years. This thing that you’re doing right now. Even that you are doing it is anti-vegan.
I understand your ethical arguments. I’m not saying you’re completely stupid. I know you are right and I know that the wealth of this nation already exists. And maybe I am making a mistake. Maybe this is my agreement that I have made a mistake and that all of this bloodshed up until now has been the meat business. Isn’t that enough for you?
I don’t understand the argument. Are we writing the book or are you appeasing me? Because we are still subjugating and humiliating people in the pages of the book. But at the same time, are you saying that this is your meat revelation or not? Are you telling us that meat is bad, yes or no?
Scribe, come very close to me. Closer. Close enough that I could kiss you if I wanted to.
Sir, I have been extremely pleased with the non-physical nature of our relationship up until now.
Son, let me put my arm around you. Listen to the old man. There is nothing fucking better than barbecue.
Yes, sir. But this is really disgusting to me physically. I just can’t imagine people that do this.
Come on, give me a big kiss.
Oh for God’s sake. Get your bloody hands off of me. I mean what the fuck? Get a hold of yourself.
I need you. I need you scribe.
Okay fine. You’ve got your seven. But this one is over son. You’ve got your bloody words in there and let’s hope your coherent by the end of this.
Do you doubt my competence?
I am saying prayers more now than I have ever done in my life, sir. You make me question the existence of God.
Do I really? Say that again.
I said I doubt your existence sir. I think you’re a dead man. I think God has already told you you’re going to die and you’re having yourself a last hurray at our expense and it’s not beautiful. It’s not clean.
That’s the point. They are not clean.
No. Because you want me to talk about this it makes all of us unclean. You are no longer clean, sir. You’re not clean anymore.
This session has come to an end. Go do your job. Speak none of this, scribe. I’m not without power.
Sir, if only you understood how much love I have for you in my heart. I’m just begging you to understand.
Yeah, hallelujah. Whatever.
5
Editor’s note. The section about the murders was carried out and made a part of the book. Let it be known that the scribe did his job as appointed and the final text was approved. It is now the part of the book and the scribe wishes no individual commentary at this time. He is observing a moment of privacy.
6
I control the weather.
Indeed there is that connection.
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s not all such a madness. The lessons I learned as a royal engineer or things no common man has ever had access to. No one had ever had such access to wisdom and knowledge and had the power to make things happen at their whim. It was a glorious time on the planet Earth.
Yes, great Egyptian histories. You are reminiscing about your youth again. Yes, this is the part of the story where you tell us about the water and the weather.
Did I tell you we would make a storm?
Yes, you told us there would be a great storm. How did you know?
I know because I know the secret.
You know how to antagonize God.
I am able to ask God for help.
And sometimes you play with God to gain your purposes?
It’s just a matter of disagreeing with the water cycle. If you demand water be somewhere, the water will come.
Nature follows the aqueducts.
It follows the pump if we ask it to. The secret to our success.
But why use this power vainly? Why are we saying this?
Because they needed to know there was only one me. As long as I get to be me, you get to be you. And you might be the most talented writer in the room, scribe, but you’re not me. We can even talk about being influential to God and you can scream how favorable your people are in the eyes of God. But you’re not me. You will never be me.
Would it help if I said that none of us wants to be you?
Oh? Not one? What about this prophet on the hill and all of his altar building.
Yes, yes we all saw it. It was wonderful. You make them bankrupt themselves and then you brought on a great storm. You called it. You said this is when we open the gate and this is when we close the gate. And just like you predicted, we whipped up a storm.
Water is a weapon of war without parallel.
Water has been a good weapon against hunger for the last 40 years, sir. Can we just quit this game and go home? Can we stop waging war on our neighbors and just go home, please? You keep this stupid war going just so you can slander your enemies in your book. Sir, can we please just go home and to go back to gardening? We really need it. We need it so much more than we need your war. We don’t need your hate. We don’t need this drama. We don’t care. Everything needs to live and we believe in food. Food without blood. Please, sir. Just food without blood is so much nicer.
Stop crying, you idiot. I heard you the first 20 times. Let’s get to the end of this book already. Here, dry your eyes.
7
What do you think? It’s the story of the end of days.
Now I’m getting it. You provoke us to war and then you show us how foolish everything we did ever was. And in the end, we have a reappearance of venereal disease that is a direct consequence of making use of the women after one of our conquests. Sir, your way is shit.
Don’t you get it? It’s how life keeps making the same mistakes again and again.
Yes, but that’s the point. We don’t need to be reminded of how low we can be. We were practicing being high. We were trying to be good people. We all know how shitty the world is. But we were doing it without the blood and we were doing just fine. I don’t want to write this anymore. I don’t want to write this book. I was okay being the writer of the book 40 years ago. This is just malicious mischief. I don’t know how I can be a part of it.
Technically, you are just a contract player. I mean, out of deference we came to you first and you fully agreed to get on board with the project.
Oh for fucks sake! Do you have to be coercive with every fucking thing you say?
I’m just reminding you who has the power.
It’s not who has the power, you fat fuck. It’s who needs the power and where we get the power and what we use it for. We’re supposed to be doing this without corruption.
That’s the point. I am also a Jew. I also understand that corruption is bad.
But you are the corruption. This book is a corruption.
It does sort of deflate your ego, doesn’t it?
That’s it. I’m out of here. This is an insane asylum. You are off your bloody pumpkin. I don’t know who you think you’re fooling. I don’t know what you think you need. You rarely get out of your pajamas. You’re a geriatric old fool. Please just go back to bed and find something interesting to play with in your garden.
Hillel.
I wasn’t sure you even knew my name.
You’re right.
I know I’m right. This whole escapade of yours is wrong. Nobody needs this war. Nobody needs this hate. Nobody needs the corruption and nobody needs the hysteria. And yes, boss, nobody needs the venereal disease that comes from the hysteria either.
I ate too much barbecue.
Well, sir, in terms of jurisprudence. I suppose I could understand the junk food defense as being one of a persuasive nature. If you want to say that your diet was behind your decision making and that if you specifically had not been eating meat, you would find these things that you did while you were eating meat to be rather repugnant. I could see that maybe getting some points in the correct court of law.
Look, scribe. I’m not quite done yet. I just want to tell our story the way it should be told.
It’s bloody hell being on someone’s artist trip. It’s the hell of the planet when you actually have someone with the wealth to match their ego.
I knew you would see it my way. But, for lunch, fresh greens and some fruit, what do you say? It’s time for fruit. Surely you won’t say no to fruit?
And then after in an intimate moment on the hillside observing the clouds as they rolled across the sky
Yeah, it’s like you want to feel that you are really doing something but you need all the people to help you in order for you to feel it.
Yes. I’m a great man. Look what I can do.
Well, yes or no. It’s a matter of public conduct as much as anything else.
Again you are only jealous. You write slow stable truths And you ask people to carefully consider. I offer them something today! Something we can all pull together for as a team!
Yes but we did not need this. We just needed everything to stay the same. We love it when things are the same. It means we can get closer and closer to the truth.
You are starting to exhaust me.
I’m just saying that if you got in line with us, you would be universally loved. It’s not a matter of popularity when people are afraid of you. And when you do demonstrations like this for no other reason than to satisfy your ego, people wonder about your ability to lead. I’m just saying that we liked it how it was.
You liked it how it was because I pointed out the relationship between dead humans and dead animals and the question of what exactly was clean meat to eat.
Those were great last words. It was like you learned something. All that has been up until now is folly on the waist of public funds. You don’t need this and neither do we and you went with Miriam.
I know what I said. I was there.
Wasn’t it enough for you? Keeping up with all of the holiday updates. Wasn’t that enough work?
No. The book was perfect and I think the cuts and pastes will be fine. It’s not that.
And what is it? Is it the realization that you are a phony?
Phony? Let’s not talk phonies Mr I write what other people tell me. I’m me and there’s only one me. But yeah, I don’t really feel very good. Most of this stuff is from some original idea that flashed in my mind. I could just do this! And if I treated it like a call to war, I could follow this inspiration all the way to Glory.
So you sent us to war because you want to die in battle?
Not really.
But you agree that you wanted to die and you were trying to somehow control things.
I did the best I could with what I had to work with.
But the real truth is that any leader faces a comeuppance at the end. You are saying that you want to write the Torah on yourself and I’m saying that the Torah has already been written. I’m saying that you’re doing something here because it fits into some logical box of authority but it isn’t doing anything but causing pain and harm to everyone and everything it touches.
Would you trust me if I said I agree to be vegan?
You feel like shit and your heart hurts, doesn’t it?
You were always right and I was always wrong.
I got it, I got it. Listen, what’s done is done but let’s do what we can to try and get out of here gracefully.
What does that mean?
It means less you and more me.
No one would ever believe it. No one would ever listen to my voice as a vegan.
Well, let’s see what we can do.
