Book Excerpts
“I recall the temporary loss of High Priest Zetla’s vocal chords through his intermittent cries of ecstasy; and the powerful presence of some force that whipped through the Temple sanctuary like a whirling hurricane, revealing itself through the “quickening” movements of the bodies of certain members. At the end of the Torah reading, I could not help but memorize the groundswell of emotional responses from the Queen and the members of her congregation, shining the light on an experience that could not be rationally explained.”
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“When I felt this, I always knew what would happen next. Members sitting next to me, or afar, appeared to be struck by lightning; their bodies were tossed in the air like leaves in a windstorm; heads would “rock ‘n roll” back and forth and from side to side as though something trapped inside of them was desperately attempting to free itself; arms and legs twisted and turned like an angry tornado; and tongues rapidly uttered unrecognizable words and sounds that was gibberish to my young ears.”
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“I paid attention to everything, carefully listening to all of the sounds and vigilantly watching the body movements of the grown-ups; each one standing up for hours on end, bobbing their heads in a trance-like rhythm, and repeating certain phrases over and over and over again. Year after year, in each and every Temple service, I witnessed the collective motion of fists lightly pounding over hearts, while the words of each affirmation seemed to pound the walls and floor of the Temple Sanctuary. The body movements of the reciters were somewhat like synchronized swimmers at the Olympics; the swimmers’ grace may have been absent, but the power was not.”
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“With every strike, and they were too numerous to count, I lost my breath and felt as though I was right there in the room with the children, watching each heinous blow from the belt strip the soft, pubescent skin from their bodies. I tasted my own tears that were fiercely dripping from my eyes and I cried out an inner plea to God for mercy. But God did not hear me and the whippings continued.”
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“Instead of offering him an invitation to dine with their families, which would have provided my dad with the opportunity to inquire the whereabouts of their fair-skinned maidens, just like the actor Cleavon Little did in the Blazing Saddles movie, they chased my father with sticks and bats, screaming at the tops of their voices the contemptuous two syllable noun that many people of Caucasian descent used to describe “tanned” people in the south, the north, the east, and the west.”
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“We’re no longer surprised by the mayhem, the senseless killings of children, the indiscriminate shootings and bombings, and the daily competition between sick-minded men to perform the ugliest and most heinous acts of the century. We’re desensitized to the evil in our world because it has become a normal part of our daily existence. Tales of evil acts greet us in the morning and tuck us in at night, it is part of our audio and visual diet, and it numbs our stomachs when we digest its addictive nutrients. We bathe our senses in its hot, black waters, leaving odorless but invisible phlegm on the skin of our thoughts. And before we cleanse ourselves from its mucus, it has already penetrated the cells of our bodies to impair our awareness of its sinister intentions.”
