But even if they didn’t feel the slightest bit betrayed, and even if they saw that my reasons for forwarding Kalisch’s email were good, they would see that my doing so had been a mistake. How could they avoid seeing that? I said so outright, and there was no way to avoid saying so outright, not without lying. Not without blaming people who weren’t deserving of blame. It really wasn’t the fault of those elders outside the community that they’d failed to step in to help me. People don’t step in to help you, not from outside. That’s just not the way the world works. And overall, that’s probably a good thing. They didn’t know me, those elders. They didn’t know Kalisch or Unger. All they knew was that Kalisch and Unger were headmasters of Israelite schools, were pedigreed, authorized by the Israelites of Chicago to exert certain powers. And maybe they’d heard of my dad, probably they’d heard of my dad, and certainly whatever they’d heard wouldn’t have been good. Why would wise Israelites step in to help a stranger, the son of a reputed self-hating Jew whose own schoolmasters had called him dangerous, had called him detrimental to the Israelites? They wouldn’t. And they shouldn’t be expected to. To insist otherwise might have been convenient for me, but it would have been a lie, and I wasn’t going to start lying to the scholars. So what, then? So I made a mistake back in June. It was a forgivable mistake, and taking as long as I’d taken to admit to it — that was forgivable too. But if I could make one mistake here, I could make another there. And it was easy to understand how they might see it that way, the scholars. They might think, “Gurion made a mistake in June. How do we know he’s not making a mistake in November?” And then they might not do what I wanted them to do.
And I saw it was better they be misled by me than not led by me. Nothing was worth the risk of failing to protect my father.
I could send them an email from FIFTEEN23FIRSTSAMUEL some other time.
Sent: November 16, 2006, 11:51 PM Central-Standard Time
Subject: SUDDEN HOLIDAY
To: 49_17ISAIAH@gmail.com
CC: NEW SCHECHTER LIST, NORTHSIDE HEBREW DAY LIST
Scholars,
If we are just, then tomorrow a new holiday will arise. I believe we are just, and so I am canceling school for all of those Israelites who wish to observe. Services will be held in the field across the street from Aptakisic Junior High School, in the valley between the two hills. Directions to get there from Schechter are attached.
This news comes late, I know. Most of you are in bed already. Most of those in bed won’t check email before school tomorrow. But for those of you who Hashem has chosen to receive this email, I suggest He chose you for a reason. And though I have cancelled school, there is no reason for you to think that showing up early at Hebrew Day or Schechter to wait covertly near the entrance and spread the news to our brothers would be a bad idea. In fact, if we are just, then to do so would be a mitzvah.
Lastly: There may be a toll to pay. As this potential holiday creeps closer, I am less and less certain about what exactly it will celebrate, and I see it would be irresponsible, even criminal, to leave out mention of a toll’s possibility. What’s curious, scholars, or maybe not so curious at all, is that despite not knowing if there will be a toll to pay, I do know what that toll will be, should we have to pay it: a dollar per scholar, delivered in parts. From a distance.
I pray that we are just.
If we are just, then tomorrow a new holiday will arise.
Rabbi Gurion
___________________
AptakisicDirections.doc
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18 COMMENTARY ON COMMENTARIES
“So far, Tanach aside, The Instructions has predominately been concerned with things that general readers, and even most scholars, were not aware of prior to reading The Instructions. The majority of the exceptions haven’t required any correction: the previously published texts** have appeared as they were written; the differing opinions of editorialists — those of academia and mass-media both — have been enough at odds as to mutually nullify one another’s authority; the facts of the War and my earlier childhood have, for the most part, been reported accurately by the press.
In cases where facts have been made up, misinterpreted, or warped by proximity to the agendas of those presenting them,*** the lies and warpage and misunderstandings have been easy enough for me to correct in passing by simply telling the story of the Side of Damage and the Gurionic War as I experienced them, free of nearly all reference to what was to come.
At this point in the story, however, owing to the motives that I’ve since been erroneously ascribed for having written “Sudden Holiday”—motives universally ascribed to me, by my supporters as well as my detractors — I have to look forward, however briefly, in order to correct you all directly, friends and enemies alike.
In case the reader is scratching his head, unaware of the misconstrued motives to which I am referring — whether because he has been living in the wilderness between the end of 2006 and the present, or, more likely, because the present in which he is reading this is far enough ahead of the present in which I am writing it that The Instructions has become hegemonic, and the miscontruances thereby forgotten — he’ll just have to take my word that I am justified in temporarily (as temporarily as possible) breaking the mostly old-timey flow of the narrative here, in Book 18 in C.E. 2013, and push on like a good soldier, a good scholar.
The rest of you are certainly aware that “Sudden Holiday” has been regularly cited as material evidence that I, Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, had been plotting since at least the night prior to that YouTube-crashing geologic razzle-dazzle which far too many people (one would be too many) have taken to calling “The 11/17 Miracle,” to execute what is currently known by my supporters as “The Damage Proper” and by my detractors as “The Gurionic War.”
Once and for all, friends, and once and for all, enemies: While I do accept full responsibility for bringing the Damage Proper, I did not plan the Damage Proper until minutes prior to the Damage Proper. Furthermore, I had no idea that there would be a Damage Proper. No one did. Not even Eliyahu. Not until I planned it. How could we have?
Yes, it is true that the recurring themes of Main Man’s ramblings contained what might now be construed as the stuff of prophecy; that had we understood his words to be prophetic, we might have better predicted what would happen on Friday. But — with the exception of Eliyahu — we did not understand his words that way, I least of all. Or no moreso, I should say, than I understood my vision during the Electric Chair wager or my dream of the Tower of Restraint (to be described shortly) to be prophetic. I will not deny that these three phenomena seemed to me to be possessed of insight, nor that I trusted and eventually acted upon those perceived insights to a certain degree. However, because they could all, as well, be mundanely explained — i.e., “Williams Cocktail Party Syndrome leads its sufferers to engage in a novel kind of verbal behavior characterized, for the most part, by ‘mash-ups’ of previously overheard statements”**** to explain the utterances of Main Man, who split his time outside the Cage between Pentecostal Mass and marathon sessions of network television, and fell asleep at night listening to mixes Vincie’d burned him; an oxygen-deprived brain to account for the Electric Chair vision; a combination of latently understood evidence and my not-so-latent desire to salvage my friendship with Nakamook to account for the Tower of Restraint dream — I did not take it for granted that Adonai was trying to tell me anything.