Joseph’s Tomb is Burning

by Moshe Dann (October 2012)

Promises to be kept and fulfilled. During the years of slavery and desert wandering, the Jews had protected a small box, a sarcophagus.

Holding the keffiyah, Araon was unsure what to do. Perhaps it was a trick to lure him.

The door of the building was locked. Aaron peered through a window.

Aaron took a water bottle from his knapsack and drank, and then offered the bottle to Ahmed.

In the interrogation room Omri began punching him, hoping Aaron would fight back, an excuse for another beating.

A week later, in court, shackled hand and foot, the prosecutor read the charges: Aaron was accused of killing Ahmed in cold blood. Murder.

In the evening, sitting around our dining room table, I and my seven older brothers and sisters would share our worlds, and the secrets we were forever discovering, bursting with flowering and fruit, and burying in the sand, the lush Mediterranean breeze settling around us, the sounds of crickets, metronomes of passion and curiosity, cuddling us to sleep. Papa would listen to the radio, watch TV, or talk politics with his friends.

They took us to hotels. We ate the Medinah, we shit the Medinah, we puked the Medinah. I and my friends, children of the Strip, rode up and down the elevators and when tourists wanted to get on, pressed several buttons and got off at whatever floor came next. We smeared food on emblems of the Medinah.

Only a few more months, the Medinah promised.

III

A half-hour before midnight a bus waited in the center of the settlement. Rafi greeted the other men as they boarded, friends carrying prayer books and weapons. They knew that even though the bus was bullet-proof and protected by an army jeep, if the Arabs attacked, they could be wiped out.

In court, the judge reluctantly examined the items. The Prosecutor objected.

Aaron explained, pulling the cuffs out of his pocket. Nissim smiled and put the cuffs into his own pocket.

Waiting outside the courtroom before the trial began, Nissim spoke quietly with the Prosecutor, a young lady wearing a black robe over her tight pants suit. Holding a stack of files, she listened, but said nothing. When the judge entered the courtroom, Aaron was brought in. Nissim sat near him, in the front, and then stood up and asked to speak.

IV

Preventing Jews from controlling these sites and from returning to Eretz Yisrael obliterates Jewish sovereignty and the truth of Torah, the Revelation.

V

VI

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