Cayle Chernin Blog April 13th/2007Passover is always a good time, remembering leaving Egypt where things had gotten pretty ugly after ‘Joseph’, was ‘forgotten’ by the new Pharo and the Jews had settled into 400 years of slavery..’tote that barge, lift that bale of Egyptian cotton’. Apparently God told Abraham, the first Jew, that is, the first man to Not commit human sacrifice, though he was willing..(A ram served as replacement for his only begotten son, besides Ismael, that is, his other son, begotten by Hagar the maid,) that because he was a little reticent about serving God’s purpose, “the Jews would be spending 400 years in slavery in a foreign land”. We can’t say he didn’t tell us. Sins of the Father and all. Flash Forward 400 years: Moses of the aristocratic Egyptian upbringing in the Palace – spared the death of the male Jewish children decreed by the Pharo - returned to his people to lead them into the Wilderness and out of slavery, in spite of his stutter which really annoyed God when his low self esteem had Moses saying “why me, get somebody else to lead The Jewish People who can ta-ta-talk good”. But God ever in spiritual good humour went with his first choice..Moses the stutterer, who had been spared death in infancy, rescued from the bulrushes and would now deliver the eye for the eye tooth, in the form of the 10th plague, death of the first born. Flash back: Joseph who I have always liked: Joseph, the artist with his coat of many colours and his ability to interpret dreams, and who his macho brothers – 12, I think, again a magic Number because wasn’t it 12 Nazis hanged at Nuremberg and Haman’s 12 sons who hung at that first Purim (sort of Jewish Hallow’en) – actually dumped their Father’s favorite into a hole, down a well and left him to die. Later Joseph gets the last laugh and the sons of Abraham, the family dynasty that grew from the man who fathered both the Jewish and Moslem faiths put in their 400 years in Egypt Land. A ‘simca’ in Jewish is a celebration: However that first Passover Sedar, The Last Supper resulted in what I would have called a pretty Bad Friday for Jesus. A ressurection does NOT a cruci’fiction remedy..okay, ritual death, spiritual rebirth, nice work if you can get it. But as to that lovely Easter Sunday we just celebrated, Simca Jacobovicic, the Naked Archeologist – claims he found the tomb of Jesus in Talpiot, Jerusalem and that it doesn’t appear to have been the scene of a ressurection. Them’s fighting words. Rather the final resting place en famille of Jesus, His wife, the former Mary Magdalene, no more “I don’t know who to love him” reformed slut, and their son Judah, probably named for one of his great, great, great Uncle’s, Joseph’s brother Judah. Well, maybe? For the Love of Jesus, I don’t mean to be rude, but really how can people be so in love with ‘a concept’, well actually that I can understand, more than the reverence for an icon from the past who is supposed to represent a real person who lived and dies…oh yeah, here it is: for our sins. Colette said, “It is hard to love God after you’ve loved a man”, meaning the pleasures of the flesh are rather more satisfying than the spiritual lift of devotion to an imagined Being. Real or not, we can only imagine. The great outpouring of love and faith and delirious affection, the rapture of the rapture..Ho-ly! Yikes! They LOOOVEEE Jesus and they HATE actual people that are alive and kicking. Like the Pro-Choicers as it has been said who love the baby from conception to birth and then they hate the little bastard. I think it’s hateful to persecute for the love of Jesus. We are told he was a lovely Rabbi..that his teachings are in the rabbinic tradition of the Talmudic and ‘learning’.. ‘They’ hate ‘me’ because ‘they’ believe my ancestors were directly responsible for killing a Jew named Jesus, and they want to kill the Jews for killing a Jew. POST TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME My life with the Movies: I realized I have post traumatic stress syndrome caused by It Happened one Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert: Rich girl on the lam, with only a few pennies in her coin purse..(silly girl, she should have put a little scratch together) and bad boy newsman who smells the Story and incidently her perfume. They share rooms, sleep under the stars, starve and eventually begin to like, and fall into love with each other. No question he’s mean as mud, but then she’s spoiled by her Father’s money, so she needs to be treated badly to get unspoiled. I zeroed in on my trauma when I saw how her ‘helplessness’ triggers his lust – his first interest in her as a woman comes when she’s afraid that she’s been left alone in the forest, when he goes off probably to take a piss, and returns to her screaming fit at being abandoned. She falls into his arms and for the first time, he wants to kiss her. I loved Gable as much as Brando. When he did I cried and I kept a newspaper clipping that said: “When a giant oak falls the whole forest suffers. We will all miss Gable”. Movie stars, Jesus. It was said that women swallowed the gravel that Hitler walked on, we saw the footage of young girls screaming and fainting in frenzy over Sinatra and apparently the two visions that appear most to people on their death bed are Elvis and Jesus. I don’t think it’s wrong to indulge in remembering those who are gone, known or simply appreciated through their artifacts. I remember my Grandparents very fondly, I miss them, My Father who passed away in 2000, I think of often and keep his picture on my desk, this love of those who are gone, of keeping them alive through memory is I think a beautiful thing. I guess it’s the reverence that is hard to fathom. Of course my grand parents never walked on water or died for our sins but none of us were around then any way. We are worshipping beings, we love to worship. We’re weird! The trick I suppose is to choose an object of worship that brings out the best, not the worst in us. And to quote the magnificent Earth Kitt in an old Movie:‘Prejudice is a time saver’.
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