Gluten Free Moshiach

It happened at tea time. Yorkshire Blend, splash of oat milk, biscuits, and since we’re in the Holy Land, leftover borekas. They get very hard, very fast, those doughy rectangles. Practically clay by the afternoon. Wash down with a glass of seltzer, you can handle it.

But Clive can’t handle it, not any more. Last year he self diagnosed as gluten intolerant. Now he whispers to servers in restaurants – can’t eat that, ashkenazi tummy – with an ingratiating smile, as if he’s letting you in on a cabalistic secret. Turn forty, you’ll feel it too. It’s all downhill from here.

Actually, forty’s no big deal. Not the worst club to join. Only, the slow realisation there’s nothing in particular left. The oncoming numbers loom. Forty five is a biggie. Fifty – a wince. You’d really better have it sorted by fifty. That’s looking unlikely for Clive who isn’t married, no kids (that he’s aware of, he jokes), works intermittently, and rather likes it that way. On the path to a quiet sixth decade. Or at least he was, until he became moshiach.

Naturally it was shabbes. He’d visited one of the less fashionable shuls, late, end of the Torah reading, just shy of eleven o’ clock. Which is honestly fine in Tel Aviv. Everyone’s shul hopping, bumping into friends, slipping out for ‘kiddish club’ whiskey on the steps outside. Something from the Highlands, peaty. Clive slipped past the drinking lads, picked up a Chumash, sat near the back. He peered over the shoulder of a skeletal grey-haired man with a blue kippa, to catch the page number. Oh, right. Yitro. That’s a good one.

Something went wrong at the duchening, the priestly blessing. Half a dozen men – Cohenim – ambled over to the ark and covered their heads in tallit. You’re meant to look away. Underneath the shawls their hands splay like Spock to channel the holy spirit, May The Force Be With You.

Normally, Clive ducks under a tallit but he was chatting to Yoni and it caught him by surprise. So Clive saw the covered Cohenim, full on, a flock of Hebrew National ghosts.

That’s when the pain hit, hot and precise, under the skin of his left elbow.

Clive blushed down at the floor, at his sandals and uncut toenails. He’d seen something he shouldn’t. The prayer washed over him, the call of the rabbi, the response of the cohenim, each out of tune in his unique way. Clive’s late grandfather had been a Cohen, always lagging two beats after everyone else.

The elbow was hot. He rubbed it during kiddush, whiskey and cholent. It fascinated him, the animalism of The Jews, how after the sanctity and song it’s every man for himself, jostling up the front of the buffet, snatching handfuls of peanuts, watermelon slices, pickled herring on cocktail sticks. Some socialise but many sit alone, grazing, munching in private contemplation. We’re born alone, we die alone, we snack alone.

So many oddballs, thought Clive, sitting next to Yoni. Such peculiar people. Do the terminally odd gravitate to religion? Or is the human race generally weird? Get close up to any human and you’ll find a tic, a wobble, a curse. Yoni offered a plate of carrot cake. Clive raised his palm, refusing. Gluten, remember? No good. A minute on the lips, a lifetime of the drips.

On his way home Clive closed his eyes and walked blind for a full block. He often does that, a little test of fate. Can I keep a straight line? Does the universe love me? He clutched his elbow, a faint eruption of nerves. He imagined his veins a river of sizzling snakes. This might need looking at.

They say if we all keep Shabbes, just once, Moshiach will come. Which would honestly solve a lot of Clive’s problems. With that in mind, he’d left the bathroom light on, enough to guide his whiskey eyes to the couch. Cholent and crisps wasn’t enough, he needed something to nosh.

Entering the kitchen he bumped the wall and on went the overhead light, breaking the sanctity of the day. No Moshiach this week, may as well turn on the TV. There’s a little goat cheese in the fridge, but the cholent was meaty. So, no.

The elbow wasn’t calming down. He looked in the bathroom cabinet, found and applied an out-of-date moisturiser. Then to the rest of his arm, just in case. What if something’s growing down there?

Slumped on the couch, Clive fumbled for the TV remote. What luck! An open packet of trail mix. He munched some nuts, tossed in a few raisins for good measure, dozed off.

Back in shul. A different shul with high mahogany ceilings. Still not wearing a tallit. In fact, not wearing anything. Again, the duchening, men draped in white sheets, rocking to and fro, like lulavs shaking in the harvest. It’s ok, Clive. You can look up. Up here. You’re allowed to look.

Holy white ghosts float over the bima. More Cohenim, dozens, spreading out, repeating the prayer, zigzagging overhead like chessboard bishops.

Light slants in through the window’s six-pointed star, bluish as it reaches the congregation. Clive glances sideways. In the curved glass of a whiskey bottle the white vestments hang upside down. The melody expands. Blue light bounces off every corner, glints on the marble floor, leaks like happy tears into everything, everyone, shalom, shalom.

“Christ!” He wakes with a start and rolls off the couch, elbow pulsing. Nuts and raisins scatter as he reaches for the moisturiser. Clive runs to the bathroom and hacks up a mouthful of briny yellow fluid from the Highlands.

“Wrong messiah, buddy.” Says a high-pitched male voice at Clive’s elbow.

Clive froze. “Yoni?”

But it wasn’t Yoni. He’d left Yoni at shul chatting up the zaftig blonde with a hairlip.

“Yon?”

“Down here, kiddo.”

It felt like a bug crawled on his elbow and Clive swatted with his right hand, held up his elbow to the bathroom mirror and there, staring back, a human mouth beneath a well-trimmed red moustache.

“Hey.” Mouthed the mouth. “Get me a drink, will you?”

The hairs of the red moustache twitched, a tongue snaked out and licked its lips.

Clive watched his own eyes widen in the mirror. The mouth licked itself.

He closed his eyes. What the heck was in that whiskey? He relaxed his arm, let it hang by his side with the elbow pointing behind, opened his eyes. There, everything normal. A little hallucination. His toothbrush, pink and mangled, in a plastic cup on the sink.

“I’m still here, Clive.” Said the voice, faintly pantomine. “You’ve been chosen. It’s not a big deal. I’ll tell you all about it. Before that, I could really, really could use a cup of tea.”

Clive closed his eyes, again. At least he has a shabbes kettle. But if this is some kind of Holy Visitation, what about the TV he left on in the lounge?

“I’ve got Yorkshire. Oat milk?”

“No milk. Black. Like my hat.”

As he leaned against the warm urn with it’s pre-boiled water, Clive let out a sigh. Chosen, schmosen. At least they picked a schlub with an open calendar.

“Sugar?”