Excerpt: Shtetlon

Growing up, I was never sure how I was supposed to feel about Shtetlon. On one hand it was a marvellous thing, a place we, so misunderstood, so persecuted, could finally live without fear. It was a world without anti-Semitism, where Jews could learn and study Torah in peace. It was a world without any of the temptations that had marked our earthly existence, such as non-kosher food. It was sufficiently spacious enough that the Orthodox and non-Orthodox could avoid each other, never have to see each other in their lifetime.

On the other hand, it was full of Jews. Nowhere was the old adage about Jews being their own worst enemies, and that of “two Jews, three opinions” more true than here. Some rabbis saw the fact that Shtetlon was a moon of Jupiter – Jew-piter – a final mockery on the part of the gentiles. Why should we listen to them, it was asked? Was space travel kosher? Why couldn’t they invent a rocket that didn’t move on Shabbat? Those suspiciously porcine organisms that roamed around on Shtetlon’s polar ice caps – could they be eaten? Could aliens be Jewish?

And what of the Holy One’s pronouncement that he was “the ruler of heaven and earth”?

Oy vey! The questions.

What happened? How did God’s Chosen People come to share such an unusual fate? That is a story for another time, and it does not concern us here. The long and short of it is that the goyim didn’t want us here. Am Yisrael overstepped the mark in 2049, a year after the hundredth anniversary of the realisation of the Zionist dream.
“We were defending ourselves,” I was taught at school. “We had to defend ourselves against terror.” I would dutifully copy this down, at the same time, wondering, if life was so terrible on Earth, why our people lived there for five thousand years.
But in 2049, the nations of the world decided that we had defended ourselves enough. The last Israeli Prime Minister signed the treaty that would bring us here, to Shtetlon, the only people to be exiled not only from their homeland, but also from Earth itself.

So when Shtetlon was invaded by aliens with giant purple tentacles, it came as a bit of a shock. Hadn’t we suffered enough?

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“The question I want to put to you,” my Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Berzenstein, said on Shabbat morning (an endless cause of debates and sometimes even physical violence – should Shabbat be marked as the twenty-five hours it had been for our forefathers, or the seventy or so the Friday/Saturday period was on Shtetlon? And what to make of a year that had eight hundred days instead of three hundred and sixty five?) “is whether this is good for the Jews.”
“Well,” Mrs Fishberg said. Mrs Fishberg, a woman of ninety, was old enough to remember life on Earth. I rolled my eyes. Her experiences as a schoolgirl in 1990s Britain had given her a somewhat rose-tinted view of the planet we had left.
“I think it could be a marvellous opportunity.”
“And why do you think that, Mrs Fishberg?” said the Rabbi.
“Well,” Mrs Fishberg said. “On Shtetlon, there’s nobody here except us. And the Lord called us to be a light unto the nations.”
We saw how well that worked out, I thought.

I left Beth El Synagogue an hour and a half later. There were twelve hours of Shabbat to go. Since there was very little to do on Shtetlon, at least where I lived, synagogue services lasted far longer than they would have done on Earth, especially when you take into account the fact that days, in general, were longer, and that a new liturgy had had to be constructed to take into account our situation – a liturgy that some steadfastly refused to accept.

“Prayer in case of Alien Invasion” wasn’t in their Siddur.
“Shabbat Shalom, Avichai,” said a voice behind me, as I walked home, fresh from tucking into the Kiddush.
“Shabbat Shalom,” I said, narrowly avoiding stepping into a crater.
“Keeping well?” It was the Synagogue Secretary, Fred Rosenzweig. What did he want? Money? I had paid my membership only last month. Jews always wanted money.
“Yes, Fred,” I said, wondering, not for the first time, why his parents had bestowed such a goyische name on him. “And you?”
“I am very well,” Fred said. “I have a…a proposition to make to you, Avichai.” A proposition? He’s not going to ask me to marry him, is he? Under halachah, that was forbidden.
“Our synagogue, as you know, is struggling to attract members.” I couldn’t say I had noticed. To me, it was just Beth El Synagogue where I’d attended for the last fifteen years. A small building, it seated about fifty people, not like the other place which floated in a Star of David pattern above our heads. People liked to be high in the sky. Closer to the Lord.

They thought they were better than us.

“Yeah?” I said. “I can’t say I’ve noticed, myself.” Come to think of it, I had noticed that business had somewhat dried up in the synagogue shop over the last few weeks. Last weekend, only two customers had turned up the entire time.
“They’re deserting us.” He jabbed a contemptuous finger up there. We didn’t speak of the other place.
“Business is bad,” he said. “There’s only one thing to do.” He glanced in the direction of the large UFO that loomed ominously just past the other place. I shuddered. Aliens with giant purple tentacles. They hadn’t landed yet, but it was only a matter of time.
“I want you to go there, Avichai,” he said. “I will pay you a lot of money.” As an integral member of the community, I was always assigned the task of introducing newcomers to our shul.
“You’re meshuggah, Fred,” I said. “You want me to go there and talk to the – the aliens?”
“Well, nobody else is going to do it,” Fred said. “Go up there. Tell them a little bit about our community. Make them feel welcome.”
“Fred,” I said. “They’re from another planet. They’ve got giant purple tentacles.” He shook his head. “Don’t you think that their spaceship looks somewhat like a Star of David? They’re Jewish, Avi. They’ve got to be.”
Glancing upwards at the vast, grey monstrosity, I couldn’t see any resemblance to a Star of David whatsoever. “No,” I said. “I don’t. I’m not going there, Fred. They might eat me. Oy. They might even anally probe me.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Fred said. Hang on. If he had this much money, why, as Synagogue Secretary, did he want me to do this?
“What’s your game, Fred?” I said. “I’m not going up there to get eaten by aliens with giant purple tentacles.” At that moment, Fred’s talking yarmulke piped up.
“Fred, Fred, Fred! Looks like someone don’t wanna do what you say!”
“Shut up, Shmuel,” Fred muttered.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not doing this. Find someone else to go up there.”

I went home that night to my wife. “Avichai!” she yelled, when she saw me. “Did you remember to pick up the candlesticks?”
“No,” I said. Why was it that there was always something I had forgotten to do? I could never be good enough for her. She was worse than my mother. “Sorry, Rivka. I’ll pick them up now.” What did she need candlesticks for, anyway? It wasn’t Hanukkah. It wasn’t Shabbat. We had plenty of candlesticks. As was my husbandly duty, I did not argue with her.
“How come you weren’t at shul this morning?” she demanded.
“I was at shul,” I said. Was this what had become of our marriage? We never did anything together any more. Once, I would have taken her arm and we would have walked to Beth El Synagogue together, with a spring in our step and a gladness in our hearts…OK. I opened my mouth to speak and then quickly closed it again. What was I thinking?
“No, you weren’t,” she said. “I’m sick of this. What is it about me? Do you not love me any more, Avichai? Do you not love me?”
“Of course I…” I said. That was a difficult question. I changed the subject. “Look. I don’t know where you got the idea that I wasn’t at shul…I went to Beth El, like we always do…”
“Avi!” my wife yelled. “I thought we agreed. I thought I told you.” My heart sank. “We don’t go to that place any more. What is with you, Avi?”
“That’s the first I heard of it,” I said. She banged her saucepan on the table. “Look. We’ve been through this. We don’t go to that place. We go to Melech HaShammayim because I can’t step foot in the same synagogue as someone who disrespects me! Someone who disrespects me, insults me, my family…I mean, she asked if I was pregnant. I’m not going to put up with that. I won’t tolerate it…”
“Right.” I said. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Are you listening to me, Avi?” This was the latest nail in the coffin of our marriage. Going to separate synagogues…

“You know what the time is?” my yarmulke yelled. “It’s time for you to go and speak to the aliens!”
Rivka stared at me, horror-struck. “Aliens? We’re having an important conversation and you want to go and talk to some aliens? What’s the matter with you, Avichai?”
“Look,” I said. “I don’t want to speak to any aliens. I’m not going to go. It’s this stupid thing…” Oh, no. Oh, no. How would I explain?