Four Acts of Betrayal

Father:

Why?

What happened to you Yochanan?

Kedusha, dveykus, hasmada.

You were so pure.

What happened?

Yochanan’s Heart:

Am I really an atheist now?

Is this a dream?

No Moshe rabeinu?

It’s all a hoax?

The lies in the Talmud that used to bother me are really -  lies?

All those apologetic answers were mere cover ups?

The universe is -  how old?

Parshas Breishis was written by  - humans?

Elohim, El Elyon and Yahewa were Canaanite deities?

God was not present in Auschwitz?

I prayed to nobody?

My ancestors wasted entire lifetimes on BS?

BS?

How does a ben-torah know slang?

What happened to me?

Yochanan’s Mind:

My name is Yochanan. I call myself Yochanan Kohen Gadol. Like that infamous High Priest, who shared my name, who became a tzdoki, a heretic at the age 80. I am luckier than he was. I started going downhill at 15. “Baruch Hashem”, “shtreimel-bekishe” notwithstanding, I’m an atheist at the age of 30.

Yochanan’s Spirit:

It was a beautiful day. I got on to a city bus in Williamsburg. I was a 15 year old New Square native, as innocent as the sun, as blind as the wind. It was my first time on a “sitibus”. I sit down on the first seat, chumash in hand.

“Stand up please,” the driver tells me. Is he an Anti-Semite? What does he want from me? What can I do? I take the next seat.

The driver folds the seat, presses a button, lowers a ramp, and a pretty young girl  rolls onto the bus in a wheelchair. All the passengers on the bus wait patiently as the girl “parks” her wheelchair.

What “mentchen” these goyim are, I marvel.  How much effort went into designing this ramp and the laws pertaining to it!

Filled with awe and admiration, I turn to my chumash in my hand, open to that week’s Parsha, Parshas Emor:

“Verse 18: For any man who has a blemish shall not approach; a blind man or a lame man, or a man with a sunken nose, or a man who has disproportionate limbs.
Verse 19: or a man who has a broken (crippled) foot, or a broken (crippled) hand,
Verse 20: or one with overhanging eyebrows, or with a cataract, or a disarrangement [in the eye], or one with scurf or scabs, or one with crushed testicles.
Verse 21: Any man who has a blemish, who is a descendant of Aharon the kohein, shall not approach to offer the fire-offerings of Adnoy. He has a blemish; the bread of his G-d he may not approach to offer [as an offering].
Verse 22: The bread of his G-d which is of the most holy, and from the holy [offerings] he may eat.
Verse 23: However, he may not enter beyond the Curtain and he shall not approach the Altar for he has a blemish and he shall not profane My holy things, for I am Ad-noy, who sanctifies them.”