The Holy Half-Shekel & Removal Of Death Tumah

כ'א באייר תשס"ח
Mab 22

The night before last night (Saturday night following Shabbat), I dreamt. There is more to this dream than I am going to blog, but here is the end of the dream.

I was with a rabbi, believe it or not. I'm not sure exactly what our connection was, but he had taken me up for some reason, like a teacher or advocate or something.

He took me into the inner outer court of "the temple" (which was like a makeshift diaspora shul) covered within the folds of his cloak or robes of some sort. After we were inside, I came out from among the folds and stood there within the midst of the room.

There was a long table in the middle of the room where judges sat. The head judge sitting at the middle of the table was a woman.

A large group of people came into the room from the outside. I was now surrounded by a large group of Christians whom had agreed to pay $50 per person for the opportunity to see inside the temple. Some of them began to secretly and quietly sing Christian hymns around me, which seemed to try to incorporate me as one "lost" in the crowd among them. I didn't feel they were doing this specifically to me, but to the temple room itself (as if trying to imprint the walls with the presence of their song). I felt so unseen and marginalized standing there surrounded by people to whom I did not belong. I could hear them because I was surrounded by them. The others inside could not. I wanted them to go away, I was feeling smothered and suffocated by the covert singing of hymns by some of them.

The head woman judge spoke to the crowd who had each agreed to pay $50 to be there at that moment, surrounding me, and told them that their $50 worth of time was over now, to bring the money forward to pay for their visit, and directed them that it was now time to leave the shul-temple. Visiting time was over. Each one was to bring his or her $50 to the person at the end of the table collecting the money for the visit.

The head woman judge looked at me. "I don't have $50, I didn't agree to pay $50," I said. "I'm not one of this group. I came in with him," I said, pointing to the rabbi who was standing away from the whole fiasco. The rabbi acknowledged me. The group left and I stayed behind in the room.

We all went into another less formal room. Everyone was now chanting Hebrew prayers and such things. The head woman judge said to me, "Do you think you could fit here?" "I don't know", I said, "I haven't said the prayers in a long time."

The scene changed. Now the rabbi was using me as a divining tool of some sort. He was holding me around the waist and I was leaning out from the waist, like we were attached at the waist. My arms and hands were free floating out into the space in front of us, as if my fingertips were "smelling" the air. I did not consciously direct the movement of my arms/hands, they moved as if they were a sense organ seeing what could not be seen, leading us toward something.

My fingertips touched different places in space and we all followed were they led. Suddenly, my fingertips turned around and I touched myself.

We were then inside a cave where a woman had been held captive for a long time. At first, the cave appeared empty. Again, I was used as a divining tool. There was dirty iron pot sitting on the ground near one corner of the back wall where waste had once been collected during her captivity. The rest of the cave was immaculately clean and well kept for a cave. She had been held prisoner here for a long time. Where was she now?

I looked and found a shallow grave, like a bump in the floor shaped like a body. Her body was still in it, protectively covered over by tightly woven soil (held together by fine plant roots) like an earthen shroud. With my hand, and my face near her face, I was able to poke through into the woven soil around her face, into the space in front of her face, and then started to pull back all the woven soil which protectively covered and sheltered her from the deathly dankness of the cave. As I did, exposure to the fresh air (we had brought with us by finding and opening to enter the cave) agreed with her. She didn't disintegrate like a mummy or once-enshrouded dead body exposed to air might have. Instead, death left her body and she came back to life. The shroud made of woven soil had kept safe her life.

We had to get her to the surface, and did quickly. Once on the surface, she was me I think. I could make no distinction between us. The rabbi pulled something away from us. It looked like a huge slate blue rock the size of a small boulder covered with a filmy luminescent membrane like that which covers a newborn. The thin membrane isolated the bulk of the rock from contact with everything else and held it congealed together like a ball. I knew what it was - it was death tumah. He threw it out into the water which was flowing like a river, to be carried away in the current of running water.

I woke up.