Once a day Og visited him in the Common Room where he spent most of his time reading or with his hands on his book and his eyes to the distance. One peaceful day when they were alone he said to Og, “I must tell you this while my head is still clear. And I can tell only you.” He gathered his thoughts for a moment. “It took me a long time to realize that I was the last Jew, though Galactic Federation kept saying so. I had been long alone, but that realization made me fiercely, hideously lonely. Perhaps you don’t understand. I think you do. And then my loneliness turned itself inside out and I grew myself a kind of perverse pride. The last! The last! I would close the Book that was opened those thousands of years before, as great in a way as the first had been… but I had found the Cnidori, and they were a people to talk with and keep from going mad in loneliness—but Jews! They were ugly, and filthy, and the opposite of everything I saw as human. I despised them. Almost, I hated them… that was what wanted to be Jews! And I had started it by teaching them, because I was so lonely—and I had no way to stop it except to destroy them, and I nearly did that! And you—” He began to weep with the weak passion of age.
“Zohar, do not weep. You will make yourself ill.”
“My soul is sick! It is like a boil that needs lancing, and it hurts so much! Who will forgive me?” He reached out and grasped one of Og’s arms. “Who?”
“They will forgive you anything—but if you ask you will only hurt yourself more deeply. And I make no judgments.”
“But I must be judged!” Zohar cried. “Let me have a little peace to die with!”
“If I must, then, Zohar, I judge you a member of humanity who has saved more people than would be alive without him. I think you could not wish better.”
Zohar said weakly, “You knew all the time, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Og. “I believe I did.”
But Zohar did not hear, for he had fainted.
He woke in his bed and when his eyes opened he saw Og beside him. “What are you?” he said, and Og stared with his unwinking eye; he thought Zohar’s mind had left him.
Then Zohar laughed. “My mind is not gone yet. But what are you, really, Og? You cannot answer. Ah well… would you ask my people to come here now, so I can say good-bye? I doubt it will be long; they raise all kinds of uproar, but at least they can’t cry.”
Og brought the people, and Zohar blessed them all and each; they were silent, in awe of him. He seemed to fade while he spoke, as if he were being enveloped in mist. “I have no advice for you,” he whispered at last. “I have taught all I know and that is little enough because I am not very wise, but you will find the wise among yourselves. Now, whoever remembers, let him recite me a psalm. Not the twenty-third. I want the hundred and fourth, and leave out that stupid part at the end where the sinners are consumed from the earth.”
But it was only Og who remembered that psalm in its entirety, and spoke the words describing the world Zohar had come from an unmeasurable time ago.
When he was finished, Zohar said the Shema, which tells that God is One, and died. And Og thought that he must be pleased with his dying.
Og removed himself. He let the b’nei Avraham prepare the body, wrap it in the prayer shawl, and bury it. He waited during the days in which the people sat in mourning, and when they had gotten up he said, “Surely my time is come.” He traveled once about the domains he had created for their inhabitants and returned to say good-bye in fewer words than Zohar had done.
But the people cried, “No, Golem, no! How can you leave us now when we need you so greatly?”
“You are not children. Zohar told you that you must manage for yourselves.”
“But we have so much to learn. We do not know how to use the radio, and we want to tell Galactic Federation that Zohar is dead, and of all he and you have done for us.”
“I doubt that Galactic Federation is interested,” said Og.
“Nevertheless we will learn!”
They were a stubborn people. Og said, “I will stay for that, but no longer.”
Then Og discovered he must teach them enough lingua to make themselves understood by Galactic Federation. All were determined learners, and a few had a gift for languages. When he had satisfied himself that they were capable, he said, “Now.”
And they said, “Og ha-Golem, why must you waste yourself? We have so much to discover about the God we worship and the men who have worshipped Him!”
“Zohar taught you all he knew, and that was a great deal.”
“Indeed he taught us the Law and the Prophets, but he did not teach us the tongues of Aramaic or Greek, or Writings, or Mishna, or Talmud (Palestinian and Babylonian), or Tosefta, or Commentary, or—”
“But why must you learn all that?”
“To keep it for others who may wish to know of it when we are dead.”
So Og surrounded himself with them, the sons and daughters of Avraham and their children, who now took surnames of their own from womb parents—and all of them b’nei Zohar—and he began: “Here is Misha, given by word of mouth from Scribe to Scribe for a thousand years. Fifth Division, Nezikin, which is Damages; Baba Metzia: the Middle Gate: ‘If two took hold of a garment and one said, “I found it,” and the other said, “I found it,” or one said, “I bought it,” and the other said, “I bought it,” each takes an oath that he claims not less than half and they divide it…’”
In this manner Og ha-Golem, who had endless patience, lived a thousand and twenty years. By radio the Galaxy heard of the strange work of strange creatures, and over hundreds of years colonists who wished to call themselves b’nei Avraham drifted inward to re-create the world Pardes. They were not great in number, but they made a world. From pardes is derived “Paradise” but in the humble world of Pardes the peoples drained more of the swamps and planted fruitful orchards and pleasant gardens. All of these were named for their creators, except one.
When Og discovered that his functions were deteriorating, he refused replacement parts and directed that when he stopped all of his components must be dismantled and scattered to the ends of the earth, for fear of idolatry. But a garden was named for him, may his spirit rest in justice and his carapace rust in peace, and the one being who had no organic life is remembered with love among living things.
Here the people live, doing good and evil, contending with God and arguing with each other as usual, and all keep the Tradition as well as they can. Only the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants, once called Cnidori, jealously guard for themselves the privilege of the name b’nei Zohar, and they are considered by the others to be snobbish, clannish, and stiff-necked.
BARRY N. MALZBERG
Leviticus: In the Ark
The very basis and focus of the Jewish religion is The Law, which regulates every facet and activity of Jewish life. It is the symbolic structure of tradition and ceremony within which the Jew lives. It is complex, demanding, and alive… as alive as thought itself.