Chapter XI: The Cave And the Multiplication
The Travels of Reb Mendelovitch is an experimental comix strip in the form of a scroll, describing the imaginary adventures of reb Mendelovitch in a chaotic, politically unstable world. The protagonist is based on Schneur Zalman of Hebron, an orthodox artist and a HABAD rabbinical envoy who had traveled around the world, and the author’s great-great-grandfather.
In the final (!) installment Mendelovitch’s children accuse him of heresy, and he returns home to write the scrolls.
Bird-heads had dispersed
Throughout the Queen’s colonies
And had a yeshiva in a cave.
Narrow is the cave’s mouth, like a pit’s,
With a stone gate inside, it is like a hollow rock.
A great wind blows from the cave, unbearable!
It may not be entered with candles.
Chapter 11
The Cave
And the Multiplication
Birds (to one another):
Said the Master– fire and smoke?
What a nuisance!
And a child’s egg?
Nothing!
Did he support the revolution?
No! He quit!
Not so hard!
Leaving home
Seeking his Queen
Drawing on his egg –
A fool!
Away Fool!
Here is a fool
With a foolish spirit
A heretic,
He does not see it!
Away Fool!
God bless!
Mendelovitch:
The Queen had not spared me
Since she set my house on fire.
On this night I shall cry and wail
My heart is melting in my belly,
What have I got here now?
Driven by his children
To a far,
Desolate land.
He had gone to one place
And found nothing,
And in the second as well.
Until he arrived at the third.
Mendelovitch:
You again?
Prophet:
Of my scrolls you shall eat,
Like a dove you shall fly!
And then a cloud rose, like a man’s hand,
until the sky was veiled
and good rains came down.
In fire’s vapor
The Prophet carries
Mendelovitch
Back to the house of his delight,
All on fire.
Upon returning to Schipselscherer
He knew some places,
And all his adventures, to lads
And cities, rivers and seas,
All the place his feet walked in
And his ankles passed through
In his amusements on his travels – he put down on scrolls.
The very
End
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