Chapter 4

Haggadah Section: Rachtzah

Chapter 4

1   Jerry answered and said, "Behold they will not believe me, and they will not heed my voice, but they will say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you’. "

2    And the Lord said to him, "What do you have in your puffy shirt?" And he said, "Nothing.” And God said “Jerry, you’re obviously lying. I can plainly see you have something in your puffy shirt.”

3    And God said, "take it out," “It?” “It.” “out?” “out.” And so Jerry did reluctantly show God the Tweety Bird Pez dispenser he was indeed concealing in his puffy shirt, and lo it did need air.

4    And God said, “Cast the Pez to the ground” and Jerry cast it to the ground, and it became a serpent, and Jerry fled from before it, like the time he found a hair in his farina and freaked out.

4    And the Lord said to Jerry, "Stretch forth your hand and take hold of its tail." So Jerry stretched forth his hand and grasped it, though he did crinkle his face up and held the serpent as far from himself as possible, and it again became a Tweety Bird Pez dispenser in his hand.

6    And the Lord said further to him, "Your hands, they’re quite exquisite. They are so soft and milky white. Now put your hand into your bosom. No the other one." and he put his hand into his bosom, and he took it out, and behold, his hand had a discoloration on it, also white, but not of the milky kind.

7    And God said, "Put your hand back into your bosom. No the other one." And he put his hand back into his bosom, and when he took it out of his bosom, lo there was no white discoloration, only an exquisite, milky white hand, like the other one.

8    “And it will come to pass, if they do not believe either of these two signs, and they do not heed your voice, you shall take of the water of the Hudson and spill it upon the dry land, and the water that you take from the Hudson will become Snapple on the dry land."

9    Jerry said to the Lord, "I beseech You, O Lord. I am not a man of words, Yea, a bit of a lispy-talker.”

10       But the Lord said to him, "Who gave man a mouth, or who makes one dumb or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? And Jerry said, “Get out!! I was just talking about that to my friends the other day; if it would be better to date the deaf or the blind. Now I said the deaf because – “

12       So now, go! I will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you what you shall speak. "

13       But Jerry said, "I beseech You, O Lord, send now your message with another whom You would send."

14       And The Lord said, “God is getting upset! Is there not George your brother, the Levite? I know that he will surely speak, and behold, he is coming forth toward you, and when he sees you, he will rejoice in his heart. And Jerry said, “I don’t know so much about ‘rejoice’.”

15       “You shall speak to him, and you shall put the words into his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will instruct you both what you shall do.”

16       “Whose mouth now?”

17       And God had an idea and said, “I just had a great idea. You will speak and George will speak for you, to the people, and it will be that he will be your speaker, and you will be his leader.”

18       “So you want him to read my lips? He’s not a novelty act, God. Where you hire him out for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.”

  1. And God said, “Look. It’s a skill just like juggling. He probably enjoys showing it off.” But Jerry remained unconvinced. The Lord continued, “Could you ask him? Just ask him. If he says no, case closed.” And George came forth and said, “Sure. I’ll do it.”
  1. And God commanded Jerry, “You shall take this Pez dispenser in your hand, with which you shall perform the signs." And Jerry, again with the nose crinkling bemoaned, “But it’s been on the floor!”
  1. Jerry went and returned to Frank, his father in law, and he said to him, "Let me go now and return to my brothers who are in Manhattan, and let me see whether they are still alive." So Frank said to Moses, "Ach! Get the hell outta here!!"
  1. The Lord said to Jerry in Queens, "Go, return to Manhattan, for all the people who sought your life have died or moved to Jersey."
  1. So Jerry took his wife and his sons, mounted them upon the Saab, and he returned to the land of Manhattan, and Jerry took the Pez dispenser of God in his milky white hand.
  1. The Lord said to Jerry, "When you go to return to Manhattan, see all the sights! I mean all the signs! Signs… see all the signs that I have placed in your milky white hand and perform them before Newman, but I will harden his coronary arteries, and he will not send out the people.
  1. And you shall say to Newman, 'So said the Lord, Art Vandelay, "My firstborn son is Israel”.'
  1. So I say to you, 'Send out My son so that he will worship Me, but if you refuse to send him out, behold, I am going to slay your firstborn son, the Bubble Boy.' "
  1. Now Jerry was on the way, staying at The Plaza, humming “Master of the house, keeper of the Inn…” when the Lord met him and sought to put him to death.
  1. Elaine took a sharp stone and severed her son's foreskin - which to her had no face, no personality - and cast it to Jerry’s feet, and she said, "For you are a bridegroom of blood to me.[1]" Jerry said, “First of all, what the hell does that mean? Second, I’m dying here and you’re throwing a spontaneous bris? You’re no mohel, Shakey.”
  1. And God said “Is the baby gonna cry like that? Is that how the baby cries, with the loud, sustained, squealing cry, 'cause that could pose a problem. Do you have any control of your child 'cause this is the time to exercise it when baby is crying in that high-pitched, squealing tone that can drive you insane?!!”
  1. So God released Jerry. Then Elaine said, "A bridegroom of blood concerning the circumcision." And under his breath, Jerry said “I still don’t know what that means.”
  1. The Lord said to George, "Go toward Jerry, to the desert." And George Replied, “I am down. Mark me down!” So he went and met him on the mount of God, and he kissed him, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
  1. And Jerry mouthed George all the words of the Lord with which He had sent him and all the signs that He had commanded him.

33 So Jerry and George went, and they assembled all the elders of the children of Israel. And George did read his lips and spoke most the words that the Lord had spoken to Jerry, messing up only one or two - ok maybe more than two, but they got the gist of it - and he performed the signs before the eyes of the people.

34 And the people believed, and they heard that the Lord, Art Vandelay, had remembered the children of Israel and that He saw their affliction, and they kneeled and prostrated themselves and said “You are a very good man.” And Jerry thought to himself, “Yes, I am a good man. A very, very good man.”

 

[1] Zipporah immediately understood that the threat was related to circumcision, by a "psychoanalytic link" between Jerry’s penis and his son's, the ambiguous use of pronouns taken by Haberman (2003) as indicating the fundamental identity of the deity, her husband and her son in the woman's subconscious. Bonna Devora Haberman, 'Foreskin sacrifice - Zipporah's Ritual and the Bloody Bridegroom' in: The covenant of circumcision: new perspectives on an ancient Jewish rite, Brandeis series on Jewish women, ed. Mark, UPNE, 2003, ISBN 978-1-58465-307-3, 18-42. "Like Eve, Zipporah tangles her references to her son, her lover and God. ... Male figures coalesce in Eve['s] and Zipporah's consciousness."

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