Silêncio

What if she'd married a zebra?

"My wife is a lesbian. Some asshole rabbi married her today to another woman."
"You don't know this for sure."
"My sister-in-law was there, Stella. My ex-wife stood under the chuppa with this broad, and when the time came she broke the glass. My wife is a shiksa. The two of them are lesbians. This is what Judaism has come to? I can't believe it!"
"Donald, be kind," said Sabbath. "Don't disparage the Jews for wanting to be with it. Even the Jews are up against it in the Age of Total Schlock. The Jews can't win," Sabbath said to Stella who looked to be Filipino and was, like himself, an older and wiser person. "Either they're mocked because they're still wearing their beards and waving their arms in the air or they are ridiculed by people like Donald here for being up-to-the-minute servants of the sexual revolution."
"What if she'd married a zebra?" Donald asked indignantly. "Would a rabbi have married her to a zebra?"
"Zebra or zebu?" asked Sabbath.
"What's a zebu?"
"A zebu is an east Asian cow with a large hump. Many women today are leaving husbands for zebus. Which did you say?"
"Zebra."
"Well, I think not. A rabbi wouldn't touch a zebra. Can't. They don't have cloven hooves. For a rabbi to officiate at the marriage of a person to an animal, the animal has to chew its cud and have a cloven hoof. A camel. A rabbi can marry a person to a camel. A cow. Any kind of cattle. Sheep. Can't marry someone to a rabbit, however, because even though a rabbit chews its cud, it doesn't have a cloven hoof. They also eat their own shit, which, on the face of it, you might think a point in their favor: chew their food three times. But what is required is twice. That's why a rabbi can't marry a person to a pig. Not that the pig is unclean. That's not the problem, never has been. The problem with the pig is, though it has a cloven hoof, it doesn't chew its cud. A zebra may or may not chew its cud—I don't know. But it doesn't have a cloven hoof, and with the rabbis, one strike and you're out. The rabbi can marry a person to a bull, of course. The bull is like a cow. The divine animal, the bull. The Canaanite god El—which is where the Jews got El-o-him—is a bull. Anti-Defamation League tries to downplay this, but like it or not, the El in Elohim, a bull! Basic religious Passion is to worship a bull. Damn it, Donald, you Jews ought to be proud of that. All the ancient religions were obscene. Do you know how the Egyptians imagined the origins of the universe? Any kid can read about it in his encyclopaedia. God masturbated. And his sperm flew up and created the universe."
The nurses did not look happy with the turn given to the conversation by Sabbath, and so the puppeteer decided to ad-dress them directly. "God's jerking off alarms you? Well, gods are alarming, girls. It's a god who commands you to cut off your foreskin. It's a god who commands you to sacrifice your firstborn. It's a god who commands you to leave your mother and father and go off into the wilderness. It's a god who sends you into slavery. It's a god who destroys—it's the spirit of a god that comes down to destroy—and yet it's a god who gives life. What in all of creation is as nasty and strong as this god who gives life? The God of the Torah embodies the world in all its horror. And in all its truth. You've got to hand it to the Jews. Truly rare and admirable candour. What other people's national myth reveals their God's atrocious conduct and their own? Just read the Bible, it's all there, the backsliding, idolatrous, butchering Jews and the schizophrenia of these ancient gods. What is the archetypal Bible story? story of betrayal. Of treachery. It's just one deception after an-other. And whose is the greatest voice in the Bible? Isaiah. The mad desire to obliterate all! The mad desire to save all! The greatest voice in the Bible is the voice of somebody who has lost his mind! And that God, that Hebrew God—you can't escape Him! What's shocking is not His monstrous features—plenty gods are monstrous, it seems almost to have been a prerequisite but that there's no recourse from Him. No power beyond His The most monstrous feature of God, my friends, is the totalitarianism. This vengeful, seething God, this punishment-ordaining bastard, is ultimate! Mind if I have a Pepsi?" Sabbath inquired Donald.

Philip Roth, in Sabbath's Theater