{"id":72976,"date":"2020-04-06T09:05:48","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T06:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=72976"},"modified":"2020-04-06T09:05:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T06:05:48","slug":"spellbound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/spellbound\/","title":{"rendered":"Spellbound"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"72976","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":59587,"related_cahpter":"453","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Ezekiel 1 Read by Jessica Rabbit\r\n\r\n","content":"

One of my most God-conscious friends is a Slovak bombshell with better English than most native speakers. After our ulpan in Jerusalem in 1997, she became Bratislava\u2019s most popular MTV presenter. She\u2019s been in front of the cameras ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n

FaceTiming this morning from our respective quarantines, we reflected on what freaks the ancient prophets were. Hosea naming his kid Not Loved and Ezekiel\u2019s episodes with excrement wouldn\u2019t have been crowd pleasers. \u201cActs of faith,\u201d she said, \u201clook as bizarre to non-believers today as they did to them back then.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She and I had bonded over talks like this ever since we formed an exclusive club of two the first day of ulpan. So there was no question of who would read the chapter I chose from Ezekiel for my gay wedding ten years later. It could only be Vera.<\/span><\/p>\n

For all of its spectacular details, the passage ultimately attests to the limits there are to describing God. Almost everything Ezekiel sees is \u201clike\u201d but <\/span>not quite<\/span><\/i> something on earth: the likeness of four beings, the likeness of a man, the likeness of fiery coals, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the heart of the blinding vision extraordinaire there glows \u201csomething like gleaming amber\u201d. When Vera read these words, knowing friends chuckled at my mischief in highlighting my wedding with an allusion to Amber Valletta (a portal to the divine for this gay boy since her first <\/span>Vogue<\/span><\/i> cover in February 1993). But it was Vera who set the revelation on fire, branding it on their hearts forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the service we had seen her alongside her unworthy boyfriend, dressing down a figure-hugging gown with a short denim jacket. When the time came for her to read, she removed the jacket to reveal a silhouette last seen in Toontown. Every man and woman\u2019s jaw dropped as she strode up the aisle, turned towards the lectern, and reverenced the moment with a dramatic pause before addressing her page of Scripture.<\/span><\/p>\n

She lured us backwards in time as the first phrases rolled from her lips: \u201cIn the thirtieth year\u2026 in the fourth month\u2026 on the fifth day of the month.\u201d The guttural emphasis she laid on the river <\/span>Che<\/span><\/i>bar presaged the transfixing close of the opening line: \u201cthe heavens were opened\u2026 and I saw <\/span>visions of God<\/span><\/i>.\u201d I had abridged the chapter so that people would stay rapt, and by the time she sealed the prophecy with \u201c<\/span>This<\/span><\/i> was the <\/span>appearance <\/span><\/i>of the <\/span>likeness <\/span><\/i>of the <\/span>glory of God<\/span><\/i>,\u201d not a soul was thinking about the sanctity of marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The erotics of biblical literature are as plain as day to some of us. Ezekiel\u2019s relationship to prophecy is so physical, he eats his scroll. His radiant apparition even culminates in something like human loins and the \u201cfire below\u201d (v. 27). His divine encounter puts me in touch with him and suggests he was more than spellbound by the golden chariot. He was seduced.<\/span><\/p>\n

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