Remembering

Well, I’d better post again. It’s been a while and blogger tells me my posting has gone down from an average of six a week to five a week. Um.
There have been things to do. Last week, I finished the rough draft of Common Prayers and I always celebrate the ending of one story by waiting a week before attempting another one. Once I waited a whole month, a month without writing. That was bad. But then Jamnia was what I produced after that, so maybe the month of rest did me good.
I doubt it, though. Some people have a feeling that they aren’t really doing anything, that they ought to be “doing something.” Well, when I am not writing that is just how I feel, and when I write again, then I feel like I am “doing it” though what, exactly, I am doing escapes me.

It is the fourth day of Sukkot now, and every night you are supposed to invite a different character from the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, to stay with you. Usually it is one of the ancestors: Abraham, Sara… you know. But I am not really a Jew, and I am not really gung ho on bringing those ancestors into my tent. They had big enough tents of their own. So today I turn to the story of the concubine in the book of Judges, the woman whose husband left her to be raped and murdered by a whole town of men. He took her body and cut it in twelve pieces to send a piece each to the tribes of Israel. They were not avenging her, but avenging HIS lost property. I read the story so seldom that it shocks me every time I return to it. Something in me says, “This CAN’T be true. It can’t be.” It is just too much.

But, ah, but even if that one story weren’t true, there are many concubines, aren’t there, too many stories of two many girls killed like this.

So on the fourth day of sukkah we remember that woman, and light a candle for those like her.