Dead Sea Capers

Dead Sea Capers

       Sightless Douglas the Weightlifter

              I never did like floats. Other kids would

                        favor them but I always got a cone.

I swim but I don't float. Even in the Dead Sea I sink. My partner floats so very well that her toes and nipples stay out of the water. When we visited the Dead Sea last summer I think hardly an inch of her buttocks sank out of sight. She dislikes the culture of intellectual debate and so spent most of her time tanning and swimming. The food at the banquet hardly lived up to expectations. Too salty, everything. And the lectures wearisome as well.

       One sold the other studied. That's the way of the world, agreed? Read Homer, for instance. Or better yet, Horace. And after Horace read Ovid. When you tire of the classics, turn for a few well-spent evenings to Beowulf and Gawain. End with Chaucer. Here we have the greatest purveyor of, or better yet, the most intense dealer in, the contradictions between the meditant and the merchant.

       Who am I? My name is Meckling. I teach philosophy of religion at a small college in Trier, the oldest city in the country. That is neither here nor there, though. In my spare time I read--increasingly, to my curiosity; why anyone else's? nobody cares, and for good reason--accounts of the intrigue around the granting of Dead Sea scroll privileges. These codices are all housed in the Kumran Building in Hafiz. Access to the library of fragments is strictly controlled by particular members of the Department of Antiquities, at the university of Hafiz. That is, ostensibly. Actually the credit for the restrictions goes to the Israeli government.

       What is this to you? Nothing, really. This is a question for the trained thinker, not for you. Not for commoners dabbling in ideas as if they were indifferently stirring their pudding after a satisfying meal of roast beef and succulent pig. I eat no pig. My name should tell you that. Mine is one of the few sects, in fact, let me qualify to you, which still observes ritual holidays and fervently follows traditional rules. I am a believer, that is. That is neither here nor there, though. You, unfamiliar with either Jewish ritual or German intellectual rigor, will about now be throwing this book aside for some less patently partisan and more piquantly sexual reading.  But bear with me. This is the end of my digression into exposition of this sort. Let me now tell you a little about the intrigue here. Adventure, see? Now you are all ears, for the moment! So let me begin.

       First, however, I wish to ask you if the name Eisemann means anything to you? No? Never mind. I will introduce you to him. Eisemann toppled the Israeli government single-handed over this business.

(To be continued)