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EXODUS“<br />
BIG DEAL<br />
Written Shortly Before the “Big Move,” Summer ’83<br />
The BIG MOVE. Everything we read about lately, every rumor that flies about campus,<br />
seems to have something to do with the BIG MOVE. We are going, or so they tell us, from<br />
Givat Ram to Mt. Scopus, and it is being presented to us as a kind of mini-aliyah. One notes<br />
that in all our official memos it is invariably capitalized, not just the first letter, but all of them,<br />
as if it were a massive, unatterable phenomenon. “Not since the Exodus,” I thought to myself,<br />
“has there been such a tremendous hullaballoo about a simple change of location.<br />
Then the true allegorical meaning of the excitement struck me: the fellow running this<br />
show is, you guessed it, Moshe. I grant you, Margolin does not closely resemble Charleton Heston<br />
in The Ten Commandments (or even The Planet o f the Apes), but the allusion is thought<br />
provoking.<br />
Perhaps the K.B.H. (Kadosh Eiaruch-Hu) has heard our cries from bondage in the fleshpots<br />
of Shikunei ha-Elef. We can only await with the baited breath our departure to the Promised<br />
Campus, a campus flowing with milk and<br />
honey, or at least one that spares us a<br />
half-hour bus ride."<br />
I assume that our departure is being<br />
delayed because the hearts of the housing<br />
department have been hardened. Somehow<br />
I doubt that such tough bureaucrats<br />
as they will be phased by transforming<br />
a rod into a snake, or by a quick<br />
case of leprosy. Such tricks have been<br />
attempted by far better magicians than<br />
the OSA staff, and to no effect. Card<br />
tricks probably wouldn’t impress them<br />
either, and the water is already such that<br />
changing it to blood can only improve<br />
the cleanliness of my wash. Any frogs<br />
sent would only fry on the hot sidewalks<br />
(not kosher anyway), and they’re probably<br />
used to both gnats and flies by now.<br />
Forget about sending them cattle disease<br />
(who keeps a cow in a Jerusalem apartment?),<br />
and a plague of boils would be<br />
THE TRUNKS HAVE ARRIVED<br />
nothing alongside the mosquito bites<br />
they already have. Hail is nothing compared<br />
to what hits this place in winter, and locusts would be a disaster for the kibbutzniki,<br />
city dwellers can endure them with a can or two of bug spray and the loss of a few rubber<br />
plants. Israelis would probably only use locusts as a substitute for S.VJ*. Darkness is hardly a<br />
threat, they have power failures here already. Moshe, you might just clench it by causing all<br />
their firstborn sons to become dardasim, but I doubt it.<br />
Assuming, o Moshe, that you find a way to persuade them to let us go, we’ll get out of this<br />
place. Even so, can you picture such a trip? Moshe Margolin lifts up his mighty rod and parts the<br />
traffic on Yaffo road to lead out what must be the entire junior class of Brandeis University.<br />
Then, with Givat Ram housing bureaucracy in hot pursuit, he closes the traffic in on them, and<br />
they are crushed by an oncoming 4-aleph. Think twice, Moshe, do you really want to lead the<br />
OYP-ers around downtown Jerusalem for forty years? Our madrichim have enough trouble<br />
keeping track of us for three hours. But perhpas it will all be worth it in the end, Moshe; you’ll<br />
be a star, it might make a good movie, and think of what you could make on the novelization<br />
rights.<br />
Chana Irving<br />
Hebrew University<br />
16
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