21st Century Bogatyr: Dovid's Neshumeh

by Zvi Baranoff

Dovid's mother certainly tried to tie him to her apron strings. When he was a little pisher, she seemingly was held by an emotional bond to him unlike that of any of his eight older siblings.

She fondled him and used terms of endearment. She breastfed him more often and weaned him more reluctantly and much later than any of the rest of her brood. Dovid's momma also postponed enrolling him into a cheder until he was very nearly five.

Maybe it had something to do with his neshumeh, his inner spark, that was her reason to treat this child differently than the others.

Perhaps it had more to do with his mother's firm decision that this child would be the end of her cycles of birthing. After his birth, the midwife's assistant visited often and began supplying her with the herbal tea blend that kept her menstruation regular, freeing her from the blessing or curse of pregnancy.

So, night after night, Dovid slept with one hand on his mother's breast and the heels of his feet digging into her husband's ribs. This went on, almost as if it was a plan.

Any effort on his mother's part to keep him at home, however, had no long term effects.

When Dovid turned three, he still had eight siblings below the age of Bar Mitzvah. He had plenty of role models for mischief seeking and for avoiding parental authority. Beyond that, a passion for adventure burned so brightly inside of him that it was nearly impossible to conceal or suppress.

Beginning before he was even out of diapers, Dovid had an uncanny ability to disconnect, dismantle and reverse engineer everything within reach. He would bend, break, remold, mangle and chew on everything. He wanted to know how everything worked and what everything tasted like.

It is not uncommon for children to ask "Why?" repetitively. Dovid, however, rarely did so. What Dovid would ask is "How?" He wanted to know, for instance, what made clocks tick and would find out - often to the frustration of the clock's owner.

And, in spite of a late beginning at cheder Dovid mastered the Aleph Beis and was an exemplary reader quite early. He quickly worked his way through the melamed's books and the knowledge that the melamed had to offer. The teacher was quite aware that his young pupil was destined for advanced studies beyond the limited walls of that cheder.

One day, when Dovid was ten, he was found lying on the ground. His eyes were wide open but he exhibited no obvious awareness of his surroundings nor of the worried family and neighbors that encircled him. He was carried, in this condition, back home. A doctor, a rabbi and an herbalist were summoned.

Hours passed with the doctor checking Dovid's pulse, temperature, reflexes, etc. The rabbi prayed. The herbalist made a relaxing tea to calm the anxious family.

The doctor suspected that Dovid was suffering from a fit connected to some form of latent epilepsy. The rabbi hypothesized that Dovid was possibly possessed by a dybbuk. The herbalist expressed no opinion and continued to care for the frayed nerves of the worried family.

After several hours Dovid sat up and looked around, smiling contentedly. Then, he closed his eyes and slept peacefully. A broad series of medical tests were performed on the child over the following weeks. No cause for the incident could be determined.

Dovid told none of them about the mushrooms he had eaten or the visions that he had experienced. It was many years before he let anyone know about those experiences. He was, after his initial encounter with the fungi, very careful to conceal his experimentations and assure that he was in a secure place before again ingesting the mushrooms and entering into trance-like conditions.

On the Home Planet, over the tens or hundreds of thousands of years that humanity dwelled there, the flora and fungi were pretty well understood. Through generation after generation of experimentation, we knew which are edible and which are poisonous as well as the ones that had medical value or psychoactive potential.

Planet Birobidzhan doesn't have the thousands of years of human experience. Our presence here is a mere blink of an eye. We brought the seeds and cuttings from Earth to assure our needs.

The flora of Planet Birobidzhan are still mostly a mystery to us and the fungi even more so. Only a relatively handful of plants are considered to be safe for human consumption. Many are known to be poisonous. Children are sternly warned against eating random plants and to refrain from even touching the fungi.

What compelled Dovid to eat the mushrooms of Planet Birobidzhan? It seems that they called out to him and he answered their call.

This is not a Jewish story. It is, however, a story about Jews. One does not need to be Jewish to read this tale any more than one needs to be a Hobbit or an Elf to read Lord of the Rings.

This story is a work of fiction. The setting for this tale is in the distant future, on the far away Planet Birobidzhan. This planet was settled by Jewish exiles from Planet Earth.

The population of Planet Birobidzhan has been cut off from the Home Planet for a long time. They have developed their own unique culture, traditions and linguistics.

The language spoken on Planet Birobidzhan is primarily Yiddish. I have sprinkled a significant number of Yiddish words and phrases throughout the telling of the tale. I also refer to various Jewish religious and cultural touchstones.

To make this story more accessible, I have included a glossary of words and phrases in Yiddish and Hebrew that are used as well as some explanations of religious terms and holidays.

I hope that readers find this to be useful.

The link to the Glossary is here:

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-useful-guide-glossary-to-planet.html?m=1

פּלאַנעט ביראָבידזשאַן

Do you want to read more about Planet Birobidzhan? Here are all the posted installments so far, in the order that they were posted. Just click your way through the story!

1 On A Planet Safe for Yidden

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/on-planet-safe-for-yidden.html

2 Yenne Velt: A History of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/yenne-velt-history-of-planet-birobidzhan.html

3 Another Globe, Perhaps?

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/another-globe-perhaps.html

4 Bereshis: The Transport & Transformation of the Founders

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/03/bereshis-transport-transformation-of.html

5 The Town of First Landing

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-town-of-first-landing.html

6 A Personal History of an Early Settler on Planet Birobidzhan

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-personal-history-of-early-settler-on.html