And so, in the throes of the great enlightenment, in the birth pangs of light, of tolerance, of individualism, of serious scholarship and study -- the dark child destroys the mother candid, fair: Judaism perished.

O my soul, all of this today: we must speak of living a life of religion that conflicts with our own secular life. Do we dare to flee back into the darkness from whence...? There are scorpions --

But the enlightenment was no light! It was a fire, a flame, a kindling, a torch, not the true shining gleam of the sun (and science says photons, and there is no difference between lamp-light and sunlight [at base, at essence]: another glory defeated and deranged, an eagle wrestled to the ground by vultures, hungry carnivorous and no longer satisfied with their waiting, far-famed or desiring it at least already they would struggle down, not suited with their natures, yes, how they fly, for DEATH has conquered life).

Lord God has been abandoned, and never will be found. I would trade every ounce of my soul, everything of my being for something, something of meaning in the world. Do I surrendur to the neccessity of the truth? What is in the thing so supremely valuable? It is a truth of dust, it is a truth of threadbare, diseased, and I cannot hang it about myself without that I am impure, and I am fallen.

It is not given to me: I hate the truth. I love the lies that we tell ourselves, the lies that we whisper to our hearts at night, the lies that we consume moreso than every meal to give us strength, the victuals for our soul in strength, our garments. And if you can see through? The gauze, the mirror, something flashing and a vague panoply of smoke? Rising to the heavens, some consequence we have not observed, some message as yet unseen?

O Lord of Lords God, God Holy of Holies: to separate Judaism from its purpose, as if there were something worthy in the mere fact of its being, as if the quest and the darkness and rocks for pillows, altars and a thousand years of martyrdom and the holy scriptures -- if we indeed would call them holy -- might have any meaning exclusive of you, these works of our own hands, our idols!

And for this our fathers died? We have idolized the scriptures! We have transformed the True Religion into a golden calf. Everything is thus, everything is so. But there is still hope. When the Israelites made the calves, before that the holy of holies -- have we fallen from grace? Can we return? O Lord of Lords, O Lord of Hosts, save us from our enemies, and save me from death, and find some comfort for a small and suffering soul.

You mock me? Do you think that the things of religion are pitiable, are unenviable, are unwarranted? It is the only saving grace mankind could find. If all this is wickedness with just cause and reason -- a soul that can conceive of an absent being the highest of all beings, in order to ascend to such heights would hurl himself off of cliff in protest at the cruel and consuming darkness of a world that knew not His Name.

A tear falls for Zion in the wilderness.