My husband is of the opinion that everyone in the Middle East is nuts, and that the hot climate helps make them that way. I disagree with him on that point, but once in a while I come across something that makes me wonder whether he’s not right after all:
A week ago, 20 men gathered in darkness around a grave in northern Israel to carry out the cabalist ritual pulsa denura, which in Aramaic means “lash of fire.” The object of the curse was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who refuses to cancel his plan to evacuate 25 Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory.
According to participants, Sharon will be struck down by the Angels of Destruction in less than a month, or else the 20 men themselves will die.
The ritual might have drawn little attention at a quieter moment in a country that has long been a showcase for extreme beliefs. But as the evacuations approach, Israeli society is transfixed by every detail of what Sharon calls disengagement, and images of the chanting men have been played repeatedly on Israeli television.
Sober assessments also appeared in Israeli newspapers Wednesday noting that a pulsa denura was invoked nearly a decade ago against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin not long before he was killed by a Jewish extremist opposed to his support of the 1993 Oslo accords.
I’m no fan of Sharon, but I don’t want to see him dead either. What I want is an end to the bloodshed. So I hope that G-d decides to confuse the lot of them and ignore the ritual.