MODERN MEDRASH
(A story about a story from the Chumash -VaYikra 23,39-43)
Inspired by Marc Geller
Three Green Things and a Yellow
One day G-d was talking to Moshe about the future. G-d told Moshe that even though all the people Moshe knew lived in tents and herded sheep, in the future hardly anyone would live in tents or herd sheep. "How will they live, and what will they do all day?" Moshe asked G-d with great interest.
"In the future," G-d answered Moshe, "people will live in houses and apartments, and they will use computers to do their work."
"What's a house?" Moshe asked.
G-d thought and said, “A house is like a stiff tent that stays in one place all the time."
"What's an apartment?" Moshe asked.
G-d answered, “An apartment is like a bunch of houses stacked on top of each other to save space."
"Will there be no space in the future?" Moshe asked.
G-d said, "There will be plenty of space, but not in the cities, where most of the people want to live. That's why they will need apartments."
Moshe said, "I don't understand. Why will people want to live in the cities, where they have to stack up their houses, when there is plenty of space in the hills and fields?"
G-d said, "That's a very good question, Moshe. I don't quite understand it myself. As near as I can figure it, people will want to live in the cities because the cities will have most of the good jobs and all of the good restaurants."
"What's a restaurant?" Moshe asked.
G-d answered, ''A restaurant is a place where other people cook you all sons of wonderful kinds of food, and when you are done eating, they clean up everything. You pay them some money to do this for you.”
"I wish we had restaurants now,” Moshe said, sighing.
"Don't worry," G-d said. "You will have them soon enough."
Moshe asked, "Will there be trees in the cities?"
G-d answered, "Not enough. There will not be nearly enough trees in the cities, and the air will be so bad in most cities that the trees that are there will have a tough time growing."
"Maybe the people in the future will find a way to keep the good restaurants and get rid of the bad air?" Moshe asked.
"Maybe," G-d answered.
After a pause, Moshe asked, "What's a computer?"
''A computer," G-d answered, "counts things and writes things down, very fast."
"Why will the people in the future need to count and write so fast? Will they have that many sheep to count?" Moshe asked.
"No," said G-d. "Most of them will have no sheep. Most of them will live by doing things that have nothing to do with animals or with the land, but the things they will do for a living will be things that need fast counting and fast writing, and that is why they will need computers."
Moshe asked G-d, "Isn't there any way for you to help people remember the land and tents and sheep even when they are living in cities, eating in restaurants, and counting and writing on computers?"
G-d thought for a time and then said, "I have an idea to help people remember the land. I will give them a holiday where they have to sleep outside in booths. That way at least once a year they will remember what the dew smells like on the growing things at night and what the stars look like when they are lying down and looking up at night."
