Prayers had failed. Plan B called for a curse.
So 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.
Another intriguing tid-bit: The grave around which "the men chanted for Sharon's swift death" was that of
Shlomo Ben-Yosef, a member of a radical Jewish underground group who was hanged by the British in 1938 for firing on a bus full of Arabs.Old Shlomo should have worked for the other side. At least then he'd have gotten the 77 virgins (or however many it is).
Religion. Ain't it grand?
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