Chapter 6

"Letting Go and Letting God"

After the events of September 11th, I felt ever more strongly, the call of the wild. It was as if I felt the future itself calling me forward to walk away from everything I felt obliged towards, and manifest my trust and belief in God by letting go of my politically correct concerns. I had two children to look after. They needed me and I had much guilt in my heart for I knew myself to have been emotionally preoccupied and unable to care for them as a father should. My finances were deteriorating rapidly.
When I had managed that company with Yuval Dor we called Art Named Communication, I had made a very good salary as the manager of the company and the bank had given me a credit line of 15,000 shekels as well as 15,000 shekels on my credit card, all without any kind of security, The female bank clerk in charge of credit for company accounts and I had dated. I had negotiated for Yuval better conditions for his credit line and while doing so, I had flirted with the clerk by reading her palm. We saw each other a few times and she was very generous when it came to my own credit.
Now the bank account was near the bottom of the credit line and the credit card made it possible for me to take a loan for cash to pay the rent and buy groceries for a couple of months. I knew I would never be able to pay the loan back. A few months went by and during this time, I was introduced by a friend of a friend who had come to my lectures about Divine Design and the number 11, to Sima, who lived at Dizengoff 139 in Tel Aviv with her two grown daughters. Sima displayed great interest in my ideas about communication and the events of 9/11.
She organized a couple of lectures for me. I used to visit her frequently and she fed me with Yemenite Gachnun she used to sell at the beach on Saturdays, for extra income. She liked to smoke grass as much as I did and she shared with me her marijuana very generously. She had a lover much younger than her and was very ecstatic about her relationship, and for this I was relieved as I wasn't interested in any kind of romantic relationship myself. We actually had a lot of fun and she never complained that I would drop by without asking, any time I felt like it.
Eventually I had no money for rent.
The guy who introduced me to Sima was also excited about my ideas and he agreed to give me a 1000 shekels as an investment, actually 2000 shekels but he had had second thoughts. My daughter Ruti agreed to give me another 1000. I paid the rent for the last time and bought groceries with the money I still made from giving English lessons.
When Sima offered to finance my writing any book I wanted to, and I decided I would write about 9/11, Sima's boyfriend left for Europe where he got involved in something he was arrested for, making it possible for Sima to invite me to come and write the book at her house on her computer.
It took me a few days as I had done all the research already, over the course of the months following September 11th. Sima had found someone to do the editing and graphics and paid them. She had her friend get the book published in Steimatsky.
I told my daughter Ruti that I was leaving everything behind, leaving her to care for my children, her brother and sister, and left to live with Sima. Shamefuly I admit that my feeling of relief and release was greater than my guilt. My heart told me I was doing the right thing, no matter how it looked to the world. This was the fulfillment of the Angel saying "amen" regarding the taking care of my children as I followed my destiny.
There was a newspaper article about the book with a picture of me called " Jonathan Michael's Conspiracy of 9/11". I wrote the book under the name Jonathan Michael ( יונתן מיכאל) which is 617 in Gematria. Like " man of the fire (איש האש)" the fire being that consuming fire of the jealous God or The man ,"who God knows" ( אשר ידעו יהוה ) which refers to Moses as having spoken to God from "within to within".
 (פנים אל פנים) . This is usually translated stupidly as "face to face" but God has no face and speaks to man from "within" to "within", the word "within" and "face" are spelled exactly the same  in Hebrew.
 Now let me make it perfectly clear that the Gematria shouldn't prove anything at all for any one, including me. It is simply a condensed kind of Divine Poetry, a work of art and completely open to interpretation, but only if one is so inclined, like me.
My son Idan came to visit me at Sima's a few times. Keren I didn't see for many months. She was to go to a boarding school and then lived with my ex wife, Nurit, Ruti's mother. Idan joined the army and they arranged board for him. I prayed for them all the time but trusted God he would keep His promise to take care of them, Bless them, and He did and He has. I mostly concerned myself with my own affairs.
The book was published and I went out halfheartedly to sell it in the streets for 30 shekels, while it was being sold in Steimatsky's for 60.
I slept on Sima's couch as one of her daughters returned home and the extra room I had been sleeping in went back to her. I sold just a few books a day and also passed out materiel on The CIA involvement in 9/11 I had printed out, but it was very obvious Sima wasn't going to get rich quick and this was no best seller.
One night I was abruptly awakenned when Sima got onto the couch with me and vehemently demanded my affections. I was taken by surprise and pushed her away. The next day she complained that I was lazy and not doing enough to sell the book and make her money back.
I raised my voice back at her and she immediately kicked me out. Just like that, with all the books and my belongings.
"Go away!" she said.
There were about 600 hundred copies of the book, or so, in boxes. I stacked them all up in an unused concrete garbage enclosure behind Sima's building, with my own things in a couple of canvas bags and a suitcase, and I was homeless for a week.
During this week I got a permit to sell the book on Dizengoff Street as an artist promoting his own works. I was the only one selling a book while every one else sold artwork and jewellery.
I felt inexplicably happy and certain I was on the right path.
I told myself a narrative where I was a hero, fearlessly baring my breast to the elements as I did everything I could to reveal the truth to the world about the evil conspiracy that would eventually be blamed on the Jews and used as an excuse to commit another holocaust. I actually believed this. At the time, President Bush was making plans to topple Saddam Husein who was rumored to have chemical weapons he would use on Israel, or something like that. Bush was the grandson of a Nazi sympathizer and couldn't be trusted. It was all in my book.
On the first night, just as I was about to "close shop" and pack the books up, collect my things and find someplace to sleep...perhaps the beach....a young girl came down the street skipping rope. She was, as I later found out, seventeen. It was so strange the way she skipped rope while approaching me on the emptied city street, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She stopped by me and asked me what my book was about. I told her. She said I must be a hero, to do what I am doing, that she admired me. She was very pretty and very young, too young, but I was smitten, anyway.
We spent the night walking and talking. She was on her way to Jerusalem but had ran out of money for the bus and she told me she just knew everything would be alright. I gave her the bus fair but she said she would spend he night with me, keep me company and that she did. We wandered the streets holding hands and chatting together as if we had to say everything we could possibly say, because we both knew we would never see each other again. Finally we ended up on the beach and I found some wood and made a fire. Finding the wood was a surprise, it was just there- left behind as surplus by other fire makers who had gone. I bought some wine and some cookies with the money I had earned selling books at an all night kiosk. She fell asleep with her head on my knees and I praised God for being so gentle with me and making my first homeless night so much fun.
With the crack of dawn she took a bus to the central bus station and that was the last I ever saw of her. I went back to where I had stored my things and tried to get some sleep myself. I curled up under a blanket on top of the book boxes.
Sima woke me with a scream of fright. 
She had opened the door to the cement cubicle to see if my books were still there and was so startled to find me sleeping that she ran away without a word. I sold books the next day too. That night I went to Ramat Gan to sleep in the apartment we had lived at, with the 164 and 47 address, as Idan had told me it was empty and being renovated. I still had the key. I took a soap-less shower and slept uncomfortably on cardboard, leaving early the next morning to sell books on the street.
For a few nights I slept in the apartment or on my things in the cement garbage cubicle. Then I had a windfall. On Saturday I sold books on the boardwalk and within a few hours I sold some twenty books. many of them were to Israeli Arabs who saw my book as validating what they already knew. Bush did 9/11 and it was just a pretext to go to war and steal Arab oil.
I put half my weekly income from selling the book into an envelope and left it for Sima in her mailbox. God told me to do that. Don't ask me how, I couldn't really say, but I knew it wasn't my idea. It was way too wise and proved to be very much the right thing to do.
The next day Sima brought me a big fat joint and told me how much she respected what I had done by giving her money despite being homeless. She invited me to come by and have a smoke, a coffee and a talk. Sima was very good to me, much better than I deserved. I once was so horny and lonely I stole money from her wallet and went to get a massage. The money I stole wasn't enough, but the woman who took me into the room knew me and didn't suspect I would come up short on cash when she was done. She was very pissed at me and I never went back there again.
At any rate, there was a concrete shack behind Sima's ground floor apartment which had no electricity or running water. It was at her disposal as storage space and she agreed to rent it to me so I could put my stuff there until I found some solution. It hadn't started raining yet. This was the winter of 2002-2003 and it was going to be the rainiest winter in 11 years. Of course I had it in my mind that I could sell the book during the day as well as still teach some English lessons, and sleep in the shack during the night. Sima was feeling friendly and agreed to not only let me shower at her place, but she would give me electricity for a light bulb at night. I think this was the beginning of November.
We made a deal and I moved into the concrete shack, feeling happier than I had for a very long time.


We all need One God,
with One Name,
and One Torah.

The God of Art
And His Torah
as taught
by jmr a light.

Art for Art's Sake!

is becoming
_________________
A Catastrophic Tragedy. Maybe Not!

29283812363938/11=2662164760358

Jonathan Michael Robbins

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יונתן מיכאל רבינס