THE TORAH
THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
CHAPTER 1
YOU CALL THIS A BEGINNING?
I talk to myself a lot.
Which is okay because I write dialogue. If I need a good conversation, I have one—whether there’s anyone around or not.
I take a lot of drugs, too—immunosuppressives, corticosteroids, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and speed. Which could explain why this conversation didn’t surprise me.
“You believe this?” A voice asked as a book materialized on my cluttered desk.
“Believe what?” I picked up the book. “What’s this? I scanned my loft, a large-windowed, high-celiinged room furnished with the effluvia of years spent on Middle and Far Eastern assignments, and saw a thick mist undulating on my Persian carpetbag pillows, “And who are you?”
“It’s new Bible and I’m God.”
“A New Testament?” I squinted into the mist. “And you’re God . . . really?”
“A New Old Testament . . . and yes really, I’m God. You expected maybe Morgan Freeman?”
“I wasn’t expecting anything.” I reclined my seatback for this new flight of fancy. “But okay. If you’re God and this is a new Old Testament.” I shrugged, “What’s the big deal about a new Bible? They publish ’em all the time. Big moneymakers. Have been for centuries. People look in them for answers.”
“People need answers?”
“People got questions.”
“And people get answers from that book?”
I smirked as the usual self-sparring I did to build a good debate began. “Religious leaders give people answers from that book.”
God frowned, “What do these leaders tell people?”
“They tell them what you meant when you said stuff in the book.”
“They know what I meant?”
“They make it up. It’s called Theology.”
“Like you think you’re making this up now?”
I frowned as the voice spoke different words than I’d imagined, “I’m not making this up?”
“You’re not making this up.”
“Well, if I’m not making this up,” I felt myself listening for rather than thinking up answers, “I got a couple of questions for you.”
“Shoot.”
“One, how do I know you’re God? Two, what do you want from me? Three, if you’re not me, why am I hearing in English? And four, am I nuts?”
“One, if I wasn’t God, you’d have had to ring me in downstairs. Two, I need a modern writer to help rewrite this book. Three, you’re hearing me in English because you never listened in Hebrew school and four, other than the fact that a couple is two, I don’t know if you’re nuts.”
“You deal with many nuts?”
The book’s cover flipped open to Genesis, “I had a regular trail mix in here.”
“And you want me to help rewrite this?”
“Just the Torah. The rest is sequel.”
“But I write fiction. Is this fiction?”
“Everything was fiction,” God smirked, “in the beginning.”
CHAPTER 2
SO BEGIN ALREADY
“You really wanted the Bible to start that way?”
“You want better, it was a dark and stormy night?” God sighed, “The dark I had already. The stormy and the night, I didn’t create until later. You ever try creating in the dark? It was darker than a coalminer’s kishkas out there. I had to watch my step. Believe you me, when I stub a toe someone hears about it.”
“But there wasn’t anyone.”
“No one Moses knew about, but I had a whole world . . .” the Almighty’s voice chuckled, “You know how many sides a sphere has? How many people besides Moses I worked with?”
“So the Jews weren’t your Chosen people?”
“You see where I mention Jews in Genesis? There weren’t any Jews yet. No Jews, no goyim, no nobody. No bodies period, farschtayin?”
“Got it. Go on.”
“Okay, so,” the Almighty paused, “where was I?”
“You created light.”
“And it was good,” God nodded. “I told Moses to write that.”
“He did.”
“But you get tired of nothing but light. After a while, you need dark. You need variety. You eat lox all day you need a little pound cake, nu?” God frowned, “Not a great example, but this is a first draft, yes?”
“You’ve seen me write before?”
“I’ve seen everybody do everything before. I’m like Santa Claus, but with longer hours,” the Almighty smiled. “Nick got himself a good deal when the Christians picked him. Used to watch good and bad people for Odin, too,” God shrugged. “Christians had to change things because Oden would kill the bad ones.” The Almighty lightened up, “When Thomas Nast drew Nick’s portrait, he finally got famous. Even got Coke ads . . .”
“Like Joe Greene.”
“ . . . short hours, nice travel allowance, staff to do the grunt work. Nick’s got it nice. I should be so lucky. So,” God nodded, “I made light and cut the light with some dark. Made a nice change, but too sudden, so I softened it. Smoothed it out, you know? Made it nice. Dawn, dusk—the works.”
“The refraction made nice colors, too.”
“Ike Newton loved that. Saw that light wasn’t just light. A mench he was. Found the wiggle room I left so people could get ideas. Things to make light more interesting—useful even.” God nodded again, “Okay, so I had light and dark and the in-between stuff on the second day. But the earth was still a mess—like a teenager’s room it looked.”
“I might have used a different image.”
“You sell more books than me, Mister Critic?”
“I don’t believe this.”
“You think I’m here because you believe?”
“Okay. Alright already. I got it. Jeez,” I sighed. “So, it says here, ‘God said let there be an expanse . . . you said expanse?”
“Expanse you don’t like now?”
“I’m just saying . . .”
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Book Details
About the Book
When God, Moses, Aaron and the gang appear in my loft, the translate, explain, clear up and write down The Torah as they meant it to be written
About the Author
The author has lived in and written about Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Haiti, Shanghai and the US. His novels are The Missionary Position about Angela Benedetto’s adventures in Iran Jaya, My Enemy, My Friend, about a love affair during the Iranian Revolution, Something Came Up about a young man’s search for himself hitchhiking across the US, Shanghaie’d about a Chinese/Israeli plot originating in 1930’s Shanghai, Maiden Shanghai, about Shanghai’s Green Gang’s convert aid to China’s Xinjiang Separatists, Laidback & CO. about an athletic team in Jakarta, Indonesia and The United Hates of America about two warring preachers who join forces against common enemies. He has written published articles for Channel east Magazine, West-East Magazine, Media Magazine, Asian Hotel and Catering Magazine, www.zingasia.com, www.chineOnline.com and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.