It happened at tea time. Yorkshire Blend, splash of oat milk, biscuits, and since we’re in the Holy Land, leftover borekas. They get very hard, very fast, those doughy rectangles. Practically clay by the afternoon. Wash down with a glass of seltzer, you can handle it.

But Clive can’t handle it, not any more. Last year he self diagnosed as gluten intolerant. Now he whispers to servers in restaurants – can’t eat that, ashkenazi tummy – with an ingratiating smile, as if he’s letting you in on a cabalistic secret. Turn forty, you’ll feel it too. It’s all downhill from here.

Actually, forty’s no big deal. Not the worst club to join. Only, the slow realisation there’s nothing in particular left. The oncoming numbers loom. Forty five is a biggie. Fifty – a wince. You’d really better have it sorted by fifty. That’s looking unlikely for Clive who isn’t married, no kids (that he’s aware of, he jokes), works intermittently, and rather likes it that way. On the path to a quiet sixth decade. Or at least he was, until he became moshiach.

Naturally it was shabbes. He’d visited one of the less fashionable shuls, late, end of the Torah reading, just shy of eleven o’ clock. Which is honestly fine in Tel Aviv. Everyone’s shul hopping, bumping into friends, slipping out for ‘kiddish club’ whiskey on the steps outside. Something from the Highlands, peaty. Clive slipped past the drinking lads, picked up a Chumash, sat near the back. He peered over the shoulder of a skeletal grey-haired man with a blue kippa, to catch the page number. Oh, right. Yitro. That’s a good one.

Something went wrong at the duchening, the priestly blessing. Half a dozen men – Cohenim – ambled over to the ark and covered........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)