Free Beware of God by Shalom Auslander Page A

afternoon, on a shady hill in the B’nei Zion Cemetery overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Rosenbergs and a few close friends buried their beloved Chaim Yankel.
    It was a quiet, respectful service. On their way out, as they passed through the cemetery gates, the Rosenbergs stopped, and took one last look at Chaim Yankel’s grave.
    The children waved sadly.
    Mrs. Rosenberg blew her husband a kiss.
    â€œWe shall be together soon, my love,” she whispered to her husband. “I give ’em till Monday, tops.”

The Metamorphosis
    A S Motty awoke one morning from impure dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a very large goy. In his waking half-sleep, he lazily scratched his hairy chest.
    Hairy?
    He threw back the covers. His chest had become broad and muscular. A thick coat of curly black hair spread across it and trailed down his stomach. His newly muscular arms and shoulders felt huge in his tank top. Motty didn’t remember owning a tank top, certainly not one that said Budweiser across the chest.
    Awesome.
    He moved his heavy arms up and down, watching the muscles expanding and contracting beneath his suddenly taut skin. Beginning on his shoulder and extending down his arm was an elaborate tattoo of a blond woman in a bikini straddling a large sword that rested in the eye socket of a bloody skull.
    He was overcome with the desire to build something with hammers and wood.
    He ran to his mirror. From the neck up, nothing had changed. He was all Motty. From the neck down, he was a burly construction worker. It gave the effect of some sort of experimental head reassignment surgery gone terribly wrong. In addition to the tank top, he was wearing a red and black flannel plaid shirt buttoned only to the chest, and faded denim jeans, torn at the knees, from which hung a yellow and black Stanley tape measure marked “Contractor Grade.” Motty unzipped the jeans and looked inside his black underwear. Black underwear?
    â€œSo that’s a foreskin.”
    It occurred to Motty that somewhere out there was a once-burly, previously uncircumcised construction-type person running around with the body of an eighteen-year-old Lubavitcher yeshiva student.
    â€œBut,” thought Motty, “that’s his problem.” He stopped himself. “That’s his fuckin’ problem.”
    Nice.
    There was a loud rapping on his bedroom door. “You’re going to be late for shul!” his mother shouted. “Motty!” He had completely forgotten it was Shabbos.
    Motty swung the door open.
    â€œTa-da!”
    Motty’s massive goyish body filled the doorway. His mother’s mouth dropped open in a silent scream. Her eyes rolled backward into her head, her eyelids fluttered and she fell face first onto the hard bedroom floor.
    She was out cold.
    Motty lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom. He put her in bed, installed some ceramic tile in the master bath and left for shul.
    With his goyishe legs and powerful stride, it took him only half the usual time to reach the synagogue, but he still walked in right in the middle of the rabbi’s midservice sermon.
    Everyone turned.
    â€œWho dares to walk in right in the middle of the rabbi’s speech?” their faces all seemed to ask.
    A tall shaygitz in jeans wearing a yarmulke and a tallis was not the answer they were expecting.
    The chief rabbi motioned to the cantor, who motioned to the assistant rabbi, who hurried down the aisle to the man in the jeans and motioned to him to please come outside.
    â€œAre you a guest or friend of a current shul member?” asked the assistant rabbi.
    Motty explained it all as simply and directly as he possibly could. He was Motty Aranson. He had awakened as a goy, it was as simple as that, but clearly it was a matter of biology and not of belief, and he didn’t think it should change anyone’s opinion of him.
    Motty asked that he please be allowed inside so as