MY PENTATEUCH Prologue My Pentateuch Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy The New Testament "Andre will clean up" Arrangement of the Dishes as Parable Hunting a Giraffe, Shooting a Picture The Story of the Garden of Eden Veronica's Handkerchief The Four Elements Prologue A heavy, transparent glass plate lies on the wooden surface of my desk. Like a transparent tombstone, one sees very well who lies underneath. Under the glass I place photos, reproductions, postcards and notes, just like in my father's house, where they were called "tzetalach". Nowadays, one layer of memories covers its predecessor, hides it and obstructs it, I no longer know what was when, what came before what, and if at all. The memories become ghosts. The photos on the desk make a partial, broken mosaic, an incomplete puzzle, that can hardly manage to join together into a story, due to the black holes between the islands of memory. The memory islands wander between vast abysses, that swallowed entire chapters. We will not know if they contained the moments of truth, and the major landmarks in the paths of the story. I look at a puzzle that was scorched in time, faded, yellowed, grayed, blackened, or crumbled. As I write these lines, I seek not the lost details. Sometimes it seems to me that it is better to flaunt the broken fragments. Like me, right now, they break their silence and come together on the paper between my hands. I look at them, and they give me fragmented looks, that echo back and forth in the spaces between the lines, in the fragmented chapters of "My Pentateuch" and "The New Testament". Next >> Translation: Uri Bruck.