13 Adar, 4759
 
 

Fear is heating up in the Ashkenazi world as the Christians prepare to mark the one thousandth anniversary of the establishment of their religion. Aside from the usual fears of anti-Jewish riots and massacres, the Jewish leadership is concerned that poor planning by the Christian authorities will lead to social chaos and worse anti-Jewish violence than might otherwise be the case. Some rabbis, however, believe that the Jews are in a unique position to help their Christian neighbors, and thus, may be able to extract concessions from the Church that could virtually end anti-Semitism in our time.

The problem is that for the last nine hundred years, all Christian dates have been expressed in three digits. During this entire period, no one in authority has done any contingency planning to adjust to the shift for 4 digits that will occur next year during the month of Tevet 4760, the date the Christians call "January 1, 1000." This change has the potential to throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse in which any date is mentioned. Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into question. Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval economy into chaos.

As usual, many Christians are doing their best to blame the Jews for this problem. Friar Dominic Cedric of the London Office of the Inquisition explained this point of view (after first engaging in a religious disputation, and then condemning me to eternal damnation for being a Jew after I bested his arguments) in an exclusive interview for the Jewish Times:

"It's all the fault of the Jews. After all, they don't have to deal with the consequences of this. They've been using 4-digit dates for the past 3,760 years, but when they refused to accept our Saviour they wouldn't let us use their dates, but made us start from scratch! I say that we confiscate all of the Jews' property and expel these infidels, and that will solve our problem!"

Fortunately for the Jews, this is a minority opinion, as the kings of Europe are rather addicted to the Jews as a source of reliable revenue and the foundation of world commerce. The Church is also interested in there being Jews in every Christian country in order to provide an example of what happens to infidels. It is unlikely that these moderate leaders will permit much more than confiscation of half the Jews' property and an occasional anti-Jewish riot here and there.

Many Jewish leaders believe that Ashkenazi Jewry can ask for, and get, more from the Christians. One such leader, Rabbi Noah A Kohol, Rosh Yeshiva and Brewmeister of the Shli"tzer "Beis" (as the Ashkenazim call it) Midrash of London, believes that if Jews can look past the apparent hostility of the neighbors and help them out, the payback to the Jewish People could be enourmous.

"Look," says Rabbi Kohol, sitting in his book-filled study, sipping a full stein of the world-famous Schli"tzer brew, "Christians aren't the only people who wait until the last minute to get things done. You should see the condition of my own house in the days before Pesach! I don't even do the final search for chametz until the night before the seder, and I wait until just a couple of hours before to burn it. They might be Christians, but they are also people, made in the image of God, and we should have some empathy. After all, hath not a Christian eyes? Hath not a Christian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick their skin, do they not bleed?…"

That doesn't mean that Rabbi Kohol doesn't think that the Jews should behave as friers in this matter. "We help the Christians, yes, but in return we should expect a reasonable favor. Now, I can't imagine that they would give us full social and political equality. It's a total fantasy to think that any Western nation will ever state that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, if you would tell me that a great nation would ever codify a fundamental rule that its legislative councils shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, I would say that you have had too much of that Shli"tzer brew to drink, and I'd stop serving you."

"No, What I am going to ask for from the Church is the right for Jews to settle in some lands that have become newly Christian, and where we can expect that the locals do not have the same hostility towards Jews that you find here in England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. In those lands, fully autonomous under authentic Jewish rule, we can rebuild the Jewish nation, and live in peace until the Messiah comes and leads us back to the Land of Israel."

"I make the Church an offer it cannot refuse. They avert their "Y1K" crisis, and we Jews will be able to live in permanent peace in Poland and Lithuania. Once this happens, we will virtually eliminate anti-Semitism in our time, and we will solve the Jewish problem for the Christians once and for all."

These are not just idle comments. Followers of the Shli"tzer Rav Have been quietly selling their possessions, and packing up to prepare for the move east. The Shli"tzers are not the only Jewish group ready to go. All over the West, everyone is bracing for the craziness that is expected by the end of the first Christian millenium. Muslim leaders are watching the goings-on in Europe as well. They, too will be facing the same problems 600 years from now when we will reach the thousandth anniversary of Mohammed's flight from Mecca.
 
 

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