Note: This text was translated from the Russian original by AI.

Listen: All of this happened, more or less. The Bible is a very selective book. It tells us that a whole generation was supposed to exhale its soul into the sands, and it somehow omits the details of what these people did during their primary working hours. And they didn’t just lie down and wait for death.

They were the Elite. The first draft. The very people who saw the Ten Plagues in 4D and crossed the sea without getting their sandals wet. They had ‘white bone’¹ and cloud pillars instead of air conditioning. And suddenly, Moses comes out of the fog and says: ‘Guys, I have two pieces of news. The good one—your children will see rivers of milk. The bad one—you’re just here for the extras. Your historical role is fertilizer.’

So it goes.

On that day at Kaplan—the main square of the camp in front of the Tabernacle—the best people gathered. Officers of the tribes, Levites from good families, those who remembered how to properly set a table in Goshen. They weren’t going to quietly turn into dust. They had a ‘social contract.’ They didn’t leave Egypt just to be ‘dumped’ for some ungrateful teenagers who don’t even know what a real slave whip looks like.

‘Democracy!’ shouted Dathan. Or Abiram. They always shouted together, like a two-headed parrot. ‘We are the ones who made the Exodus! We are the carriers of Sinai values! You have no right to deprive us of the Future!’

They declared ‘civil disobedience’ to the divine decree. They blocked the Jordan. It was spectacular: thousands of people in white robes sat on the shore and said that if the Future didn’t belong to them, then it wouldn’t belong to anyone. ‘We will cut off the manna supplies!’ the protest leaders announced. ‘We’ll call a strike on the Tabernacle! Let Moses light the lamps himself if he’s so smart!’

God, as is well known, possesses a specific sense of humor. Instead of simply incinerating them (which would have been an act of mercy), He allowed them to protest. This became their curse. They became the Generation of Eternal Protest.

Since they were forbidden from entering the Future, they decided to block it. Time passed. Eras changed. Empires vanished. But somewhere in the folds of reality, Dor HaMidbar continued its rally. When Joshua tried to cross the Jordan, he ran into pickets with signs: ‘No entry without our consent!’ When the Temples were being built, they stood nearby with megaphones, proving that current architecture was a departure from the true ideals of the tent camp of 1446 BCE.

And here we are—our days. Tel Aviv. Kaplan Street.

If you look closely at the crowd on Ayalon today, you’ll see them. They look very modern—in tactical shorts and with smartphones—but the sand of Sinai burns in their eyes. These are they. The very people Moses crossed off the lists of the living. They protest against any government, any reform, and any Future for one simple reason: they aren’t in it. They are stuck in an eternal ‘Yesterday,’ and their only power is the ability to stop traffic on the highway leading to ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Shame!’ shouts an old man with an ‘Exodus-82’ tattoo. ‘We are the white bone! We led you out of Egypt, and you’re building interchanges here without our blessing!’

They block Ayalon every Saturday because it’s the only way to feel that time still obeys them. They are Dor HaMidbar, professional refugees from reality, whose only ideology is: ‘We were promised, and we were cheated.’

God looks down from above, sips ambrosia, and says to Gabriel: ‘See? I told you they’d never get tired. It’s the longest demonstration in the history of the Universe.’ Gabriel sighs: ‘Lord, maybe we should let them into Canaan after all? There are great discounts on real estate there right now.’ ‘We can’t,’ God replies. ‘If they enter, they’ll have to stop protesting. And without the protest, they simply crumble into dust. They need Ayalon. They need Kaplan. It is their promised land.’

So it goes.

Notes

  1. White bone—an idiom for elite status and privileged position of the first generation of the Exodus.
  2. The protest continues because without it, they simply crumble into dust.

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