I had a kingdom. I had a kingdom. We were kings and princes, we were queens and priestesses. We were the judges and the accused and our trials took place in silent inner prayer and in bombasts of joy and excruciating penitance. I had a kingdom where day and night flowed into one another and there was both division and fluidity between the sexes. I had a kingdom where we were both warriors and saintly ascetics engaged in scholastic examination of the mystical and the obscure. Reb Nachman of Bratslav taught that the only weapon of a Jew is his prayers. I had a kingdom.

The caravan left before dawn. We traveled along the silk road and other more obscure trade routes, along paths without names, and then finally straying out into the dessert along paths that had never been taken. In our train of camels we carried silks and spices and brocade slippers from Persia and silver belt bucles from the Sassanid empire and tea from China and all manner of wood work from the Slavic Rus. Our path stretched from Vilna to Itil to Bukharan to Xing Xiang. No nation has been a stranger to my tribe. We have know all nations. We have left our seed in the wombs of every land. The hoofs of our animals have compacted the earth down and made it smaller and drawn all nations together. We have know the true song of joy and trembling and have played it on the double reed pipes and the snare drum under every constellation, in truth. I have shed blood and also I have caught the drops of blood from my own wounds before they hit the ground.

On the sabbath, our horses and camels were rounded up into a circular formation and all of our merchandise, which it is forbidden to handle on the seventh day, was placed in the center. And all of us would gather outside of the forbidden circle and conduct the sacred rites of the sabbath day and praise the one who created all in his infinite wisdom. And I recite the holy hidden alphabet, which the ineffable one uttered at the beginning of time in order to form the heavens and the earth and our eyes would roll back in our heads in the ecstacy of knowledge. And we would sing: How deep are thy ways, O Lord.

And we travelled deeper and deeper into the dessert, past Baghdad and then past Cairo and then into a land that we did not know and our fathers did not know. But we became aware that we were approaching a truth we had not known previously. It was as though a hidden machine had been set in motion and we were enacting the will of the unseen.gears. This is the hidden truth.

Some of the men grew fearful and spoke of turning back and taking up the routes which had been assured to us by past experience. I understood their fear and felt it too and to assuage them I would sing them lullabyes at night. And I would tell them stories about the kingdom, about our home. I had a kingdom. I had a kindom. The rivers were as rich in fish for the catching as the skies were with stars and the red haired trtibesmen in the north would join with the black haired tribesmen in the south and engage in duels of epic storytelling and poetic improvisation. The sound of the three stringed lute resounded in the ears of every infant as the children learned from birth that there is one truth but a thousand gates into the palace where the truth is held. I had a kindom. The red melons and the yellow melons were ripe and round and the grapes grew long as a womans finger on the vine. In the high court there were four judges: one Jewish, one Muslim, one Christian, and one who Worshipped the Spirit of the Animals. Each man in the kingdom who came before the court would be tried according to the customs of his own tribe and according to the dictates of his own relation to G-d. Each man would be know as he knew himself and as he defined himself to the world. For everyone knows that the Kingdom is a land of knowledge and that the passage way to knowledge is narrow and must be protected and eased along by the goodwill of custom.

We travelled further until we reached a point where we had seen no other caravan for a week. We travelled one day and did not stop at night until the animals were utterly exhausted. As the sun rose we saw a tent in the distance. I pulled away from the caravan and rode up to the tent. The morning light was breaking. I dismounted and walked up the flapping entrance of the tent. I put my hand to the doorway and pulled it open and stepped inside. I had entered into the presence of the King.