Israel Stories: The Apocalypse Appreciation Society

'And Mohammed travelled there unto Babylon and fought the Dragon. After the dragon he fought the fiery snake and so did the apocalypse begin and end on that day'.

Now, I am not an expert on the Koran and, to tell the truth, I have never owned nor opened a copy but, after a focused internet search via Wikipedia, I can assure you that the verse above does not appear anywhere. So the passage that I saw stuck to a lamppost is probably fake. More likely the words are lyrics to some thrash metal group.

Everyone has a version of the "end of days" and all religions at least agree on one thing - the bad guys will be vanquished and we will all live in peace as long as we are all Christian or Muslim or just accept and pray to one Gd. A bit like a haredi version of Star Wars.

The end of the world was supposed to have happened at many significant points in human history. Of course the years 1000 and 2000 were prime candidates. There is a website that lists 200 possible dates including April 17th 2008. Can't quite remember what happened on April 17th but it certainly wasn't the end of the world. I think we were Pesach cleaning which, for many, feels like the end of the world so there is some truth there.

In my house, the end of the world is when I forget to empty the washing machine, when one of the kids' Barbie dolls has been decapitated by their youngest sister and when I forget to tell my wife that her parents phoned.

I have subsequently learned that the word apocalypse means lifting the veil or revelation, hence the book of Revelations. I thought maybe lifting the veil had some vague reference to Muslim women in France, but then I could be wrong.

In Israel, apocalypse could mean the final revelation of how the mortgage system works, i.e. revealing the greatest of all unfathomable secrets, knowing exactly why a bank cannot access previous information, why everything must be signed everywhere and why you actually need to pay to have a mortgage in the first place.

Apocalypse could explain the workings of the political system, the bus system, local government and why the science museum doesn't open on a Sunday.

Apocalypse is the lifting of the veil so, when it comes, I expect to understand everything like why our Government , bless it, chooses the age-old trick of deceiving  our enemies into thinking we are weak and haven't got a clue, why we don't respond to bad PR and why we make countless excuses instead of getting the job done.

I am quite looking forward to the apocalypse, that forthcoming war with Gog and Magog (or Mango according to the spell check, takes on a different slant really, the war between Gog and Mango) then maybe we would get everything straight and start beating our swords into ploughshares.

So when the apocalypse comes, and the end of days is upon us, I think I'll book a front row seat, put a tent up, get the barbeque fired up, buy some garinim (sunflower seeds), slip my Crocs off , sing some old Yishuv songs, and enjoy watching the lion lie down with the lamb . . . after we've whipped his behind.