Saturday, March 18, 2006

Sleeping Beauty

Once upon a time there lived a king and queen. All was bright in their lives except they had no children. So the king davened and davened and the queen wept and joy of joys, the davenen and the crying went up to shomayim and the couple had a beautiful daughter. The next shabbos they named her Shoshana Makabeya and made a big kiddush at the castle and almost everyone in the realm was invited.

Alas for their daughter, they did not invite the fairies, since such nonsense was assur d'oraisa. Nonetheless, the fairies came unbidden. Citing Vayiqra 22:17: You shall not let a sorceress live, the king and queen killed the fairies as fast as they could. Enraged, the evil fairy descended upon the castle to avenge her fallen comrades and pronounced a terrible curse upon Shoshana Makabeya: On her 15th birthday, she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. Grief-stricken, the king and queen failed to stop a final heathen magic-working party-crasher from making an appearance on the scene. This fairy gasped at all the carnage and addressed the dumbstruck crowd: I cannot remove the curse, but I can soften it. Shoshana Makabeya will not die; she will merely sleep for 100 years, after which she will be awakened by a kiss from her bashert. Then the last fairy ran away, lest the king and queen come to their senses and kill her too.

The king and queen were at a loss. They had never dreamed that halakhic adherence could produce such dreadful results. They determined to shelter Shoshana Makabeya from any and all knowledge that could possibly have protected her and decreed that all spindles should be burned within the year. The people of the realm complied and thus it was that at the mature age of 14 years and 364 days, Shoshana Makabeya was going on shiddukh dates without the slightest clue of how to spin thread to sew the clothes of her future husband.

On her fifteenth birthday, the king and queen threw a grand party in their daughter's honor. Her naivete concerning the curse placed on her from birth made the evil fairy's mission entirely too easy. When the crowd dispersed to play a merry game of hide and go seek, the evil fairy planted herself and a spindle in the top-most tower of the castle and waited. Inevitably, Shoshana Makabeya slipped up to the tower. She of course had never seen a spindle and was instantly intrigued by the fairy's tools and asked if she might try. Lo! She pricked her finger and fell into a deep sleep. The evil fairy promptly vanished and the good fairy promptly appeared. The good fairy cast a state of suspended animation over the entire kingdom so that 100 years hence when the bashert would presumably arrive to wake the princess, her parents would be around to enjoy the simcha.

About 35,964 days later, the bashert was preparing for his departure to rescue the princess. Unfortunately for Shoshana Makabeya, the bashert's rav poskened that it was assur to kiss her, and it was assur to be in the tower in the first place because of yihud. So the bashert settled down with some other nice Jewish girl, leaving Shoshana Makabeya, her parents and the citizens of the realm to sleep happily ever after.

Edit: Here's a glossary. Please don't take this as totally authoritative.

Assur: (adj) Forbidden
Assur d'oraisa: (adj) Forbidden in Torah law (a branch of Jewish law, the other being rabbinic law)
Bashert: Soulmate
Daven: (v.i.) Pray
Davenen: (n) Prayer, praying
Halakhic: (adj): Having to do with Jewish law
Kiddush: (n) Snack hour after davenen on shabbos
Posken: (v.i.) Issue a halakhic ruling
Rav: (n) Rabbi
Shabbos: (n) Sabbath
Shiddukh Date: (n) The occasion you meet a person before the occasion on which you decide whether to get married to the person
Shomayim: (n) Heaven(s)
Shoshana Makabeya: (n) Rosie the Riveter
Simcha: (n) Celebration. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs....
Yihud: (n) People who should not be alone together being alone together