Shalom Auslander on the First Story He Was Ever Told

The morning of my blinding began like any other.

I was in the first grade, six years of age, perhaps seven, at the ultra‑Orthodox Yeshiva of Spring Valley in a town in rural New York named Monsey, waiting for class to begin. Some boys stood at the back of the classroom, laughing and joking and flipping baseball cards. Others sat on the floor and played kugelach, the Jewish version of jacks. Suddenly the door flew open, and a bearded man in a long black coat hurried in. He sat down and flipped open the very old black book that lay on his desk. The pages were yellowed. The cover was frayed. It was held together with duct tape along its spine. Then he blinded me. The way the man blinded me was this:

He blinded me with a story.

The story he blinded me with is called Feh.

Feh was the first story I was ever told. I was told Feh before Cinderella and before Frog and Toad, before Winnie the Pooh and before Peter Rabbit, before The Berenstain Bears and before The Three Little Pigs. Rabbis tell this story. Their rabbis told it to them. Priests tell this story, pastors tell this story, imams tell this story. The story is told by thousands of people to thousands of other people, thousands of times a day, in thousands of different forms. The book from which the original story derives is the oldest, most influential book of stories ever written, so influential that even people who weren’t told the story know the story. Soon they end up telling it too.

It was, the storytellers said, the story of me.

It was, the storytellers said, the story of all human beings. This is how it goes:

Feh

Once upon a time, there was a man named God who was perfect and never wrong. One day, He created Earth. He liked Earth very much. He liked the land and He liked the sea. He liked the trees and He liked the grass. He liked the moon and He liked the stars. He liked the birds and He liked the beasts. Every day, after creating something, God would stand back, wipe His hands on His smock, and say,

‑ It is good.

So proud was God of His work that He called the angels Gabriel and Elijah over to see it.

‑ What’s that? they asked.
‑ That’s the aurora borealis, said God.
‑ Amazing, they said.
‑ What’s that?
‑ That’s the Grand Canyon.
‑ Spectacular, they said.
‑ What’s that?
‑ That’s a field of dew‑dusted lavender bellflowers, awakening in the early‑morning sun.
‑ Breathtaking, they said. That was Thursday.

On Friday, God created Man.

Man wasn’t great. He wasn’t even good. Supplies were low. All God had left was some dirt. He made Man out of dirt.

‑ What do you call that? the angels asked, unable to hide their disdain for the hideous lumpen mass laid out on God’s workbench.
‑ Man, said God.
‑ So you’re his father? asked Gabriel.
‑ Kinda, said God.
‑ Who’s his mother? asked Elijah.
‑ It’s complicated, said God.
‑ What’s that? asked Gabriel.
‑ A penis, said God. The angels shrugged.
‑ Meh, said Elijah.
‑ Feh, said Gabriel.
‑ It needs work, said Elijah.
‑ It needs pants, Gabriel replied.

God wasn’t crazy about Man either. In the entire story of the beginning of the earth and the universe and all that is in it, Man was the only creation after which God did not say, It is good.

He didn’t say anything. He said bupkis.

Bupkis is Yiddish for nothing.

How do we know how God felt about his son? Here’s a clue: He named him Adam, from the Hebrew word Adamah, which means dirt.

He named his son Dirt.

Dirt wasn’t happy in God’s world. Dirt had nothing to do. Dirt was lonely. Before long, Dirt was getting on God’s nerves.

The angels tried to cheer God up.

‑ He’s a first draft, they told God.
‑ All first drafts are shit. But they didn’t really believe that, and neither did God. After all, dogs came out perfect—wet noses, fluffy tails, unconditional love. Draft One, nailed it. Sunset didn’t need a rewrite. The Great Barrier Reef was a masterpiece. So God started Man over.
‑ Oh well, He said.
‑ Writing is rewriting.

God took Dirt, laid him back down on his workbench, and ditched everything but a single rib.

One rib, that was all that was worth saving. The rest was trash.

The second draft, which God named Woman, was an improvement. He turned Physical Strength down a bit, but ramped up Emotional Complexity and doubled Self‑Awareness.

Better. Not great.

Not even good. But better.

He named her Chava, from Chai, the Hebrew word for alive. He named her Alive.

Alive isn’t exactly high praise, but it’s better than Dirt. Now they were a couple. The Dirts. A minimal standard.

The store brand. The first thing the Dirts did was to break the rules. Well, one rule. Once. But God was very angry.

‑ Get out, said God.

The Dirts left, but the story only got worse. The Dirts had children. Two boys. The older Dirt murdered the younger Dirt. The very first man born of man, and what does he do? He kills. He stabs. He butchers.

These are my ancestors.

This is my mishpacha. Hebrew for family.

Up in Heaven, God is depressed. God needs a drink. God creates a pub.

‑ The usual? the bartender asks. God nods.
‑ How’s the human thing going? the bartender asks. God sighs.
‑ My spirit will not contend with mankind forever, He says.
‑ I am going to put an end to all people. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
‑ ’Bout time, says the bartender.
‑ Cursed is the ground because of them, says God.
‑ True that, says the bartender.

Gabriel was right about human beings, God thinks as He throws back His drink.

They’re feh, from top to bottom. Totally, irredeemably feh.

THE END

It’s a miserable story. It’s a downer.

It’s a bummer.

My life would have been immeasurably brighter if they’d taught me The Three Little Pigs instead.

Alas, Soul‑Crushing Storytime wasn’t over. It was only beginning. The story of Feh is just the first story in a long book of similar stories, the collection of which is a book called You Suck. The first part of You Suck is known as The Old Testament.

Spoiler alert: Moses, the main character, dies before reaching his goal. Why?

Because he was feh.

The second part of You Suck is known as The New Testament.

Spoiler alert: It ends with God making a huge wine press, filling it with millions of people, and crushing them to death.

Why? Guess.

Most people who read the Old Testament don’t read the New. Most people who read the New Testament don’t read the Old. They don’t have to. They’re the same story:

Feh.

The name of the man who blinded me was Rabbi Hammer. People in Monsey went to him for advice. Tell us how to see, they beseeched him. But Rabbi Hammer was blind too. When he finished telling us Feh, he closed the book of You Suck, leaned forward, and kissed it. Then he called us up, one by one, and gave us each a small copy of the book.

‑ To keep in your hearts and minds, he said, all the days of your lives. Then he handed us our book and shook our hands.

‑ Mazel tov, he said. Hebrew for good luck.

He wasn’t kidding. I am fifty years old now and still I am blind. It is a strange blindness. It is not a darkness, not a blackness, not an absence of light. Rather, I go through life as if beneath a shroud; I can see the sky, the earth, the trees, the animals, all the flora and fauna without deviation, without distortion or diversion. But mankind appears to me grotesque, vile, foul, ignominious, none more so than myself. With others I can occasionally be fair. With others there is a chance of expiation. With myself, though, I am a hanging judge. To myself I show no mercy. There is no criticism I don’t believe, no compliment I accept. I avoid mirrors. Mirrors are bad. Catching a glimpse of my reflection in a store window is enough to ruin my whole day. This is what I think when I do:

Feh.

‑ I wish you could see yourself, says my wife Orli, the way I see you. As if wishing could make a blind man see.

I was very young when they told me that I am feh, and that you are feh, and that all of us are feh, so young that I don’t remember exactly how young I was. But I remember this: It was the days of laughter and joking. It was the days of flipping baseball cards. It was the days of kugelach. It was the days of light.

Then people began telling me this story.

And behold, the world and all that is in it turned to darkness.

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From Feh: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander published on July 23, 2024 by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Shalom Auslander.