This is long, but since we are forgoing services today you might want to dwell here (remember that this article was written in 1999)...
Voice in the wilderness
Simcha Pearlmutter does not tilt at windmills anymore.
For 35 years this diminutive man rankled the establishment, but as mightily as it huffed and puffed, he did not blow away.
It is amazing how much fuss one man can generate, especially if you meet him in his environment. He is a city unto himself, the entire population -- together with his wife -- of the tiniest community in the country.
Ir Ovot (pop.: 2) has fewer residents than there are highway signs leading to it. They could have left him alone to evaporate in this godforsaken place in the Arava desert, and very possibly he might never have been heard from.
The tempest he weathered was unrelenting for 30 of those years, involving just about the entire national force: the immigration authorities, religious establishment, Lands Administration, the courts, the water company, Bezeq, not to mention pretty much everyone living in the region.
It started even before he and Rahel got there: it started in Miami, when they applied to make aliya. Simcha Pearlmutter was deemed a menace to the Jewish State because he believed in the prophecies. He believed in the Messiah, in resurrection. He believed -- they claimed -- in Jesus Christ. And there is no room in this country, not even in the uninhabited desert, for people like that.
Simcha flicks away the controversy like a pesky fly. The Messiah, he now says, could be called David or Bob or anything. Yet he used to attribute a specific name, and that name was Yeshua, and that is what earned him the Mark of Cain.
That, and the murmurs that he was practising bigamy; but that, too, he dismisses, pointing out that if he was, he would have been jailed.
For a long time he was not registered as a Jew, the settlement he founded was not recognized, the water he thirsted for was not provided, and, and, and...
Everything changed, in one sudden moment, five years ago.
HE IS a man of immense magnetic allure, but tender, emotional. You want to lean over and hug him.
He is 64. His face is wonderfully craggy with deep furrows of pain and character; his eyes, sky-blue but red-rimmed. He's built like a fire hydrant, compact and muscular; he wears a kipa, trim beard, and a few strands of peyot.
"I am the example of the perfect failure in Israel," Simcha says.
His success would be measured by how many lives he has touched, by how much his hardy struggles have spread inspiration.
But he has failed, he says, if you judge him by what he has created. There were numerous ventures that flourished for a while: farming, a trucking company, a toy factory, a health spa. His ultimate vision was to create a haven for Russian immigrants. But all that remains -- the legacy of his 35 years in the desert -- is a house where two people live, and next to it, a tiny green patch surrounding the four graves of Ir Ovot cemetery.
He goes there, blows a shofar, weeps, and waits. He waits for that tattered stranger to come over the nearby Mountains of Edom -- the Messiah, who will raise the dead.
Resurrection was always a foundation of his beliefs. Now, he says, it's an obsession, his only reason for living. "The phone rang, and Rahel answered. It was Ari, and he said, 'Mom, I'm at the bus stop. Everything is ok.' Then he said, 'I have to leave now, here comes the bus. I love you. I'll call you later.'
"Those were his last words."
It was 5 years ago, in Hadera. Bus bombing. Five dead. Ari Pearlmutter was not yet 20.
Simcha's voice chokes.
"You begin to wonder, where was God?
"I didn't question whether I believed in God. I just didn't know if I liked him anymore. It's even worse. That's a crisis, when you know He's there, and you say 'I'm not denying You, I just don't want anything more to do with You.' "
And so, alone in the wilderness, he waits.
"I get up every morning, at three, and I run five kilometers, and I look at the Mountains of Edom. Oh, it's so beautiful, you can't imagine! Then I can say with certainty, 'I lift up my eyes unto the mountains from whence my help will come.' I keep running, and I recite, 'My help will come from Hashem,' and I scream it in my mind. God said the Mashiach is coming from over these
