Chapter VIII: The Sack and the Wreckage

The Travels of Reb Mendelovitch is an experimental comix strip in the form of a scroll, describing the imaginary adventures of reb Mendelovitch in a chaotic, politically unstable world. The protagonist is based on Schneur Zalman, of Hebron, an orthodox artist, a HABAD rabbinical envoy who had traveled around the world, and the author’s great-great-grandfather.
In the eighth installment (the Sack and the Wreckage), Mendelovitch arrives at the conquered city Herbon,* to see it ransacked by the Queen’s armies.


Several days,
And a few nights,
Mendelovitch lingers
On a mountaintop.
He shaves his hair, he tosses and turns,
Exhausted, the tedium is great.
Under the mountain, another city
Called Herbon.*
Part rocky land,
Part burial ground,
Its people slain
By the marauding
Troops of the Queen. 

Chapter Eight: The Sack and the Wreckage

Mendelovitch: I walk in the city of death.
Why was the city destroyed?

Figure: we are Queen’s slaves!
Mendelovitch: Would she gorge on the tatters
of her realm?
Slaves’ Blues:
Regard that hostile land,
Evil and stubborn,
Behold the deeds of malicious hearts
Wrecking everything, sparing nothing.
One invents torments for gold,
Another incites a thousand crimes,
And all maliciously commit
Theft
Murder
And much violence.
Figure: now we shall free the bonded!
With cries and mayhem
Herbon will revolt
In the quest for justice,
But its voice is not heard.
Soldier: we shall undo what is banned!
Mendelovitch: Luviouvi? Are the great Gvirs here too?

From the devastation
Mendelovitch dangles
With his egg
Into the Luviouvi’s house
Between shame
And rebellion. 

(*) A transposition of Hebron, meaning, in Hebrew, that things have gone awry, with an allusion to defecating.

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