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IN LAST NIGHT'S DREAM, I sat alone at a long table. There was no one else in the room, but a voice rather harshly kept questioning me.
Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead? I wondered which part of the "you" ought to reply. As a child I was an Orthodox Ashkenazi Jew raised by an intensely religious mother and a father indifferent to such "foolishness. " My four older siblings remained Orthodox, but by the age of fourteen I venerated Elisha ben Abuya, who was regarded as a villain by the men who taught me Talmud: The oldest and most striking reference to the views of Elisha is found in the following baraita (Ḥag. 14b; Yer. ii. 1):