The Jesus Can Drink

Last week I went out with a friend to a neighborhood bar to have a couple of beers and let loose. Like most bars on Allenby street, the appropriate word for this place was shabby. And the fact that it was death metal night didn't really help the bar in that arena. But, whatever, the place had cheap beer and I didn't really feel that the place next door - a half strip joint, half whorehouse - was really my cup of tea either. So we took our seats on a couple of the ripped leather bar stools, ordered some shitty beer and started to absorb the filth of this place.

Being that I wasn't really paying too much attention to the German death metal music videos blaring on the big screen tv perched impossibly high on the wall, I decided to scope the place out and see what sort of people go to German death metal bars on Tuesday nights in Tel Aviv. Much to my surprise, through the billowing smoke coming from the guy next to me, I was able to make out the visage of my neighborhood Jesus.

This guy is known in Tel Aviv, and maybe has some notoriety in other parts of Israel, as being the guy who sits out in front of the iconic Carmel market, and proclaims that he is the Jewish Messiah (not Jesus - but I'm glad that I was confused about his status at first because saying "the neighborhood Jesus" rolls better of the tongue than "the neighborhood Jewish Messiah). He usually garners a lot of attention from his Jesus-like shawl, the sign that he advertises himself with and his biblical looking beard.

But I digress. This Jesus was slamming shots of what looked to be vodka with his woman and was speaking Russian rather loudly. I mean, I had heard that this guy had been arrested on the beach for something and had seen him smokin a spliff once when he was setting up his Jesus exhibition, but now I get to see, with my own eyes, the majesty of Holy Messiah himself getting all shitty. If only this was the image that was laminated onto his advertisement sign....