Photo: Todd Rosenberg
Matan Torah 2022
History,
Revelation,
Our myth of Sinai returns now for celebration
Ritual and community.
Special food for the palate and flowers for the sanctuary.
The long line from revelation to exile to redemption
Rosenzweig’s trinity of history,
Yet in our century all has been rehearsed
All has been encapsuled
The failed secular messianic movements
The failed dictatorships
The secular theologies of flag county and honor
One big experiment in social engineering that only led to ethnic cleansing.
From the European of learning to Auschwitz to Yom Yerushalayim
Giddying changes for our community.
Before our eyes within decades,
The desert blooms,
The county thrives,
Start-up nation attracts billions from investors globally
Women’s revolution in Torah bringing
the new gift of insight into our sacred texts
Technology and torah allowing us the dizzying mastery
of 2000 years with one click
(except on Shabbat when we return to our “am Haaretz status”)
But recently the tiny RNA virus that toppled our lifestyles
Recalibrating work and play where economies toppled
and nations blamed each other.
And the horrors of another war
of man’s inhumanity to man,
To remind us of the darkness within,
That is destined to boil over volcanically every century
Making that post WWII 70 year calm another aberration in Hegelian history
A blip in the centuries fighting over a piece of real estate…
Now we return to that normal,
Europe’s soil hungers for blood and must be satisfied with more.
Yet here we are
We dig once more into texts of Decalogue and Ruth and the Degel
Of self-understanding as a covenantal community
As well as on the individual trajectories
The personal miracles
The personal revelations
The renewal of commitment to recovery and healing
The openness to transcendence
The time to reflect and meditate on another year
Of learning
Of growth
Of optimism in the face of darkness.
Yizkor seems to mar the festivities
But that is our genius
For loss and trauma are never far from joy
Like the glass we break under the chuppah
We must remember those we lost
Moving from grief to an etching of love and memory
In the heart.
We have created this monotheistic ideal
Yet Schechina is down here with us
A matrix of love and
Suffering alongside us quietly
She wears at times a black bodice
And longs for her beloved
Trapped with us in an eternal exile.
We take all of this
On the macro level- as a community among others
As a nation state among others
And as individuals within communities
And struggle with seeing our tradition as once more relevant
Its ideals and mission
Its promises and utopian messianism
The myth of Matan Torah
Forgive Me
Forgive Me
Reb Melech
I know it was your Yahrzeit
All the chassidim flowed in
Krakow is a sea of black,
For those who came to participate in the new industry
(Charedi Kivrei Zadikkim tourism)
I was being driven to the border past Reyshe / Rzeszów/Lancut/Lizesk
On the highway racing past you…
Thinking how many times I prayed by your tziyon,
Wondered how all types of chassidus come together by you,
You somehow bring us/them under your unconditional love
Even broken souls like me.
REMAH
Forgive me too Rav Moshe (Isserless),
I used to stop by you on the way to Lizesk
A nod to my Oberlander father
Reassuring him that even the Satmer Rov
Omitted “veyatzmahk pirkunei”
The gravesite is quiet in the chilly brilliant spring sunshine
(The tree grows over your tziyon, just like in the photos
from the turn of the 19th century)
no cannon ball holes piercing your tziyon
(like the Chozeh!)
Stopping by the cradle of minhag Ashkenaz in deference to you,
Don’t worry Dad I used to say, the stylish move to chassidus
Does not supplant your minhagim…
It was theological not behavioral!
Then I look for the Megaleh Amukos
(on whose matzevah is inscribed: “he had gilui Eliyahu x3”) !!
But Rabbosai, you know there Is this war going on,
Next door, across the border
While you both rest peacefully,
Yet for an inexplicable reason
I felt the need to come here
To be here
Despite my wife’s exhortations
(the Ukrainian NAZI’s were the worst butchers in WWII)
Despite the AZOV fighters’ NAZI insignia
Despite the steely eyed soldiers guarding the fascist cross
By the lake where we do tashlich in Uman
And the assaults on chassidish kids on the streets of Pushkina
Despite history..
At the border
I see thousands of women and crying children
lined up by the border heading into Poland
Images of the forced lethal marches circa 1944
Each carrying a heavy heart and a wheely, leaving for safety
Leaving behind their loved men to fight
It’s an epic story of human misery and transmigration
I feel I am in a movie set
This long line in the no man’s land between war and safety.
Once again Europe drips with blood.
I am filled with pride as I see the Israeli flag on red medical volunteer suits
Literally hundreds of volunteers yelling in Hebrew
even units of Israeli medic soldiers help out
with their tents, food and equipment, truly a kiddush Hashem.
I walk in the opposite direction to the refugees,
so my path is clear, and I feel a loneliness
As I am walking into the fray.
An Israeli Major sees me stumbling carrying bags
of heavy donated equipment and insists on
helping me.
Four bubbly Israeli volunteers offer me fruit
from their supermarket cart they are taking to the
other side where thousands wait in line in silence.
I want to hug each one.
I volunteered in 1972 as a medical student during the Yom Kippur War
Now memories of those same whiney sirens surface
as we descend into the shelter.
For all the talk, writings on Post Holocaust this and that,
I need to be here…
“Never Again” applies to all human beings
So please forgive me Reb Melech and RAMO
I will come back on a better day.
Dad blowing shofar Jan 30, 2022, at age 101
Dad At 101
Born in an epidemic
100 years ago
A survivor for a century
Surfing on the aphorisms of classical wisdom
As if we learned what he felt necessary through his pithy wisdoms alone.
Having born witness to Hitler’s march into Vienna
Kindertransport
Internment
The love of his life
Starting a family
Communal work
Synagogue warden, President,
National prominence
Aliyah
Art and calligraphy
COVID brings it full circle
I know not when he began to blow shofar
In Tatura Internment camp?
Prior in Vienna?
But at 101 he continues to blow
He loves to entertain his guests
(despite Mum calling it “showing off”)
Even when cognitive articulations fail
As if his shofar blowing
Represents his will to breath
The serpentine shofar bending to his will
As if he finally tamed the inner snake of desire
And the outer monster of this century
The power of his sound
The power of his Prussian will
The power of his survival
Memories of his blowing in shul in the 60’s
Those last few kolos
We were on tenterhooks as kids
Carrying the shame of his failure
And the pride of his success
What began the century
Now ends it
The shofar heralding its onset and its end?
The jubilee of his life now bookended?
As if the microbe infecting millions
Killing millions
Began the worst century of human history
A harbinger of the killing fields of Europe
And Asia, the soil dripping with death
Screaming from the blood soaking it.
How he survived all of this,
This horrific century
Doggedly refusing to surrender
To the rules of others
His own iron will
Of moderation
Health, exercise
Care of the body and mind
No extremes mind you.
His Aliyah as a final arrival to the field of dreams
His delight in walking the streets unabashed of his yarmulke
Impossible in Europe
A microscopic reflection of what has taken place in the miracle of Zionism.
But also an inner protection, a survivor’s immune response to tragedy
Through walling off the emotions of loss
And the price one pays for that
The sense of betrayal of parents and sister
On the Vienna banhoff platform
And the demands of discipline and results from children
No room for failure
No expression of emotion allowed
Especially crying….
As I watch him blowing
It is as if he is telling me
I may not express myself
I may not tell you my feelings
I may not divulge my inner thoughts, I never did,
But here is my legacy
Listen to the power
Listen to the cadence the pitch the perfection
Here
This is what I leave my children
The memory of this sound
The sound that grows stronger and stronger
The sound of the jubilee
In this land of Jubilees
The optimism of the survivor
The spiritual immunity I give to you
To survive.
For Esther Was Here...And I Knew Not
אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ ה' בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י ל֥אֹ יָדָֽעְתִּי׃
“God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love….
Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Sitting next to my father,
Holding his 100 year old crafted hand,
He strokes mine gently, knowingly,
In silence.
I bow my head to kiss his hand
In sheer deference to this Prussian survivor.
No words need be spoke
(he cannot hear)
All has been said
All is left now to be present
To pay homage
We look at her picture together
(A book dedicated to her memory has her portrait)
We both stare at it and at each other, appreciating what we both mourn.
We share the same loss but in such different ways.
In fact this picture as well as her portrait look down from every wall,
As do her drawings and watercolors of flora and fauna,
A veritable gallery of her perception,
where she once toiled, despite failing eyesight,
These testaments (reshimu) to her once presence,
Force me to conjure her slender violin fingers in mine
On this same couch,
Despite her now physical absence-
I feel her absence, here more than anywhere else
And this overwhelming sense of her presence
Clouds my ability to heal the knife-like pain in the chest,
That has resurfaced from those early days of mourning,
As if her chimeric vitality emerges from the walls.
Opening the wounds of the heart once more.
I feel like I am in the Van Gogh immersive
Which allows no escape,
Yet in her very absence, even now she once more teaches me,
In this unbearable absence, her ghostly spirit nonetheless present
Showing me a theology she never articulated,
Always being a God-believer, (and more so after the Six-Day War)
A fierce advocate for Zionism,
She blessed people constantly in her waning years
Yet never professed any creed.
Mother is showing me a path I had read but never experienced
Through her excruciating absence and my painful longing
In that deep chasm of loss,
How I must cast aside any intellectual grasp,
Any attempt to make sense of the non-sense,
Any hope to resolve the pain of loss through the tincture of time.
Mother is teaching me in this immersive
To fully embrace the feelings of the eternal broken heart-
To realize any solace must come from the infinite distance
Of her not being here,
and in my yearning,
suspended in my inability to let go of her.
In her absence
Despite her absence
She is most present to me.
Here in her apartment
A mausoleum of sorts,
She once again is teaching me Rebbe Nachman’s paradoxical theology
(the parable of the mountain and the spring)
In ways I never experienced.
For (according to Weiss) it was precisely God’s absence
That allowed for faith,
(no experience of mystical union, nor intellectual reasoning),
An Anti-theology if you like,
The only hope in the Kafkaesque despair of
the yearning , not the learning or understanding.
That this was the only path to finding the light of His presence.
This she taught me through her loss, in the heart.
“Over the infinity of space and time, the infinitely more infinite love of God comes to possess us. He comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. If we remain deaf, he comes back again and again like a beggar, but also, like a beggar, one day he stops coming. If we consent, God puts a little seed in us and he goes away again. From that moment God has no more to do; neither have we, except to wait. We only have not to regret the consent we gave him, the nuptial yes.”
Rabbi Nachman’s Story of The Seven Beggars
“And this is the life of the world: At the far end of the world there is a mountain, on the mountain top is a rock, and a fountain of water gushes from the rock. This you know: that everything in the world possesses a heart, and the world itself has a great heart. The heart of the world is complete, for it has a face, and hands, and breasts, and toes, and the littlest toe of the world’s heart Is more worthy than any human heart.
“So at one end of the earth there is the fountain that flows from the rock on the mountain top, and at the other end is the earth’s heart. And the heart desires the mountain spring; it remains in its place far at the other end of the earth, but it is filled with an unutterable longing, it burns with an endless desire for the distant fountain of water.
In the day, the sun is like a blazing whip upon the heart, because of its longing for the spring; but when the heart is utterly weak from the punishment of the sun, a great bird comes and spreads its wings and gives the heart rest. But even while it rests, it longs for the mountain spring, and It looks toward the peak of the mountain, for if it were to lose sight of the spring for but one instant the heart would cease to live.
“Because of its great longing, it sometimes tries to go to the fountain, but if it goes nearer to the foot of the mountain it can no longer see the spring on the top of the mountain, and so it must remain far away, for only from a distance may a mountain peak be seen. And if it were for an instant to lose sight of the spring, the heart would die, and then all the world would die, for the life of the world and everything in it is in the life of its heart.
“So the heart remains longing at the other end of the earth, longing for the spring that cannot come toward it, for the spring has no share in Time, but lives on a mountain peak far above the time that is on earth. And the mountain spring could not be of the earth at all, since it has no share in the earth’s time but for the earth’s heart, which gives the spring its day.
And as the day draws to its close, and time is ended, the heart becomesdark with grief, for when the day is done the mountain spring willbe gone from the earth, and then the earth’s heart will die of longing and when the heart is dead all the earth and all the creatures upon the earth will die.
“And so, as the day draws to a close, the heart begins to sing farewell to the fountain; it sings its grief in wildly beautiful melody, and the mountain spring sings farewell to the heart, and their songs are filled with love and eternal longing.
I Tried But The Gates Were Locked
“I tried but the gates were locked”
I tried, but the gate was locked, all three.
It would be at least an hour
Until the gatekeeper, the guard, would show up to allow folks in for services.
I realized that for much of my life the gates have been locked.
Like Jude the Obscure, whether the university walls or the heavenly gates,
I have not had the access codes,
All these gates were locked.
I paced up and down the outer walls of the shul and noted the wording above etched in
Jerusalem stone:
What is the remez being sent to me?
No access to my seforim left last night inside…
My ‘quota” prior to davening….
Now a prisoner of outside the walls of the Beis Midrash.
I begin to pace, and gyrating my stiff hips,
Up and down the sidewalk alongside the gates.
At least I will not waste the time standing idly,
rather work out the stiffness in my joints
A daily ritual to resolve the arthritic shoulder and hips, expected at this age.
The sense of failure grows as I realize my “appointment”
with the Chabad Rabbi
To learn the Alter Rebbe prior to davening,
would not happen, my Likutei Torah “fix”
Each Shabbat morning, that sets the high bar for what the day demands,
The expectation of the Rebbe beyond all my human capabilities,
Yet framing my Shabbat nevertheless.
The gates are thick black-brown already tarnished iron bars welded together
make the shul an impenetrable fortress,
unlike the European shuls that are almost invisible from the outside.
Here the Jerusalem stone stands out from the neighboring buildings
nevertheless the iron gates protect it.
Outside the gates I have nothing, no texts, only my mind…
and the deep sense of exclusion…outside the locked gates.
Then the Rabbi shows up!
And wonders why I am standing outside the gates!
Showing me that the shank had not gone through both holes
And in fact
The gate was open all the time!
I had not tried to open the gate
Thinking the padlock was functional.
He opens the gate with ease and I follow him dutifully;
But my heart bleeds and I start weeping inexplicably,
For not only was I excluded and access denied for 45 precious minutes,
My sense of exclusion was now entirely a myth…
my self-denial was false…
the gate had been open the whole time.
The tears flowed from the very failure of my failure.
Jude could not have walked right in to Christminster,
But I could have opened the gates of the Lord.
In my illusion of being locked out,
I spent 45 minutes drowning in the self-indulgent
Misery of exclusion and sense of inadequacy.
I was fooled by my lack of investigation,
Seeing the lock as open, in assuming I was locked out.
This assumption was so real
that the dramatic opening of the gate with such ease
Cause this flood of emotion, a reverse catharsis that only revealed
Just how excluded I was…
I was excluded from the very exclusion!
A reversal of the very validation of my sense of failure
Even more painful than the original feeling.
This only revealed the fool
The incompetent
The inattentive
A lifelong inattention to detail.
Yet another character flaw.
We enter the shul and he grabs the text and begins to learn.
We study the mystical meaning of Zecharia’s vision of the menorah
Its meaning and message in Likutei Torah.
And the two olive trees on either side of the menorah:
And I am thinking ..
Is this the very bifurcated scene of the high priest
standing before the angel of God on one side
and the Satan on the other?
Is this not precisely the same Satan who subverted me this morning
What is he teaching me?
The illusion of my self sabotage?
The accuser pointing out the two olive trees pulling me apart
The gates are now open
But the inner Kritik/Satan is alive and well
And Jude the Obscure remains outside the walls of Christminster.
The Light And The Dark of COVID
The light and the dark of COVID
For sure the disruption to life as we know it..
The lock down on a sunny cold December morning
The eerie quiet on the streets of Jerusalem
Feeling like Shabbat
But not…
The wind makes itself felt
On the cheeks
Making the sun even more friendly and healing than usual.
This year represents a fracture from the usual
The way we do things
The way we interact with one another
A reset button has been pushed
Not of our own making
For many the niceties of social interaction
The inability to go to each other’s homes
And make polite conversation
Has been a blessing
What wonderful excuses we now have
Not to meet unwelcome relatives
On holidays
And for those of us who felt discomfort
With the community of worshippers
With little choice in shuls
This blessed COVID came none too soon
For here was our out
At least for those of us at high risk
And Shabbes became an island of private sanity
Where the Schechina wafts through the soul
With its own rhythm and cadences
And the midrashic imagination has fertile soil
To soar and dive
To feel the light and the darkness of the divine.
Economies have tanked
Things just stopped
Commerce, shops, service industries-
Hitting the poor of course-, disproportionately
The traffic on the highways has thinned
And it’s as if the frenetic commercial drive
and greed has been checked by this invisible
Bug, this virus, this corona shaped
beautiful coral colored spiked circular image.
As if, mother earth and her tiny messengers
have brought the massive economies and greedy
multinationals to their knees with one tiny microbe
infecting without regard to GDP.
More importantly its effect on relationships
The masking of the face
The absent cues and facial gestures
That signify emotions
Reducing communication now to voice only
And the eyebrows.
Even more importantly
The sensation of touch has been severely curtailed
Allowing for an atrophy of this faculty
No more the hug of a fellow congregant
(Shlez always said shaking hands was goyish!
“A yid needs to give another a hug!”)
No more the compassionate hug of a patient
I recently diagnosed with an incurable illness
No more the furtive hug of another woman disguised as friendship
Maybe the loss of touch the most damaging of all.
Watching David Attenborough’s images of nurturing mammals
The gentility of mothers stroking their furry young
Ingrained in our paleo brains
In our genetic imprint
The need for the mother’s touch
The stroke on the cheek
The reassuring hug around the neck
Things we starve for,
Beyond survival
Flight or fright
That maternal reassurance
Forestalling the existential nightmare of what is in store
Now or eventually
That darkness and eventual ayin….
Her loving touch that will be mirrored in every touch henceforth
And in her wake
Every touch of a woman
Now lost in the official rules of COVID engagement
Governed by rule of law
Just like Halachah
Where the rules overtake the heart
And the law is an ass
No chance for that archetypal connection
That replays the lost mother
Now the secular government has joined your halachic framers
In an unholy alliance
To forbid this need
This alone has done more damage than all others.
The Unmasking of The Masks
The unmasking of the masks
We have normalized the covering of the face
What we once looked on in horror,
What Islamic women covered to our chagrin,
(and resulting political/legal responses in Europe)
Not so long ago,
Is now our norm.
The facial cues we used to rely upon in our social intercourse,
The curve of the mouth’s edges,
The cheek muscles pulled back in a smile a grin or a growl,
Those subtle emotional cues,
Now are hidden.
We only have the eyes now,
And their limited expression
Peeking above the KN95 barrier,
To discern any response to our verbal challenges.
Persona, mask, personality,
These we were taught
Were only the external manifestation of the soul..
Masking the inner light that was kept from view.
Herr Rabbiner Professor Freud gave us a darker version,
Of forces beneath the surface that needed suppression,
The Id, the naked ape inside,
Despite the genteel middle-class Viennese gemutlichkeit
That persona was the projected image of our better selves
What we would like others to see, not the real darker self.
Now fully masked,
We interact with one another
Unable to decipher the cues that once alerted us
To the response of the other.
Unable to see a flicker, a smile, a tersing of the lips in anger
Unable to respond in kind.
How will this affect our connections, our relationships?
How will we know when she returns a naughty look?
Left only with a wink, and a unilateral eyebrow rise?
Without the impish smile that usually accompanies the warmth of the gaze?
It is as if we need to begin again.
Like infants,
Gazing at divine mother’s eyes at the breast
Where it all begins,
And the toddler reads nonverbally, mother’s approval or otherwise, in her face, her smile
And the infant learns to obey her facial expression with such precision.
(I will never forget my earliest memory circa 1954
my father’s glare
In shul as a toddler on Yom Kippur
during Kedusha
As he stared me down to stop interrupting his piety.
His lips were tight, and his eyes burned deep into me.)
We will have to relearn new skills
To see only in the eyes
Everything we need
To read another’s soul,
To seek approval or disavow reproof
To discern betrayal or intuit a sly cunning
To see warmth and love
Or hatred and jealousy.
How to learn this?
Impossible with our aging neurons.
We will leave that to the young
Who will now have that advantage over us,
Seeing what we cannot
Behind the mask
The Soul of Jerusalem
The rain makes the stones of Jerusalem glow,
As if they are being shined for a new season of spring,
The sky, most of the year an azure blueness of infinity,
Now menacing us with its angry granite grey clouds
Crossing the sacred skyline of the Old City.
Walking becomes treacherous,
As the stones provide no assurance
That your gait will get you to your destination,
So I walk hesitatingly across the landscape of Rehavia
Walking down Narkis is particularly hazardous,
On my way to the sacred space that is Mayanot.
Winter is miserable here,
There is no let up,
No possibility of that brilliant azure blue during this season
And everyone reflects the depressive atmosphere
In their gait, their posture and facial expression.
But this is after all Jerusalem.
It has survived millennia,
It surely passes through this annual depression,
Without hesitation
Its people manage too,
A potpourri of ethnic mixes etched in their skin color,
Each with their own genetic story,
Each here for a particular thought, promise, dream, rationalization,
Seeing this piece of real estate as the spiritual center of the world.
My father too,
Walks carefully on the slippery stones
A survivor, he senses danger personal and with his ethnic radar,
Reminds me to step with caution,
As he has always done,
First priority has always been caution, survival, rebuilding.
He too came here,
15 years ago,
Never looked back,
This Holy City was for him
A place,
Where he never again would need to “look over his shoulder”
As he had for decades in Vienna, Australia, London
Always wary
Always worried
Maybe it could happen again?
Mistrust of government
Police, authorities
Now free,
This city of dreamers, mystics and madmen.
Here he feels at home,
Despite the slippery stones.
We dress up tonight
I know he loves to look dapper,
Crisp white shirt and tie,
Blue blazer and camel cashmere winter coat, trilby hat
Quite the gentleman!
We walk into the lobby of the King David
We note the absence of Mum
Who used to come here on the balcony overlooking the Old City
Father and son.
Fathers and sons…
Do all sons feel this way?
The clock ticks
Time is merciless
Each visit a gift.
He sits overlooking the Sea of Galilee
The cloudy skies make a haze of the lake
But so quiet and peaceful
His mind focuses on starlings flying around chasing each other
His mind flows to eternal nature
He is at peace.
We make Havdala and look at the empty easy chair
Where mum would rise to pay respect to the exit of Shabbat
And hold each other’s hand in that father son knowing
No need for words
The pain of her absence binds us.
On the table are his paintings,
His daily routine includes a couple of hours with his palate,
Inspired by mum,
And his choice is always horses and birds
With a couple of pictures of his cat Candy
Whom he adores as she plays hard to get
Intuitively knowing that’s what he needs.
Back in Jerusalem
The rain pounds the window sill
And the wet chills the bone
But in his Prussian precision
The routine goes on
The measured portions
The schedule
The tucking of his tztiztis exactly folded into his underpants,
A survivor he thinks about those long gone
And I, his son
remain
In awe.
Maybe he is the soul of Jerusalem?
Aunty Becky Tombstone Setting
Aunty Becky Tombstone setting
On behalf of the Ungar clan,
I and Rochelle are sorry we could not be here today,
Rochelle and I have only the fondest memories of Becky,
From the days at the Menorah Primary School
Where, as our teacher, we still remember the vocabulary list
and the multiplications tables!
As well her impatience with our arithmetic development!
Which was matched only by her insisting that no child might think
we were getting preferential treatment because she was our aunt.
But she was always fair (unlike our mum who seemed arbitrary
most of the time).
Those ancient days still bear down in the deep recesses of the psyche.
It was hard to reconcile Becky as a teacher during the week, and loving aunt on Sundays,
When we went round to Mallard Way or their newer home in Kingsbury.
The contrast between her sweet fried fishballs and
Mum’s unsweetened, boiled, fishballs
(They were small soft and delicious just like her.)
Mirrored their characters so appropriately!
As we progressed beyond into grammar school our relationship warmed
As she was no longer burdened by any conflict of interest,
And she became our second mother.
Always ready to give advice when we complained about Mum
Always there to give a hug,
The love now seemed unconditional.
There is a foto (please hand out copy or show it blown up)
of Becky and Essie in London shortly
after she arrived,
In Trafalgar square with the pigeons,
With her older sister she seemed happy and safe
And that lasted her whole life.
As the years progressed they became closer
and the distance between London and Jerusalem
only intensified their love.
When Becky came to visit they sat hand in hand on the couch,
Thanks to Tony who orchestrated these wonderful times together.
Rochelle and I would visit her in Nightingale
where she would tell us how tired she was,
Yet often, over Shabbat, she seemed to love the services there,
and knew everybody and their business.
She would have made a great gabbai.
Our last visit with her before she passed was so painful for us,
There was a deep sense of tragedy she inherited from the Sargon side,
And it was reflected in her beautiful eyes.
I am sure that the proximity of her leaving this world to Essie David and Ray
Meant that they would all never be alone,
They would storm heaven together.
May her memory be for a blessing
Sweet akeyka-bakey
Rivka bas Eliyahu Avraham.
Finally I Get It!
You! you! YOU!
You know it really has only to do with one thing!!!
The secret of the universe!
The heart of the universe!
The heart!
This heart of darkness.
Rebbe knew this secret..
(The heart and the spring [1])
He knew!
Your secret.
That You in…. You…in Your infinitude
Your Magnitude
Your Majesty
Are seduced by one thing only…
The heart!
The heart of the world
The heart of suffering
The heart of a wide-eyed boy
Whose girl finally shares a glance with him from the lady’s gallery
Of Finchley Central Synagogue
Circa 1964.
You understand that!
You demand that!
You are only moved by that alone.
I get it!
In the flirting!
In the search! Le cherche du femme!
In the failed conquest!
In the surrender to another’s rejection!
You are there!
You!
Are still moved by that!
Not the voluminous Talmudic pages learned by heart…
Not the erudition of the scholars..the pilpul..
Not the mastery of texts by the Talmidei Chachamim
No!
Only this little boy
Whose heart was inflamed,
And after years of pain and suffering and pining,
She sent a glance his way…
From the lady’s gallery…
And he fell apart…
His heart dissolved…
A solution of divine proportions!
She!
Had glanced his way!
Her gaze..
Was as vast as the cosmos,
It traversed the universe to him,
Taking decades to realize this…she…
The Matronita
Had glanced upon the zoharic knight on the white horse below the castle
Who had pledged eternal platonic love for her.
And now,
The universe makes sense
Finally,
I realized what makes YOU tick! Lord
You , You, You!
Take pleasure in this alone.
You share in my heart pain.
However, when the Heart needs to rest a bit,
so as to draw a little breath [Yid. oyf zoyfn] then
comes a Big Bird and spreads its wings above it,
shielding it from the sun; then the Heart gets
a little rest. But even then while resting
it also looks facing the Spring and still longs for it.
But since it longs so much for the Source,
why does it not go to the Source?
Only, as soon as the Heart wants to go close
to the Mountain upon which is the Source
then it no longer sees the peak;
it cannot look at the Spring —
and as soon as it would not look at the Spring
it would expire, for the Heart's entire vitality
is only from the Source, so when it stands facing the
Mountain then it sees the Mountain peak where the Spring is,
but immediately as soon as it wants to go to the Mountain,
the peak no longer appears (for such indeed is the way with a tall
mountain; standing from afar the peak is visible,
but upon going nearer the peak is no longer visible).
Then it can no longer look at the Source and could
— Mercy save us! —
expire, and if this Heart
— Mercy save us! —
would expire the whole world would be destroyed,
for the Heart is the very vitality of every thing,
and how can the world endure without the Heart?
Therefore the Heart cannot go to the Spring;
it only stands facing the Spring, longing and screaming
without cease to be able to come to it, as mentioned.
[1] And there is a Mountain, and on the Mountain stands a Stone, and from the Stone emerges a Spring. Now, every thing has a heart, and the entire world also has a heart, and the Heart of the World is a complete structure, with face, hands, feet etc. But the nail of the foot of the World's Heart is heartier [Yid. hertziker] than the heart of anything else. And the Mountain with the Stone and the Spring stands at one end of the world, while this Heart of the World stands at another end of the world, and the Heart stands facing the Spring, desiring and hoping continuously, exceedingly, that it should come to the Spring, and the longing and desire of the Heart to come to the Spring is just extraordinary. It screams nonstop, the Heart, to come to the Source, and the Source longs for the Heart too. Now, the Heart has two things that make it weak. One, because the sun pursues it exceedingly and scorches it (because it always yearns and desires to come to the Source), and the second thing that tires the Heart is due to yearning and desiring, that the Heart constantly yearns and wishes; it keeps pouring out its soul for the Source and screaming and so forth, as above, so as to come to the Source, for the Heart is always standing facing the Source, and screams "Na! Gevald!" [Yid. Please! Woe!], and keeps on yearning most exceedingly for the Source, as mentioned.
Cuba Dancing, Letting Go
Mistakenly I join a group of tourists
visiting dilapidated synagogues and cemeteries
For how could I not include this on my itinerary?
A sense of shame were I to skip this,
The decay of the buildings and peeling 50-year-old paint a testament
To poverty and exodus of the community after la Revolution.
The community leader tries to entertain a group of elderly tourists
led by their rabbi
From Delaware, who only wanted her picture (with plaque)
alongside the presidente.
We are no longer in the original sanctuary which they say
is now leased to a dance troupe (!)
We are in a smaller ignominious hall with fading yellow hanging curtains,
And old mustard-colored cinema seats lined up as pews
with a central gangway in the middle.
We are shepherded next to the dining hall
where old age folk are being fed,
I am embarrassed to stand there in voyeuristic show
designed to get the tourists to contribute.
Next onto the Holocaust “museum” consisting of a hallway
with the usual murals depicting Nazi Europe
and pictures of the ill-fated SS St Louis liner
turned away with 900 passengers, back to Europe to meet
their fate. The 83 year old guide
(why do all old Cubans look like Hemingway?)
speaks of his years growing up in Cuba,
with profound nostalgia.
Some of us restless ones, begin to wander.
We are used to high tech images and commanding videos with
colored murals, personal stories at least, testimonies, this is so pitiful.
I wanted to see the grandeur of the sanctuary,
so I slowly open the door to find the dance troupe in session.
They are dancing on what was the elevated platform
in front of the Aron Hakodesh which has been
boarded up but obviously still there.
I am initially sad that the community needs to survive on this rental
but all thoughts vanish then they begin to rehearse.
These young ballet dancers are oblivious to anything but their craft,
they swing through the air and twirl on their toes.
This is not modern dance,
more the classical ballet Havana is famous for.
I am amazed at the architecture of their slim bodies.
There is no fat, only muscles and sinews and
insertion points of muscles in joints.
I feel I am watching a live exercise in anatomy.
But then the music begins and I am spellbound by the movement
and the music together.
As they spin and fly through the air, defying gravity,
always landing with grace, the power and strength
and control reminds me of a classical oil painting,
then imagining them on stage in a huge ballet theatre
I am transported through time and space along with them.
Their bodies in motion carry me along.
The women rehearse for 30 seconds then men take over
with the same sequence of music and moves.
Tears overwhelm me, this place of Jewish history,
with a Holocaust museum on the other side of the
doors, and a failing shul and elderly feeding hall, then this!
The old folks and young lithe bodies together
unaware of each other in one building.
How does all fit? How can it?
I am so moved by their youth and vigor, their dedication to the art,
thinking of nothing but the performance, the moves,
the elegance and grace as they fly through the air.
I feel this was no accident, these young folk, the future,
with no “theology” in their minds, clueless in
fact as where they are dancing,
(for them a rental space) for me, on the altar,
the BIMA, before the Ark of the Covenant,
held to be so sacred a space by generations of worshippers,
They think not, they must not,
they must in fact, inhibit the mind
so that the body can perform.
(I remember when performing a Bach fugue
how in fact I had to let go of the thought of the notes
and just let the fingers play and play until the
fingers got it right).
Through constant rehearsal they train their limbs into muscle memory,
striving to mimic the intent of the choreographer who at times critiques,
and at others gets up to show them the move she wants.
As they dance it dawns on me the lesson to be learned.
They are the future, they express their spirituality in their bodies,
in their movements, their artistry IS their spirituality…
And for me, in a subversive way there remains holiness here still,
from the decrepit halls behind us and the institutionalization of
Holocaust memorials and “museums”
as an identity marker to the past,
here was something vital alive and urgent.
Alive with the movement of youth and vigor in the present.
I am so taken by one of the male dancers whose grace was feminine
yet so strong, An Adonis, a Greek god,
spinning and twirling through the air,
his jumps were high always landing with gentility.
Maybe this was the lesson. The future, the youth,
the next generation was giving us a message.
Forget the theologies and theodicies,
forget the rationalizations and even the heresies,
watch us!
Committed to the body to beauty to motion
to commitment to our craft
Watch us dance!
Rapturous dance
Leave the head behind, it only impedes,
Leave the heaviness
Leave the gravity/gravitas
Allow the body to soar in space
The new sanctuary
The body as temple
Worship here!
Follow the new rituals of pas de deux
The new rabbi as choreographer
Next time I daven is Shul
it will be the first time since my aveilus
that I will be permitted to tansel
The post kabbalat Shabbat dance around the bima back home.
The Rabbi will hold my hand and welcome me back after a year of mourning
And I will bring back these movements
I will try to let go and let the swaying of our Hassidic tansel
Move me out of the headspace and into the rhythm and movement as we sing
Shabbes Koidesh Shabbes Shabbes Koidesh!
And mother will nod approvingly.
Surrender To The Mystery
Surrender to the Mystery
Surrender to the mystery!
Dad at 99
Soldering on
Prussian Precision routine
Looks the same as when he was 70
Mum’s succumbing
Her leukemic white cells unable to
Mount a defense
Against that last pneumonia
Simply unable…
And our turning 70
Whatever happened to those decades?
They seem to have accordioned
Folding into each other in a blur
This single truth,
Slowly advancing towards us
Like a dark cloud on the horizon
Initially of little consequence
(Too many others things to contend with)
Now approaching silently and menacingly,
Too large to ignore any longer,
In the fantasy of youthful immortality,
The greying sky,
Casting a pall over everything.
For every person since time immemorial
Must surrender to the inevitable,
The ending of things,
Putting one’s mental house in order
Requires a staging of the soul
To be receptive to “passing on”
To that very fact,
To be able to face it as a reality not merely a concept.
Time is the enemy…
Every day passing,
Every wasted minute now pointing its accusing finger
The seasons and the festivals are counted differently
How many more seder nights?
And each grandchild’s rite of passage
A marker along this path
The days have a precious quality
Sunrise feels like a light in a cathedral, during in through the stained glass windows
Sunset feels like the soul going into hibernation.
Rain especially,
Has a delicious quality,
And the cold winters become increasingly unbearable.
The body announces its slippery decline
In subtle ways,
The shoulders creak when arising during the night to void,
Taste buds are demanding the familiar,
Reluctant and uninterested in trying new recipes and exotic dishes.
By 4pm the body fatigues,
unable to see the last batch of patients with vigour.
By 8pm no new discussions or decisions can be made.
Rashi script on the Daf becomes a marker year after year
As to the retinal decline,
And hearing above ambient noise becomes more and more irritating.
We won’t discuss the libido in good company
But you can imagine.
And what of all of this learning?
Accumulation of data,
Facts and figures,
Thesis and papers,
My books standing like soldiers in the library
In an army of memory surrounding me with comfort,
Each reflecting my struggles and interests over 50 years.
Textual mastery and interpretation,
Theological reflections and discourse,
Historical analysis and the continual seeking of trends,
The sum total of what is understood and what has been forgotten
None of this brings us closer to understanding the mystery.
We seem to have come round full circle
Seeing yet again the mystery behind this whole human endeavor.
The myths we create to inspire and calm the very horror of the ending
The world to come,
Paradise,
For those fortunate to have lived a good life
The recycling of souls
Looking down from heaven
Angelic beings
Seem now, purely wish-fulfillment
As the ending looms, a different perspective arises
Slowly now perceptibly,
Who taught us how to prepare for death?
Beyond the confession? The Zadok Hadin
Halacha is almost matter of fact and detailed about what to do
But how to feel? Not a word.
And what of those Hassidic Masters?
What did they learn from lying in the open grave?
Beyond the panic and terror?
Or those Carpathian Hesychastic monks in their caves for years on end?
Surely those with near-death experiences make claims from the beyond?
I fear the wisdom preached cannot remove the terror,
And certainly does not listen the mystery.
Surrender to the Mystery
Maybe this is the reason for poetry and music
The Greeks (tragedies) understood that
The last bastion against the tyranny of time
The eternal world rotating on the axis Mundi forever
The horror of man versus the gods
The impossibility of man winning.
Maybe the mystery itself has what to teach?
Something divine about it?
Something in common perhaps?
Both unknowable and ineffable
Both unpredictable and uncanny
Both appearing at times unjust and petulant
And the mystery of birth, being and death becomes
The singular event we face without satisfactory explanation
Rational understanding,
Maybe this is the point
The unacceptable fact is the teacher
The very knowing we know nothing
The surrender and acceptance is the goal.
For every passing, time, time, time,
Midas Hadin
ברא -אהלים :לוא אמר ברא ה', שבתחלה עלה במחשבה לבראתו במדת הדין, ראה שאין העלום מתקיים, הקדים דמת
Rashi to Genesis 1:1
Imagine
In the place of NOT-God
Where history and suffering cohabit
Where blind hatred and genocide flirt
And the angel of death moves with impunity
And my mother knows what is happening to her and is mortally afraid
In this space, the harms I have caused others accumulate
Bearing down weightily, confronting me with “j’accuse!”
It is precisely here
Where the NOT-God/Schechina dwells,
In the heart of darkness,
Forced, wrenched and torn from the Divine pleroma
Without her consent, banished from the father’s table
In the beginning….before time.
Imagine
How she must to suffer alongside us
Eternally yearning to be reunited with her GOD
But prevented by the same divine decree
That divine self-indulgence, pique and experiment (kivyachol)
In humankind (Midas HaDin)
Like a mad scientist in a laboratory who just cannot give up
And the rats on their treadmills are going crazy.
If only He’d begun with Midas HaRachamim
What would it have looked like today
Orgies and fun? (God forbid!)
Too much loving?
Unconditional praise?
Certainly, the need to avoid so much destruction?
(The verse ״These are the generations of the heaven
and the earth when they were created״ (Gen. 2:4)
suggested to the rabbis the creation of prior worlds,
while the verse ״You carry them away as with a flood״ (Ps. 90:5)
was also interpreted to refer to the destruction of these prior worlds.
The Zohar (1:262b) suggests that God did not actually build these
prior worlds, but only thought about building them.
That this world was not the first that God created
was believed to be indicated by Isaiah 65:17: “For,
behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the
former shall not be remembered nor come to mind.”
Zohar Hadash identifies the prior worlds as totaling 1,000,
as does Or ha-Hayim 1:12, which states that before God created this world,
He created a thousand hidden worlds. These hidden worlds were
created through the first letter, aleph. That is why the Torah,
in the report of the Creation of this world, commences with the second
letter, bet. The existence of the 1,000 worlds is linked to the verse
You may have the thousand, O Solomon (S. of S. 8:12).
Weren’t those worlds enough to show him
the devastating effects of Midas Ha-Din?
Now condemned to a history of divine gevurot
Infecting down below every interaction burdened with these kelippot
Splitting our hearts into chambers of good and evil.
Imagine
Moments of grace
Where She glimpses of the divine, transcending time and space
And one can feel the presence of His absence
Where a wormhole allows Her to gaze
And fill with desire
Taking me along for the ride.
The weight of being is lifted
By a delicate unbearable lightness
As if the anchor that chains me to the inexorable sense
of progress of time
Time passing,
Time wasted,
Time running out,
Is lifted momentarily.
This Midas Ha-Din
That took her from me
Producing an utter grief
This overwhelming Kaddish
Transforming the grief into memory
A spiritual cardio-conversion,
As this year of mourning comes to a close
I wonder whether the recitation was for her, the Schechina or myself.
Is it not possible…
This brilliant psychodrama of Kaddish
The obsessive repetitiveness of it,
The public display of it,
Its tone and cadences,
The swaying and the steps back and forward
The body in motion with the heart
Is, in fact a Kaddish for myself?
That as the year winds up
The cessation of its recitation looming
A new anxiety
Having been baptized a couple of thousand times
I must face the silence
The no-recitation when the service calls for those members
of this exclusive club to stand and be counted
Those whose entrance fee has been paid with tears
I must stand down
The sheer terror of no mourning no response no expression.
Can I not continue to say Kaddish forever?
Why am I stopping in two weeks?
If I feel I must
If only for my own demise?
(this is not a Halachic question!)
Imagine
In the place of NOT-God
There is a silence too
A not saying of Kaddish
For the worlds He destroyed
For the laboratory rats sacrificed for His eternal experiment
The silence that screams in the Sahara Desert
The silence representing the failure to adequately mourn the loss
The enormity of the bereavement
The silence after every life breathed no longer
For the permanent absence
For His allowing the angel of death free reign
For the Midas Ha-Din.
Ashen Soul
הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם, וַאֲדַבֵּרָּׁה;
וְתִשְמַע הָּׁאָּׁרֶץ, אִמְרֵּי-פִי
Give ear, ye heavens, and I will speak;
and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
Sitting in a manicured courtyard,
Palm trees surrounding this sacred space, allowing for privacy
The sound of water gushing into a small pool,
The manicured quadrangle allowing for the sun’s rays
To cause a kaleidoscope of shadows on the perfectly set stones.
In the cloistered sanctuary of this spa for the wealthy,
A Bodhisattva is placed in the center,
Presumably to provide an air of serenity,
In a sitting posture, the Buddha clasps two bowls in his lap
I gaze at the idol, in the center of the quadrangle,
Jealous that it sits, still, beyond time and history,
Having lived a life and taught how to escape “dukka”
The sorrow and suffering of this world.
I however cannot escape history,
My soul is ashen,
Infected by a white powdery substance
That was released some 70 years ago
When millions were cremated,
And the smoke and ash billowed heavenward.
Whereas the blood-soaked earth and mass graves of Europe
betray the genocidal numbers who cannot speak from the earth.
What of those consumed by the fire?
Those who went up in smoke in a fine powdery haze of ash
What happened after?
Where are they now?
The ash returned to earth
To contaminate everything
“no one living would ever be able to escape them, these ashes would be contained in the milk that will be drunk by babies yet unborn and in the breasts their mothers offer them: the ashes will linger in the flowers which will grow out of them and in the pollen with which they will be fertilized by bees, they will be in the depths of the earth too, where rotted woodlands transform themselves into coal, and in the heights of heaven, where every human gaze, equipped with a telescope, encounters the invisible layers which envelop this wormy terrestrial apple of ours. These ashes will be contained in the breath and expression of every one of us and next time anybody asks what the air he breathes of is made of. He will have to think about these ashes; they will be contained in books which haven’t been yet written…”
(Arnold Lustig, A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova, trans, Jeanne Nemcova, New York: Harper and Harper Row, 1973, 1973)
The white ash settled on the grassy Bavarian meadows
and forever daisies bear some guilt for not having refused.
Nature accepted what the heavens refused.
The Bodhisattva looks down avoiding my gaze
What is there to say?
It’s an idol after all
And Halachically forbidden to describe its beauty.
So why did the ash fall back to earth?
Why did heaven refuse it?
Why didn’t God suspend the laws of gravity?
Not lovingly inhale every one of the million babies.
Let’s say he was out of touch
(for how we could go on living and worshipping Him
had he been present to History’s worst horror?)
What about Michael, Rephael, Uriel and Gabriel- surely our archangels
should have received them lovingly?
Even Mamale Rachel could not be found.
Silence.
Only one angel who was a quite willing accomplice- Samael/Satan.
So the ash fell back down to earth obeying His natural laws
And infects my soul.
It is the frosted lens by which I see everything.
Even joy is contaminated by this white powdery gloss.
הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם “Listen O heavens!”
No longer are you a valid witness!
You let the ash rain back down
No longer are you a valid witness
You are summarily disqualified
וְתִשְמַע הָּׁאָּׁרֶץ “Let the earth give ear”
It cannot-its ears are filled with ash, you cannot bear witness
You hide too much blood
Moses our teacher no longer has eternal witnesses to rebuke Israel
When it sins,
Case is now dismissed for tainted witnesses
Even the judge is absent.
The Bodhisattva promises escape
But a luxury I simply cannot indulge
Memory and history do not end
Men went on living
But the idea of man did not survive.
Terumos Ha-Deshen
The scooping of ash from the Temple altar
And its cleansing after the sacrifices of the day,
-The priests would compete for this ritual-
Seeing it as the choicest of tasks.
What High Priest would dare approach the ashes of the crematoria
Seeing the same sacred task a millennia later
Vying for the job,
Scooping the holy powder of a generation
From the altar consecrated by human not animal sacrifice.
The priests are the kapos
Scooping the human powder
With satanic zeal
For heaven refused to accept them.
A generation later we see
How we too have been sacrificed for so long
On the altar of our messianic expectations
A rescue from above
אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶאֱמוּנָּׁה שְלֵּמָּׁה
בְבִיאַת הַמָּׁשִִֽׁיחַ, וְאַף עַל פִי שֶיִתְמַהְמִֵּֽׁהַ,
עִם כָּׁל זֶה אֲחַכֶה לּוֹ בכָּׁל יוֹם שֶיָּׁבוֹא
“even though he may tarry”
Tragically too late for history
אני לא מאמין
The Ending
The ultimate secret
That we all share,
That we cannot abide,
That we avoid at all cost,
That we drown in anything,
Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, sex
To avoid facing it..
This secret..
The Mystery..
The sod..
The roz..
This enigmatic kabbalistic gematria
That fails to reveal.
This secret is…
Is our mortality!
Our ending.
Our facing the approaching end.
The end of it all.
Our consciousness.
Our self image.
Our very existence.
In this crisis,
Bathed in tears,
Bathed in memories,
The earliest memories,
And the lost memories,
The a-hah moments,
Saying goodbye…
To mother, holding her hand…
In her fears, in that dreaded hospital bed,
Drowning in her fears,
I am helpless.
I cannot fix this.
She again teaches me,
Having born me,
Facing the end of her Kaddish,
In another month,
(I fear the stopping,
Of this recitationary obsession,
For the nothing=ness
Of the day after
In minyan
Silent.)
In this space between recitation and silence
She lingers
She bears down on me
She remains in my heart
The Secret of Life: The Ending
This force
This presence
Her presence
In her absence
The Schechina
Suffers through her
In the silence
I suffer her,
Bereavement means bereft
Holding those slender violin fingers
In mine,
Knowing what is to come
What must happen,
Knowing in the head
But refusing in the heart.
My holy twin rebounds how Mum
Voiced her fear of loneliness
And she jumped into her bed holding her
Comforting her in her ultimate fear.
And now
Only now,
In these tears,
Do I understand,
The suffering of Her
In Galut,
Schechinta be-galuta
I had to suffer this loss
To understand and feel the Divine loss,
The last 8 verses were written bedema
In tears, by Moses (?)
As if he was prescient
And knew what my mother would anguish over.
The ending must be growing in tears
For us
For her
For Her.
And my own ending,
The three score years and ten that loom shortly,
My own biblical lifespan now exhausted
I must return to her/Her
For strength
To endure this
Awareness
Death and the Maiden comes to my ear.
The Schechinah at 32,000 Feet
Schechina at 32,000 feet
At 32,000 feet one is allowed to let the mind wander,
At 32,000 feet certain thoughts are permitted, no?
Lord, can you allow me certain thoughts at this altitude?
will you permit me thoughts unacceptable and inappropriate at ground level?
Up here I am close to the heavens, can we agree?
up here the blue sky seems more pure (and eternal)
up here the burden of my own mortality is lifted momentarily,
up here I feel the license to say things not allowed down below,
thoughts that would be misinterpreted “down there”.
So permit me some heretical thoughts, maybe?
for up here, I fear less the inner Kritik!
up here my flight attendant,
has been inexplicably liberal in the administration of bloody Mary’s.
Let me then express
what I would never dare down there,
let me invite you
to feelings not revealed,
let me in
on what you know already
since you are so intuitive from that which has hitherto
been congealed.
The transgressive includes you my dear,
beyond the professionalism and propriety,
the learned intellectual discussions
over Pinot Noir and Netziv!
the heart has no boundaries (you know, of course)
and the heart will have its way no matter what the consequence.
For the Divine operates under atmospheric conditions
and today surprisingly the sky is blue
the heavens have an azure clarity,
which means the real truth is present and obvious
which means down below we are in trouble.
So forgive me a while,
under the Mariological influence,
of a deadly combination of sky blue and the redness of this inflammatory concoction,
and reminiscences of the black Madonna of Częstochowa,
(at least the Vodka in the Bloody Mary survived!)
allowing the inner Kritik ( wife? Mother? for whom I mourn thrice daily?)
a moments reprieve.
Up here at 32,000 feet,
where all barriers to expression maybe removed
for a while,
I can say the following
and not pay the price down below.
I love you my dear
and through you I love Her,
though the very transgression
beyond the rule book
beyond the Halachic
beyond the appropriate.
For She makes demands
on me,
and I have little idea how to handle Her
despite my age
and struggles.
She still thinks/demands satisfaction as/is possible.
Strung between Wife, Mother and Schechina (the RAMAK was correct)
between every woman I have loved and the law
here I am today, this moment
my tears and my heart in unison
the head games are out of the picture up here (thank goodness or Godness)
the reality of life, love and death so clear,
and the knowing heart fills my being,
with no higher criticism (Biblical or Psychological!)
to account to.
I am writing at 32,000 feet, a dizzying height even without Vodka!
But my fingers are merely gliding over the keyboard
a demoness has possessed them for a few,
The words flow like the red liquor
The censor is off duty, we have fooled it at 32,000 feet
And outside... the eternal blueness,
but inside…. the bloody Mary lingers a little longer
imbibed in the incarnation of Mary/Schechina/You
I am at peace if only for a few.
Only in Pain
Only in pain
Can I connect
An realize that I am at the center of this trauma.
In the fog of alcohol
In the release from the left hemisphere
Something happens,
A paradox,
clarity emerges!
That my very existence
My existential being,
Emerges,
And finds solace
And meaning,
And validation.
In only this…
The nadir..
The very Even Shesiya
From which the world emerges
Spun out like a thread..
In the Kaddish..
Among the cacophony of black-hatted voices..
Responding dutifully,
A sea of frumkeit
precisely here!
is where it all takes place.
Downstairs this Tisha B’Av,
my wife watches videos,
of Charedi Rabbis spewing mussar
for this will save her soul,
or her guilt.
And I upstairs,
I think about Gisa Fleischman
and how she was tortured..
but he (Rabbi Dov Ber Weissmandl)
gets away (Kastner’s train?)..
How she was nailed to the floor of the cattle car
And gassed as soon she arrived in Auschwitz..
And why I feel responsible for it,
Why?
Why?
We are missing the point!
Emily North
