They want my library
They think it's valuable
They know where it hurts the deepest.
Identity is so bound to our possessions
Especially the non-tangibles, those sentimental things that
have value only to the owner.
I said "I’m not attached!"
"They are merely books!" I exclaimed.
Easily and not so easily replaceable after all
It's the content not the materiality itself surely!
I am not defined by them, surely not!
But I am.
Tears flow easily as I pass my hand over the burgundy
spines with golden Hebrew letters
Each reflecting the life’s work of its holy author
Most commentators on the Bible in different centuries,
especially those Polish Hassidic masters who move me
most, their erudition informed by the mysticism of the
BESHT.
Each reflecting his own life struggle with the Divine
encoded in the words.
Yes these volumes also reflect my biography my spiritual
progress over these last years
Years and years of spiritual processing, suffering and anguish
Poring over these texts, slowly coming to the dawning of understanding
Each text located in time and space in the living breathing
daily rituals and discipline of
Study commitment of time, friends and study partners,
shiurim deadlines etc.
The hand moves slowly over these spines, some dusty
some already fading in their gold,
And the tears flow. Of course the inner denigrating voice
says "you really don’t deserve these seforim hakedoshim
bragging as you did .. as if mere ownership could change
your spiritual status, as if the currency of a library might
affect your inner soul. As if owning meant integrating, as if
you could imbibe their secrets by mere possession!"
In the mikveh my broken heart melts,
It is as it should be
It always is
That is God's will
You get what you get
Maybe the letting go of even these items, these sacred
books, this library
The surrender of this holy space framed by the chocolate
wooden shelves stately standing
Side by side like soldiers
This sacred space framed by the souls of all these saints
who struggled with their own demons,
Now comes to teach me something even more important
In the letting go.
The cleansing of this whole process
The relinquishing and surrender needed,
The past and its attachments, however dear
The purification process through fire and stress.
Well it has been a privilege to have "owned" or at least
been the location and repository of this organic whole.
Each shelf representing another author
Each relating in chronology and subject matter to the
other.
In tension and in dialectic, often on opposite ends of the
mystical spectrum,
Nevertheless reflecting the tension and complexity of my
own spiritual process.
A privilege that I must now allow to pass through my fingers like sand grains
Without holding and grieving as I am.
The pain is so great precisely because of the false identity
being stripped and the nakedness of truth like a raw
wound seeping its serum on all sides, weeping freely.
In truth I am no kabbalist; I am no Chassid, I live in a postholocaust
world of no-meaning and absurdity, all I have left
are my texts, the sacred word, held together by centuries
of tears, I am merely
The Niemandsrose of Celan, I am his psalm.
So this stripping away of false senses of self is in truth
healthy debridement of dead tissue albeit painful.
A painful blessing of sorts
And as the Rebbe teaches, the acceptance of bizyonot is
the true reflection of t'shuva.
