70 years after the Temple had been destroyed and the Shekhinah had gone into exile, all the angels went into mourning for Her, and they composed dirges and lamentations for her. So too did all the upper and lower realms weep for Her and go into mourning. Then God came down from heaven and looked upon His house that had been burned. He looked for His people, who had gone into exile. And He inquired about His bride,who had left Him. And just as she had suffered a change, so too did Her husband-His light no longer shone, and He was changed from what He had been. Indeed, by some accounts God was bound in chains.[1]
Psalm: Paul Celan
“No one moulds us again out of earth and clay, no one conjures our dust. No one. Praised be your name, no one. For your sake we shall flower. Towards you. A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing-, the no one's rose. With our pistil soul-bright, with our stamen heaven-ravaged, our corolla red with the crimson word which we sang over, O over the thorn.[2]
She longs for Him,
she, through our collective self, keeps longing for the absent lover
in the dark night of this apparent exile
despite the yellow glowing lights on the Jerusalem walls,
the yellow badges haunt our dreams
despite the Profit Sharing Plans for retirement in Florida,
all contemporary luxury feels guilty,
all remains not well.
In our absent gazes,
She too is not present, in us
She too has gone, disgusted by the self-bloating
Holier-than-Thou’ness of current religious pretensions to piety
so we play games as if...
the rituals of daily life and learning had meaning inside
as if...
nothing had happened some 70 years ago
a lover’s spat some would say!
others would make even more outrageous theological claims
(harping to Nietzche)
yet others would put blame on us! on the very victims!!
as if...
Has He ever not been bound in chains? [3]
the king bound in the trestles. מלך אסור ברהטים
did the Song to end all Songs not tell us?
the king bound in his trestles
outside the garden of delight
watching and waiting for his beloved,
yet kabbalistically also bound
in the trauma of this very creation
in the only way the finite could trap the infinite in its grip.
Bound in the chains of the barbed wire trestles
He watches his beloved starved and tortured
played with and humiliated by German/Ukrainian/Polish soldiers
the women defiled in ways that left permanent etchings in the flesh,
a scarring, living corpses who could never again make love...
handsome smart uniforms smoking all the while with leather gloves
so as not to defile themselves.
Bound in the excremental deterioration of the self and humanity
as if...
the divine wished to experience such degradation
a pervert Greek experiment ordered by the Pantheon for the amusement of the gods.
Awakening from this traumatic nightmare
now 70 years later
like those Rabbis of old
looking at the Hurban
the broken Jerusalem walls,
the “fox running across the Temple Mount”[4]-
we have no Rabbi Akiva to laugh.
We languish amid the normalcy of daily life
as if... it never took place.
And we, the children of those who survived
whose parents’ silences
deafen the living rooms of London, NY, Tel Aviv
what are we to believe?
who are we to believe?
You who survived gave us nothing to believe!
despite your comings and goings to shul
and the lips chattering alongside the songs of the chazzan
we saw through that, even as children,
to the dark emptiness inside you all
and realized slowly, slowly
the legacy of Die Niemandsrose[5]
and the Psalm to No-Body.
Please help us
before you depart this world
please show us how to
believe!
show us how to hold on to our lost faith
even as you slowly drowned in your memories and lost ones.
In connecting to you
we at least have a physical representation
of your lives here
of your embodied trauma
of the blue etchings in your forearms
of your survival
we can hug and embrace your frail bodies
like a talisman
to ward off the evil curse that is our people.
But what will you leave us when you have gone?
what blessing will you bestow upon us
as you move away
into the memory of our loss?
Please don’t leave
please do not leave us alone
in this wilderness
in this new modern Hurban
please give us a hint
at some messianic dream you still hold on to
some secret you have withheld until now
some divine word you received over there
in the hell of enlightened Europe.
Hold us close
hold us to your hearts
squeeze us tight please
never let go.
For without you
we fear,
we fear
we will lose all faith
like the Klauzenberger Rebbe claimed
in the first al chet on Kol Nidre 1946
“our only אל חטא was that we own up to is our loss of faith on You Lord!”
without you
present
to hold us close
we fear
being alone in this nightmarish world
where people go about their normal lives
as if...
as if...
it never happened.
[1] Howard Schwartz, The Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 58 ,Pesikta De Rav Kahana 13:9, 15:3, Zohar I:182a
[2] Translated by Michael Hamburger
[3] Song of Songs 7:6 “Your head upon you is like Carmel, and the hair of your head like purple; a king is caught in its tresses.”
[4] Lamentations 5:18 “For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, (even) foxes walk upon it.”
[5] Paul Celan: Die Niemandsrose (The Nomansrose / The No-One's-Rose, 1963)
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This is Julian Ungar-Sargon's personal website. It contains poems, essays, and podcasts for the spiritual seeker and interdisciplinary aficionado.
