“For when the face of the east shines and the darkness of night withdraws There is a purveyor (memanne) for the east side And he draws forth a single thread of light from the south side. Until the sun comes and emerges and breaks through the windows of heaven And illuminates the world. And that thread of light causes the darkness of night to withdraw.”
“Then the doe of dawn (Ayelet HaShachar) comes out. And a black light emerges in the darkness to join with the day. And the day is illuminated. And the light of day subsumes and draws that doe into itself.”
“It was about this doe, when she withdraws from the daylight that subsumed her, that David sang his song. As it is written: ‘Lamenatzeach Ayelet HaShachar’, and what did he say “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me.” For the Ayelet HaShachar has withdrawn from the light of day”
Zohar to Exodus 1
“So as the natural phenomenon of sunrise is understood to reflect a supernal dynamic within the divine self, the process of the two inner-‐divine lovers, uniting as one light. But as the lovers separate, following the climactic moment of union, they immediately yearn for each other; they lament the sorrow of their parting. The cry over divine absence in Psalm 22:2 is understood to be a response to …the doe returning to her hiding place. The Schechina who has been united in love with Tiferet has now withdrawn from the fully risen sun, and her lover Tiferet, cries out in anguished yearning “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?”
Eitan Fishbane [1]
For the withdrawal of Her
Is really absorption within Him
(The divine androgyny),
He appears and full and integrated,
Feminine absorbed within masculine.
But He can no longer sees Her as distinct
So eros is destroyed,
And so is the sense of I-‐thou.
And the tension that excites,
And in His plentitude
He mourns for Her,
Despite her absorption within Him.
So each dawn,
This drama re-‐enacts
This cycle of night/day
Repeats the torture,
Of presence and loss.
From the sundrenched 8th floor room overlooking Manhattan
This quiet Sunday morning
Three weeks post neurological event,
The sagely white bearded patriarch moves his lips in prayer
Under the oxygen mask,
To a background hissing of humidifier.
The sun is gracious
Warming the hospital room with its glow
as only a frigid winter January morning can do.
While he prayed
I reflected,
While he praised
I felt pain,
Deep inside the heart
As the sun brought clarity after a weekend of darkness.
If “she” reflects Shechinah,
And if my pain is really Hers (Degel Machane Efraim)
Then all my acute wounding needs inner work right?
This yearning for connection and intimacy,
In the face of her/Her emotional unavailability,
Is precisely the wooing required on Erev Shabbat with Shir HaShirim
To re-‐unite Tiferet and Malchut
For during the week sis in exile…
A curse for the wounded boy,
Exacerbated by her/Her own Freudian issues
and unresolved complexes with the father/Patriarch, Father/Tiferet.
she sits by his bedside singing zemirot, her voice halting
as it breaks with tears. Does the Schechina woo like this too?
Yet the wounded boy only worries about his lonely pain
After three weeks of indifference and unavailability,
Not a word of emotion, not a word other than relating
To the business of the ICU, the devotion only a single daughter
Can provide a father.
The connection so deep
No husband could ever sever the bond
The wounded boy rages with anger and grief
The conquest failed after all
Wife never severed the umbilical cord of approval
From the white haired patriarch
Rages with powerlessness
Having fallen for the same archetypal personality as mother
Who demanded love only conditionally?
The boy, whose soul was now forever split,
Torn between the mother, virgin, Madonna, goddess,
And the whore,
Who is subjected now to the rage of the daughter,
For bringing apikorsus to read during my night time vigils
To this hospital ward, this room, this place of sanctity,
“How could you?” she yells,
“Defiling the purity of this saintly holy room
By this pornographic image on the cover of a Sacred Prostitute!”
(An archetypal monograph into the image of the dark side of Schechina!)
Jung is alive and well!
In this triangle of father, daughter and me
I surely feel only shame and disgrace
The sailor who fell from grace from the sea
For how could I possibly fill the shoes as a substitute?
Condemned from the start,
The set up is complete.
(Despite years of study and scholarship.)
The sun still brings warmth and clarity
As I dig deeper into my well of compassion
As I realize, now, after a night of resentment,
In its glow,
That she too, is so wounded.
Can I find more space in my heart?
I want to…
I so need her approval even now
But it feels empty today…
After a weekend of pain…
I struggle with this Degel
He has helped me save my spirituality in the past…
I try to internalize his message with such effort.
Like a mantra:
“Your pain is really Her pain, so focus on Her, and you will be fixed”
This Sunday I realize I must surrender to it
My pain is really Hers
She is crying for Her consort
Through me
Through my pain
She cries for der eibishte! Tiferet,
“Why have You forsaken me?”
Like I cry in silence to her,
Yet I must hold this too.
So her wound is Hers
Her abuse is Hers
And my task is to cry for her/Her
Pray for her/Her, despite myself
Despite the howling young boy
Craving attention, and validation,
resist this feeling too.
And in writing this I force myself to face the white sheet
Like an analyst and,
As if the act of writing
“Escribe”
Etching in ink on this white paper
Is therapeutic,
This violence to the white virgin page
A rape of sorts,
Language as the means of seduction
Writing as the means of rape
Lying on the analyst’s couch
Of bonded cloth
Alkaline Japanese rice paper
The Geisha bows to me as my pen
Pierces her robe
Screaming my woes
On the silent page
Receiving my ink, like semen
Without protest.
I, the little boy
Acting out on this page,
Wounded, despite years of carrying this
I the little boy
Triggered, by the indifferent icy snow queen’s criticisms
