Intimations From Beyond: Shloshim for Abba

The Vurke Rebbe’s son complains to the Kotzker “My father has not come to me in a dream”[1]

“And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are

won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

There is an interesting Zohar [2] that says that everyday a Bas Kol cries out from heaven: “Oh, Return (My) wayward sons.” The Slonimer Rebbe comments on this passage in the Zohar, citing the Baal Shem Tov who asks the following difficulty: Who cares? We don’t hear this voice everyday in our lives so the Bas Kol surely isn’t affecting us on an experiential level. What good does it do for us to know that such a phenomenon exists? However, the Baal Shem Tov answers this question with another question. When a person wakes up in the morning and out of the blue decides to do t’shuva, where does that inspiration come from? When a person suddenly decides to completely change his life and dedicate himself to Torah learning, how does such an idea even come into the person’s head? Even when a person finds the inspiration to improve himself even a little bit, how does that happen? This is the Bas Kol.

Intimations from no-dreams

No one comes to me

No Bas Kol

Despite my wish

For Abba to contact me

And tell me what?

He forgives

The decisions

The invasion

The horror of the last year

He forgives my indiscretions

He forgives my impiousness

My behavioral imperfections

My past.

I was there for his last breath

Holding his arm

Refusing resuscitation demands

Knowing the last breath was at hand

The last breath was his decision.

Attendant in reverent expectation

Unsurprised by the kiss of death

Fully appropriate, and desired.

Enough! your eyes said to me (albeit inferred)

Tired of this frame

The body never held out much for you

A barrier to the intellectual pursuit of scholarship

A nuisance at times

And the last two years of total ascetic life

No taste of food or drink

Just being and thinking

A prisoner of the body

Locked in to the earthly

A transition of sorts

But agonizing nonetheless

A tragedy

Watching you suffer in silence.

A dream…

You…

So maddening

So overpowering in my consciousness

“Do not go gentle into the night”

you did not leave passively

you fought three times the angel of death

but he came after Purim

and this time you threw no fire bolts at him

no divine name carved on your Mosaic staff

this time, you allowed this

you were always in control

even of this.

The ending

The completion of this life

Led uncompromisingly by rules

The final moment

Privileged to be present

(unlike the death of Dada and Nana

which was cruelly withheld from me

for which I never forgave the circumstances of my distance

which still causes me pain so many decades after

the inability to be present

to say goodbye

to hold the hand and kiss the lips

of those who nourished my childhood)

Living in the absent dream

The no Bas Kol

You have not come to me Abbele!

In the Vurke Rebbe’s 30 days

I have no Kotzke to go to

No one to complain to

No one to storm the heavens in search of you

Where are you now?

I knew you were right

“amito shel torah”

Alone you stood your ground

Despite the odds

Against the mighty Gra

Are you in his Heichal?

Are you excitedly proving him wrong finally?

Did he nod? His approval?

Privileged to have had you reside here

Your daughter’s love bathing you

The last breath taken here surrounded

by the library of Torah you toiled so long in

The beloved seforim accompanying you on this last voyage

Paying you homage as humble servants

taking their leave

Knowing you have been received in the eternal library

The Beis Midrash on High

And you will argue your theories eternally there

In the good company of your colleagues.

The study is back to “normalcy” still, without my clutter,

I will have you know,

The holy books line its walls without the modesty curtain

Gazing at the emptiness of your presence

Just a candle is lit…

A trace of your soul remains,

This sanctuary to your memory.

And my ferns!

My ferns!

Have returned

And with them

The seeds, their children

Having survived this bitter winter

Against all odds

You would want to know that.

You sat out there on the deck

In the privacy of the fern-lined deck

In the warm sunshine

Holding your daughter’s hand often.

You seemed to find peace among those tropical ferns

Little ferns

So fragile

You would be comforted.

They are back on the ledges now

Awaiting the warm sunshine once more

To grow

In your memory.

Please send me a Bas Kol

At the very least.

Please

I need to know this was what you wanted

In your holy silence.

You cannot leave this way.

A dream perhaps?

[1] Shlomo Carlebach story of the “Vurcke Rebbe and the ocean of tears” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIBBJo0Op0k

[2] Every day a bas kol calls "shuvu banim shovavim, return to me o' wayward sons." (Chagigah 15)