This study…
This study is empty
Only the books line its wall now
standing like soldiers
Just like Sarah likes them
Neat and tidy,
Like the rare book section of a library
Many are leather-‐bound
Representing those with special meaning
Chosen carefully for bookbinding
Representing the special choices
Their dark burgundy (with gold leaf) color contrasts
with the light oak wood The round table with flowers in the center
Uncluttered.
A potted green plant survives the ending of his life
Slowly awakening to this spring
Growing in the large framed window
Facing the sun approvingly with its leaves.
But I feel uncomfortable sitting here
With his large picture portrait
Looking down benignly
Eliyahu’s brilliant portrait
Classical posture and ever so present
It fills the room
As if he had never left
As if this room remains
His…
The room is too tidy
It lacks my clutter
Having evacuated it a year or so ago
Willingly and with love
As he moved in,
Silent and suffering in silence
Until the last breath.
So we covered the books
And removed all the clutter
That represents my stuff
The trinkets and little man toys
(That give us pleasure more for their familiarity
Signposts of where we have been in the past
Places and people)
The ink pens, old passports, worry balls
Pictures of the past,
Bags and briefcases,
The electronic bric a brac accompanying I-‐phones I-‐pads
Chargers, receipts, all the insignificant stuff I hold dear And drives her crazy.
Now uncomfortably neat, bare of all but seforim
All the apikorsus missing
This library is sanitized
Merely the canon of rabbinic literature, commentaries and superglosses.
And before this idealized burgundy library
As if at its helm,
this large and singular picture
His presence,
Bearing down,
As in life,
A presence too transparent,
Overpowering to those who venerated him
However benign looking now,
For me he remains a judging of self
And exposure of my failures
Of demanding self praxis
Goals yet to be met
Textual volumes
Marginalia upon marginalia
The hair-‐splitting subtleties of tort law
Exposing my continuing ignorance
And Discomfort.
Self-‐acceptance is clearly not present now
The portrait and the burgundy leather bound volumes
Have conspired to press upon my soul
To become this alien space
Once so intimate
A place of meeting friends colleagues and meshulachim
A space that mirrored my real self
My space.
Now, only foreign.
I’m not sure the clutter returned would change this…
Ever since he inhabited this space
In his utter suffering silence
His holiness filled the small study
And the reshimu-‐the residue remains
Long after the body gave up the ghost.
In this space Seemingly sterile now
No longer holding the shot glasses comfortably
Where secrets over scotch are shared
Where people bare their souls to me
Where marriages are clarified
And incurable diagnoses confirmed
Where young men make critical decisions
Where my thoughts fill the space on quiet Shabbat nights
As the dawn approaches
And self-‐understanding slowly bubbles up
In this unique sacred time
Pouring over obscure Hassidic texts
Or a Yeats poem.
His presence here is enigmatic
As his presence in my life
As I come to frame his influence in my life
His lasting reshimu
The light as well as the darker spaces
Overwhelming presences
My decades of resistance yet influence
The sheer power of his personality
And quiet unsaid judgments
Reflecting my wounds
And focusing on my transference
Surely this is not a place of comfort
And quiet
Not after him
Not after his quiet suffering in this space
Not after the divine visitation and kiss of death here In this space
Now sanctified
No, this study has become a sort of shrine
The large unframed portrait
His face against a black background
His bright pleasant but serious expression
His pale skin color against the irrational darkness of space
Reflecting his intuition that the rational mind can somehow grasp
Everything
If only sufficient effort is applied
So different from my gnostic pessimism
My suspicion that in this quantum world
Only irrational numbers
And irrational forces in the psyche
Have ruled the last century And my soul.
In the end his rational mind
Overcame his Hassidic mystical background
And my non-‐rational mysticism
Overcame my father’s middle European enlightened rationalism
My nihilism and pessimism suffuses my heart
And my tragic sense (so Greek!)
Makes more sense of the world
Supporting further my discomfort here.
I am not sure I can return here
To this shrine
To this sacred space
Too sacred for my soul
That needs freedom to think
And observe,
Freedom to explore the heretical
In order to frame the orthodox
Freedom to write the unacceptable
In order to move the conversation deeper.
So I take my leave now
I leave this study
Albeit with reverence
His presence
His overwhelming influence
Like chains
I must get free
Free to think once more.
And make sense of him, with time.
