The Sargon Women

Always looking for that ultimate paradigm, the archetype of

womanhood Lost, when I lost my childhood innocence, or

was it beaten out of me?

Split between the goddess and the whore

My subconscious got strewn between these poles.

Evaluating and unresolving my relationships They usually

fell apart when I realized the truth, I was either repulsed or

she remained forever beyond.

Torn between desire and admiration, the goddess in white

garments and the woman in the lacy black lingerie.

To have infected all those relationships, all those pathetic

pursuits to nowhere, so much effort and obsession After

fantasy and images, dreams and pre-conceived fragments

To be followed by the inevitable repulsion or rejection does

it matter which?

Strung in both cases between those awful poles of

isolation.

But now in ageing, I see clearer.

For I have inevitably been forced to finally appreciate what

was so precious, what was so refined and subtle, what I

had missed all along... that Sargon femininity, that ultimate

image etched into my subconscious, first and lastly, the

picture of my mother holding the violin playing her

Paganini piece or Beethoven Romance as she won the all

India violin competition, that iconic image of her in her

black velvet dress, the low cut appeal of that black velvet

despite her innocence, and the ability to hold both purity

and seduction without loss of either, the freshness of her

gaze and guilelessness.

That precious absence of manipulativeness, of

deviousness, of pseudo-naiveté that I have known in

encountering other women along the way. At some point, I

had lost that image. Where had I forgotten this deep

feeling?

That primordial image I had seen all my childhood like

those Sunday afternoons with the Sargon women hugging

the walls and the men with their Arabic playbeads in the

middle of the large living room in Wembley. On puffs and

small ottomans, speaking of world affairs and business

and the women chatting on the sidelines; of pleasantries.

But those very women come back to me now as I realize

that what I really needed all along, what I had been

searching for without knowing it, was that precise notion of

womanhood. That innocence and lack of guile, yet

attraction and desire, the absence of that conflict, found

only in Sargon women.

Even more so, all those women who brought out the worst

in me were really a gift bringing me to this place of

realization. This place of return of the past and the

ancestors, the Sargon women.

Holy sisters, mother, aunts, Becky Florence, Matilda, even

Diana, Ray, Myrtle, and my beloved Nana, then nieces

and daughters ... and now as I stare at my granddaughter

playing, 7 months old, her coyness as she places her tiny

hands on my beard inquisitively, I bask in the reflection of

this knowledge that those values will continue, that I have

come to peace with the mother goddess.

That my notion of Schechina has come full circle as I

welcome the bride each Sabbath projecting onto her all

those virtues of the eishis chayil.

Thank you for the gift of womanhood

Of innocence yet desire

Of purity with the body

With no guilt or shame

The refusal of the lacy black, but the retention of the

burning and yearning desire. Thank you.

Lying on My Chest

I lie slowly in the darkness of the night

my grandson breathes deeply on me.

he had been awakened and was frightened or just

disoriented now I took him to cuddle with and calm him

his head rests lightly on my chest and I am in heaven.

there is no greater pleasure and no greater sadness.

My thoughts go back to July 4th 1985

when Sam and I were on a sailboat "Piece of Heaven" I

think I named it Chesapeake Bay, out for a couple of days

over July 4th holiday

starry night but not really calm

too nauseating to sleep below deck

so I lay on deck

and my older son Eli

lay on top of me as I warmed him with a blanket.

Then too I thought this was heaven

truly... Under the starry skies I was brought back to my

early days when I'd walk out to watch the heavens by the

brook behind our home in Finchley as a teenager thinking

of eternity and man's short destiny.

So much has happened since then

and as a father

another generation

no longer father and son

he has gone his own way

forging his own dreams.

and now as a grandfather I hold this boy

feeling only blessed and privileged to be present to this

holy moment of awareness.

I bless all you fathers and grandfathers to experience just

this

just this moment in time

when you glimpse eternity

when you get an inkling of what history is really made of

the stuff of myth

fathers and sons

fathers and grandsons

and I adjure you to hold that very moment as I do

cherish it as it will fuel you throughout all that is coming

the degeneration and infirmity

the disease and old age

I bless my father and grandfather

as I think of Dada and the Julius I never knew

whose ashes are strewn in the ground in a polluted

continent and after whom I am named

I bless the ancestors who lie in cold earth in foreign lands

and cemeteries whose souls I pray for.

I think of Dada's green cardigan and the smell that was his

alone

and no more,

His hug when opening the door on Mallard Way in

Kingsbury each Sunday afternoon.

Little did I know how much I needed that hug, that is now

embedded in memory and keeps me going at times.

His hug as a grandfather, his name as Dada

I now seek to perpetuate with this hug

this child

this inquiring soul

with long blond locks

This Divine Child.

January 1, 2009

To live in ignorance

to live in the dark

to live in the Absence

To accept my inadequacy and yet see You

and be present to You in the darkness

Your feeling Presence

in the coursing of time

now another calendar year

by which I mark the passage of my failure allowing it to

gently wash over me like a light cotton wisp

Maybe we need do nothing

for powerless we are over ourselves, over politics and

world events despite intimacy of imagery on our TV, the

forces of nature and history overwhelm us like our own

rage and intolerance.

Maybe just maybe

being present to the flux of time is sufficient now that I

cannot change the world nor even myself those ingrained

defects of character that persist and haunt me like a

plague or a recurrent infection.

Just to be present Shabbat comes in and leaves witness

to it all the horror and the majesty

Another year

hard to believe

a step closer to my mortality

being "gathered to the fathers"

I think of my ancestors a lot recently

how deeply I am connected organically to them lying in

rotting graves and crematoria despite my knowing nothing

of them.

As time flows through me it changes

it experiences itself differently

like water flowing thought a machine

a distillery maybe

neither better or worse for the chemistry, just different

If I am, were able to remove the moral and the piety from

the equation what is left is just water, just me,

experiencing it all, the flux of time.

and maybe that will be sufficient to say I have lived

adequately without judgement day for that too requires an

enduring of sorts albeit different the suffering of being and

being present to others and self.

the toleration of the inner critic the sense of inadequacy

that pervades all and the knowing of how fragile it all

remains.

This too is an endurance.

Autumn Leaves II

I return to you and you are dying again

Golden leaves gloriously reflecting the brilliant sun

Anxiety-ridden

For a week or two you will be dead-on-the-ground

A darkening browny rust trodden leaf

Ve-emunascha baleilot

I hereby promise to wait for you

Once again

Another year

Or at least the winter

I believe in your eternal return

That you will grow anew.

It is the same you

A genetic promise

This tree same shape same color.

So I will wait out the winter ahead

Watch this tree

Naked in the snow

Brown and bereft

And remember these few days

Of golden sunlit rustling

When we were together

And I blessed you

I promise to witness your dying

And your birth in the spring

A greenhorn

You will not recognize me

We will need to get re-acquainted

No matter

I look forward to it

And then next year as you take your leave once more

You too will realize

It was all about waiting and faith

And hope and promise.

Gevurah she-Bigvurah

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.

The Theology of Imperfection

No longer pursuing the movie goal post of perfection.

Owning my Grade B status finally,

accepting the insuperable urges of the flesh fully,

open at last to the implications of a sin-filled life and after life.

I surrender to the addictions of power, greed, lust, envy,

slough, vainglory and textual mastery.

The binary affects of that sign wave of spirit verse lust-lust filled life,

even an broken clock gets it right twice a day!

Just standing still, stop the clock, stop the increscent inner critic.

This approach does not work, it is programmed to fail.

Who does Kurzweil fool but himself with all his pills, green tea and exercise!

He is still my age!

And will die like me!

When, is almost irrelevant.

Rebbi tells us to see only the itachlis1 -worms and

maggots-the rest is history. Just be aware of that one fact!

It is sufficient.

The thinkers all seem tired, the saints are all floored,

the sons eat not that far from their father’s table

and the grim reaper is active as ever.

So for the first time I will let time overcome me without

guilt, the inner snake will be silent, the critic gagged

and whatever will happen or worse,

the deafening silence of nothing happening,

I will attempt to endure however terrifying.

Rabbi Nachman speaks of tachlis meaning the ultimate purpose in life.

A person needs to be constantly aware of

the ultimate purpose in life by focusing on the

tachlis.

Music and the Messiah

Our souls are strung out on a musical stave

Each a musical note and its harmonics

Some crotchets, some minims, some quavering in the fleeting wind

Each a distinct sound in time and space and comforted by the rest

between them That allows each to breathe and exist.

Our lives are devoted to searching for the ultimate musical

sequence that mirrors our inner soul architecture like a

resonating drum.

And when some exalted piece

approaches us, our hearts quicken, the pulse races and

we feel faint.

I remember well the first time I heard the

Marche Funebre of the Eroica at the memorial to the

Israeli Athletes at the Munich Olympic games; or the

Brandenburg Fifth while my friend’s mother lay dying on

her white silken bed.

Or Mahler’s fifth which awakened me

to post-classical music.

I can literally correlate events in

my life with each of these moments of awakening.

My biography littered with a list of musical sequences I

stumbled upon; that arrested me in my tracks, phrases

and harmonies that melted me.

Each musical piece feels

like I am coming closer, ever so slowly, to the ultimate

musical sequence I will not be able to bear and my soul

will finally expire to its glorious melody.

So too with the Tzaddik whose soul.

We are told, is a

“general transpersonal soul” whose life is a pursuit of the

ultimate niggun the perfect Levitical music that

encompasses the sequences and harmonies of the

spheres and the secret of creation itself, whose musicality

will herald the Messianic era precisely because his tune

will melt all hearts.

Reb Nachman was seeking this melody and his ten

psalms reflected the complex character of the genres of

literary characters each mirrored. He realized the power of

music to transform and heal and spoke of music of

primordial archetypal tones that resonated with my senses

as I feel when such melodies pass me by.

In the final days that score will be revealed and we shall

discover that it turned out to be the very key by which the

letters of Torah could actually be played on musically.

Rustling

A new musical form

Each leaf a solo instrument in a green orchestra

A quartet on a twig

A chamber group on a branch

A symphony orchestra this forest.

The conductor, the wind, equalizes all

She gently caresses each leaf

Giving exactly what it needs to sing

Beginning gradually to a crescendo of rustling.

I watch, reading my-self into this musical text.

When she gets agitated

The whole orchestra rises to the occasion, even branches

bending and twisting

Reflecting her sense of discomfort.

Yet each leaf retains its identity

Since there is an added participant in this musical morning

The brilliant sun

Whose rays reflect off each and every leaf, differently.

And the combined effort of wind and sun cause a

kaleidoscope of lights

To reflect off the tree adding light to the total sound experience

The more it rustles in the wind the more light it flickers

The more it attempts to reflect the son-et-lumière of its

own nature.

This rustling, this interaction of music and light, is healing

for my soul, in the darkness of my not knowing

Having come to acceptance of my ignorance, my

mediocrity, and my powerlessness over forces greater

than me, that wish to dominate me from within and

without.

I have not mastered the art of gnosis in anything- least of

all sacred science.

So this morning, in this glorious morning on the South

Lake of Chicago

Brilliant sun in the deep azure vastness of eternity,

I surrender, to this light, to the sense of His secret

Presence -malchut- for it flickers and rustles now here now

there, mati velo mati reaching touching but then gone in a flash.

A metaphor for any achievement in the past, momentary

images flickering like in an old super 8 home movie.

In the light I know I must leave this tortured self,

The tyranny of what might have been had I done this or that,

to be free like those sparkling leaves, to sing His song

without the fettered past.

I learn this from the orchestra above, the rustling is so

fleeting, ever changing, and temporary

Yet that this is OK too.

Teach me how to learn daas in this hastara.

(L.M. I :56.)

La Stella Luna

The natural satellite of Earth, visible by reflection of

sunlight and having a slightly elliptical orbit, approximately

356,000 kilometers (221,600 miles) distant at perigee and

406,997 kilometers (252,950 miles) at apogee. Its mean

diameter is 3,475 kilometers (2,160 miles), its mass

approximately one eightieth that of Earth, and its average

period of revolution around Earth 29 days 12 hours 44

minutes calculated with respect to the sun.

As salt resolved in the ocean I was swallowed in God's

sea, Past faith, past unbelieving, Past doubt, past certainty.

Suddenly in my bosom A star shone clear and bright; All

the suns of heaven Vanished in that star's light.

This gorgeous moon has finally appeared

Still covered by a misty cloud But in its full glory It is the

15th of the month And we have not blessed it as yet We

waited for Tisha B’av to pass But it was so cloudy since

Now it revealed itself to us on this last opportunity to bless

Before it descends Representing the waning of our

fortunes and the cycle begins again.

I love this evening moon I cannot leave it I watch it ever so

slowly mend its way across my front door Tracing its

celestial path yet so close to me tonight. La Stella Luna he

told her in Moonstruck, “when the moon hits your eye

like a big pizza pie...That’s amore!” we sang with the kids so

often when things went well and we were on top of the

world. Usually driving somewhere. Nothing could defeat

our family We were the best we could be.

It does have a face, really! And it has moved so many men

to rhyme and poetry Its grace and ivory quality In the

darkness of the cold universe, so close to us, beckoning

its wisdom. I wait each month for these few moments

when it is full, so round you could draw a circle with it No

blemishes, no shadows, no fault lines, no reflections of my

own failures Rather fullness and mad dogs and craziness,

Even Shakespeare referred to the moon as "governess of

the floods." Those crazy tides In his dreamy midsummer

night play, But elsewhere in Othello she is blamed for

making men mad by coming too close to earth. Lunar

madness, lunatics, we all go crazy in the fullness of her

mid-cycle presence.

I see why, it is truly hypnotic.

In the liturgy the ecclesia of Israel is also compared to the

moon whose fortunes rise and fall in history. Ancient

midrashim point to a moment of creation when the sun

and moon were equal And the moon complained only to

be lessened in stature.

She is so silent this one I hear no music of the spheres!

What was Holtz on! But I prefer the solitude She too is so

lonely and we two are together this night I am sure she

sees me watching her.

In her face so many have written In her presence so many

have cried Her topography is truly marked by the

landscape of human memory Etched with the tears of

loving hearts and yearning souls.

We too pray for her return to her former glory Equal to the

burning mighty sun For I am sure she will remember all

those who prayed for her monthly Who cried for her

diminishment, her waning half the time Her disappearing

and absence before resurfacing What was she doing?

What abuse did she suffer while gone from our gaze?

Maybe we loaded her with too much baggage For after all

Jews and Muslims use and abuse her for calendric

purposes She is weary now with all the battles over who

was right and who was wrong Who was closer to God

Who had the sacred text that was divine and who had the

heretical text. Tired from all man’s fighting over hegemony

Missing the importance of loving rather than being right.

She needs rehabilitation as well! A re-birth of a different

sort A renewal of spirit Not the pagan wicker stuff mind you

Rather a re-imagining of cycle and womanhood, fecundity

and birthing

The monthly cycles that woman understands as to the

tides The truth of the ebb and flow we have all seemed to

have lost in the hustle for security The bleeding and

fatigue the pain and the bloating the mood swings and the

relief She understands all this well.

Our future needs her now Needs to integrate her methods

and cycles not for mastering some ancient text or race Not

for controlling other’s behavior when to daven or not, when

to light or not, Rather to succumb and surrender like she

does To meld and wane To accept this fully in silence To

endure To hold all opposites tightly without letting go

Appreciating all there is however disparate

This is her secret We need it badly!

Meditations at Night

It comes to me at night

Those thoughts

Your stories

Your suffering.

In the darkness well suited for such machinations

I realize my inadequacy.

For all I can really do is to listen.

Make small indentations here and there

In the utter progressiveness of disease towards its ultimate desire

To destroy and disintegrate

To annihilate by slow death the flesh of us all.

In these stories of suffering and anguish

My own past rekindles itself

Ignited in kind

My own heart bleeds

For I too have experienced all this

And remain powerless in the face of it.

The past and future combine

The horrors and torture the slow death and fleshy pain

Into a history of story-telling and narrating

To overwhelm the small hours of the night.

My parents and grandparents going back

What were they thinking, my namesake, when being driven in cattle cars

How did they pray and believe in those last moments, the

gas rising ever so slowly.

Generations after generations until this last bloody century of genocide.

And inevitability I think of God

That personal being who made promises in the Bible.

And His goodness and this world of pain.

And countless thinkers before me struggling with the claims

Of His mercy and love.

In the darkness I find no solace.

What do I tell this beautiful new and first grandchild?

As I hold him now and as I will be asked by him, no doubt

That I too failed to make sense of any of it

That I too follow the rite and ritual in the hope of

That in deference to the faith of my ancestors and the

memory of those who died sanctifying His name in

Sobibor and Belzec extermination camps I still maintain

The customs and prayers, the ablutions and Mitzvot

How do I comfort

How do I maintain faith despite

The evidence is overwhelming for the victory for the demonic forces

Despite modern medicine and comforts

The dark side always seems to emerge from the good.

Where do I turn him towards, for answers that I never found?

In teachers and clergy that failed me long ago, surely not!

In platitudes and moralistic-pietistic neologisms that I long ago rejected!

At least let me hand on something genuine!

No it must be in the secrets of Torah

Those codes available only to those who have undergone

the ritual and moral purification demanded

The code of spiritual discipline that teaches the body to speak

The secret that all is encoded in the body

And precisely there the paradox of life manifests itself.

For in the moment of birth and growth

Is encoded the lifespan and genetic map

Of where and whom and when things will take place within

The diseases and loves, addictions and desires

Right there within, albeit cellular.

Yes I must turn him towards the inner space

Where the paradox of micro and macrocosm remains

Where the divine remains accessible through refining the

ancient arts of listening

To the pulse the breath the flow of body fluids

Even in decline and especially in illness

His presence is felt most.

And maybe, just maybe he or his children will understand better

Will grasp the true meaning of the paradox of human

suffering and divine pleasure

And all of our worship and effort thought the generations a long chain

Each link vital in transmitting those secrets

Embedded in the sacred texts and rituals

Will have contributed to their future understanding.

The Loneliness of Pain: Steps in Self-Recovery

Alone in the pain, dis-connected from loved ones in anguish

The limb the head the heart autonomous from my will

Each beating its own rhythmic lashes

On the most sensitive face of my soul

This inscription of the soul's hidden desire

And the body as instrument of torture.

What can this message be?

I remain alone even in deciphering the code

Some payment of a moral debt maybe

A ritual infraction, a long forgotten hurt maybe?

I rack my throbbing brain to think of something that will do

justice to this interminable

Suffering.

Is it possible for a moment for there to be no meaning to it all?

No ultimate design, no satisfaction by some accusing angel?

No district attorney waiting his smile to break

No judgement meted out by the gavel hitting the wooden

desk? At the end of the day?

Merely suffering for its own sake like the rows of bodies

wrapped tightly in grimy blankets

Along the sidewalk of Bombay streets as I speed to the

airport to escape these teeming masses

Each one surely in pain

Each one desiring a better life

Each one doing his or her own reckoning with the almighty

as to the meaning of their circumstance and its justice.

"Resist that at all cost, my mind interjects

For is it not more important to suffer for a reason

Can one at least bear it better?

With dignity even

But even this is too much for me as I situate myself once more

In a post-Holocaust age of technology and indifference

Suicide bombings of Pizza Huts in Jerusalem and Twin

Towers burning, bodies falling, etched in the soul forever.

No, for me meaning is a luxury I cannot afford and must

rest with the brute force of the facts, the reality as-it-is,

allowing it to work its devilish desire on my mind, yes I resist

For the sake of their memory

For the sake of my patients

For the sake of those who's suffering was pointless

'A mere act of nature' they said

'The force of Revolution' they said

'Social upheavals' they said

'The price we must pay for progress' they said.

Even 'what we must do to hasten the Messiah' they said.

For my mission is to remain in that space between the

Twin Towers, where meaning is as yet unclear,

I am the boatman who takes people across the river

I am the doorman who allows my patients in to this next corridor

With their baggage in hand

Making that path a little easier.

In this loneliness, of your pain

I reach out to you

I put my hand on your shoulder

I bless you to suffer well.

You are not alone

For in my soul I make space for you to enter

To feel my protection and care

To feel me feeling your anguish as real

I hold you close and wish you would feel more secure, so

that somehow you will take that leap into the abyss,

Knowing I'll be there for you,

Not letting go

That is my promise,

So you can fall well, into the abyss

Knowing I'll be there for you

Into the space of self-knowledge as prelude to a new awareness

Into the light of a new realization

That somehow in its typically uncanny way

Your soul knows

In some deep way

That this was meant to be

That this was not meaningless

That in some deep as yet impenetrable way

The travesty of this was appropriate

That there is a message to the pain

To the anguish

Yet to be unearthed

But present for you.

And that together we walk this path of pain

In this space I now hold you

Soothing your wounds along the way

Like a pregnant father sitting by the head of his wife in labor

Gently wiping her forehead with a wet cloth

And whispering loving words to ease her pain

To distract her spasms

Before the new life emerges.

In this space I know hold you

Soothing your wounds as best I can

But even more in the knowing

You and me

The wounded teaching the healer all along more than he

could ever learn alone

In that space between the Twin Towers

Between us

The divinity of presence

Between us

The sacred space of non-absurdity

Where we share the awareness of meaning and hold the

dignity of our suffering.

Blessings and Miracles

About 3 years ago I went in to this Rabbi for a blessing.

"He said why don't you bless your patients!"

I looked incredulously at him.

Are you kidding?

Me! Bless my patients!

What do you take me for!

Some clergyman!

And even if I do

They might think I'm giving them the "last rights" or that I

have some how given up on them or even having failed as

a physician! so instead am resorting to prayer instead of

medication!

But he persisted...

So, out of respect for him

I began to mutter words like "God Bless" at the end of

every session.

Those two words! At first embarrassed I kinda got used to

them after a while!

My gosh what a difference it made...

I had no illusions about myself - make no mistake

I remained a flawed human being

With no "sacred credentials" to presume such sanctity

As the power-to-bless...

All I was doing was following the advice of this Rabbi.

What is a blessing?

What does it mean to bless another

How can a blessing mean anything today, in the context of

technological and medical power, those incredible

advances we have made in medicine and the human

ability to cure disease?

How come we need to resort to age-old rituals and sacred

words in an age of such

advanced scientific medical advance?

To bless is to first and foremost to give

To give of one's inner self

From the depth of one's being

Beyond one's professional capability and medical or

diagnostic prowess.

To give from that place of vulnerability and woundedness

we all share

To give in a posture of humility

To lie side by side with the patient on his or her side of the

aisle

To relinquish the power invested in as a doctor

To become a healer and carry the burden of this suffering

in those words

Then it is to invoke

To surrender to the Higher Power that guides us all

To admit defeat in the presence of Him who givers life

To admit we can only do what we can do

To realize the limitations of our science and art and the

craft of medicine

To see the limits history and current research places on us

To admit we have only gone so far and no further

To surrender to our own limitations as human beings and

care-givers.

Then to it is to ask

Always asking for the gifts

Of life and light

Of healing and repair

Of the heart

The pure heart

To remove all resentment and fear

To bathe us both physician and patient

In the warmth of knowing and feeling the Presence

The gift of Providence

That all will be taken care of

That He is Present to this pain and suffering

That it has meaning after all.

Finally it is to bestow

The deeper connection

That I as healer am present in ways beyond the

prescription and the injection

The prodding and the poking

The examination and the words

The diagnosis and the categories

The X-Rays and MRI's

The mastery of the human body and pathology

The abilities and the lack

That I am present in my own woundedness and frailty

In my own humanity and mortality

For you the patient.

To connect in this deeper way

In the knowledge of my limitations

In the realization of my own pain

Reaching to yours.

And miracles?

Can these occur?

Are they real?

Can they be measured?

Can't everything just go away

Can't things go back to what they were before this crisis?

Can't we just make this a bad dream?

That never happened after all?

Maybe, just maybe

This terrible sickness is a gift

That shows you and I

In such a devastatingly real way

Just how miraculous our ordinary life was and is

What we took for granted all the while

As ordinary

Now seems so desirable and miraculous

The morning breeze

The deep blue sky above with white puffs of clouds

whispering by

The green, deeper-than-green lawn after a fresh rainfall

The flower that recently sprouted outside my window

The fresh scent of lilac or ivy unsuspectedly wafting by me

on a walk

The child giggling and cooing to its mother

The sounds of Glen Gould's Beethoven

The beauty of art and architecture

The magnificence of the largest body of fresh water

stretching to the horizon on a calm day, that incredible

Lake Michigan!

And the raging sea washing up on the rocks, such

awesome power.

The trickling sound of a brook as it cascades down a fall

The taste of goose pate as it first touches the palate in its

complexity of flavors

The deep red wine full of body and vigor sliding down so

creamily

The strength of good single malt with friends

The night sky full of myriads of stellar beings

Each looking down at me form such a distance they no

longer exist

The warm touch of my wife's hand unconsciously passing

over my face during the night

The feeling of that first hug when my darling children

return home

The feeling of safety when I am with my parents

The tear that wells up when a Pete Seeger song

accidentally crosses my consciousness (when flicking the

radio dial), surprising me from out of no-where!

The sense of holiness by the grave of the Saint in a godforesaken

hole in the Ukraine!

The sense of gratitude in waking up each morning alive

And that first conscious breath

That delicious sense of being

And knowing that I have been privileged to live yet another

day.

These are the miracles for me

The miracle of the ordinary-yet-not ordinary life

As I live it

The life I desire

The life I wish to return to

The life I took for granted for so long

For so many years

The life I now see as so precious

And so miraculous

I ask to be granted a little more time

To live that life

That is the miracle for me.

The Four Who Entered the Orchard

The Rabbis taught: Four [Sages] entered the Pardes

[literally "the orchard."] They were Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma,

Acher [Elisha ben Avuya, called Acher -- the other one and

Rabbi Akiva.

Rabbi Akiva said to them [prior to their ascension]: "When

you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say,

'Water! Water!' for it is said, 'He who speaks untruths shall

not stand before My eyes' (Psalms 101:7)."

Ben Azzai gazed and died. Regarding him the verse

states, "Precious in the eyes of G-d is the death of His

pious ones" (Psalms 116:15). Ben Zoma gazed and was

harmed [he lost his sanity -- Rashi]. Regarding him the

verse states, "Did you find honey? Eat only much as you

need, lest you be overfilled and vomit it up" (Proverbs 25:16).

Acher -- the other one- cut down the plantings [he became a heretic].

Rabbi Akiva entered in peace and left in peace.2

1The Talmud (Chagiga 14b), Zohar (I, 26b) and Tikunei

Zohar (Tikun 40) report the following incident regarding

four Mishnaic Sages.

2Tikunei Zohar adds details not mentioned in the Talmud.

The ancient Saba [an old man] stood up and said [to

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai], "Rabbi, Rabbi! What is the

meaning of what Rabbi Akiva said to his students, "When

you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say,

'Water! Water!' lest you place yourselves in danger, for it is

said, 'He who speaks untruths shall not stand before My

eyes.' But it is written, "There shall be a firmament

between the waters and it shall separate between water

[above the firmament] and water [below the

firmament]" (Genesis 1:6). Since the Torah describes the

division of the waters in to upper and lower, why should it

be problematic to mention this division? Furthermore,

since there are [in fact] upper and lower waters, why did

Rabbi Akiva warn them, "do not say, 'Water! Water!'" The

Holy Lamp [a title accorded to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai]

replied, "Saba, it is proper that you reveal this secret that

the chevraya! [Rabbi Shimon's circle of disciples] have not

grasped clearly."

The ancient Saba answered, "Rabbi, Rabbi, Holy Lamp.

Surely the pure marble stones are the letter yud -- one the

upper yud of the letter aleph, and one the lower yud of the

letter aleph [an aleph in script is formed by an upright yud

at the top to the right, and an upside-down yud at the

bottom to the left, joined by a vav, the diagonal line

between them]. Here, there is no spiritual impurity; only

pure marble stones, and so there is no separation

between one water and the other; they form a single unity

from the aspect of the Tree of Life, which is the vav in the

midst of the letter aleph. In this regard it states, "[lest he

put forth his hand] and if he take of the Tree of Life [and

eat and live forever] (Gen. 3:22)...

The four

This group of four

Entering the orchard

The very unknowing of what might emerge at the end,

Fearless but with some trepidation no doubt,

Armed with only the desire to see and behold

The Schechina, in Her pristine ness

In Her glory and beauty

Powerless over this desire

They enter fearlessly

Together, then silence.

We remain ignorant as to what actually happened inside

Were there cries and screams?

Was there silence? or noise? of pain?

Inside, during those eternal moments

Inside this orchard, this paradise

Left with only a trace

The effect of that decision recorded in legend and text

Their lives inscribed in Talmud and Zohar

And liturgy, embellished in the matrix of sacred history

Inspiring countless generations of spirit seekers

Warning others to beware

All because of that fateful decision to enter, to taste to

experience the forbidden.

These men

These four men

Never the same again.

The experience to alter their lives forever

Only one emerges unscathed,

Only one picks up where he had left off

Back to school, teaching class

The weekend over,

The trip completed,

Return-to-work status.

But what of the others?

And why?

What really took place there?

We know little except

By all accounts

They were scarred for life

One dead, the other insane, another heresy,

This is what became of those less fortunate three.

So what did they "see" or experience

Could we speculate as to what happened?

Today drugs might do this.

Patients of mine on LSD have reported similar visions

and post –acid hallucinations lasting years.

Surely drugs can affect a person in such a way.

But I prefer an older metaphor

They saw such a trauma

They descended into such a hell

That only the demonic could have affected them so

violently.

(However we speculate can we agree it was violent?)

Four entered into Hell

Four were taken to Sheol against their will.

I mean who would want to go there voluntarily?

Surely we can surmise it was a forced migration

Transfer, deportation and Final Solution.

Yes; let us agree it was deportation or worse a death camp

What they beheld would make three quarters of them

insane, mad or heretical.

Four entered into Auschwitz, Belzec or Sobibor

Four entered but how many emerged whole? Only one.

Theoretically that could be the tentative meaning for this

place.

The term Paradise is then merely an expression used by

the Rabbis to hide the true character of the

trauma...lashon saginahor

A cleansing expression this "orchard" euphemistically

referring to a garden of delight

But so violent and horrific that the Rabbis spared us the

particulars, the facts, the trauma..

And of Akiva what happened?

Do you really think he came through ok? Yatza beshalom?

Wait!

Listen! Fast forward!

To the culmination of his life

His martyrdom

We think so holy

But for him it was nothing compared to a living hell

The lonely survivor of this 'orchard experience'

We know about survivors and their burdens

We know about the nightmares and long-term effects

We know about Post-Traumatic Stress disorders

(DSMI, II, III, and IV-category diagnosis after all;

Officially sanctioned by the American Psychiatric

Association-therefore it exists!)

And for some

Who survive

The better strategy is psychosis

For others, self-mutilation.

So the Romans raking his skin with iron combs and

crucifying him

As they burn him alive

Oh that story,

That martyrology, we read on Yom Kippur

Must be woven into this one;

The orchard on the one hand and the torture and death of

Akiva on the other.

For him this might have been less than we feel when

reading, less of a horror...

After all, he actually continues to teach his students during

the torture

About mesirus nefesh and the Shema our doxology

What gives him this power?

Of course

We may now understand his pain

For now he will be relieved of the living hell

A survivor alone without his three companions

after that so-called 'orchard experience'

Even this Roman hell is better than continuing.

Alone.

Four entered the orchard

One went mad

One committed suicide

One became heretical

And one yatza beshalom came out 'in peace'

But then could not continue to live in peace.

That is our post Holocaust Midrash our 'take'

On the Holy Rabbi Akiva

The single survivor

Four entered but in reality no one escaped Hell

Unscathed

None were the same again.

Only in Tears

The Vurker Rebbe got it right.

Only in tears.

No words. Insufficient. Duplicitous, devious, cannot do it

justice.

Entrapment by words,

words that indict,

words that sentence,

Words that mean two things,

language that conceals more than it reveals,

texts that remain forever opaque to dissection.

Like two lovers embracing, on a city bench, hard wood,

overlooking the River seine, at dusk, the bridges lined with

Victorian lights that flicker, these lovers have no need for

words, just clasped in each other with tears that well up,

tears of yearning longing and desire.

No words needed at the beginning and end of life,

for joy there are tears:

for grief there are tears.

Words remain inadequate at the two ends of life.

So too with God, all the praying, supplication,

benedictions, petitions, Glorias, Sancta's, Hail Marias,

breast-beating confessionals, all these sacred words

remain inadequate, failing as they do, to describe or even

approach the grand Paradox of God.

God in history, God in nature, God in psyche, these

oxymoron, non-sequitors, those meaningless word games

philosophical jargon, betraying only the fraudulence of the

author.

Subject/object, transcendence/immanence, incarnation/

tzimtzum polarities of good and evil faith and Auschwitz

these binaries pale before the atrocity of logic and

decency in the mind of the ultimate software engineer.

Even love, as our two subjects on the hard wooden bench

seem to demonstrate, even love contains such paradox

that cannot encapsulate the sublime experienced by the

groping arms, feelings simultaneously lived in, such as

fear, hatred, powerlessness, attraction, joy and death.

So the Rebbe invites us to jettison words and embrace

tears.

For each drop that slowly wells up in the corner of the eye,

waiting to grow until it descends down the mountainside of

the cheek to leave a trail of white salty tracings lined

vertically and in parallel, etched in the landscape and

contours of the maxilla like the ski marks in snow, contains

within a myriad of feelings most mutually contradictory.

Most sufficient to do justice to the complexity of human

emotion, unlike words.

It is these tears that provide the refraction and prism by

which to look out into man and history, God and dying,

love and hatred, joy and slow painful decline, and see the

utter enigma and uncanniness of it all, in a way that feels

right.

Through the distortion of the pear-shaped teardrop lines

begin to bend, reality curves, that which appeared

symmetrical, aligned, in focus, logical, now appears to no

longer give certainty as to what is real, what truly

represents history and truth.

In such a teardrop all the safety of rules, theorems, laws of

mathematics softens and gives way.

In the lived experience of the tear, its distortion,

I see the only possible strategy to hold my own paradox,

of sanity and

insanity, competence and failures, lies deceits and

betrayals,

To hold on to history and man to have faith in life despite

the horrors of torture and death.

In the tears of the Vurker Rebbe, the deepest torah is

revealed.

Powerless Over My Pain

Finally something I just cannot control

MY PAIN!

Until now, I thought I could control all those little things in

my life.

Until now, I did!

My spouse, my in-laws, my kids, my boss,

Ways I could control by hook or by crook.

That was, until now.

This pain,

This bloody pain,

Will not leave me alone.

Despite the vicodin, the therapy

It eludes all manner of treatment.

Despite the doctors,

Despite the therapists, and pain management

The injections and epidurals

The pain lingers;

A gnawing aching, -at times- sharp like a knife,

At other times, a slow constant reminder of my own

mortality.

It defies me like no other.

It is demonic,

It charms and betrays me

Opening my darker side and my flaws

Like a crack in an otherwise flawless marble.

How could I possible see this as a friend?

As a counselor, as a teacher, as a gift?

Ridiculous!

But there you have it.

That which I cannot control

I must surrender to;

Like in battle. There comes a point when every

commander must make this decision.

To surrender or lose all.

This pain makes me go to places I never wished.

It forces me to confront spaces within I'd rather leave

alone.

Old wounds from childhood, memories from old traumas

There is no escape now.

I am forced to revisit all of this, my package, that which

makes me ME

The good and the bad in the mirror. I wish to see only the

bright side but this pain forces me to see the darker

image.

Old wounds now resurface, the abuse, the violent speech,

the abandonment perceived or real, it matters not now, all

come crowding in with this crazy pain.

All come to pay respects like a cast of characters in a play

after the final performance.

And it is in this powerlessness that I come to surrender.

An unfamiliar experience for me-the control freak.

So painful to relinquish anything to anybody since that

tender age, when abandoned by the fierce demands of

mother, and the failure of father to stick up for me, I made

that solemn oath NEVER again to rely on anybody,

anything, anyone, for my emotional health. Never again

could I TRUST the outside world never to surrender.

Yet here it is I am forced on the precipice between insanity

and pain

To surrender despite my oath.

To surrender my whole self-perception

That is what is being asked from me.

My illness, my pain is teaching me how to surrender.

Teaching me that I need to surrender to some Higher

Power and rely on that which is beyond me. Like a

prisoner I need to release all the old perceptions of self

and give in to that which I have no control of.

And slowly slowly to the degree to which I surrender to this

Higher Power I begin to feel a release, not more pain as I

had assumed, more a release from the grip of it, from the

lancinating knife going through me. And I begin to realize

that healing is taking place.

Not curing for there is no cure for my pain, but the

integration of my pain into something bigger than myself.

The slow realization that I being held by a larger thing or

archetype that allows me to hold my pain along with all the

blessings in my life.

The gift of my pain, the paradoxical gift of my life in all its

facets. This is what is being asked of me.

The Body In Pain

How to construct a new image

In light my recovery and divine intervention?

Re-visit old myths and texts in a new key.

That of salvation

For I have been saved

Not in the local spiritual meaning, far beyond that

But physically, emotionally and soul saving

In a divine act of grace and charity.

Within the pain I watch the body react

And see and perceive the miracle of daily improvement

The breath becomes longer the weak legs get stronger the

aching spasms of the left chest wall remain but respond

better to the heating packs

I also need fewer painkillers.

And realize that I am so powerless over everything in my

life, the accident as well as the speed of recovery,

privileged to have those who love me care for me in

powerlessness,

That these processes are set in the laws of physics and

molecular biology over which I have no control, that I am a

mere participant through which these laws are incarnate

yet I am able to document and watch closely as if I were

interpreting a text: The body as sacred text.

But how to live with the gnawing fact of something divine

in my salvation is the challenge; you know my tradition

does not handle salvation and crucifixion talk well! But

there you have it, a sister canonical text that embodies

notions of suffering and passion, salvation and new

insights. (Simone Weil may have seen this better than

anyone in the last century), but today I prefer Elaine

Scarry's meditation on pain and its currency in the

mythical and political landscape.

And how to live each day differently in the face of this

dimension?

For me it is clearer as the days go by¦

Live my vocation better

I am a healer

And in my healing I must add this new dimension of grace

and blessing;

For as I healed slowly and painfully daily

I realized the blessing came in and through the body of

pain and nowhere else.

Only in the body of pain could I locate meaning and

divinity

Not beyond

Not out there but very immanently within.

The incarnation is active and well. Tzimtzum has a new

dimension.

So my task is clear

To bless others and open their hearts to their pain

To see the divine within themselves albeit paradoxically

Feel the pain its length and breadth its quality and duration

and in the feeling

See something a message of grace.

For as Rabbi Nachman tells us God hides in the very

hidden spaces where you expect Him least

And not only that He hides His deepest secrets there! In

the most unexpected places to avoid the "Other side".

Yes I must teach my patients from my own pain

How see their own divine nature within

By blessing more

By being a conduit for blessing and divine succor.

Prayer of the Survivor

Rabbi Nachman's foremost disciple and scribe, Reb

Noson, explains: "When the verse states 'ein ode milvado,'

it means to say that nothing exists but God. Above and

below, in heaven and on earth, everything is absolutely

naught and without substance - although this is impossible

to explain, but can only be grasped according to the

intuition of each person" (Likkutei Halakhos, Matnas

Sh'chiv me-Ra' 2:2).

Lord,

It is difficult

After all that's happened,

to hold on

To that experience of closeness to You

I had in the ICU

Life becomes ordinary

The grandfather clock keeps on chiming in my living room

And the morning mist returns each day now that it's

autumn round the corner

And selichos weather is about to descend with its early

chill as I leave the front door for shul.

But it cannot be the same

I have seen the angel of death

He looks like the front of a semi, in my car seat!

And my cracked ribs and shortness of breath

And persistent sleepless nights attest to his mark…

I have also experienced Your grace

And Your helping hand

And the kindness of your creatures the compassion of

your nurses and aides

All those who helped me

My children surrounding my bed

My wife and all my friends and well wishers

The prayers of the community and patients.

So how to live on after all this...

The feeling of bliss inside the pain

The knowledge of being alive in the haze of morphine

The sense of Your presence and privilege of having

survived

This ordeal

What now.

My Tikkun Chazot

My daveing

My immersion

The Tikkun Klali

The Hitbodedut

Uman

Those rituals that assisted me in purification

From a life steeped in the flesh

To loosen and jog and separate

Make a little space for another sensibility

Open the soul to the void and the silence

What becomes of them

Now that I have seen the 'other side'

And have come so close to death.

Where do I go now

That is my question



Post Trauma Depression

Loss

Slowly the awareness of the post period

That space in time after

The aporia

Returning to normality but

It cannot be the same.

Funny how the inner spirit has its own time and periodicity

My 90 days of abstinence for instance

Did Not coincide with Elul and Teshuva neatly.

In the absence of Uman

The fall comes quickly

What was it about that pilgrimage?

Just the trip and the obstacles?

Just the suffering of the place?

Was that what helped?

Anyway this year I remained

Locked into my pain

My chest and ribs the arbiter of no-journey

And the fall came quickly.

Trying not to condemn right now

Trying to see the light within

As divine

And the importance of listening to this inner voice

Over that of authority

Didn't I always have this problem with authority!

Where to go now?

Don't I still need those tools that helped me in the past?

Breslov, recovery, analysis?

The trinity of spiritual aids?

Or do I need a new therapy now

To help me through this post trauma?

Some new abstraction

Seeing the divine in the pain and wound itself

Gives one a new authority

A new way of seeing the world

In the body of pain.

Behind the Body In Pain

Behind the body in pain

Behind the swirling thoughts

As to where, why, and what

The future, the past, and survival

Beyond the bed and the paralysis

The body in pain

Beyond even that

I felt a presence

An inner spirit behind all that

Present to whatever was taking place

A sense of awe

Despite

And this spirit was not "out there"

No, it was within.

Since then I have acquired a new authority

Not in any material sense

Nor even that of power

Morality or hierarchy

Merely an inner authority

As if I wish to be present to that place

And in contact with that spirit

I had never known before.

The Godliness within you may call it

Divine immanence

"memale kol almin"

But I fell into the trap

Thinking that now these new spiritual credentials

Would allow me off the hook

Free now of the things of this world

Free of all addictions to work and love and objects out

there

But the evil one is there too

Waiting for moments of weakness as usual

Waiting to jump in at a moment's notice

To trip me up yet again.

So here after the fall

The post trauma fall

I am vaulted into reality once again

I have not changed essentially

The old ruminations and obsessions can return at anytime

The grandiosity and self-bloating

The feeling that the world revolves around me

The me-ness of it all

That which I felt as only superficial in that ICU bed

That which was in the front of

Not behind the feelings

Not the spirit within

Not the real Self

So back I go now

To the old and tried tools for recovery

The meditations and devotions

The ablutions and the prayer

The rituals that move

The immersions and baptisms

The song and connections to the brotherhood of fellows

The pilgrimage and confessions to the saints

No, I am not above this

Despite the fools errand of thought

Despite my new credentials

And near-death experience.

So humbling isn't it!

No free rides even now

After it all

No easy road to heaven

The toil and spiritual work begins anew

Like the New Year

The Shadowy One

"Perhaps everything that frightens us is something

helpless that wants our love." Ranier Maria Rilke

Despite running to PT massage even chiropractic and

acupuncture I feel whipped. MRIs confirm the objective

facts But there remains a deep gap between the pictures

and my experience of the pain.

Yet I was trained to treat other’s pain so expertly! And daily

go about listening for the specifics of their disease Years

and years of listening to pain then diagnosing and making

differential diagnoses What it might be what it could be

ruling out this or that... then To decide where and when my

intervention might alleviate their suffering. But for my own

pain, despite the knowing! Powerless!

So what is this disease teaching me? You may ask. Slowly

it dawns on me that despite the knowledge of the pain It

still will not go... the pain continues... As if had I gone to a

psychoanalyst and heard the root cause for my emotional

disorder That in itself, the very understanding of the

process and etiology of the disorder Will NOT make the

neurosis go away! One needs years of analysis!

So what will make this go away! Maybe, just maybe The

incarnation of the knowledge IN THE BODY A kind of body

awareness, not mind awareness The way the pain and

illness was originally incarnated into the soma Into the

symptoms, into the very corpus I call my body So too the

healing must come from the body and be released from

the body Letting go of the pain in the body.

I cannot do this alone. I can only accomplish this by

surrender. The little 10 year old, arrested in his or her

development must be taken by the psycho- analyst in the

above example, By the hand, loved and caressed despite

the behavior and neurosis... What we call “transference”...

and allowed to mature over time, ever so slowly In the

safety of the therapeutic relationship.

I think here too my pain must be allowed to be felt fully, to

ripen and mature And be surrendered to (see my essay on

mesiras nefesh and Rabbi Akiva)

This is the Higher Power we call divinity This is what

prayer is about Surrender and turning this pain over to

Him. King David’s Psalms are full of pain!!!! (Psalm 23

attests to his utter surrender despite the pain) And of

course, lest we forget

The psalms are meant to be sung! The rabbis wonder as

to why some of them are called psalms at all!! rather call

them dirges! Some of them! Yet the paradoxical answer is

that it is precisely in the pain That David sings to God Of

his pain and of his pursuit by his enemies and his hunger

and thirst Of all this he sings!!!

So here is my answer too To sing of my pain, paradoxically

To surrender to it Not fight it Not medicate it But listen to

the crying child inside who wishes to be heard Listen to his

message Above all, listen For being ignored is worse than

death for this little 10 year old.

And God said to me, Go forth: For I am king of time. But to

you I am only the shadowy one who knows with you your

loneliness and sees through your eyes. He sees through

my eyes in all the ages.

-R. M. Rilke, Book of Hours