Upsheren 2009

This piece of heaven

this godlen-haired boy

now three years of age

having arrived at that moment

having been prepared for the haircut

the upsheren the shearing

the first haircut

of his precious life.

The long hair is golden and soft like fleece

it curls naturally and jumps when he does

although slower coming down to rest on his shoulders a

second later

like a mythic young greek god

he prances around in wild abandon.

How we invest our hopes and dreams on our little ones

and the women look on

as the men do their rituals of rites of passage

a mythic journeying of pain and transformation

like the Bris not so long ago.

Somehow this was more painful

as we cut and cut

snipped away as he looked on

knowing this was his moment

as the father and grandfathers blessed him.

But we leave the peyos to signify

this hassidic custom that has leaked into our world

an identification that this child, this boy

has his hair removed to reveal his peyos

his sideburns; an identification of ethnic belonging

to his people at this tender age.

His long flowing golden peyos were the very comfort

not all was shorn

not all was lost

the very cutting and esthetic of removal

the loss of his infancy and the grief of that loss

the entering into the age of education and collective

impressioning

the cultural molding and ritual training

was somehow mitigated by the wildness of these golden

locks

as if it signified his resistance to the power of the collective

the violence of the collective.

The next day it dawns of me as I visit that they too have

been cut

the long flowing golden peyos

a secondary loss

much worse

I say nothing

do nothing

after all

I am to be a doting grandparent

but in the car to work

the next day

I weep uncontrollably.

What is this about?

you may ask.

Where does this grief come from

what have you invested in this wunder kind?

that has evoked so much pain?

And as the week progresses it slowly unfolds

the hopes for this child

the projections

the dreams and aspirations

and the powerlessness to be other than the doting Dada.

And I must learn

this too

as I reflect back on my own Dada

in Kingsbury London

each sunday as we visited

his bear hug of my small frame as I buried myself in his

loving arms

surely he had his own desires for me

vastly different from the hidebound orthodoxy of my

father’s oberland

flavor of Ashkenazi rite

far from his natural mysticism (he liked Whitehead).

Now in the next generation I am only his Dada

and I must learn this again and again.

I must accept what is not in my power

I must love despite

and be available despite.

But what of this pain?

the floods of tears must have meant more than my petty

selfishness

and self-centeredness

of wishing yet another child in my own image

Surely I have learned that bitter lesson over and over

again

Beaten into submission and admission of my failures.

Having sacrificed my sons on the altar of my/their culture’s

expectations

I have learned and have no wish to perpetuate this

violence on anyone again.

I am truly satisfied to leave alone and let grow

the flower has its own seed

and we are here only to water it

but surely that is the point with what kind of nutrient?

And there is the pain

the cutting a second time

to conform with the local

yeshivish notion of propriety

watching this happen

as an indication

of what is to come

and what he is to be

and what will be done to him

cut me as well, deeply.

The insanity of conformation

the violence of the collective

the refusal to listen to other voices

the insistence on local petty custom as reality

in the face of my experience of truth as broad and tolerant

cutting across party lines and ritual behaviorism

all this pressed in hard this week.

But in the warm waters of the mikveh

we wash away all resentments and fears

we bathe in Her calming uterine humors

and we realize that this too is part of life

and passage and transformation.

My job is only to bless and bless again

to wish this holy child will find the secrets

and remember me as I do my beloved Dada

and see his guiding hand so many decades later.

Fathers and Sons

Mostly I avoid the pain

buried in work and self

but now and then it surfaces

this violence we perpetrated

on our children

in the name of religion

and education

and morals

Mostly unacknowledged transmission of what we received

ourselves mostly stuff we got from our parents

the rage and anger all in the name of parenting of course.

So now when we meet

the sins of the fathers are evident in the lives of the sons

having sacrificed them on the altar of our expectations

hoping they might, no will not, mess up like we did

if only we push harder just a little

more piano practice, more talmud

"just finish shas and I will give you this or that"

any coercive gift

any seduction to achieve the goal

of mastery, of some status in another world long lost

or impress some bearded scholar.

Thinking-like my parents- that this will guarantee success

and survival hoping this will end up with a better outcome

like some statistical FDA study moving the variables a little

here and there to affect the outcome

and prove to the committee of its significance

and survive the financial drought with another grant.

In these moments

the guilt surfaces too

and the powerlessness of it all

now that all this has come to consciousness

as if we are so predetermined by our culture and parenthood

our archetypal roles as fathers

participating in some kind of mythic epic role as Abraham

and our sons as Isaac

a theatre that has played for thousands of years.

but the deed has been done

and they are off somewhere in some place working

through their pain and abuse in some far away city alone.

the deed always carries the burden of its residue despite

the pleading of the perpetrator and begging for forgiveness

it must work itself through the machinery of cause and effect

the neurons are damaged

the end plates fractured

the synapses forever distorted.

Only time will move things

jiggle those synapses

and eventual parenting.

As parents they will finally see themselves as I did

and realize the trap we are all in.

Only then

like with me

will they forgive and open the heart to compassion.

Until then I must live with this

and carry this burden

and watch them from afar

in grief for what I have done

in holy pursuit of God texts and piety.

Teardrop

You can see when it is about to happen:

the eye gets a little reddish

then a tiny ooze forms in the inner corner

swelling slowly into a teardrop

as the emotions wash over the heart

and the pain creeps up like a soft blanket.

The tear forms, pear shaped

then gravity exerts its voice

drawing it downwards across the cheek’s terrain

the sandy golden landscape like the Sahara

leaving a trail of moisture in its wake

until it reached the cliff’s edge

and then drops precipitously.

This tear is but a drop

but a drop in the ocean of human tears

that endlessly accumulates.

Mankind does not learn

each inflicts pain on another, weaker

a food chain of suffering

long debated and agreed upon

as to its taboo

nevertheless the deep instinct within to inflict it goes on

unchecked.

But do animals cry?

do tears well up in the cat?

do they inflict pain for the pleasure of it?

do massacres occur in the chimpanzee population?

we think not!

My tears form easily now just like hers

as she recounts her story

the story behind the story

the story behind her history

her chief complaint.

The pear-shaped tear

contains all her pain

the world’s suffering

the family anguish

someone must bear this of course

just like someone must laugh it all away.

The drop is discrete and isolated

soon to be wiped away by the controlling mind

the socialized soul

the embarassment of revealing the heart;

but for that moment, that instant

beyond her control

that salty drop told me everything.

A drop in the ocean of tears

we are each that teardrop

each so discreet

yet part of the sea

and affected by its saltiness, its pollutants

its pH and temperature

pushed and pulled by its currents.

That teardrop coursed its trajectory like the path we each

must follow

from its birth in pain to its pear-shaped formation

then leaving the mother eye

as it descends along the cheek, leaving home and leaving

its salty outlined trace until

it falls off the precipice into the void.

But we are told not one is lost

as the Rebbe of Vurke stood motionless before the ocean

of tears

transfixed

bent over his cane like a shaman

pointing to the ocean of tears

refusing to enter the Garden of Eden

until

until what?

the good Lord would dry up the ocean of tears.

to put an end to all tears everywhere for good.

But what the of the past?

can we ignore what happened?

can we forget?

can we imagine it never happened in this frenzied

Messianic dance?

Who will cry for the memory?

who will shed a tear for each martyr?

unjustly tortured or raped

murdered and pillaged?

will the Rebbe just pack his cane and enter the pearly

gates?

She wipes her cheek and continues the narrative

focusing on the symptom

and the technical aspects of her illness and the moment

has passed

but in that space

in that instant

all was revealed to me

her past

its impact on her present

and the diagnosis magically appeared.

Shofar: Uman 2009

Amidst the silence of 15,000 men breathing in expectation,

the Halachic anxiety reigns- until now.

The central core of Rush Hashanah- this year only one

day on Sunday- will shortly be fulfilled,

the obligation to blow and hear the shofar and it’s shrill

sounds.

The text reads: lishmoah kol shofar

to listen to the Kol of the shofar- the sound of the shofar

it is not music; it is a sound, a piercing note that cuts to the

soul of the listener.

But wait! It is more complex than that.

The voice or sound is broken, punctuated by the very

rests-the absence of sound- into rhythms; a syncopation.

So sound and rhythm but no music?

No sequence of varying tones? No.

It is not a trumpet, it is not a musical instrument,

it can only convey the product of one of pitch.

So what is the message of this strange hybrid of sound,

syncopation, rhythm but no variation in pitch?

The midrash teaches us this is designed to awaken the

divine. In one poignant text we are told He gets up from

His seat of justice and moves over to the seat of mercy.

The question however remains who is doing the blowing?

Of course literally it is the Baal Tekiyah-our representative

down here among us in the congregation.

and who is doing the listening?

the midrash would have us think of the Almighty!

And who is meant to hear Israel’s sounds?

The penitent doing his Teshuva, yes again at the literal

level. On the plane level the mitzvah-the commandments

to blow,

and for us who must listen, for this is the hallmark unique

to Rosh Hashanah rituals

to hear the hundred sounds of the shofar but,

clearly it is not only us.

Rather than the moralistic-pietistic version of “awaken ye

slumberers”

the shofar of this clarion call to awaken from spiritual

slumber to activity

it is that but much more;

maybe we are also being exposed,

allowed to listen in on the divine.

And not just the mechanics of His moving from one

cathedra to the other, from justice to mercy

although that too.

The Piacetzne Rebbe told us during the destruction of the

Warsaw ghettothat

if we are sufficiently empathetic,

if we suffer along side the divine sufficiently,

for Her pain and exilethen

we too can somehow be admitted into God’s private

chamber of weeping and participate in the divine Bechi.

So it dawned on me standing in the silence before the

shrill

among these men

in this Ukranian village

on this clear cool autumn day

in the 60th year of my life

that the sound of the shofar

is the cry itself

the Schechinah Herself

weeping for us

for mankind

for the brokenness of our lives

for her separation and exile from the divine her consort.

If so, our task is clearnot

only to be moved by Her sound

but to be present to her pain as well

as we gather here in the year 5770

in the ongoing long persistent exile of the Galut

literally and mythically we too participate in the divine

weeping

for mankind who remains alienated from man, from family

and from self.

At this moment I feel the unique fellowship of these 15,000

pilgrims

men from all backgrounds gathered here in emunah

to listen together and be by the Rebbe

who taught us how to listen,

to the Schechina weeping.

These men have taken leave of family, children, wives,

friends and congregation to gather here for this moment of

eerie silence before the blowing of the shofar,

the ram’s horn echoing Isaac's and all son’s perennial

question to their fathers “where is the ram?”

Where is the very sacrifice we continually make one

generation after the next, the repetitive cyclic or akeda

through history, for the sake of the fathers and the sake of

the Father the mythic repetition of suffering and affliction

our Rebbe demands we continually ask "ayeh haseh

laola"

Here some 15,000 sons ask where”?”

"Where are you Lord; in my life?"

"why are you so concealed?"

"How can i see You in my suffering?"

I need to fly 16 hours to a tiny Ukrainian village to feel

Your presence for a few moments,

a few cherished fleeting moments through the agency of

this shofar and my Rebbe.

At that moment-in the silence before the blowing

I feel Her Presence

Then She weeps piercing shrill notes of one pitch, no

variation, no melody, no counterpoint,

just one pitch that shatters the silent Ukrainian

countryside.

And for a moment

We are privy to a piercing of the iron curtain that separates

us from the divine.

A Sense of the Tragic

To have to bear the unbearable

how do I do this?

let alone teach my patients?

the tragedy that is of this world alone

this suffering life

this particular patient in extremis;

facing the pain of others

the failure of self

the pain of mere existence

of harms done to others

to even those I have loved

especially to my children

to the Self

a gnawing aching pain like the second one reels in one's

toe from a too hot bath

there follows a deeper slower agonizing pain- that oneknowing

this without worry of sentimentality

like when listening to Bach and suddenly the tears flow

uncontrollably without explanation as if he had unlocked

the mystery of the suffering world in one chord sequence.

and I know how true it is despite the distance over time the

secret remains alive...

but no one taught me how to bear it.

Why me?

Why my shoulders?

Nana had always said "he carries the world on his

shoulders" when I was three

A cry baby to my Dad who often was triggered by this little

sissy boy

who cried too easily for everything and anything

triggering his rage as to what this so-called son was

turning in to.

Yet I still cry when making love, unable to hold back the

pain

as if in the climax there is a secret being released into the

world from a mysterious place through the lovers

and we are powerless to resist this like the very act of love

itself

and are forced to transmit this crie-du-chat

despite ourselves

we are as mere porters.

and this sense pervades all my experience

nothing is free of its taint...

especially the sunsets over the lake

and landscapes in changing seasons

as if nothing is eternal

all must die and rebirth

all must leave and dissolve

and I cannot bear it nor hold back the tears.

But for me the joy was always intimately bound to not only

love but also death and the tragic poisoned all happiness

with the perilous concoction of ecstasy and torment.

And discovering the sacred was no refuge, for here too I

found the hierosgamos-that sacred union of good and bad,

light and dark sides, angels and demons, overseen by the

Almight Oneness the Presence where all is made clearmade

plain in one glance (skira) the whole of history, of

human suffering, of nature and survival, of violence and

animal behavior, human striving throught the lens of this

tragic focus.

This consciessness we called God once, forced me into

an even more unbearable awareness of the cosmic

suffering and divine pain which only raised the stakes

even higher seeing things from his perspective lightened

nothing comforted no one. And of sacred texts the longing

and yearning heightened the feeling that there were a few

prophets with the same sense.

The relief comes only in fleeting moments, a Scotch, the

climax, the music, the needle in the spine which demands

my total focus and concentration, aware of nothing but the

technique and watching that X-ray screen for my nonbiological

steel needle penetrating the vulnerable flesh as

it passes skin, fascia, muscle and dura to deliver the

sacred remedy.

And in most unexpected places it surfaces; triggered by

haunting memories a sequence of music, a word spoken

soflty in a movie, a patient's knowing look of anguish, my

sibling abused, ageing relatives after a time gap,

Above all-no one taught me how to carry all this.

Nana and Dada Revisited

I walk towards their tomb

sunny skies,

glorious London

June day,

rolling meadows,

puffy white clouds,

warm breeze,

London's green belt at its best.

The grave needs a cleaning,

I see two stones- someone has been to visit them and left

his or her trace in the stone on the grave,

a symbolic re-internment annually.

In the month of Tamuz I am but a few weeks away from

Nana's yahrzheit-appropriate to pay the annual homage to

the angel who saved me as an infant.

Funny how chicken soup substituted so well for infant

formula

funnier still how she knew what I needed.

I bend down and kneel by the grave's cold marble.

I am overcome with a wave-like grief that sweeps me

along its path.

In reverence for these two beings who were so old to me

when I was young

but now feel so close to me in age.

Dada was my current age when I was born, (not so farfetched

anymore)

as the decades pile up age recedes cleverly.

These were the only grandparents I knew (thank you Herr

Hitler)

and I am suddenly overcome with grief.

Despite the years (1980 for Dada and 1984 for Nana) I

conjure up their faces easily and smell dada's green

sweater and his special odor, a mixture of camphor, castor

oil and cologne.

His big arms welcome me at his doorstep with the usual

spoonful of this or that and a big hug.

His being larger-than-life for me and his sagacity lent an

aura of the patriarch and I honored him as just that.

Nana's hug was more intimate, she was so small and

fragile so I was the one who held her and my memories

are mixed with that year she spent looking after my twins

in Philadelphia.

I felt so connected to her organically and sensed in her a

knowing through the body and sensations, bound up with

her unconditional love for me and my twin.

Her hug,

her warmth,

her love,

I always felt undeserving of it.. The initial grief yields to a

torrent of tears as I come to realize my failed life, and my

having failed them. Nothing much to show for all these

years

despite having left these British shores with their blessing

some 35 years ago.They must have felt full of promise for

me and my career.

What can I say now,

how do I explain

how life meets out its particular brand of suffering to each

how there always seemed to be something tripping me up

destined to sabotage all efforts to the contrary.

But I am and continue to come here

to their resting place

In this one thing I have succeeded.

In loving them,

in my undying connection and unapologetic devotion to

them despite their dreams for me and my letting them

down.

So what remains for me is to say "All I can give you now is

my heart, as large as the world,

here, right now, as I lie on your gravesite" giving them

what is most precious, the very me-ness of I am.

And to say I love them eternally .

Slowly moving away from the overwhelming grief that

comes so rarely

in these numbing years

I find solace in their very presence

their absolute being here and reciprocity of love

a feel in the presence of their love tangibly

in the stillness of the moment

a knowing of the love they have for me in the silent breeze

of this warm afternoon

and I am comforted.

I say the memorial prayer for the sefardi rite and walk

away, comforted.

Prisoner of the Text

For Batya

Of course the last joke is on the reader!

Bible or Milton it matters not

having accepted it as a sacred text

we are now prisoners of the word, the logos

and despite awareness and "reader reception theory"

we are its victims.

we soak in its literariness

working out this or that meaning

that forever remains elusive

and bask in the tricks we find and gaps in the text

as if we have dis-covered a new layer of hidden meaning

hitherto unearthed

like amateur archeologists of the soul we dig and we dig.

Two trees

diplopia

double vision

two eyes

the text as mirror of our poverty

splitting

never got it right

always missed the point

for there were two points

isn't that the message

knowing and experiencing

guilt and forbidden pleasure

carrying the weight

forever

for a moment's indiscretion.

And we

Children of the readers

Prisoners of a different type

Housed in a maximum security cell block

Called Torah She Be al Peh

Where the outer limits of discourse

Frame and constrict us

Preventing escape into a dangerous field

Like the waters surrounding Alcatraz

Weighted down by generations of prior readers

With long beards and authority

What shall we say?

How do we read anew?

How can we interpret truth after the end of truth?

And we can no longer be silent

Like good English polite schoolboys

In their maroon uniforms

And skullcaps

And long socks

And short pants

To the master who fondles

Or the rabbi who decides the true interpretation

We survivors

Children of survivors

Our diplopia is hard-wired

A new generation of genetic mutants

We cannot see but double

We cannot make love in the singular

We have a new declension and a new grammar to fit

We make love in the plural to a double visual ghost.

So Adam may have been correct after all

From his perspective there were two trees

In the midst of the Garden

In that mid-point where there can only be one

For he described a new geometry

And put Aristotle to sleep

And we are forever condemned

To love and seek both.

A Lone Voice

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog

from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with

muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the

sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the

white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen

wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my

East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My

noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love

would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted

now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle

the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden

If a person who has risen to the holiness of silence should

lower himself to a particular form of divine service, in

prayer, study, the limited problems of morality, he will

suffer and feel oppressed. He will feel that his soul , which

embraces all existence, is being pressed as though with

prongs, to surrender her to the lowland where everything

exists within a prescribed measure, to the narrowness of a

particular path, when all paths are open to him, all

abounding in light, all abounding in lifeʼs treasures.

OROT HAKODESH VOL II P 307, Rav Kook

The Holy Izhbetzer comments on “I am earth and ash”,

that to grow spiritually, you need both. Some of our Jewish

leaders have made a complete religion out of the ashes of

the Holy Six Million. But ashes alone are just not enough

to nurture the neshama. You need the earth also to build

strong roots.

On the one hand I cannot forget what happened in

Europe. On the other I know that I have to help rebuild a

new world. What’s a holocaust memorial? Is it the last will

and testament of the six million to have a memorial? Their

last will is that we yidden should be yidden. Unfortunately,

many yidden give two million dollars to a holocaust

memorial while their own kids don’t care about being

Jewish. Inconsistency in one’s emotions or thinking is a

human quality and a very honest expression of one’s

humanity. A deceitful person attempts to reconcile

contradiction through conniving reasoning and by

stretching the truth.

My goal is to turn people on to Yiddishkeit or whatever

other religion or spiritual path they were born into. And to

make frum (religious). Jews conscious of our world

mission. Orthodox Jews keep G-d’s commandments but

have trouble accepting their responsibility to help make

this a better world for all of humanity. On the other hand,

the enlightened Jews who came out of the ghetto sought

to achieve social responsibility but completely neglected

the commandments.

Rav Kook taught that the so called secular Jews by

settling in and building the Holy Land, were guarding the

body of the Jewish people, while the religious Jews were

watching its soul. Today the body of the Torah, the laws,

are being guarded by the religious Jews, while the soul of

the Torah, the fire of its teachings are being watched by

the so-called secular Jews. We orthodox Jews have to

deliver G-d’s message to the entire world and that’s why I

travel to a place where there aren’t that many Jewish

people now. That’s why I came to Poland. It’s a place that

has especially bad memories for our people. But that’s the

very reason that it makes Poland a prime choice for

change. In the Bible we find that Shechem is the city

where Dina was raped. Years later it was the city where

the brothers sold Joseph and the split of the twelve tribes

began. But it’s also the headquarters for the tribe of

Joseph who symbolizes the start of the redemption. So the

greatest tribute we can offer to the Six Million is to return

to the place of their eternal rest and swear to them that we

shall dedicate ourselves to spreading their values and

their dreams to the entire world. Holocaust memorials

have been turned into a business by people who haven’t

the slightest idea of who the pre-holocaust Jews were and

what they stood for. We cannot allow assimilated Jews

who speak in an alien tongue be our spokespeople to the

world. We must address the world in our own Divine

language. If I let out tztzis and payus everywhere, then

when I return to Germany, I let them out even longer. I was

in Hamburg once and a Jewish lady told me that I wasn’t

in Jerusalem where I could let my religion hang out this

way. I told her that in all the times I’ve been back to

Germany, no German ever made such remarks to me. Her

comments are, cholila, Nazi-like. The Nazis wanted to

wipe out our people and she wants to wipe out our

religion. Another time, in Hamburg, I walked into a

restaurant with a German TV reporter. He saw me eat

some fruit and told me, thank G-d you eat kosher, that he

had interviewed a famous Israeli pianist the week before,

who ordered ham and cheese. I felt a sigh of relief, he told

me. Thank G-d, the Fuehrer didn’t succeed and there are

still Jews who are proud to be Jews. We frummer Yidden

can make such a Kiddush haShem with our behavior, that

we can inspire the whole world. But first we have to clean

up our own act. A little Israeli boy once told me that the

reason he doesn’t go to a Jewish school is that he lives

near a yeshiva and he hears the children crying whenever

they get beaten by the teachers.

Any parent or teacher who hits children is, G-d forbid,

keeping Der Fuehrer’s way alive! G-d’s words can be

taught to our children and spread throughout the world

only in a loving way that is completely free of all anger and

hatred.

The Shoah: The Holocaust and helping to rebuild a new

world By Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach on April 29, 1989 - כ"ד

ניסן תשמ"ט

Majdaneck, Poland 5749 Originally transcribed for

Connections Magazine by Rabbi Sam Intrator

I fear we have forgotten. I fear we have betrayed your

memory. I fear we too are lost.

Where our President speaks of the Koran and ignores

history where inside we are empty where even our

theologies fail us your voice seems so far away.

What yiddishkeit? What kind of healing did you mean? That

nostalgia for the shtetl? Surely not! The high moral ground?

You were way beyond that pietism!

In Spertus today I watched lazily as third generation old

ladies volunteered and wandered around busily with that

patronizing Mona Lisa smile doing their chesed work

disconnected from ritual and myth in their do gooded-ness

but there is no mezuza on any door in this multi million

dollar edifice to perpetuate Judaism.

And I think of myself lost in this world. drowning in the

twitter and chatter of the day worried about his speech in

Cairo and Buchenwald “to the victims that died here” as

if...Poor fellow...Prisoner of his own rhetoric!

What did Hitler teach us? A lot, I fear. These bastards of

history are our only teachers. and the history of violence

and war seems to be the real lesson with moments of

peace interspersed. Look at Napoleon before him the

world was never the same. The horror of the State invades

our consciousness.

But Shloime! You still believed in the message didnʼt you?

the “light unto the nations” gag appropriated by secular

zionists so conveniently and the myth of superiority! What

now? After 60 years of colonial rule? How is our moral

compass reading? Just look into the prisons and hospitals

and schools for the violence. Nothing has changed! We

appropriated the state apparatus as well.

No, my teacher, I fear the change must come within.

Today 60 years ago Albert Schweitzer visited University of

Chicago and 5000 people came out to visit him! he too

was a hero. Nobel Prize laureate Bach musicologist,

pianist, organist physician and theologian. Yet 40 years

ago today was the massacre at Tiananmen Square and

during WWII today many US soldiers died in a bloody

Midway naval battle in the Pacific. Today the evacuation at

Dunkirk ended. Today today today going back remains

bloodied.

Today today each day each day assimilated Jews get

further away and we the faithful? Where are we going?

Further into the Talmud? Our legal texts, our rhetoric of the

past? Into Halachic minutiae? Anything to avoid the deep

chasm within?

Stop waging yesterdayʼs battle my friend! The war is

over...Out there let the inner battle begin. Start worrying

about our own inner betrayals deceits and lies. Fix the

inner world first. Close the blogs shut down the libraries

seal the Beis Midrash.

And in the silence let the deafening screams penetrate let

the pain ooze up from the bloody ground the centuriesʼ

martyrs of all races have their say let the memories bubble

into the landscape the horrors percolate into the bloodstream.

Let a new consciousness arise where the only command

shall be “let the other live” no matter what the

consequences.

You Speak of God

The Denial and Acknowledgment of Faith

There is such a thing as denial of faith that is like

acknowledgment of faith.

And there is also such a thing as acknowledgment of faith

that is like denial.

A person may acknowledge that the Torah is from heaven.

But his picture of heaven is so distorted that it contains not

even a trace of true faith.

On the other hand, a person may deny that the Torah is

from heaven. But his denial is based only on what he has

learned from believers whose minds are filled with empty

and confused thoughts. As a result, he decides that the

Torah must have a higher source than that. And so he

seeks its source in the greatness of the spirit of humanity,

in the depth of ethics and in the Torah's spirit of wisdom.

Although this has not yet brought him to the heart of truth,

such a denial is considered acknowledgment. And it

steadily comes ever closer to faith.

A confused generation of such people must certainly

improve.

This question as to whether or not the Torah is from

heaven is merely one example that illustrates all questions

of faith, general and particular: the relationship between

how they are perceived and their core being, the latter

being the goal of faith.

"There are many apikorsim who are deniers, in

accordance with the standards of Halacha. However,

when we examine their soul we will discover in them a

connection to the Divine content, in a hidden form. And

that is why in our generation there is a tendency toward

merit and kindness even toward absolute deniers.

- Orot Ha'Emunah, Rav Kook

How dare you!

Repeated offender you!

Addicted to taking His name!

Continually adding His authority, to your discourse.

You know better of course!

And I’m not talking of swearing!

I might have forgiven the heart of holy expletives

In the heat of passion. No.

No. I mean all this God-speak-

As if . . . you understand His will, His desire, His

personality!

As if . . . your texts, your theology, your logos

admits you to some secret gnosis

about Him.

As if… He backs your petty imitation piety

Giving you the authority you so desperately seek,

Or is it comfort?

Can't you see?

Havent you heard of Herr Dr Freud?

Hasn’t he finally cleansed you of your petty projections

of God "up there"?

Some CEO or spiritual accountant,

trafficking in good deeds.

Didn't you listen to Herr Rabbiner Wittgenstein?

(remember that foto of him and Hitler in kindergarten

together!)

Didn't he finally expose your holy discourse as mere

language games.

Hasn't Auschwitz made you reel?

And forced you to pull back those false projections of Him

La Nom-du-Pere and Rabbi Derrida

Did he not teach you to

Jettison those moralistic-pietistic glib responses

Dump the pseudo-frumkeit once and for all?

Are you still locked in to the pre-modern apologia?

Have you not raged against the darkness of the night?

Or is the anxiety of the past, the Text, the prior authority

figures-

Essentially your father's God, too weighty?

When will you stop abusing His Name?

It's forbidden, you know.

To even articulate the Tetragrammaton

Let alone write it!

Why do you think that even its translations like Gott or

God are any different?

The pious even remind us with a dash (G-tt and G-d)!

Yet you talk of Him constantly

In and out of speech, in your effort to connect and convert

Those from one addiction to yours.

At least admit you are powerless over organized frumkeit,

orthodoxy, denomination of your choosing, pastor rabbi or

whatever!

You say to yourself "if only" he would convert, become

frum, change his position to mine, "do" the rituals, walk the

talk, "believe" in God . . .

Then he will be saved, and my days work is done

In the name of the Lord.

And the others?

The so-called atheists?

What of them?

Are they damned? Like we are told on late night cable TV.

You know some of God's children don't believe in Him

In your conception of Him

What of them?

Are they truly damned? After all Hitler made no distinction

between communist or Rabbi

Trotskyite disciple or Hassid

Homosexual or pietist.

Will you be more exacting than the demon?

These do not practice the faith–of-the-fathers.

Don't genuflect on command

Bend the knees on page 22 of the Artscroll Siddur

Are not "upstanding" when told and "be seated" when told

by the pulpit Rabbi.

Some God's children lost their faith.

What of them?

They (unlike you) never took His name in vain!

They never even mention His name!

His name never crosses their lips.

They never even write His name on paper with a dash!

He never enters their discourse.

For them, there is only no-thing. Indescribable. Period.

Man needs to get on with the rest of it. Period.

These holy atheists.

Your Holier-than-thou piety

Seems closer to the Senate Missouri Lutherans than the

tradition of our fathers!

As if . . . on arrival in America you appropriated the worst

of local piety

And the easiest way to avoid the real question of the day.

As if . . . we can ignore the central issue that begs our very

relationship to the divine

As if . . . we can put Auschwitz behind us as in a family

spat.

Instead we wallow in self-pity, mea culpa, communal selfanalysis,

and cheap anti-secular shots to rationalize the

crime that fits this punishment-

As if . . . this will somehow allow us to move on with the

communal self intact and restored in the center of the

circle once more.

Where is God you might ask?

And in the Artscolification of Judaism

Some awaken to its bourgeois pettiness

Its middle class morality

Its Victorian residua

And see it at odds with tradition

Awakening as if from a coma of 70 years

Blurry-eyed, blinking and squinting from too much light

Slightly disoriented but awake enough to realize

Something is seriously wrong.

And in the search for meaning

A reflection of the state of play

A meta-analysis

We find that at the very heart of the matter

The core of this blindness

The cause for such a prolonged stupor

Was the mis-quoting

The mis-reading

The mis-identification

Of that GOD word-concept-idea.

This too needs purification

It too needs rehabilitation

From the years of atrophy and neglect

Worse the years of abuse and isolation

Like the hull or keel of a boat

Needs cleaning of its barnacles

Those crustaceous shells from the deep.

And we go silent on the GOD word.

We resist and refrain from its usage.

Taking it in vain, and with it

all its fake baggage.

For a while.

Allowing the old dust to settle

The old theologies to mummify, ossify,

Condemn them to Oxbridge, to a museum

Where the academics and intellectuals can discourse

In their common rooms over port.

Let time intervene in this period of word bans

Let a new post-denomination, post-orthodox, postgenocide

Description emerge.

Let God back into the center stage without controlling the

discourse

With no attribution

No naming

Just remain silent.

Let Him, the no-named One back into the center and

become Present

Just show up and sit on the sidelines

Admit defeat

Admit we know no-thing

Admit there is no discourse left

To describe the indescribable.

No literature or art that might do it justice

Admit our brain death our spiritual demise

That the whole modern enlightenment enterprise went

terribly wrong

That we are becoming half computers, half monsters.

To do that you will need to shut up.

Close the academies seal the folios, stop consulting legal

texts for your next move.

Stop in fact TALKING GOD.

LEARN FROM THE Holy Atheists!

Time

(A MEDITATION ON REB NACHMAN'S TORAH 33)

April 2009

Let it wash over you, like the surf on a lazy beach dayyour

hands clinging to the sand

Let it brush over your face like a gentle zephyr as you

climb over the green hilltop

Let it lighten the room like the sun finally revealing itself

with the passing cloud filling your dark book-lined study

through the window, in a beam of dusty particles.

Stop managing it!

Stop fitting your schedule into it all

those chores and errands, the appointments and

deadlines, the very day's work-if not,

the guilt of time's passage will not have been lifted once

again, and the Adamic curse leak into the night.

The inner kritik must justify today's existence to the court

above, or else there maybe no reason for tomorrow.

So you run and run from daybreak and the daf yomi 'til

nightfall when you drop

letting the fatigue and increasing inability to do what you

used to be able to "accomplish" in a day, relieve you of the

kritik for a while.

Stop trying to manipulate time-to cut corners to save time

to cheat and steal a few minutes (stealing maybe a felony

upstairs!)

Finally finally surrender

to time

realize it as a gift and participate only as an observer.

Stand on the sidelines and let sacred Time begin to affect

you slowly.

You well know the seasons and the months the equinox

and the passage of holy days

the cycle of tempers you resisted for so long for fear of

"pagan influence" into the pristine mono-theistic Biblical

faith of the Father. La nom du Pere!

Weren't you taught to ignore those astrological signs on

the side of the Machzor on Succos?

Finally open up to the crab and the fish and the goat and

those symbols reflecting a rhythm a metre and key and

tone that changes monthly.

Become open to the week of the sefirah (didn't Rabeinu

tell us it would affect us daily)!

Lord knows you suffered during "gevurah"!

Let the Shabbos finally invade your body

in its preparation without the usual panic and bad tempers

once thought by you as obligatory as the laws themselves!

let it already be savored in the Friday afternoon mikveh,

stay a while longer, feel Her Presence the Song of Songs,

chant slowly, feel the passion for Her

Psalm 107 and feel the Baal Shem Tov's teaching, ships

long out to sea finally coming home to port like your week.

Welcome the Bride with others and dance!

Let this holy time invade your senses with the light of the

Sabbath candles, the spices each sacred meal and the

red dry wine on the palatemarkers

in time like buoys in the channel pointing and

protecting small craft until they reach open waters again.

Agreed it is scary.

brought up to waste not a minute of time.

each fragment precious, a minute...even seconds wasted

to be accounted for in some future court.

Did not the Vilna Gaon keep a little black book of all the

wasted minutes he owed annually?

As if time was a commodity that had value like the billable

hours my lawyer clocks up on me monthly!

each minute measured and "clocked'

More like a magazine of bullets as it passes through an

old machine gun in a black and white movie.

Spitting out bullets from the front end while the magazine

passes through the rear to emerge empty, having

delivered its aliquot of death over time, yet broken down to

a single unit of one bullet a time.

And at the end of time itself we are to be judged as to how

we spent it like we spend money or bullets.

Did we "fill" it with appropriate activities, Torah and

Mitzvot? pious activities and charity or did we "waste" it

like water might be wasted or money.

In a market economy where spending is vital to the

capitalist system I found it hard to see time in any other

way.

Mother used to say in India during the hot lazy summers

you might ask somebody what he was doing and he would

reply "killing time and watching it die"

As if it were alive and might be subject to murder.

As if it were dependent upon us to maintain its life and

protect it from those who would kill it!

In suspending time during those pilgrimages

whether to Uman Lizensk or Mezhibuz,

I purposefully remove myself from the dimension of timeas-

I-feel-it

from its dominion and tyrrany

and, in the presence of the Zaddik

I am relieved of its burden for a few hours

(at great cost to health and fatigue)

to continue to do the work of recovery and Return.

I now surrender by giving up any hope of managing it.

I surrender the hope of keeping it alive.

Let it die and continue despite me.

I cannot carry such a responsibility anymore.

Time is a modern notion

history is an enlightenment concept (Hegel)

modernity ended in the gas chambers

let time be buried there too.

Let us open to the possibility of time as an independent

force of its own

a Divine force that splits into good days and bad days

through no fault of our own

born into a mystical cyclical story

fixing what previous generations failed

I now surrender and stand on the periphery of this Divine

drama.

As such I become open to new possibilities and allow time

to wash over me

brush over my face

its good and not so good parts

remember that sunlight pouring into the study also reveals

the dust-laden shelves!

but in surrender I can breath and savor the scent of

different days

and welcome time into me like never before.

Nana's Yarhzeit 2009

Mostly, I remember her voice...

A mix of british indian, with baghdadi intonation and

nasality

"wey julian ...you will go blind!" rings evermore in my ears

As she admonished me (out of pure love) for my

confession

In the mount aishel hotel bournemouth!

Her absolute unconditional love yet strict adherence to her

own (at times prudish) standards of right and wrong.

I could never master that balance with my own kids.

As the years pass

As the annual pilgrimage to her resting place clocks its

own memories

(this year with charles so sick, bless him)

Clocking its own biography

Nestled in the rolling meadows and grazing cattle of

london's green belt

I age too.

Yet in this, my 60th year I feel closer to her than ever.

Back in my life

In the web of professional and personal matrix

Each patient I lose is Nana

Each loss I experience is framed archetypically by her loss

In pain and grief she is my compass.

If I ever need to retrieve tears

To evoke grief

I merely think of her

Her tiny frame her intense eyes

Her frailty, her energy, her commitment and above all

unconditional love of her family.

As a teenager I remember hugging her small frame

Enveloped in my arms so easily

Then some 20 years later,

Watching her hold my own twins in the white rocking chair,

philadelphia

and feeling such pride

For having my own grandmother come from across the

ocean and spend a year with us.

Only now do I acknowledge my parents' faith in me.

That year the pride spilled over into humble recognition of

the larger picture.

I had "produced twins in 1981 the way my own mother had

twins in 1950 and here Nana was again;

Nana coming to the rescue!

How mythical!

Nothing else produces the flow of tears like the memory of

Nana

Nothing else such grief

As if at age 1, inscribed into my very flesh and mind was

her salvific grace-her showing up after weeks at sea

bombay to portsmotuh was it?

Dada in tow, to save the little julian growing pale and

losing weight with her dose of chicken soup.

She evokes for me the shechina, mama rachel, mother

dear, matronisa, maternity, the great mother archetype,

But all the positive features of the feminine archetype with

none of the darker threatening aspects.

In Nana I find refuge

In Nana I find comfort

In Nana I find solace and peace despite my own unending

torment

In Nana I find hope in her eternal energy and fierce

devotion to her progeny

Her utter faith in heaven and her optimism for the better

day to come.

Her belief that one day she would win the pools and would

distribute the cash to her children and grandchildren

It happened on more than one occasion in pounds here

and there

But what abides is her pride in winning.

I pray she has finally found peace knowing her

grandchildren and great grandchildren and descendants

Remember her and adore her for her love and devotion to

us.

And as we enter the month of her yahrzeit her hillula

The auspicious day of gateway to elul and "ani ledodi

vedodi li"

I had a dream of her

Coming to me

And as I reach out to her

She has come to me as a gift

And in the tears between us I cry out

"we will never forget you Nana you are inscribed in my

bones

your love is written in my heart your care is flowing

through my veins

and written in my flesh and Nana echoing my breath"

And as I age

No memories fade

No images disappear

On the contrary the stark releif of my own biography

focuses sharply and better when seen with Nana as my

background.

God bless you Nana in gan eden.

Burning Up Inside (Bira Doleket)

God spoke to Avraham: “Go you from your land ....” R.

Yitzchak began... This may be compared to one who was

traveling from place to place, and he saw a burning

mansion. He said: Is it possible that this mansion is

without someone responsible? The owner of the mansion

looked out at him and said: I am the master of the

mansion.

So, was our father Avraham saying: Is it possible that the

world is without someone responsible? God looked out at

him and said: I am the master of the world.

(Midrash Genesis Rabba 39,1)

In This World, only intensive labor propels a person from

one level to the next. This is the meaning of what is written

(Bereishit Rabba 39), “burning courtyard (bira doleket)”:

Avraham learned that everything must be in its resting

place and at its root. However, the blessed God replied

that His blessed will is that in This World there will be only

effort and no rest.

Absolutely baffled by its power Worse, my powerlessness

Year after year, month after month Holding out as long as I can

Then the fall. A pattern in time A pattern of the body itself

The mansion has its own rhythm

A cycle of powerlessness.

What is this bira doleket within? This towering inferno of

desire? Overcoming the entire field?

Abraham asks the same question when looking out into

the world And seeing its conflagration Questioning an

intelligent design Until God responds

Ani hu baal habira

“I am the owner of the village” I am the master of this

house! But how does this help the old patriarch’s

theological question Of theodicy? Who could possibly

allow this to go on?

God does not reply with a reason for the inferno Merely

establishing his authorship and ownership

So what is the perennial answer for the fire itself Why the

world continues to rage in flames? Apparently that is left

for us, Abraham’s descendents To dis-cover.

The reason for the fire? You want me to answer? After

such a long exile! And crematoria!

An answer? Are you Crazy! Any answer is an affront to

their memory. Let us rather concentrate on my

inflammation, character defects That way we have a

playing field A field of discourse that is more manageable.

Burning mansions in my body

(Sefat Emet, Lekh Lekha, 634)

Sucking me into the fire Carnage of the soul in the

aftermath The blackened timbered shell Next day In the

cold light of day Where the insanity is made plain for all to

see The wreckage of the rage The splattered fragments of

the self Charred splinters of wood, blackened timber

Strewn across the street Where visual acuity is 20/20 In

contrast to the blindness of the previous night.

Is the meaning of this mansion on fire inside That God is

its master too? Master of His domain That even I

In this lowly state In this body Must surrender even this

The very obsession itself, the insanity, The defects of

character, the lies, deceits and betrayals All of this

baggage to Him! Could it be that buried in this Midrash is

the reflection back onto His watch Of all my life even the

bad?

“Ani hu baal habira”

He exclaims! “I am master of the house, the mansion, the

village, your body-self All of it! The good and the ugly.”

And if the gaze was the trigger The lit match cast

inadvertently into the dry brush The inappropriate stare

The lingering look A spiritual visual dysfunction-mainly

taking place in the darkness; Then maybe the rectification

the fixing and refining of this defect Must also emerge from

the visual, an imaginative restoration. The fixing must take

place in the very images-but within rather out there. What

does She look like? How do I relate to Her? To beauty,

music, passion, to the very flames?

What immortal image did I behold as a fetus? Alongside

my sister. The fateful vision that would transfix my

imagination forever? Who did I recognize as “ze eli” Why

do I continuously search the planet for that image that will

finally give me rest? Peace of mind? That image so etched

in my soul I search for it even in inappropriate places?

I feel the answer to Abraham’s question lies right here In

its midst In the flames In the carnage

An image of Him/Her The master the baal habira.

And the answer lies beyond sacred texts Rather in the

very image of that burning conflagration- But resist the

golden calf that Has emerged until now One generation

after another The false images and temporary relief.

The image behind the texts The Torah behind the Torah

Which can only be accessed by those fallen souls Who

know the other side Who felt the rage and fire within Who

saw the dark side the dark night How else?

It is only by crowing Him master of even the flames of

Auschwitz that we can Access the totality of Him His Unity

And our own.

Only this way can I inhabit this body and own this dark

soul Only by owning His mastery can I own my own

inflammation. You want to quote me philosophy?

Theology? Theodicy? We will leave that for the scholars

and Litvaks.

We who have known inside The nightmares and dead

souls who call in the night The souls wafting above us like

a Chagall painting Europe’s earth screaming from the

blood still dripping within The children’s cries do not

diminish In that furnace He still yells Ani hu baal habirah

And I still need to acknowledge Him there and within.

Emigrated

Stamped on the envelope: "emigrated"

he receives the letter back

from Vienna

from the Red Cross

was it stamped in red too?

or black?

others realize they have been deported

for who emigrates in the middle of a war?

a world war

to where?

from Vienna to where?

yes, a euphemism for deportation.

no more letters

they too will be returned

with that dreaded stamp "emigrated"

But he was the emigre after all

under the nose of the Nazi

this kindertransport

of children of the Reich and the Anschluss

crossing by train the Europe soon to be torn to shreds

to London

But they after all stayed

in Vienna

Julius, Rachel and Litzy.

she too could have left but refused.

how ironic

that the emigre gets this letter with this stamp

"emigrated"

they knew where he was

in Australia, in Tatura

one of the ‘Dunera boys’

amongst 2000 Jews behind barbed wire

"Enemy Aliens" Class I or II

classified by the holie-than-thou British

who would later admit the error in Parliament

they knew where he was

he had told them in letters.

But now he would never know their whereabouts.

I ask

"when did you realize?"

"when the letters came back".

he replied

those purloined letters

returned by the Red Cross

as if

they had emigrated, like him

to a safe place

a safe haven

for is that not what they were in fact ‘told’?

the lie

that hid behind the Nazi murderous intent.

why does this bother me so

now after so long

those letters?

I saw them once

he had a pile of them.

sacred letters

returned

by the Red Cross.

this insane need to know the exact moment when he

realized?

was it 1942 or after the War? I persist

he says, "we hoped

possibly the Russians had interned them in a camp across

the border

so that they would be at least alive

but nothing"

post war silence

then a note from the Red Cross again

last seen Izhbitz transit camp

after that whereabouts unknown.

the worst to be believed.

how to live with this as a survivor.

how to hold the returned letters

with that stamp 'emigrated'

I too am an emigre

living the stranger's life in another country

in another land

strange soil

strange customs and beliefs.

never again to feel at home

even when I go back

it gets worse each time

a distant remnant of the past here and there

nostalgia filling in the gaps.

I too am condemned to repeat the story of the father and

grandfather.

In a far away land

at the end of the railroad

Tatura

in that desert

sand

the letter arrives

he had written weeks earlier

with that fateful word 'emigrated'

his heart jumps, sweat accumulates on his brow

what does this mean?

where have they gone?

it cannot be!

feeling so powerless over this whole mess

this war

too big for all of us

when the demonic is let loose.

that letter

returned

signified the end of his youth

and the end of an era

the glory of Vienna

and its Jews were deported

Vienna as the epicenter of the world was to be no more

would forever defend its reputation

and its war record

and its collaboration

and wallow in its denial.

'emigrated' would now apply to Vienna itself

not merely its Jews.

it would apply to the civilized world as we knew it

its Mozart and its Goethe and Proust

all sullied by that letter

returned with that stamp

and that word

'emigrated'.

Letting Go

Leave it behind

all this thinking

it led nowhere

worse

to doubt and despair

leave the analysis the depth psychology

the rationalizations and reasons for...

the science and the criticism

the theory and the mastery

Like the breakdown of a Bach fugue into some

mathematical equation

Lord where have we descended to!

like analyzing the Song of Songs for its grammatical

structure! missing its desire.

let go of it

let it slip away

let thinking itself

the monkey retire

allow the cloud of imperception and clarity descend

let Moses enter the fog

where the Lord is

let the is begin

being here

now

no-where else

and stop thinking.

sing a little

just a note

a single cord maybe

let the room vibrate and resonate

listen to the echo

is it you?

or who?

jostle the mind

play games on it

or it will catch up soon and overtake you once again

focus on nothing

just be nothing

now there’s a challenge/

stay with it

in your body

feel the buttocks on the chair

the ambient sound in the air

the sweetness of early dawn

and maybe, just maybe

you might hear the white radiance of eternity

and endure better

and for a moment be relieved by the weighty burden of

self and the shoulders will feel a little lighter.

maybe.

Purim 2009: Haman

We clap and stamp on mentioning Haman the Amalekite,

each time the reader chants his name...

As if, the mere mention triggers this explosion of chaos a

wild manic stomping and clapping using instruments of

noise....

As if, we need to eradicate more than merely the name the

evocation of its horror, memories of intended genocide,….

No, this hysterical communal memorializing of that, which

we wish to forget, signifies something even more

sinister…

More than even the command, so paradoxical, to annually

“remember: not to forget” to erase the memory of Amalek,

by consistently bringing it back to conscious memory, no,

more than even this….

This communal controlled chaos limited to ten seconds

following the mere mention of “his name” HAMAN-as the

scroll unfolds, as the text is chanted, even this is not

spontaneous for “we know” we are readers we have read

before we foreshadow his mention…

SO sinister because of one reason alone, he remains alive

and deadly. He persists despite the happy ending of the

narrative story the fairytale of Esther. Despite the rolling up

of the scroll for another year the sing song and the festive

meal his name, is mention, his evocation lingers, haunts

us so, despite the merriment and liquor….for he, my

friends, is non other than….

You fill in the gap-all I can tell you is he is and is within not

without.

He remains and persists after all the merriment drink and

attempts at drowning out his voice with joy on this special

day

He works his task, divinely charged, the spoiler, that little

voice ever crescendoing, that never rests, the voice, the

critic, the doubter, the cynic, the dissolver of simple faith

with complex questions and analytical doubts.

He, whose volume can only be drowned out once a year

with a clapping and a stamping and a drinking

This is the joy of PURIM for only once a year a legislated

socially sanctioned alcohol binge to drown out his voice for

just a moment of relief a relief from that voice within. How

could we ever forget him!

Tumbleweed

Feb 2009 Rosh Chodesh Adar

She tells me children and grandchildren will grow parents

will die and we are left alone. Steel yourself, ahed of time

cut the emotional bonds to prevent worse pain. I say, I

want bot the heaven and the hell rather than no feeling at all.

She says in the aloneness is the redemption there is no

one to rely on in this world but the self such resilience and

fortitude I am in awe. I was always the weaker twin, from

birth losing weight the very first year of life until Nanaʼs

arrival and that divine potion known as chicken soup as

substitute for the nausiating warm milk.

I feel like a tumbleweed, washed up on the shore, in

someone elseʼs home, alone, she says. Tumbleweed,

swept ashore by the wind, disconnected from its roots.

But I prefer the Eskimo who says goodbye to his family

and leaves the warm igloo never to be seen again or the

wealthy Indian who gives up all and along with his begging

bowl leaves village to join a band of wandering beggars.

We are so numb, after so many years of abuse,

incredulous how she survived. She does so need the time

to heal and organize and move on. so long without the

basic human need for intimacy.

I am not alone. In my darkest hour I never felt alone. There

is a Higher Power in my life call it what you might, and I

am in continuous gratitude for life itself. I ask her about

grandchildren, thinking this will turn her around, for I could

not imagine living without them, now that I have been

granted this ultimate gift of these three beautiful creatures.

I cannot imagine life without the joy of them running into

my arms and tumbling with them on the carpet. But she

has a response. They too will grow and it is important to

detach early.

I too am a tumbleweed of sorts. We are twins after all! My

journey has been detaching from those objects and items

and addictions out there in the world that gave me comfort

during the years of abuse as a child and isolation as an

adult. The goal now is also to become as detached as a

tumbleweed, allowing the Lord to blow me daily wherever

He wishes. and to receive and be grateful for each day I

am alive and merit to see my children and grandchildren,

my parents and friends, my patients and colleagues, my

teachers and students and above all my life partner who

has had to suffer my transformation.

My roots must also be mobile however I am connected to

others in deep ways that mostly go unacknowledged.

I pray she heals soon to make such connections of

intimacy.

“ Lord, let me see You in all... even in my loneliness and

desolation, in my isolation and despair, in my rigid ironclad

armor, cut off even from myself”

“Grant me the vision to see You even in my sickness and

despair, to see Your hand omnipresent as much as in the

delights and the love of my kids

“To see the suffering around me and yet believe in You to

see the inability for me to change significantly with all my

charcter defects ever present and bearing down on me

each day and unable to correct, even You in that

obstinancy.

“To see that all this is still Your desire at that moment prior

to creation when You had the desire and foresaw it all.

“I reamin inadequate and fall short of ever carrying You

suffering. “That this struggle too is Your desire”

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.