When My Holy Sister Danced

From the revelation to the messiah

There was never a dance so sincere

As she raised her hands heavenwards

And danced towards the bright Jerusalem sunlit window

She exclaimed “Thank You Hashem…Thank You Hashem!”

Those words echoed across the universe

And broke the barriers

The Masach HaBarzel

The “iron curtain”

Separating us from the Schechina.

Those words penetrated the Ohel of “True Gratitude”

Thanking Hashem for what?

I’m not sure,

Pure joy…

Unadulterated joy.

The likes of which I never before experienced

A gift ftom the Otzer Matnas Chimam

The “Treasury of Unearned Gifts”

For only a holy woman like Rochelle

Whose whole life is devoted to others

Whose suffering matches only the Shechinah’s

A true Lost Princess,

Whose gift of love for others

For parents and children is worthy only of the “Sargon Women”

Only Rochelle would see this as a gift

As unearned, undeserved, despite her life of service.

Here was pure ego-­‐less gratitude for moments of happiness with family.

Who knows what prompted her moment of exhilaration

All I know is

That it was so genuine

That I could not but join in with her

As if her dance forced me into her circle

Against my will

To follow her in paltry manner

Behind her majestic lead

My heart melting by her warmth

Her spontaneity

Her utter joy,

My holy twin sister.

These Bloody Resentments

These resentments will be the death of me

I never learned how to cope

They eat me up like an infection

And I never seem to escape their toxicity.

Wounds of old

Seem not to let go…

The little boy is frozen in time

Staring at the authority figures

Traumatized by unfairness and injustices

Capriciousness and meanness

Of those mythical figures long lost

Of childhood.

Now triggers get easier to ignite

These festering wounds

And the notion of serenity or happiness seem further than ever

The resentments

impair all relationships

Especially with the divine

Whose silence is deafening

And the sense of aloneness is acutely felt

As a desolation descends like a grey curtain.

In the depressive mornings of ritualized activity.

These times are so different from those of tears

When I feel I have the audacity to confront the divine

As if only then, in the breaking of the heart,

Do I have audience with ultimate meaning.

Only in the tears may I confront the challenge

That is our generation’s failure

Its lack of courage and my own

To rage against the darkness.

This sorrow has its own juissance

For in the debate the inner confrontation there is a kind of joy

That for these few moments life does have meaning

That I am part of some cosmic debate with the divine

That my voice adds meaning

My past, my hurt, my haunting

Adds force to the side of humanity

Charles River Bridge-Prague 2013

My Rabbi reads nothing to do with Holocaust, he does not read or visit

concentration camps, citing the Tiferes Shlomo

where Moshe Rabbeinu averts his gaze from the burning bush

realizing he was being shown in the fire that was not consumed

the future divine judgement in history,

including the four exiles, the last being Edom-Christianity.

He did not want to harbor resentment to the Almighty

and question His justice,

while being on shlichut, His mission.

EXODUS 3

ב וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַ יְהוָה אֵלָיו, בְּלַבַּת-אֵשׁ--מִתּוֹ הַסְּנֶה; וַיַּרְא, וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ, וְהַסְּנֶה, אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל.

2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

ג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה--אָסֻרָה-נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה, אֶת-הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה: מַדּוּעַ, לֹא-יִבְעַר הַסְּנֶה.

3 And Moses said: 'I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.'

ד וַיַּרְא יְהוָה, כִּי סָר לִרְאוֹת; וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו אֱלֹהִים מִתּוֹ הַסְּנֶה, וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה מֹשֶׁה--וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי.

4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said: 'Moses, Moses.' And he said: 'Here am I.'

ה וַיֹּאמֶר, אַל-תִּקְרַב הֲלֹם; שַׁל-נְעָלֶי ,ָ מֵעַל רַגְלֶי -ָ-כִּי הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה עוֹמֵד עָלָיו,

אַדְמַת-קֹדֶשׁ הוּא.

5 And He said: 'Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.'

ו וַיֹּאמֶר, אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי ,ָ אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק, וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב; וַיַּסְתֵּר מֹשֶׁה, פָּנָיו, כִּי יָרֵא, מֵהַבִּיט אֶל-הָאֱלֹהִים.

6 Moreover He said: 'I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

In this flame Moses sees the crematoria flames rising

being fed and not being quenched

now he understands why the fire is not being consumed

it is being fed with millions of Jewish bodies

Jewish children.

So he turns from what was earlier his intellectual curiosity

a scientific puzzle, away

in horror.

Cobblestones,

everywhere in the old City across the Charles River bridge

Nazi hobnailed boots must have worn well here,

I hear them clicking their heels in obedience,

the sounds must have instilled fear,

O how they hated “white Jews” the intelligenstia

cultured, assimilated, cafe-haus

coffee-klatch-drinking Jews,

holding those newspapers with the wooden rod through the spine,

Prague Jews, (Kafka, Brod et al) who changed the way we looked at the 20th century

in art, kultur and science.

Only,

drowning as I am,

in tears,

do I have

the Chutzpah

the nerve!

to state:

“Do not go gently into the dark,

rage, rage against the darkness of the night

rage rage...”

like Dylan Thomas, in “In Country Sleep”.

the Chutzpah!

which country? Wales? or Prague.

In tears alone

I find the courage

or is it the wine?

In theses tears

I find the words

to express

what cannot be expressed in words.

For I cannot take my gaze away

I remain transfixed

in horror

at the smoldering bush of Prague

by their absence in the bustling streets

and the Jewish Quarter.

The Silence,

the words written in silence

on a parchment made of human skin

the Blasphemy...

written in German

in Holiness...

felt in the belly only of the girl with green eyes,

the question that remains some 70 years

later....

“Where were You?”

in tears,

drowning the rage

melting,

the heart of stone that can no longer feel

a sea of salt,

from eyes that can no longer see with clarity

what Chutzpah!

After 2000 years of piety

and non-questioning...

“mesiras nefesh”

in the halls of the academy

in Volozhyn and Mir-

Where do I get off

even asking this question?

Was I there?

Did I suffer?

The body writhing in pain,

they knew how to administer pain

slowly with the whip

the hands tied behind the back

suspended in air

weightless

dislocated shoulders

horror after horror

all planned,

As I read Arnost Lustig,

the “The Girl with Lovely Green Eyes”

her body,

her belly,

the Jewish Body,

the body of Christ finally atoned for,

raped by the Waffen SS.

the landscape of Jewish flesh

trodden and emasculated by Nazi Herr Prof. Doktor

or “Wartime Lies” by Louis Begley

the screenplay for “Rabbi” Kubrik’s

masterpiece...Aryan Papiern,

never finished,

due to Schindler’s List- Spielberg

and Hollywood, the new power broker

for the money-making Holocaust industry.

like the local Prague Jewish community

screwing the tourists for every euro.

Reading these two novels intensifies in me, the horror.

The grotesque yet ongoing fascination I have with the

Charles River Bridge Crucifix

adorned with kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,

adds to the theatre of the absurd

as Christians pass by for photo ops.

Her body as locus of betrayal in order to survive

in both novels

the landscape of memory is the belly

the key to survival is located there.

Yet Here I am...

today...

in Prague...

where 250,000 yidden

were transported...

to their respiratory distress

using Zyklon B...

into vapor...via Terezin the perfect

model camp for the outside world press,

the smoke and soot

from crematoria,

of Jewish bones,

raining down for days after...

inhaling Jewish souls...

yet life goes on...

tourists flock...

Israelis wonder...

what took Place?

empty synagogues...

full cemeteries...

the Maharal!

the Golem!

the cyber space Golem

the first cyborg!

the first bionic man!

“Kroner! we will accept Euro!”

money! any denomination!

540 Kroner. either way.

For all cemeteries and museums

“sorry one visit to this or that saint is not sufficient”.

A local bouncer comes close, threateningly near,

“you must buy for all or nothing”.

the fascist/communist clerk bellows,

enriching the coffers of the new Mafia,

what a scam!

To see the Maharal, the Node Bi’Yehedu the Kli Yakar

even Franz Kafka!

costs you money!

the dead demand!

or at least the living parasites

to fill the coffers of these new elites.

Scamming tourists, the new industry.

In this sea of tears I find my voice.

Ribbono Shel Olam!

Gevalt!

what happened?

where were You?

why were You silent?

I cannot,

I will not give up

on You!!!

Reb Shlomo

I need you so badly right now!

yet I also need to know!

what cannot be known!

what cannot be expressed!

what cannot be told!

I am drowning!

Help me Lord!

make sense of 900 years of master and slave,

the intimate relationship between the Christian and Jew

powerful and powerless

Bohemian Prince and Jew merchant funding his wars,

surely they are all Your children too?

both Saint and Zaddik claiming the Truth!

both dying for Your truth?

and these NAZIS!

What are we going to do with them in history?

where is history?

they are not even on the radar screen today

in Prague circa 2013!

nowhere to be seen,

yet their haunting memory,

paves the streets,

the cobblestones

the memory of hobnailed jackboots

Nazi officers,

obersturmfuhrers,

Wehrmacht,

Waffen SS,

haunting nonetheless

the tourist shops,

selling cut-glass crystal.

Here,

In Prague,

where Your prophet

Kafka,

predicted this horrific world

ahead of his time

We come to venerate him

Rabbi Kafka?- no, a post-modern Rebbe

like Reb Shlomo

and his predictions.

in Krakow 1968.

Yet even here I see Dora

his last beloved

and am intrigued by her purity

her simplicity and commitment,

to the death.

like “skinny” with the lovely green eyes

Lustig’s muse...

After all Reb Kafka died in her arms.

Her belly warmed him to the end

as he was consumed by his own flesh.

Dora!

cries out to me from her grave in a London cemetery

East Ham is it?

The United Synagogue cemetry?

post bellum 1953.

she, who cradled Kafka

she, whose father

a Hassid from Belz,

had asked the Rebbe (the Sar-Shalom, no-one less!) permission

refused forthwith,

for the match,

yet Dora refused even the Rebbe,

knowing in her belly, like skinny,

the god even he had no access to,

the Nazi beckoning the girl with the lovely green eyes

even then, in her belly,

she feels

some truth her lover had revealed,

a cabbalistic code for the 20th century,

where god becomes irrelevant,

cradling Kafka two years later on his deathbed.

Between the Node BiYehuda

the Maharal

and Kafka,

the Nazi boot,

the girl with the lovely green eyes,

I am strung,,,

like a roasted BBQ, like Maciek,

not knowing which way to turn,

but realizing that the skewer will turn on its own accord.

Torn between Nazi worlds and modern consumer gods.

There is a conference on David Ganz (1541-1613) secretary to Rabbi Loew

as if by coincidence, when we arrive,

as if,

as if the world depended upon Jewish

academic scholars who will debate,

as to the reception of Copernicus,Tycho Brahe and Kepler

in the Rabbinic world of modernity

and others like the doctor Tuvia (ha-Rofeh)

the Gra,

the Haskallah.

as if...such debates will influence the cultural

wars of the charedim and Christian

fundamentalists.

Yet here in the heart

in Prague

which feels the streets

and cobblestones

jackboots

hobnailed boots

cobbles

flowing red

Jewish blood once again...

Unconscious Jewish blood,

flowing

in numbers never even thought of by the church!

where now?

who now?

by the Vltava river, die Moldau

(Smetana rings in my ears with the Hatikvah!)

who even needs their gods?

who even needs to pray?

to recite Tehillim? Psalms-Das Neimandsrose.

Help!

help me in this hopeless

hapless stupor

the gaze is hypnotic,

Lord help me Not look

not stare

not behold this burning bush

the chutzpah

shah! Julian!

be silent!

It’s time to daven minchah.

 

This Life

This life

This body

This time

This moment

These limbs

this diabetes

this blood sugar

this unforgiving meter

This town

this neighborhood

these foreigners

this shtetl

these neighbors

this ethnicity

This spring

these trees

this pollen

these allergies

these blossoms

this perfumed garden

This wife

this rage

these triggers

this relationship

this forgiveness

This religion

this hypocrisy

this ehrlichkeit

these Baalei T’shuva

these religious claims

their enthusiasm

These grandchildren

these angels

these busy little people

these questions

this joy

This driving

this traffic

this impatience

this BBC radio

these self gloating reporters

these damn interruptions

this open highway

this occasional sense of freedom

This work

these patients

this suffering

this poverty

these spousal abuses

this CT scan

this cancer

this dying.

These parents

this generation

this ending

this transition

this sense of the impending

this inability to deal

this powerlessness unfolding

This music

this heaven

this pounding heart

these tears

this sunday

this Bach

This wine

this palate

this aroma

this slow release

this bouquet

this wonder

This lake

this immensity

this silent presence

this depth

This dark night-sky

these myriad stars

this moon

these memories

this stella luna

this sense of the infinite

This Presence

this melting of the heart

this crying

this solitude

This life

this betrayal

these lies

these deceits

this failure.

The Shtender

My first lectern,

I had thought it too presumptuous

Until now that is,

When we moved from the shteibl to the new shul across the street

And the announcement for those who wished

A small medium or large standing lectern,

Something inside me agreed,

And a month later,

In my new place,

There it was,

unexpected

Mahogany-cherry

New

Dignified

Erect

Beautiful.

Since then

Something has changed in me

I want to go to shul

I need to be there

For my lectern/shthender

I cannot let it down

I cannot shame it.

It is making demands on me!

What anthropomorphism!

Yet there you have it

I awaken Shabbat early for it beckons me

I arrive in shul

And feel its surface

Placing my seforim on it and in it

For it has a secret vault

Where I keep my “stuff”

(Even a book of Leonard Cohen poems!)

My “quota” of learning for the day

And even a miniature scotch (for emergencies only!)

Only single malt will do for this quality shtender!

As a child we sat in pews

London in the 60’s

Made by kibbutz Lavi

Finchley Central Synagogue

The very notion of an individual shtender

Was so foreign

Untouched by the “yeshivishe velt”

Where from the Lithuanian Yeshivot (especially Slbodka)

Each Talmid becomes his own unique Torah personality

So each receives a shtender.

This leakage into the everyday world of shuls

And community study Batei Midrashim

Is late:

After the Fruchthandler/Reichmann revolution

That transformed American Jewry

From modern orthodox

Into a neo-charedi Artscroll world

Where every Tom Dick or Moishe

Now studies in a community kolel

The daf yomi

Using his own shtender.

Having watched Rabbi Soloveitchik

In his decline

I lived in a world of mourning

For what might have been

Had he had a successor

To continue balanced centrist orthodoxy

Which is of course now ridiculed

As “lukewarm”, embracing modernity and secularism

As a tool for spirituality.

So I too resisted the trappings of yeshivishe

Externalities.

As if it was a betrayal of what I held dear and true.

That was until now.

This shtender

Its dark grained wood

Beckons me

To stand or sit by it

Like the Giving Tree

(was it taken from it?)

Shel Silverstein’s iconic work

That makes me cry each time

I read it to my grandchildren,

It gives me much more than I could ever wish.

It stands in a place in the spiritual geographic landscape

Of the shul.

Two rows behind the Bima

Where it has a commanding view of all that takes place

Both in the service, and afterwards,

And in site of any newcomers or strays that wonder in to daven.

When we all moved across the street from the intimacy of the shteibl

We were slightly disoriented by the immensity of this sacred space.

Where to sit?

To establish one’s identity and relationship to the geographical

Is no easy task.

Does one choose to sit near older friends

Far from holier than thou congregants

Or begin afresh?

I allowed my body to move me

And initially I went to the same location as in the shteibl

But then something moved me backwards

And centered behind the bima

And there I rested

Until now

When the shtender arrived unexpectedly

In the very place I had designated

With my name on it.

As if it validated the choice of location

Between the sacred the open.

It’s as if this is my place

My spiritual location

Among other worshippers

My station in life

My location in spiritual space

In relation to the Rebbe

And the Bima

And the Schechina.

And it has grabbed me

Emotionally

Irrationally

For the first time in my life

I feel obligated

Not to let it down

To show up

To be present

For its sake

As if it represents a stake in a homestead

Out there in the far west

And I a pioneer

I must claim it

Daily.

I remember my father loving the “box”

That enclosed seating for the lay leaders

Of his synagogue in Finchley

Not because of its power or prestige

But I now believe because it had some power over him too

It was a place structured and designated

Where people

Would, on arrival, look to the box,

To see if “Willy had arrived”

It was his place beyond a mere pew.

And as I age

This shtender will hold my arms as I sway

And lean on it

As I attempt

To connect to the divine

In an age old service

That resists change

But must be infused with vitality.

And as I bend in slowly progressive loss of spinal

Stature

Maybe it will support me

In the crustification

And decaying spirit

As I face the inevitable

And the failures of my spiritual life.

Kina (Lamentation) for Krakow

Landing in Poland is to leave behind the future

walking the cobblestones of Krakow is to take each step

back in time and conjure huddled poor peasants, traders,

scholars and merchants

plying the streets of Kazimierz.

Hard to imagine the buildings in 1558 and the worshippers

in the REMOH Shul,

dusty tomes of old printed editions,

few volumes of the Talmud committed to memory.

Darker shadows then force themselves on this idyllic scene

the sound of Nazi boots marching in perfect unison

on the cobbles reverberating to a sinister rhythm.

Now terrified Jews are being hurried to the Umschatzplatz

the elderly and weak, the children and screaming babies,

disposed of early on by Nazi guns, blood flows

between the cobbles, then silence.

80 years later

that silence lingers

death lingers here

the past never lets go

the silence is deafening

there is a pollution in memory that cannot be atoned for or purified.

How can we walk these streets without them

1943, after some 400 years of Jewish creativity

silence, no more.

Excised from the body of Krakow

as if the Christians of the Old City

could continue without its Jewish Quarter

the Ecclesia without the Synagogue

who do the priests vilify on christmas eve now?

The blindfolded woman of disgrace, the synagogue

is no longer standing next to the eclesia, who will take her place?

So Poles come to the old city Jewish Quarter

to hear hassidic music

taste blintzes, czulent and challah

and stare at hassidic dancers in cheap wall paintings

in order to appropriate some cultural memory

of “the other” the non-christian

in their desperate search for a pre-communist identity.

Then a group of Israeli student pass by being indoctrinated by their

teachers as to the powerlessness of diaspora Jews

and Krakow on their way to Auschwitz some 60 km away

as proof of the need for Zionism.

“Never again” is their doctrine

“Muscular Judaism” in their F 16ʼs and physical prowess.

Kina (Lamentation) for Krakow

Next a group of boisterous Hassidic students from New Monroe NY

davening by the tombs of the REMAH, the BACH, Tosafos Yom Tov,

and the Megale Amukos, hurriedly reciting Psalms

before being rushed to the bus for the next town,

a lightning trip around Europe to visit

Rabbinic grave sites, as if the Tremendum never occurred.

or that the only response to the Holocaust is to recreate

the shtetl of Eastern Europe

in New Square or Monroe (albeit with i-phones).

The groups walk the cobblestones with ease and comfort

oblivious to the red stains and silent walls.

The nightmare is complete

a surreal movie set

where memory is erased or appropriated

local cultural museums integrating Jewish memory

into a celebration Polish historical mosaic of cultural diversity.

The heart mourns their absence

manʼs inhumanity, indifference, callousness, to man

I hear the jackboots marching to my pulse

“eli eli lama azavtani?”

a paradoxical cry from both the psalmist as well as Jesus!

In this movie set the actors will never arrive, the director withdrew to heaven

and the lights donʼt work.

In the darkness of the old and new cemeteries, the dead look onthey

did not go up in flames and smoke-their blood congealed slowly

in the cold Polish soil and their names fade slowly

with time as the tombstones

face the cold silent winter nights.

Cry for the departed

the absent actors

the absent director

despite the cameras and movie directors

present to sell these stories

to a new generation of moviegoers.

Cry for the city

the quarter that hosted the holy rabbis

who studied through the Polish winter nights

Cry for the children deported and torn form their parents

by the Nazi horde.

Cry Cry.

Lizensk 2013

Leaving sick in laws

I bring with me the prayers of others,

A burden that relieves me of the guilt of my own faithlessness.

Kvitlech, little chits of names

People's hopes and dreams for a better outcome

Illness poverty suffering

I am the bearer of these chits

And pidyonos

Those dollar bills for the zaddik

For the poor.

Another pilgrimage

Another decade

So many failed attempts at overcoming the ego

The serpentine drives

The needs to leave a mark and trace

Once again

We arrive penniless morally

Bankrupt spiritually

With nothing to show.

Yet this is precisely what draws me to the Zaddik

So far beyond my own moral compass...

Maybe, just maybe, it takes a Zaddik of this calibre

To rescue one like me...

As Rabbeinu stated , this Zaddik, Reb 'Meilech

Was figured in the beggar's tale

Bringing bread to the lost children in the forest.

Only such a Zaddik worries about filling the bellies of children

Before lofty spiritual states,

Maybe he might listen to mug broken life

Like the strings of a broken violin

And hear a melody I cannot

In this failure

This brokenness

I bring him.

via Krakow of course

To pay deference to the Ramoh

Reb Moshe Isserless

And my father

A "Ramoh Yid"

And my beloved grave of the Megale Amukos

(Pi shalosh from the Ari hakadosh)

Who had written "Giuliani Eliyahu" on his tombstone.

this journey

This trip

In the middle of all the tumult,

Medicare, Obama, EMR, etc...

The lived life

In the middle of it all.....

Paradoxically this seems appropriate

A counter balance to the false pursuits

That plague me...

Reorienting me

To the reality

Of life and aging

Of simplicity

And connection to all those

Who suffer the awareness

Of how precious this all is...

And how fragile and fleeting.

Here I see and feel the truth

And the, lived presence of life

The good and the bad

The glory and the darkness

The light and the inner snake.

The Zaddik and the Nazi officer

Who in 1941 insisted on opening his grave

Looking for gold.

I am coming closer to his living presence

To rescue my failed life.

And bring him the chits of others who entrusted me with

Their woes and hopes.

The Aryan Papers and Queen Esther

Walking through LACMA with my son

Explaining to me in detail

The filmography of Kubrick's genius,

We finally arrive at his last unmade film

And discuss why...

Why it never was completed,

Was it Schindler's List that put him off

Or was the project too big

Too heavy,

Too close to the non divine,

Too impossible to deal with.

Was his word, his midrash to be

The last word in Holocaust literature?

Here were the clippings, the files

Even an interview with the proposed star.

We were drowning in memorabilia

And awed by his present absence,

Like the very divine he did not believe in.

I am reading the Megillah and the plot line

Queen Esther, you know,

Her entering the king's bedroom

Like Kubrick's heroine and the Nazi officer

Protecting her child...

How many Esthers were there?

How many protected their own by these choices?

midrashically she knew she would never be able to return to her husband

"Halachically" she was forever forbidden

Intimacy was sacrificed for her people

And Kubrick's starlets

Heroines among the Nazis.

I think of Moses' plea "blot me out from Your book" as he engages the divine

Threatening the divine using this metaphor of the book...

And Esther ironically pleads with the Beis Din the court that

Will arbitrate whether her book, her miracle, her sacrifice,

Will enter the canon..."kitvunee ledorot" she pleads

Moses wants out

If the divine will not forgive, forget the sin of the golden calf,

better blot him out too...

He will not lead a people into oblivion because of divine rage.

Forget the Book, it is not worth the sacrifice...

But Esther pleads for admission INTO the very book, the canon,

For posterity, for history,

To show her daughters in the future

How to suffer

How to deal with male dominance through subterfuge

How to seduce the Nazi and save the children.

So this year I mourn Rabbi Kubrick and the film that was never made

His midrash on the Holocaust

His validation of Esther

Of the insistence that the divine be held accountable

Not at some trial

Not at a Wiesel hearing with witnesses for and against the divine,

But in the bedroom of the Nazi.

beguiling the king

Seducing his male potency

The black boots, and belt,

And the self bloated male importance

Deconstructing in his vulnerable parts

The very uncircumcised maleness

That marked the Jew.

Torah As Musical Score

What if,

beneath all the rhetoric,

the mastery,

the midrashic,

the talmudic dialectic

the esoteric readings

the mysticism

even the Bible codes,

What if,

the Biblical text

these letters,

these sacred words,

and sentences,

the spaces between the letters

the paragraph spaces

(the petucha and sʼtuma)

the scribal conventions,

the columns,

the very “black fire on white fire”

hanging from the etched lines of the soferʼs quill

what if,

all this

was not merely a language sign,

a Hebraic convention

an ancient un-deciphered sacred text

conveying semantic and literary meaning

theological underpinnings

mythical yearnings

ethnic history

and narratives of a people

encountering the Divine?

Sacred Texts, the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud

burnt in Paris 1242,

Rovigo 1550,

Warsaw 1941,

Timbuktu 2013,

a bonfire of letters flying away from the crisp charred parchment.

Now pored over once again in the study halls of Lakewood and Mir

as if the Holocaust had never happened,

with an intensity like never before,

the sheer numbers, a historical record

beyond even the academies of Europe and Volozhyn,

such single mindedness and devotion

such selfless commitment.

60,000 non academics working folk attend the Siyum Hashas

a sea of black hats poring over the black lettered text.

What if,

all this scholarship

the analysis of the Biblical text

in the 63 tractates containing some 62000 pages

(taking over 7 years at the rate of one page per day)

focused on the meaning of the text

yet all the while

ignoring

the possibility

that these letters and words

might also represent

the black notes on a musical stave

the pitch recorded over time,

the score of a cacophony of sounda

symphonic score?

And for two thousand years we have been studying

in our yeshivas and seminaries

the notes of a sacred musical text

its harmony and counterpoint

its prosidy and cords

analyzing and probing

even dissecting the archeology of the text

its sources

its numerical values and gematria

its intellectual provence

without ever having played the score?

as if all the professors of musicology gathered annually

to discuss and further the science with learned novellae

as to this masterʼs use of key and pitch

melodies and harmonies,

and that composerʼs interpretation of a musical sequence.

Yet no one had ever played or sung the score!

After two thousand years of learned scholarship

employing the best minds on the order of Leibnitz and Einstein:

A Reb Chaim, The Rogechover, A Rebbe Akiva Eiger, The Avnei Nezer,

does one get more clarity than this?

razor sharp pilpul,

brilliant mind-blowing analysis

no one could disagree of course,

these were our greats!

Yet after all this brilliance,

no one ever sung

no one ever played

no one appreciated the very music of these black notes

all the while thinking they were letters that made words and meanings a

legal system, a Halachah, based on the Biblical text.

Playing the Torah text as a divine musical score

might play to our souls

or even bring the Messiah!

or cause world peace!

like no other musical score previously.

Is this what God has been waiting for so long,

allowing so much suffering all the while?

Did he give us the Torah

and has been waiting patiently for someone to actually play the piece?

Would playing it stop the pain?

Yes King David intimated all this

in his Psalter

and the Levite sang on the Temple steps

and the Apollon Musegetes played in Athens

but who ever played the Hebrew letters

and who would conduct such a Missa Solemnis?

Who would conduct?

Why Reb Shlomo of course!

then who would be the principal? the maestro?

would people attend?

or would they shrug it off

preferring the safety of the silent scroll,

or even chanting the words in the Synagogue,

to avoid the actual experience

feeling the hidden divine in the text

hearing the music of the spheres

fearing the right hemisphere

the consequences of non logical thought

that anything might be possible,

everything might be alive,

that all are connected in the music

all incarnated with the divine

all leveled,

by the delight

facing the joy of the song

penetrating the secret of the universe.

No I fear we wonʼt be hearing that song soon

Shlomo will have to meet King David the Psalmist in the next world

and play for the sweet singer of Israel there not here.

Apollo will play Hermesʼ lyre without the muses.

We are mired in self promotion

and aggrandizement

and false claims

to care for this.

So I trudge daily

to the Daf Yomi

for the next dose,

a page of Talmud

black letters dissecting the Law and the Bible

searching for a way to behave

a ritual to appease the divine

a method to suffer well

the long Exile.

But I know that the texts we analyze

still hide more than they conceal

beyond even the mystical readings

that forced another Lurianic world onto the text

into a Baroque dualism.

Beyond the cute moralistic pietistic renditions of ArtScroll

and the revisionist academic reductionism.

No, I hear a song

a melody

as yet un-played

unchartered

waiting for the brilliant young musician

(Messiah?)

who will one day

open the Torah

and begin to play

naturally and effortlessly

and the world will weep and melt.

And God will say “finally, someone is reading my love letter!”

Nothing

NOTHING

“out there”...

but a lonely silence

a universe of power, brute force,

colliding bodies in motion

Einsteinʼs nightmare

middas haDin without sweetening.

Yet as a 13 year old

I would sit on that familiar wooden park bench

Finchley common, by the brook,

where the city lights could not obscure

the brilliant night sky...

myriads of silent lights

in the dark firmament.

and wonder about my life

...and death,

and inconsequential being

in the face of eternity.

And recently once again I am fascinated by the science programs

describing the origin and death of our galaxy

the 7 billion planets

the other galaxies

the time when our sun will become a white star

and explode,

or a meteor might just hit us,

or the sun might send a magnetic radiating arc

that might penetrate out protective atmosphere

and once again nothing.

Nothing.

inside in this microcosm I call myself

feeling nothing this last year.

The kabbalists call it “mochin dekatnus”

but in its wake lie all the fears obsessions hurt and resentments

with no tools to sweep clean

no spiritual dialysis to the rescue

for all has lost meaning.

In this space of nothing

one must find the reshimu

they say

some residue of all that work

all those texts

all that inner work of the past

all those experiences

to latch onto, to carry one...

no?

Surely in this wasteland of empty claims and promises

I can find SOME-THING?

And slowly it emerges

not in the texts

not in the rituals

the sacraments

the claims

the fathers

even the Rebbes

but in the space of no-thing

an intimation

a ray

a movement

a tear welling up from the broken soul deep inside.

Of course the mind immediately goes to work,

the inner Litvak dissects,

the left hemisphere works overtime

and the doubting Thomas pokes his finger

in the fleshy painful wound in the chest.

Yet despite that

in the mild morning freshness

the unseasonably moist air

reminding me of a London wet mist

on the Heath,

I am moved once again

to immerse

in the waters

of the mikveh

that silent friendly baptismal pool of acceptance

whose waters wash away all inner dirt

and lose myself in the nothingness surrounding me.

And in this washing of the soul

I emerge once again

as if this is the only ritual left

that sustained me through all of these ups and downs

under attack

under the fears

the self-doubt

the panic

In these warm waters

there is comfort

not yet hope mind you

no fooling of the self,

just reality as it is...

Surrounded by nothing

emerging from nothing

ending with nothing

is this what they meant by ayin?

Holy Nothingness?

the darkness must always come first?

“and it was evening, and it was morning”

a paradigm for all beginnings

the universe out there

in its silent darkness

and the ani, the sacred I-ness within.

A semantic rearrangements of the letters

but a universe of difference.

In the space between Ayin and Ani

I hover

powerless and motionless

waiting.

The Killing Fields of America

The killing fields of America

Weeping as I watch the fotos of the beautiful children on CNN

They trot them out to kvetch the last drop of our emotions,

A voyeuristic ploy, as if their names were insufficient

To get maximal cardiac effect,

Newtown CT,

One by one

Each a gem,

Each an angel,

Weeping.

This killing field contrasts to the rhetoric of our "beautiful land" myth

Millions in campaign contributions to convince us we are unique

That America has something to offer the world

That we can even export civilization!

Yeah, we own 50% of all the world’s guns and munitions.

We spew violence in the name of democracy and “Nation Building”

Do we really believe they buy our euphemisms?

Are the children killed by a drone attack during a wedding in Pakistan

Any less than these angels we weep over?

Why are we not outraged by that too? Is it distance?

Is it in the name of finding terrorists? Does that justify it?

CNN lives by our double standards

It magnifies our deepest fears and needs

We cannot blame the media...

But we do buy into the commercializing of death

And oh how we profit from the death machines:

This military-industrial complex must continue to churn out machines

that spit rounds from supersized magazines

for the members of the NRA

to exercise their “right to bear arms”

and protect wife and kin. (surely the founders of our

constitution had this in mind!)

We are a republic not a democracy

The elites of Europe and the Aristocracy

Have merely been replaced by corporate jets and boardrooms

Where the future is decided-

Just like we replaced the clergy and church power,

by politicians and parties.

Only the actors have changed.

The dark side of mankind remains

And the angels on CNN

Are the sacrificial lambs we offer

In return for profit.

Shlomo's 18th Yartzheit

There is a place of tears

A hall

A palace

A Heichal

Where I meet Reb Shlomo.

His raspy voice never moved me

His music folksy and repetitive

Never inspired my “sophisticated” classical musical Critical ear.

But when he speaks

My tears well up

Every time…

I cannot explain it.

In this hall of tears

Heichal hadima’ot

Things make sense

And life takes on a tragic but real quality

And his words ring out with TRUTH

Like none others.

In this hall of tears

My life is brought into perspective

So rare in the clutter and noise of daily living

And the chasing of things of no import.

His insistence on the majesty of the Jewish soul Without trite answers to the

philosophical questions. This gives me hope

After all the words have failed.

His teaching is so simple

Worthy of the Holy Baal Shem Tov

The search for the real question

Is a life-­‐time quest

A heroic quest

And that question is not “what” but “who” [1]

Abraham asks “who” is the master?

Responsible for the burning inferno?

The Holocaust back then

And the one within;

Only then, for the first time in history

The midrashic divine responds

“I am the master” “ani baal habira”

Insufficient a response to the inquiry

But sufficient to establish a connection.

Those tears arise from a deep grief

That my life, and yours

Has within its core

this unbelievable tragedy

That only he understood

in his songs

his raspy voice

And his Toirah

And his hug.

Shlomo never really answered your questions-­‐

On the surface that is-­‐

For the question you may have asked him

Triggered within him

An autobiographical question he must have once posed

So the answer was as much his own response

To his own question.

But his insistence that the answer was also good for you

Was enough

Of a comfort,

That he too had struggles with the same issue

The same pain, like the Baal Habira.

Tormented by the Six Million

Like no other, he bore it in his guitar,

It haunted his melodies,

Did you ever see him laugh?

Did you ever not see the sadness in his melody?

The tears and the madness

Moishe-­‐gut-­‐Shabbes haunted his strings.

His music and his Toirah

Was the response to the tears

His life was the response

He saw the “Birah Doleket”

“The Pain is so infinite”

he once said:

“you could sing it for 10000 years non stop

and then maybe we will have covered the first second of pain”

Who else introduced us to the world of Rebbe Nachman and the Izhbitzer?

Who else taught us that Chassidus meant more than Chabad?

That connection to another Yid was as important as davening?

That singing was as important as leining noch a blatt?

“Ani Baal Habira!”

Sometimes I think he felt like he was the only one alive

Like Abraham his forefather

Who felt the presence of the Mayor of the burning city

Whose Presence

Tormented him

With his gaze

“Ani Baal Habira!”

18 years ago

he died

and without him

there is no prophet

to kill us with kindness

and hug us with unconditional love

and the streets of New York

have never been the same

and the homeless

have no Rabbi since

to pitch in a dollar or two.

Like the Kalever Rebbe

Whose funeral cortege was accompanied by hundreds of shepherds

We once again relive

His memory

And accompany him

We beggars, and thieves

We the nameless flock

Who live in fear

Of authority and social pressure.

His soul was unique

His mission was singular

His silent talmidim

Now remember

And sing.

I can only connect to him in this hall of tears

So today I pray:

לפני בעל הרחמים.משמיעי תפילה השמיעו תפילתנו לפני שומע מכניסי רחמים הכניסו רחמינו

תפילה. משמיעי צעקה השמיעו צעקתינו לפני שומע צעקה. השתחוו והרבו תחינה ובקשה לפני

ל רם ונישא.-מלך א

[1]

לאחר יצחק 'ר אמר (יא מה תהלים) אביך ובית עמך ושכחי אזנך והטי וראי בת שמעי פתח יצחק 'ר .'וגו לך לך אברהם אל י"י ויאמר (א) יב א

לפי כך ,הבירה בעל הוא אני לו אמר הבירה בעל הציץ ,מנהיג בלא היתה שבירה תאמר אמר ,דולקת אחת בירה וראה למקום ממקום עובר שהיה

תהלים שם שם) יפיך המלך ויתאו ,העולם כל אדון המנהיג הוא אני לו אמר ה"הקב הציץ ,מנהיג בלי שהעולם תאמר אומר אבינו אברהם שהיה

אברהם אל י"י ויאמר (ה"מ תהלים שם שם) לו והשתחוי אדניך הוא כי ,בעולם ליפותך (יב ה"מ

Copper Snakes

“And the LORD said unto him: 'What is that in thy hand?' And he said: 'A rod And He said: 'Cast it on the ground.' And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Put forth thy hand, and take it by the tail--and he put forth his hand, and laid hold of it, and it became a rod in his hand.”

Exodus 4:5

Copper snakes

That serpentine debaucher

That forms our erect posture

That vertebral structure

That makes us erect

Homo Sapiens-

Knowing man (wink wink)

Ironic how

despite our conscience

We must own one to be the other

It took the Gaon of Vilan

To "see" (hibit) as in gaze or stare

A voyeur of the vertebral anatomy

“Seeing” the primordial snake

Within each of us

And realizing it is he

Who motivates for good as well as bad

So what to do?

Embrace that which is within?

accept this serpentine skeletal rod

that keeps me erect

(though beginning to stoop with age)

whose head-he tells usis

buried in the kundalini

and (how demeaning) its tail

in my upper cervical!

Ready to be grabbed by a snake charmer

the addictions of life

who will make me rigid!

in compliance.

Yet this inverted cunningness

holds it all together

and mediates the space between the skull

and the loins.

It alone transmits the commands from wherever

in the brain, with its tail

to the wisdom below

its head facing down

in shame

knowing after all

the loins will win out

they usually do.

In this battle

who would have guessed

he remains present

despite banishment form the Garden

his curse is now to undulate within man

and continue to advise and scheme.

And the Sh’lah hakadosh

insists his presence has become more manifest

since Sinai

in his effort to explain the need for

chumros [1]

this primordial serpent

this mythological ever present

power

whose tum’ah

will one day become

transformed to the Holy Serpent.

So rest a while

we are but actors on this cosmic mythic stage

stop feeling responsible for the set up!

just be present to its power

and beware!!!!

[1] see Nesivos Sholom Avodas Hashem Maamar 13, p 280

Shadows: Bezal-El

Only in the moonlight are the shadows revealed

ghostly forms without color

banished in the sunlight of daytime.

Now in the twilight

they appear from nowhere

an intimation of another world

that only makes itself felt

in that in-between time

that is Bein Hashmashos.

These are weird and miraculous items

created at the end of creation [1]

just prior to the the Sabbath

when the Divine was readying for the Holy Shabbat

an after thought

created as an after impulse

before the stage was finally set for physics and nature

to hold reign.

These ten mishnaic occurrences

allow for the miraculous in nature

having been pre-ordained prior to nature

a primordial seed implanted into the very stuff of things

allowing for nature and non nature to coexist

in a paradox, yet allow for rabbinic logic.

A paradoxical time

this twilight

in these spaces between light and dark

shadows are conjured

so fleeting they donʼt even appear as real

yet they haunt me

as I strain to make their visual outline make sense.

No wonder that when Moses is dumbfounded

as to the divine intent

how this or that sacred item should be constructed

what it might look like,

he turned to Bezalel

at the divine insistence

he who lives in the “divine shadow” Bezeil El

he who was filled with wisdom[2] and all manner of craftsmanship

alone conjures the shapes and sounds of the divine furniture.

For there are things that only manifest in shadows

in the twilight

in the murkiness and muddiness

where light kisses darkness

touch each other

for those few minutes each day

as the sun surrenders her watch

allowing for the appearance of such figures

and ghosts.

In our shadow moments

what gets conjured?

what forms appear on the horizon of perception?

what is present that otherwise would have been suppressed

in the sun-filled light of day?

As the day wanes the shadows cast behind us grows

until we can almost see an alternate self in the late afternoon

this darker borderline personality

that we would never parade

in the light of parents,, teachers, role models and spiritual mentors.

Yet we must invite them into the conversation

for they too make demands on us

from the grey twilight unconscious plane

impacting our desires from below.

And maybe this was the genius of Bezal-El

to have courageously invited

these divine shadows of the subterranean places

of the soul

seeing the divine even here

refusing to split off the divine as sun-God

but insisting that here too

in these darker spaces of the mind

the divine was fully present.

Where did this intuition come from?

to work in the space of twilight

Miriam his great grandmother? [3]

The one who chided her father, the high court justice

shaming him to retake his wife!

to reclaim his responsibility

even if this meant

lovemaking in the shadows.[4]

Our task is similarly shadow work

archeological, muddy and smelly

where even Moses is clueless.

Bezal-El teaches us how to conjure fleeting forms and wisps

lost dreams and failed promises

broken hearts and betrayals

where others have long given up

he works his magic by inviting this darker twilight image

to the conversation.

Bezal-El taught us how to accept the Torah

in the darkness and in the shadows (baʼchoshech ubeʼarafel)

only after which Moses was able to enter the cloud

the arafel where God was present.

even though the “people remained from afar”

So surprised to see such ghosts from the past

show up at the party

insisting on their voices be heard

so surprised to see their figures projected onto the silk screen

so vividly

so articulate

figures we had banished

figures we thought had faded

we never thought we really owned

until now.

In this precious time of Bein Hashmashot, between the suns

a holographic image of the alternate soul is fully present.

Despite the Halachaʼs discomfort with such grey times

that defy neat legal forms and demarcations

the black and white of Kafkaʼs The Law

it is precisely in this blurriness

the Divine wishes to be present to.

[1] Mishan Avot 10 items were created in twilight.

[2] The rabbinical tradition relates that when God determined to appoint Bezalel architect of the desert Tabernacle, He asked Moses whether the choice were agreeable to him, and received the reply: "Lord, if he is acceptable to Thee, surely he must be so to me!" At God's command, however, the choice was referred to the people for approval and was endorsed by them. Moses thereupon commanded Bezalel to set about making the Tabernacle, the holy Ark, and the sacred utensils. Bezalel possessed such great wisdom that he could combine those letters of the alphabet with which heaven and earth were created; this being the meaning of the statement (Exodus 31:3): "I have filled him . . .with wisdom and knowledge," which were the implements by means of which God created the world, as stated in Proverbs 3:19, 20 (Berakhot 55a). By virtue of his profound wisdom, Bezalel succeeded in erecting a sanctuary which seemed a fit abiding-place for God, who is so exalted in time and space (Exodus R. 34:1; Numbers R. 12:3; Midrash Teh. 91). The candlestick of the sanctuary was of so complicated a nature that Moses could not comprehend it, although God twice showed him a heavenly model; but when he described it to Bezalel, the latter understood immediately, and made it at once; whereupon Moses expressed his admiration for the quick wisdom of Bezalel, saying again that he must have been "in the shadow of God" (Hebrew, "beẓel El") when the heavenly models were shown him (Numbers R. 15:10; compare Exodus R. 1. 2; Berakhot l.c.). Bezalel is said to have been only thirteen years of age when he accomplished his great work (Sanhedrin 69b); he owed his wisdom to the merits of pious parents; his grandfather being Hur and his grandmother Miriam, he was thus a grandnephew of Moses (Exodus R. 48:3, 4). wikipedia.

[3] Unlike Moshe and Ahron, the Torah never mentions Miriamʼs husband or children. Rather, it is the Midrash that tells us that Miriam married Kalev.“ Kalev, son of Chetzron, fathered children by Azuva, his wife, and Yeriot and these are her children: Yeshe, Shovav, and Ardon. When Azuva died, Kalev married Efrat, who bore him Chor. Chor begot Uri and Uri begot Bezalel.” (Chron. I, 2:18-20) The Midrash establishes a connection between Kalev and Miriam through a long and complicated proof. Moreover, the Midrash ascertains that Miriam and Kalev are the great grandparents of Bezalel, the great artist of the mishkan. Of Bezalel it is written that “Hashem filled him with wisdom and discernment (binah) in everything he did” (Ex: 35:31). Bezalel was able to be creative within the boundaries that G-d gave him. With only simple instructions Bezalel was able to create the mishkan and its pieces exactly the way Hashem intended. By connecting Bezalel to Miriam, the Midrash implies that Miriam is a source of Bezalelʼs intuition. (Ex. R. Parashah Aleph “Vayehi Ki”)

[4] T. B. Sotah 12a

The Place of Grief

There is a place I visit

it turns out, now, almost weekly,

by Mussaf on Shabbes.

The kabbalists go to town about the קדושה

our “sanctus” if you like,

where the word kesser כתר implies a crowning of sorts

the King of Kings and we the Schechina embodied,

the matronisa, are united

albeit momentarily...

and the men of Bet El yeshivah do their yichudim

this sacred hierosgamos, the high point

of our liturgy.

A time for grace and exceeding קדושה

There is a place I visit

it turns out, now, almost weekly,

by Mussaf on Shabbes.

But for me

it is a time for grief-

I donʼt know when this began

I just note that each week

it is about this time my heart melts

then breaks open to reveal this deep well of grief.

Watching this repeatedly

I am intrigued by the triggers and the repetitive timing,

its precision and how uniform the evocation remains.

What surfaces?

in this indescribable pain?

It is as if raw grief itself needs no further expression

no other trigger

no cause nor reason

as if I have stumbled upon this subterranean cavern filled with sorrow.

I know this is not about me

I know that from decades of analysis those

fears resentments and hurts

are all well documented in the dairies and monthly billing statements!

No, this is different!

it is not about my life, my pain, my defects of character

my betrayals, those I have caused pain

those whose hearts I broke,

those lies deceits and betrayals.

This Place of Grief

No, in this place

I feel the pain of others

of Klal Yisroel,

of humanity and history.

A shrieking cry from the beyond

the sum of all the tears shed by all those suffering

rising up like a river to overflow its banks

and the very tragedy that is the hallmark of this creation.

Finally I feel the pain of of the divine

who for millennia has patiently watched His human experiment fail

in the hope that the laboratory specimens will one day

awaken to self-awareness

and stop the violence to our spouses children and others

the genocide the torture the inhumanity.

This pain surfaces in this unique place of grief.

And then something strange happens

for a few brief moments

I am relieved of the burden of existence

of Self, of my being in this world,

of that heaviness we carry

knowing despite our attempts to banish from consciousness

we cannot erase nor anesthetize those CNN images of

Mai Lai, Czhirvenitza, Rwanda,

relieved, and

this heaviness gets lighter

and the ever-present inner KRITIK

is silenced for a few precious moments

as I identify with the Divine בכי

This cosmic grief holds me

in its grip

as the holy words of sanctus sanctus sanctus

קדש קדש קדש

ring out in the screaming silence.

In these moments I am able to access the deepest parts of myself

and in this grief paradoxically everything makes sense

I feel an non ego empowerment

seeing the world from His perspective

as I participate in this subterranean stream of awareness.

This Place of Grief

Ironic that it is not joy or other powerful emotional triggers

that allow me access to higher states of consciousness of ,מחין

no, it is this deep well of grief that transcends and soaks all existence

that moves me.

And in a flash

I remember the overwhelming feeling some 35 years ago

when, as a man in love,

the same grief surfaced at the high point of making love

surprised by the fact

that at the very epicenter of the ecstasy

this familiar grief, not joy

made itself first present in my life.

and triggered my tears.

Imitation Piety

A sea of blackness

I see only hats

Giuseppe Borsalino is smiling from his grave

over 200 bucks each!

and the imitation piety

as the boys and men

shokl and sway in their self-righteousness

muttering the talmudic arguments and its Babylonian rhetoric

in demonstration of erudition but also

dancing on the head of a pin.

But soon revulsion gives way to jealousy,

as I acknowledge their serenity

of having arrived at the “truth”

with no apparent struggle

no disconnect between faith and piety.

I had always felt I could not afford

the “luxury” of such religious demonstration and academic fervor,

following my father, for example,

I never put the tallis over the head

(although lately I do catch him doing it for Mussaf!)

remember him telling me that in Vienna

“only the truly pious and learned” would

have the chutzpa to imitate the Rov in this angelic posture.

For in my spiritual landscape

all is not well.

Faith is constantly being tested

as I continue to surrender to the flesh

as it were (Diabetes notwithstanding!)

so my guilt and remorse conspire

with my old friend apikorsus

to make me feel even more worthless in this city

of black piety,

this “Fakewood”.

This uniquely American provinciality

home grown piety, feelig so comfortable in the new Malchus shel Chessed

with its surface glaze of Torah tidbits

intellectual lightweight scholarship

fear of innovation or chidushim

settling for imitation piety.

Dressed, of course, in designer frumkeit-

Borsalino hattery, now

an industry all of its own!

Even the bookstore here is polished

nothing under $18!

the book covers with their imitation leather

and the Artscroll-approved or

Feldheim-published

Rabbinically supervised thoughtsnothing

naughty gets in here.

apikorsus rein!

An inflation of halachic minutiae

a new Wall Street bubble this town

waiting to burst when parents and in-laws can no longer to afford

supporting scholars-in-residence with many children.

Why did the Litvishe world ignore the Gaonʼs nistar

his brilliant analysis of the hidden world behind the Torah?

why are we subject to the imitation of Torah?

the surface monocular monochromatic visual landscape.

At the same time and once again simultaneously overawed

by the sheer mastery of texts

a nephew having reviewed the Talmud 18 times

venerated for his encyclopedic knowledge

or maybe his sheer memory.

Toddlers fluent in Bible

8 year olds knowing Mishnah by heart

wow, what was the emotional cost?

what happened to imagination?

So my life as outsider this shabbat

comes back into focus

as usual when “on the road”

Dadʼs Vienna comes to mind...

his fatherʼs choice to live outside the Ghetto of the 2nd district

(die tzveite Bezirke)

his choice to live in Finchley, NOT Golders Green!

my choice to live in “modern Orthodox” neighborhoods

of Philadelphia, Boston and Jerusalem.

Raising children in the complexity of that schizofrumkeit!

Now watching my daughter raise her kids differently

as they attend cheder and learn in Yiddish,

I too yearn for authenticity even at the expense

of a life lived in existential tension

of thinking truth as primal;

putting away theology and philosophy

for connection with those living in naivete of faith

and free of inner conflict and turmoil

in dialogue with the divine

bathing in the divine

certain of the divinity of texts

(despite their mangled history)

with no doubts to plague them

no sense of impending damnation

no dread

no hint of the insanity of the social network

that is right wing frumkeit today,

just relief and refuge in communal joy and warmth hymns

to the drowning.

If only I could overcome this resistance

having seen the darker side of even Hassidus

where to go?

the struggle gives me no respite

and so I return once more to my city of sojourn

to the battlefield that is everyday my hallmark

starting out the morning freshness and dawning sky

with the unique combination of the Holy waters

of the baptismal mikvah

with the grind of the Daf Yomi

and then leaving my ghetto

(for yes now I live within)

plunging into the secular world that is

both free of the blackness

yet also lightened by the lack of transcendence.

To fight my demons

my powerlessness over emotions and rage

carbohydrates and the flesh.

This daily struggle to live up to ancient inherited ideals

the sheer weight of the rabbinic tradition

the page after page of black ink

and super commentaries on commentaries

the fathers and grandfathers who arose

in the frosty European winter mornings

to pray- look down on me like patriarchs framed

in old New England portraits

adjuring me live up to the failed resolutions of my own past.

The cyclical shape that my voyage takes

documented over decades

that peculiar sine wave of the spiritual highs and lows

the crests and troughs

of the oceans that toss and turn my soul at will

as I look on powerless.

I have returned to the familiar

my resentments and failures are old friends

as I face this sea of black perfection

standing before indicting prosecutors.

Holy Melody

“It is sweet to dance to violins

When love and life are fair:

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

Is delicate and rare:

But it is not sweet with nimble feet

To dance upon the air!”

― Oscar Wilde

Rebbe Nachman says: “If you sing the right melody.. One

melody can bring peace to the whole world...”

Reb Shlomo Carlebach

In music there is connection,

in music there is hope,

in music there is refuge.

Let me in please!

into your secrets,

those harmonics that expose the divine,

let me taste the fruits of the keys

and the honey of the clefs.

In those dark notes are buried

secrets of the universe,

those strings of reverberation

upon which the planets move

and the same strings in which the heart

vibrates to, in sympathy.

Let me be moved

by your genius,

by those devotees and composers

who sacrificed all at the altar of your muse

worshipping at the feet of your cellos

in harmony and counterpoint.

Don’t let me surrender to my mother’s curse

who cannot listen for the pain of it.

She, who suffered to master the Beethoven and

Mendelssohn concertos

cannot hear the music for the trauma.

Open my broken heart to its healing waves.

Your craft reflects both the exalted shores of all

as well as the depths of despair,

for your instruments vibrate

a counterpoint of secret potions

where the world can be felt,

in a crucible of alchemical mixtures;

good and bad,

agony and ecstasy,

empathy and sorrow.

It is truly sweet to dance to violins

even when “life is unfair”!

for the only respite for me

in this bloody pain

is your holy melody.

Never will I forget the Verracini Largo

or the Halverson Passacaglia

as I lay in bedded agony

the moments I could drown out

the noisy pain

by the heavenly sound of the violin and cello

playing as if making love.

They kept my spirits floating

despite the monster in the depths below.

So homage will I pay

to the muse herself

and hand on this holy craft to those little fingers

in this 5 year old angel

who masters the do-re-me

and feels each session

as a triumph.

Sacred Texts

How uncanny, these sacred texts

black ink on sallow aging parchment

between the scrolls the heavy long atzei chayim

this Torah,

parallel lines on which the Soferʼs quill hangs his letters

etched into the calf skin

on these lines the black letters suspended

like laundry lines in the gardens of suburban estates,

forming words that speak of the mythic journey

and biography of the human/divine failure.

Put aside the doubts!

those lingering academic questions

hovering as they still do in your head,

from a previous centuryʼs scholarship,

as to the archeology of these texts

their provenance

their literary conventions-whether exilic, post exilic,

the strands and strata of authorship,

criss crossing the page

violently dissecting the body of even a verse

with no respect for the integrity of the final redaction.

Let go of the literal finally!

give up the addiction to the plain meaning as is...

surrender the belief system that accompanied the text,

forgive all prior readings,

let not the “anxiety of influence” paralyze you further

despite the weighted authority of La Nom du Pere

the overbearing presence of the black suited Father-in-Law!

Accept your own prejudice and now sustained inner baggage

your sense of the prosidy of the text,

its lyricism, its poetry, its tone,

as you begin to read once more.

Become conscious!

bring awareness of the enormity of the weight of tradition

on your shoulders,

of the combined millennia of rabbinic and church commentary

of the super-commentaries surrounding the text, like chatting housewives,

of the writings of those stern faced bearded men

peering down at you from glass enclosed frames

in the dark corridor of your father in lawʼs New York apartment.

Begin to feel the lightness of your own fresh reading!

as it confronts you with the recycled problems of plot and justice

each time the weekly portion greets you.

Feel the comfort in the Midrashic musings

as you see through their hermeneutic tricks

and literal triggers and semantic puns that opened their

one time fresh discourse.

Be excited by the cosmic implications and daring risks

the Zohar takes in its imaginative

misreadings as it opens up hidden worlds of desire and connections.

Follow the Hassidic masters as they read their own struggles

into the narrative of biblical personalities.

For your task maybe the most important most critical ever!

For the sake of the very survival of that same text.

Yes, your reading and your baggage, your prejudice and hauntings

may determine its future.

For having been born to that last generation of survivors,

in earshot of the screams,

only once removed from their cries and shrieks

and the deafening silence the mornings after

the theological absence the decades after

the divine remaining “in absentia”,

you now have the impossible task of bringing

meaning to this text once again.

Impossible you say!

to bring meaning to their lives and deaths

to their memory, their trace, here!

gazing at the columns of black letters?

Like the columns of smoke that arose from the crematoria,

etched in the space between the Holy letters

of the fractured covenant

the broke promises

the absent Messiah.

And, as you pass your white tallis over the black letters

donʼt forget this space in between...

the silent presence, before you make the blessing over the Torah,

in this silence, in this absence of meaning

your presence

your reading

your blessing despite,

your keriah

your interpretation is, once again called for.

Yes, you maybe asked to do violence to this sacred text

for the sake of its very survival

like no generation before you.

For the sake of the sacred text itself.

For Her sake.

Donʼt worry She can handle it

She, who needs rescuing, is in that sacred space,

in between the blackness.

(Was it not Glen Gould who taught us how to read and play Bach anew?

by paying close attention to the pauses and spaces between the notes

unlike his contemporaries who remained in the classical tradition

of technique. His new midrashic version of the Goldberg Variations

brought new life to the ossified traditions of the Baroque).

Pay attention to these spaces!

Play the music of Torah, with them in mind!

Attend to what was not written

what was not said

what could never be said

between the divine lover and Her sacred people.

Be that surgeon!

Sharpen the steel!

Here in this sea of blackness, the sharper the knife

you bring to the dissecting table

the keener the scalpel you apply in your

hermeneutic operating room technique,

the deeper the secrets She will reveal!

for she is ever open to new readings, however violent,

and our post-Holocaust generation has solace only in Her.

In the presence of the divine absence,

we must find refuge in Her sacred spaces,

we must find new keys to read our selves

our fractured lives

our broken souls

In Her alone

in Her sacred Torah text.

For the black letters on white parchment is Her love poem to us

despite the suffering

in spite of the torture

a love letter all the more.

We will be held accountable

by our children

were we to settle for those old readings

abdicate our truths for comfortable and familiar exegesis

for the sake of imitation piety.

Do not give up on the text!

She feels uncannily sacred despite scholarship

despite history

despite dissection!

despite Mengele

for She too is a survivor!

A rush of excitement flows over me

as the Baal Koreh chants the text,

those familiar black notes

bending to his received cantillation tradition

line after line,

the holiness is found between the etched lines

and She demands we continue to fill the gaps and lacunae

and once again bring fresh answers to the age old questions

posed to the text

the issues and plot lines

the structures and conflicts

the redundancies and questions of justice.

All this in light of the age of technological genocide we inhabit.

All this in the presence of our lack of faith

yet our being present to this very absence of the divine.

Only by such violent reading of our sacred texts

(a Post-Holocaust Midrash of sorts),

will we be able to maintain the integrity of this sacred space

and Torah herself,

for only by emptying ourselves into the space between its black letters

can we too infuse Her with our lived albeit broken lives

for this She needs too.

This is our response to Her loving.

Dad's Shofar

The service being over we prepare to leave the little house of worship

a converted basement

its founder a Mr. Weil from Germany

who had transplanted his “Yekkish” customs and centuries of memory

to the fashionable Rechavia neighborhood of Jerusalem in the 30ʼs.

Being across the street from my parents

it has become home for them

now that they prefer to walk less.

and my father in his 90ʼs,

attends regularly and punctually,

especially on this High Holy Day

of Rosh Hashana 2011

where the blowing of 100 blasts (Tekiyos) is the key element of the

morning service.

People gather to leave climbing the steps to the street level

but Dad saunters over to the Bima-the lectern where the young man

still holds the shofar,

and asks permission “to give a few blows”.

My sister and mother had already climbed the steps

when they heard more shofar blasts

and, wondering what the commotion was,

ran back down.

My father was blowing again

after all these years

floods of memories poured in...

to the days of Finchley Central Synagogue

in the 60ʼ and 70ʼs...

the annual pilgrimage to the long services

of the High Holidays...

but for our family, more than others,

the anxiety of Dadʼs Shofar.

His was not an easy one,

we never realized until many years later

how the short ones are so easy to blow.

No, his Shofar was shiny and long

with a narrow “mouthpiece”

that puckered his lips

then swelled them.

We watched him blow

year after year,

his face reddening for the needed pressure

and his facial discomfort increased as he fatigued.

Sometimes he would falter

usually towards the end of the hundred tekiyos

those last few...

we would sweat bullets

and we children, looking at each other

from the Ladies Gallery down and back up

sweated alongside.

I would sweat in sympathy

and out of embarrassment

as he tried and sometimes failed to emit a tone.

Those last few...

“come Dad, you can do it”

meeting the resistance of that Shofar

as if it alone determined the very social standing of our father

for the next year,

and the comments of the congregants as they would emerge

from the services.

Now fast forwarded to 2011

in his 91st year

he challenges the Shofar

once again,

but now

I worry about his blood pressure

and his anticoagulation

and bleeding from such exertion.

My sister arrives to watch him blow successfully

and we sigh as we see his face shine

in accomplishment.

Yes he was always a “Baal Tekeya” a master of the blowing

and probably felt more pleasure from that than his Gaboʼos

his being warden then president

then Life President for so many years.

No it was these moments of challenge

when the entire community was silent

and upstanding

as he performed

alone

on the sacred stage the Bima.

These few moments in the year at its religious high point

that marked his lifeʼs journey

his character

his challenges

and his standing in the community.

As for me?

I swore never to subject myself to such public challenges

the sweat of those moments

etched into my consciousness forever

even though I tried at home to master that recalcitrant shofar!

It seems she was special

and reserved herself

and submitted only to those she chose

like my father

who remained willing to the risk

of her petulance

annually.

That ability to risk

in public,

the humiliation as well as the glory

he carries to this day

I believe it is called character.

My Pot Belly

You know how it is!

this body in decay...

months without the needed stretching, exercising, “the workout”

merely a walk here and there

lip service to the obvious need for exercise

but now a chance

here in this gym

I book a trainer.

Yet here, in this gym

I report

be-sneekered and T-shirted up

looking a bit floppy

with my pot belly

eager for her advice.

All this makes the French trainer smile in condescension.

Around are the enthusiastic toned, buffed

gym designer-wearing treadmillers and bikers

weight lifters and ugh! crunchers.

All busy and looking so earnest

as they work so hard to burn burn burn calories

and tone tone tone muscles.

I come to her for advice and more for inspiration

as to how to overcome my absolute inertia

my abhorrence of this physical business

this boring mind-killing workout

hoping she might just work with me just this once

and that should do it for ever.

Maybe she holds the magic key to my insulin resistance

maybe she can manufacture daily time for a workout

for stretches weights and cardiac exercise

without any effort!

Or help me mourn the loss of this most precious morning time

reserved for reading and study

before the first patient.

I know I know...

it is necessary...

lord knows I preach it...

I preach to to my diabetics and heart patients

my obese and neuropathic patients.

But isnʼt that so much easier than practicing

the very lessons and results of statistics I state by rote

as to the benefits.

It is necessary, I admit, for it pushes off my fatigue

that sets in earlier and earlier in the day

as I age,

and it eases the nocturnal cramps and joint freezes

that awaken me at 2 am

both combining to indict me for my laziness

to which I readily admit.

I even admit to it lowering the daily morning sugars

to which my glucometer is the best prosecuting attorney.

Yet here I am at the gym

among the men with those swollen muscles and abs

pumping their iron and sweating beads of effort

And me, and my pot belly!

Mother used to gauge a man by his pot belly.

It seemed to tell her everything about his character

his addictions to fat,

his “lack of control” over his “baser desires”

for food -therefore for everything else as well!

inspiring in us children an automatic contempt for

other portly folk that crossed our path

with a Pavlovian instinctual response that lasts until even now.

In the mirror- I have become that man!

for comfort foods do indeed push away the need for a moral tune up

or the feeling of depression and anxiety,

they push away the need for the necessary blood work

that will inevitably reveal the moral decay of my metabolism.

So using this rare opportunity for an objective opinion

I stand before her as upright as I

can and pull in my pot belly in shame.

A slightly ridiculous posture which can only last a few minutes

as she outlines our program

and I lose my breath in disbelief.

She canʼt be serious!

Then off we go... machine after machine

(which sadist invented these torture devices)

each designed to test and tone a particular muscle

isolated, with no friends to help out

each joint localized and lonely

as I pant and attempt to reach her goal of 10 or 15 curls etc.

This French trainer, thick in accent

telegraphic speech, continuous commentary

like a medieval Rabbi writing on the bible,

clipboard in hand,

watching, watching,

what is she thinking!

Pushing pushing me to do another one or two

as my muscle burns with lactic acid.

As we proceed the greek god, this adonis ahead of me

has notched up each machine

to weights I cannot even imagine!

and each time French instructor pulls out the key

and plunges it into the notch in some low low weight

that she thinks I can manage,

(they do not make lower weights than that!)

I laugh at myself inside following this weight lifter ahead

on the next machine, then cry.

As the hour progresses I begin to hear my body responding

with noises I have not heard before,

crackles of joints and cracks in other places,

each complaining in its own way,

a muscle burning here,

a cramp there,

muscles I thought I had forgotten existed

from my human anatomy days!

All this slowly adds up to an aching body as the French torturer

(now I realize why she was French) pushes me in her horrid accent

and I get dizzier.

This body, this frame,

the muscles and fat,

the pendulent abdomen

the lack of upper body muscle

all betray

a life of sedentary work

the lack of tone

a life on the run

on coffee

running on nerves

too harried

too hurried

to give the body the sacred respect it deserves.

Yet today,

it has responded to me in ways I never thought possible.

It is telling me “there is still time”

“I have the wisdom you seek”

“if only you could invest time in me!”

But can I reorient my priorities to give it this precious time?

The pot belly looks smaller after her working me out this morning-

I look again in the mirror and see the possibilityit

indicts me nonetheless,

Could it represent once more my motherʼs ideal- flat bellied-

“self-controlled” man?

a man in control of his passions and his life?

and then I let out this hysterical laugh,

a guffaw, that gets me dirty looks for the other

serious men showering and pruning themselves before the same mirror

these greek gods do not take kindly to my laughter,

but I just cannot control myself

in this locker room of the gods

I just cannot take myself so seriously!

This body, in pain and in pleasure,

neglected mostly for the pursuits of the mind

pursuits of career

and plain need to work remains

my vehicle,

even in decline,

with its pot belly,

like a beloved old 1950 Austin Healey

that I just cannot ditch, despite the insane Lucas wiring.

And it alone carries the genetic secrets of my lineage and culture,

ethnicity and race.

So.... I will attempt in this season of resolutions,

to make a little more time,

suffer the boring passage of time,

time for the body without mind,

and look a little kinder ,

on my pot belly.