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DAYENU
My Journey to the Jewish World
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- STRANDS OF TIME ACROSS THE OCEAN
Every life story has questions like at a Passover Seder
Why is this night different from all other nights?
This is my story this is my order of things,
and it is different from all other stories.
I send my fate, like Moses his envoys, in all directions
to choose a new land for my new life,
not flattened into a map, but hilly like Canaan,
where a new time has begun its count,
to find a road that will take me through the layers of my soul,
from my birthplace to new alien fields and skies,
to lead me through the gates of Torah, through wadis
of a new language, new customs, new questions.
The strands of time will carry me across the ocean,
back and forth to check the old and the new
until
my last poem.
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- VOICES IN MY LIFE
The stern voice of my mother
calling from the window
to watch my little brother
took me from my childhood.
The voice of my unhappy marriage
undulated among time marks
of our timid attempts
of joy with other loves.
Pathetic, deceptive voices
of my backward country
killing many other voices
of the underground truths.
The voice of my Jewish soul,
passing from ancient Judea to Spain,
to Eastern European shtetles then to me
growing loud inside by body
in my exodus from Russia.
Now my voice settles
on a page like migrating birds
on the lake Kineret carrying
on their wings my Jewish soul.
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- MY LAND WAITS FOR ME
Olive groves and the aroma of Galilees oranges,
waterfalls of Ein Gedi and Jerusalem streets,
young soldiers in Judea and Samaria,
armored school busses and biblical cities.
Thats what my Land is made of
and my Jewish heart opens toward her.
Across the ocean, like Noah, I send a raven,
ashamedly, I am glad that he comes back
not finding the Land. So I dont need
to leave my comfort right away.
One day a dove that I release
doesnt return he finds the Land
and starts preparing a nest for my heart.
Yet I cannot come, I wont come
it is so hard to make a choice
in the declining slope of my life,
to make a new language my home
and leave a quiet American suburb.
Can my Land live without me?
Can I live without her?
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- DAYENU
Who will ask you in the dark,
Do you love me?
Who will say the blessing
over seven fruit for you?
Who will stand next to you
and name sins that you
are to repent on Yom Kippur?
There is no answer.
Only huge silence collects
your own scarce wisdom
in your tear-lumped throat
like a parchment of the Torahs
passages inside the mezuzah.
At every Passover you remind
God about his promises.
Dayenu that he lead
you out of Egypt,
even if not to the wilderness,
Dayenu that he showed
you the Land
even if not to take you there.
Day-day-einu, Day-day-einu.
Who watches you besides yourself?
Dayenu to have a friend,
who sees you from outside
(even though not your innerside).
Will you ever see inside yourself?
Will you ever reach the Land?
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- MANHATTAN, UPPER WEST SIDE
A slice of Broadway between
Barnes & Noble and Zabars
is like strands of a fluffy chalah
entwined into the Jewish cityscape.
The book stores window displays a poster
Modern Judaism Reading every Tuesday.
(I wonder how modern Judaism can be.)
A woman in shorts pushes a stroller
with a little boy in a kippa,
gliding in his own Jewish dream.
The long boat of a book stall
sails from one block to another carrying a sign
Books Youll Never Read.
An old man plays on an old scratchy violin
a rendition of Bie mir bistushein,
lifting him a century back to Eastern Europe.
A dog with a Star-of-David on his collar takes
his owner for a jog what a drag this guy is.
Aromas from a Jewish deli waft
above the Manhattan crowd, and Fridays rush
is like a sip of Manishewitz sweetening every street,
from Broadway down to Riverside Drive.
Before I turn into Eighty Fourth Street,
I see a young man,
his T-shirt says Looking For Jewish Joy.
Arent we all?
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Father Worries About His Children
An Arab shepherd is searching
for his goat on
Mount of Zion. On the opposite
mountain
I am searching for my little boy.
Afterward we
found them among bushes and our
voices came
back inside us, laughing and crying.
Yehuda Amichai
Before The Land was covered
with two religions, there were two stepbrothers,
Isaac and Ishmael, who never got along
always upsetting their father Abraham.
Millenniums later their descendants
still cannot reconcile olive trees, sand, air.
Will they ever laugh together?
Or will they try to kill each others children
and weep above their separate graves?
A rabbi learns how to carry the Torah
around the bima and how to draw lessons from it.
Also he has to learn how to carry an M-16 rifle
to protect the scrolls and the Land,
how to guard the patriarchs tomb,
and keep the worshipers safe.
On his watch he has a chance to talk
to Abraham and let him know that
the quarrel between his children is still on.
He separates them on the cobblestone plaza
on this tiny sacred spot to avoid the fights
(like those between Isaac and Ishmael).
In mornings and evenings he witnesses
how both brotherly-love tribes still
pray for the others disappearance into anywhere.
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- THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
Image, magic, mage
all grew from
one entwined Root hidden
in the Garden under the Tree of Knowledge.
God busied himself with the project
to separate the Future from the Past,
to make Light rule the Present
and set up the eternal clock (not a small task).
God, ambitious in his achievements,
needed someone to praise his job,
so he made a man from the dough of dust,
strong and solid, according to sketches
drawn out of his unlimited imagination,
or maybe just after his reflection in a lake,
all is subject to interpretation,
and the Book continued with the narration.
Pleased with himself, God took a breath
and blew souls into Adam then Eve,
very well-made for Adams fun.
For a simple goal of reproduction
not to be disturbed by wild winds of longing
among trees and birds and placid words
God gave them a single role: be fruitful and multiply.
They didnt need to guess or reason
what was hidden under their clothes
their naked bodies were so perfect
that blades of grass or thorny bushes
never hurt their tender thighs and soles.
God granted them salads, plain and bland,
with dew for dressing and raindrops for a drink.
How long could they survive such dullness?
Then the great conspiracy began
the Serpent, with Gods permission,
offered them, from the Tree of Knowledge,
forbidden fruit of lust
and magic of slowness of loving
and mental freedom to enjoy the pleasure.
As a clever tool to build the real world
with grief and laughter, flows and fears,
the Serpant gave them Gods imagination.
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I
DON'T DOUBT - JUST WONDER
Berishit bara Elohim
in the beginning
it was light, and the Jews made good use of that light
until it became uncertain and dark.
Maybe God tested us at every turn,
starting with Abrahams bondage of Isaac?
Could we have received better instructions?
In the beginning God promised the Jews
multitudes of stars on earth but we became grains
of sand under feet of history.
Often in the course of Christian years
the count skips a beat and Jews
have to replenish the loss of several millions.
The other tribe, Muslims, seems
to multiply without fail and built
their golden glory on the top of our destruction.
Could it have been His miscalculation?
God promised us the Land between
the sea and eternity, but we turned into
nomads of the world, exiled, expelled, exterminated.
Was it a punishment? Could it be less severe?
God gave us the Torah
a blueprint to build the House of Israel,
and a map to come back home.
Could it have been a little bit easier?
But, nevertheless, after two millennia we returned.
And God saw it was good.
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NOTES:
Strands of Time Across the Ocean
Seder (`say-der)
order in Hebrew
wadi - An oasis or gully
(Arabic)
Voices in My Life
shtetle a village
in Eastern Europe with Jewish population
Kineret Sea of Galilee
My Land Waits for Me
Judea and Samaria biblical
names for the West Bank.
Ein Gedi lush green
area near the Dead Sea.
Dayenu
dayenu 'sufficient'
in Hebrew, Passover song with repetitive lines of thanks to God.
mezuzah etched case
on a doorpost holding the a small parchment of blessing from the
Torah.
Manhattan, Upper West Side
Bie mir bistushein
- Yiddish song My beautiful maiden
kippa skullcap
Father Worries about His Children
bima - a table-height pedestal in
the center of the synagogue, where a scroll is unrolled to read.
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