All The Torah On One Leg: A Story Told Five Ways
One
Before: The Whole Heart, The Broken Heart
Simchat Torah. October 7, 2023
The day before
we thought
we would be dancing
with our Toratot across
the Jewish world
two circles of Jewish
holy time coming together
arm in arm.
In our innocence
we had anticipated
7 dances of hafacot
joyfully holding and passing
to one another
our Etzim Chayim,
unrolling the whole text
in a circle, to celebrate
the reunion of the last letter“lamed”
with the first letter “bet”,
the Torah in this moment
spelling, embodying
the whole-heart,
before She once again
would break into
two, and so we
began again, B’resheit,
with begining, with grief,
cradling our broken hearted Torah
against our broken hearts
once again.
The Whole Torah on My One Leg
I stand on
one vulnerable leg,
then the other, each worn
down knee struggling
to hold up long
enough to remember
the essence of Torah,
love thy neighbor as thyself
even as as my broken spirit
wants to flee as Lilith once
did when there seemed
to be nowhere to live
in equity, in peace.
I ask myself to try to
steady, hold onto
the bare simplicity
of this radical charge
this ancient teaching.
The whole Torah
even now is breathing
through me,
nishmat kol chai, breathe of all life -
even as rockets
explode beloved
bodies, guns fire
into the softness
of my people and yours
my family my child
and yours, so much
smoke we cannot
see one another
and yet we must
face the dead,
face the still living
on both legs
planting both feet on the ground
and walk this out
into the world -
almost impossible
yet a nencessity in
this wounded, wounding
world.
Three
Noach: The Survivor, The One Who It is Said Didn’t Pray: His Prayer
It was never recorded
how I spent those 40 days and 40 nights
roaring at the waste, the destruction
rocking in fierce wind, roiling waters
imprisoned in the ark,
no escape from
being a witness
to annihilation, listening to the dying
of the plants, trees, animals, people.
It would have been easier if I also had died
than to live with all of this-
371 days passed until
I left the ark, stepped back
onto the muddied shore, overlooking
the mountian of Ararat,
a graveyard where I was the first mourner.
and so I became
a tiller of the wounded soil
my bags full of seeds, survivors
like me,
and so I became
a student of death and renewal,
a carpenter of grief and repair,
seeking a comfort impossible
to find yet necessary to offer,
living in a time of unbearable
sorrow, one breathe at a time,
hammering and sawing, as once I had built
the ark, with what was left.
I returned to the life of becoming
an ancestor, with a love
I had never known before,
a red thread spooling from my grief body
to my granddaughter Sara, longing in her tent for a different future,
to Rachael weeping for her children, to Yaacov
wrestling as I once did with Elohim,
to all of you my grandchildren
who are at this very moment
dreaming of arks.
Four
God’s Sorrowful Heart
My regret larger than all worlds,
my sorrowful broken heart infinite
seemingly impossible to Tzimtum, to contract,
to create consolation, that out of my great love
which divided emptiness into light
into interdependent vast webs of beauty,
that these humans whom I loved into being
birthing them from my Endless Womb
one into two into the many
had turned themselves back into
tohu vavohu, into chaos, shattering balance, murdering
one another, acting with malice and greed,
abusing language, degrading all the work
of my tender hands and heart.
My rage was fierce, my despair
boundless - there seemed to be no comfort or choice
but to flood it all,
start again, a different vision and form. And then
I who had created all was surprised: I did not expect
to love Noach, his essence smelled of
relief, entered my breathe, Nishmat Kol Chai
turned my face lost in Din in judgment and
punishment, towards my faces of love compassion and I thought:
why not save him and his seed? Why not - maybe there will come ease
for my broken heart, some comfort for my mourning hands,
Let us see I thought if they can learn to receive wisdom,
which they will call Torah someday-
perhaps they can re-make themselves in my image -
this gift I formed them around -
Let us see
Five
Prayer and Ploughshares
It is my prayer, that we find
a way to beat our swords into ploughshares
that we summon the ratzon, the will
to clear the God-fields of boulder
and brush - of our rage, our trauma and horror
as impossible as it seems
and as it is taught:
so it is above, as
it is below,
that our prayers
be the ploughshares
clearing the fields of Elohim,
covered with the rubble
of broken bones and letters
so Shekinah with her faces
of mercy, compassion, love
can return, face to face
with our own, so that we like Noach
can alight from our arks
onto the bruised shore
our pockets full of seeds, those
lameds and bets
to be sowed and tended
in the grief sodden fields
and rise as verdant gardens
where once again
those beautiful young dancers
and those wandering lovers
peace and justice
might reunite
kiss and remake
this wounded, wounding
world.