ARTicles

Footsy Roll

2007-12-03T02:59:00.000-05:00

Twist and shout:
aaaaaaaaaaFoot twists and nerve shouts.

Rock and roll:
aaaaaaaaaaBody rocks and ankle rolls.

Lightning bolt shoots up leg like fish shoot down stream
(Or Doc Holliday shoots up saloon and disappointment shoots down dream)
And body crumbles to hardwood like week-old corn muffin crumbles to paper bag.

Lie in a heap but tell the truth one at a time.
That's just the way this world twists and turns:
For every bona-fide smile you give, a thousand painted ones you get.

If nothing else, one thing isn't for sure:
Pain isn't exclusive to clichés – it resides also where there's no pleasure.

I'm stuck in bed and my foot is an ouch potato.

Instead of a
aaaaaaaaBobble-head
They gave me a
aaaaaaaaHobble-foot

All is swell
aaaaaaaaaaMy foot has an inflated ego
And, like an exaggeration, my ankle is blown way out of proportion.

Now I'm hip-hoppin', flip-floppin'
Tip-toppin' and be-boppin'

Infraction 'n' fracture
Enraptured 'n' rapture
Passion 'n' pasture

(Just a chip off the old bone)

I went to the x-ray place and I was seated: he told me my foot was
Thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit in Central Park and my ankle was expecting precipitation.
He gave me an umbrella and said to wear gloves and a scarf and boots.
I wondered why my insurance didn't cover the visit and why he
Kept on pointing to a color-schemed map with clouds and numbers on it
And anyway it looked nothing like a foot. I asked him if I needed a cast.
He said, "Don't you mean a forecast?" And that's when I knew he wasn't
A radiologist but a meteorologist.

Well, it could have been a zoologist.

I always thought an ex-ray was a sunbeam that fell out of favor
But then I see an X-ray is a photo worth a thousand bones.

So maybe beauty is skin deep after all.

(I once knew a guy who was a real bonehead:
He was so vain he would airbrush his own X-rays –
I think I last saw him chilling at the boneyard.)

I turned to the medicine man,
"So tell me, good doctor, is it fract or friction?"
He replied with an impish limp.

Does one cast a mold or mold a cast?
And anyway, do non-conformists walk around in molded casts?

My foot felt like it was at an Off-Off- (way-off) Broadway play with a weak cast

Also, I always thought a hairline fracture was a split forehead.
While lying in bed, you learn new things every day.
(Anyway, if a plane lands awkwardly do they call it an airline fracture?)

Br eak

I learned of tibias and fibulas
And I'm not tibbing or fibbing

(I think he who names bones also names medicines)

Some say it was a twist of foot but I know it was a twist of fate:
Only fate can take an innocent ankle and turn it, twist it –

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaInto poetry.

A Letter (or two) to Bat Ayin

2007-07-29T05:20:00.000-04:00

O, my daughter, speak to me, unto me
Tell me of all the things you wish to say,
Of the dreams you dream and the hopes
You hope as you lie under the starry blanket
Of heaven and as you walk the tall grasses
Of earth, your arm outstretched caressing,
Feeling life organic. Please, let your grapevines
Down and shake your leaves loose, let your
Fig-tears fall and your date-smiles laugh
Please, I want you to know me, I want to
Know you. I climb your hills and bathe
In your springs, I embrace your soil and
Kiss your stones, I hold your hand and
Walk with your every high and low, I
Look into your face, shining, glowing
The sun your lamp, revealing you, healing
You, feeling you as you grow and blossom,
Flourishing in dire conditions or even
Unconditionally, just doing what you do
Best, life, taking nothing and making something
(Some might even say you are the daughter,
The child, of nothing, of infinity endless)
You, my lovely, take a stony, stony silence
Hill and make it a vineyard; you, my heart,
Take an arid desert and make it a paradise;
You, my soul, take a forgotten promise
And make it a promised land, a home for
Peace and reality, a present and future
Perfect like your sunsets, yet never fading,
The colors not frozen but neither burning,
Just feeling, knowing, being…

You are the pupil of the eye –
I wish to be the pupil of you:
Suckling, licking every fruit you teach,
Clinging, hugging every root you inspire,
Wanting, needing every seed you plant,
Every sweat you drip, every work you
Labor, everything you do and everyone
You touch. Down in the valley and up
On the peaks I call to you, yearn to you
For when you will be the everyday norm
Not the exotic exception. I need you to
Call back, say hello to me, speak to me, tell
Me of all the things you wish to say
Of the dreams you dream and the hopes
You hope as you lie under the starry blanket
Of heaven and as you walk the tall grasses
Of earth, your arm outstretched caressing,
Feeling life organic

I think you already have:
wwwwwwwThe root
wwwwwwwAnd fruit
wwwwwwwwwwwwOne

O, my daughter, when will we
Acknowledge the pupil of our
Eye and see that you are really
The daughter of us all?

Wildlife

2007-07-09T22:12:00.000-04:00

It calls, does the wild (and not only from London) –
But it gets my voicemail and leaves no message after the beep
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzNor a messenger
– What the beep?

Strong vocal cords has the wild; bar chords stronger yet –
Still I cannot hear its message.

(For some odd or G-d reason I think it’s more
A problem with my ears than its tongue.)

It grows on you, does the wild, and you can only hope to

zzzzzzzzzGrow on it.

Like a dizzy spinster it is ungroomed: hair
Tangled; cheeks
Naked; paintless
Lips; lipless
Derrières.

Unlike an elevator filled with great-aunts and queen-wannabes
Pampered in Hegai’s spa, no fumes or perfumes emanate from
Its being – only the smell of nature unsprayed, untouched by art

Official substance.

It’s a wildflower and a wild guess:
A wildflower because nothing can stop its growth;
A wild guess because no one can predict its path.

You are afraid of its potential: you want to flip the letter,
The Double-You –
But were you really born to be in sipid, in control,
To live in postproduction?

Don’t walk down its path –
zzzzzzzzzzzThere isn’t any!
But run along its every curve, over untrimmed edges and
Tall borders, ivy crawling inhibitive, inhibition crawling away.
Bust through convention centers and concession
Stands. Cross-don’t-cross? I’m never cross and crosses

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzAre for roads

Life is wild: a wild look in its eyes, a wild beard on its face –

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzDo you want to tame it or live it?

Reach In To Get Out

2007-06-25T01:21:00.001-04:00

Young blood, some younger than others of course, boils by the fireside. Sitting on rocks, rocking on energy, energized beyond recognition, we sit encircled not in warmth – but the warmth is encircled in us. Fires are unique in that way: they are nothing yet everything; you cannot touch only feel them.

The guitars strum in awkward rhythms; awkward is the title of tonight’s show. People come just because, I cannot say because of what, and hang around for a while. Some are wanted, either for their looks, or their wit, or their relationships, mostly for their relationships. Wanted by others, not by me. I like people for their existence, not their qualities. These may have existence, but they hide behind their qualities, like most, and are therefore unreadable.

It crackles and dances, does the fire, and sparks shoot upward, trying to reach the star-studded heaven above, trying like a young child for his mothers breast. But, as I watch, all the sparks fade away a mere few feet into their flight. You would think that they would learn their lesson, but, no, they still reach, still yearn, still burn for the beautiful beyond.

We sit, trying to emulate the sparks, the fire: we try to shake and dance, we try to leap off our crackling limbs, off our earthen flesh, off our boiling blood; but, the more we reach, the further away we seem to be.

We all reach differently: some reach through the pipe, some through the bottle; some reach through their hearts, some through others’ minds; some reach with their outstretched arms, some with narrow-minded thoughts; some reach by singing out of tune, some by reciting poetry; some reach by falling back, some by falling forward; some just by falling; some reach by blowing smoke rings, some by blowing minds (and some by blowing other things); some reach out, some in; but only those that don’t reach seem to be getting anywhere.

I guess we truly are like the flame – we must reach for heaven, lest we become comfortable; but the only way for us to really burn is by dancing on earth.

Doing and Hearing

2007-05-28T10:57:00.000-04:00

I try so hard, to slip my mind;
My mind tries so hard, to slip away.
Indeed, it is a slippery slope on which I think
And an empty glass slipper in a half-full glass of hope –

I try not to mind but I cannot so I do
Mind
Mind you
You mind?

We will do…

I’m in love
And when you’re in love you do things without thinking

I used to think a lot and in a lot I used to think:
I used to think about consequences and inconsequences
(I hated being inconsequence, consequently having no sequence)
I would think about stances, circumstances and happenstances
About what-will-bees and be-what-it-maze

I used to think and to think I used –

It’s confusing, I know (or not), so I just do

mmmmmmmmmI guess I’m do
mmmmmmmmmAnd I’m paying my dos
mmmmmmmmm(Though it’s more than just dues and don’ts
mmmmmmmmmBut I never knew that until I did
mmmmmmmmmAnd never did that until did)

And we will hear…

I’m still in love
And when you’re still in love you better hear what’s being said
(Even if you do)
Lest all you hear is your own cry

I hear and I try to understand and when I do
I question
And I try to understand
And when I do
(Because I do do)
I question
And I try to understand…

I wonder where I would be if I didn’t say
We will do and we will hear
Or if I said it in a different order

I probably wouldn’t be
(Never mind doing or hearing):

If I tried to understand everything I did before I did it
The only two things I would do is regret and self-pity
And that I’d do to perfection.

If I only did without hearing and understanding
I’d be doing and sending that other poem I rote

If I only heard and understood without doing,
Well, then, these words might be heard and understood
But they sure as ink wouldn’t be written

Per the theme – this poem was definitely done before being heard

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmOr understood.

א-ray

2007-05-03T19:46:00.000-04:00

(this is a weekly column we are working on @ The Algemeiner Journal in our ongoing effort to enhance it. What do you think of this as a weekly feature?)

א-ray

Believe it or not, faith is in the air (and the news). In Israel, from Olmert to Herzl, the people have lost faith in their leaders. In Politics, from Obama to Ahmadinejad, faith is suddenly omnipresent. In Environment, from Global Warming to coral reefs, faith is all that seems to be left. In Science, from apes to new planets, faith is dissected. In Economics, from Wolfowitz to Wal-Mart, in G-d they trust. And in The Middle East, well, faith has always been their excuse.

Israel:

The Israeli leader-ship is sinking fast. Following the Winograd commission’s criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s handling of last summer’s war on Hezbollah, the call for the prime minister’s resignation rings from the Golan Heights down to the Negev. The only question is: What took so long?

Cabinet minister Eitan Cabel of the Labor Party resigned from the Cabinet and called for Olmert to follow suit, to “bear responsibility” for his actions.

Olmert, who even before the release of the report had a below 3% approval rate (which, in a country the size of Israel, is about three falafel-stand owners and an Egged bus driver), said he will not quit and his spokeswoman said, “He thinks that through his actions, [public] support will come.”

For some odd reason – perhaps because of the 119 soldiers and 39 civilians killed from his previous actions – it is highly unlikely.

But, don’t worry – the Israeli leadership is not alone in its demise. The Socialist dream may be dying as well. In what Time magazine called “The End of a Zionist Idyll,” the oldest kibbutz in Israel, Degnia, has given up its socialist ideals and gone private.

“Many Israelis see us as yet another broken symbol,” said the kibbutz manager.

And, with Olmert breaking other ones, maybe it’s time for Israel to find better symbols.

Politics:

Jumping one leader-ship for another: To be politically correct, G-d votes neither Democrat nor Republican; yet, that doesn’t stop Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama from voting for G-d. In a front-page story, the NY Times followed Senator Obama’s journey “from skepticism to belief,” how the stepson of “a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids,” adopted the Christian faith.

To be politically incorrect, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the 27^th anniversary of the failed U.S. operation to rescue 53 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by saying, “Heavenly aides supported the Iranian nation and clobbered the enemy in the desert.”

You think Ahmadinejad enjoys bacon too?

Environment:

From fried, unhealthy (and non-kosher) foods, to fried, unhealthy (though kosher) planets, UN scientists claim nuclear power can save the world. And all this time we thought Iran wanted to destroy it.

More than 2,000 scientists have contributed to this report given by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the syllables themselves could corrode any ozone layer – the third of such a report given this year.

Meanwhile, as this Planet Earth is melting away, another has floated to the surface.

Science:

In real-life, ET fashion, scientists have discovered a warm and rocky “second Earth” circling a star, which they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.

Yet, while they make progress in regard to life on other planets, they can barely figure out life on this one:

In their undying quest to find the origins of everything (wonder where the origins of that comes from?), scientists have sought clues in the gestures of chimpanzees to hint at the origins of language.

Is it possible that the origins of language are found – dare it be said – in a being higher than a baboon?

Economics:

From one deity to the next: The Almighty Dollar is in play – and for very high-stakes. Wal-Mart, the mega-retailer, is being charged by the Human Rights Watch with using illegal means to prevent its workers from forming unions, while Google Inc., the mega-parent of the popular video-sharing site YouTube, filed a response to Viacom Inc.’s lawsuit that claimed YouTube was willfully infringing copyrights of Viacom Inc.’s materials.

It seems, “In G-d We Trust” has its limits. Maybe Paul D. Wolfowitz, in response to the World Bank’s inquiry into his securing a $193,590 job for a close female friend, put it best: it would be “unjust and frankly hypocritical” of the board to find guilt of ethical collapse.

After all, how can one find someone guilty of ethical collapse when there is no ethical standard to begin with?

The Middle East:

Talk about ethical standards: A suicide bomber blew himself up in middle of an Iraqi funeral, killing 32 people; a gunman killed 14 travelers on an Iraqi highway; Hamas threatened more violence if its “demands” were not met; and Iran continues its march to world domination. Is it any wonder then that, while the EU and UN sat down for tea with Hamas and the gang, terrorist attacks shot-up (and blew-up) more than 25% over the past year?

With Turkey and the Middle East at large going through a religious-or-secular identity crisis, where faith threatens humanity and humanity “sacrifices” itself over the blood of innocent children – but, of course, all in the name of Allah – who will stand up as a courageous voice in this sandy realm of terror and human indignity? Israel?

Maybe if its leader-ship could right itself.

If that doesn’t put things in perspective maybe next week will.

Why The Pain?

2007-04-24T17:17:00.000-04:00

I walk in the forest. I come upon a brook. The brook is so silent and still. I look into the brook. The brook looks into me – it is like a polished looking glass. As I stare into it, captivated by its simplicity, I begin drifting to a place I’ve only dreamt about before, a place that knows no evil and feels no pain…

The sun never sets. The sky never grays. The grass never yellows. The tree never dies. The leaf never crumbles. The flower never wilts.

The man does not hate. The woman does not cry. The child does not hurt. The family does not starve.

The mind does not forget. The heart does not deceive. The lip does not frown. The hand does not slap. The face does not cringe.

The canvas does not discolor. The music does not stop. The words do not fade. The poem does not end.

There is no war. There is no loss. There is no regret. There is no enemy. There is no divide. There is no failure. There is no pain.

But then, as I drift deeper and deeper, I begin to see more and more, and I begin to understand…

The sun never sets…because it has never risen. The sky never grays…because it has never been blue. The grass never yellows…because it has never been green. The tree never dies…because it has never lived. The flower never wilts…because it has never bloomed.

The man does not hate…but neither does he love. The woman does not cry…but neither does she laugh. The child does not hurt…but neither does he feel. The family does not starve…but neither does it eat.

The mind does not forget…but neither does it remember. The heart does not deceive…but neither is it faithful. The lip does not frown…but neither does it smile. The hand does not slap…but neither does it caress. The face does not cringe…but neither does it glow.

The canvas does not discolor…because it’s painted in black and white. The music does not stop…because the song has never been composed. The words do not fade…because the letters have never been written. The poem does not end…because the poet does not begin.

There is no war…but neither is there peace. There is no loss…but neither is there gain. There is no regret…but neither is there pride. There is no enemy… but neither is there a friend. There is no divide…but neither is there individuality. There is no failure…but neither is there hope. There is no pain…but neither is there pleasure.

Now, slowly, slowly I begin to float back to the surface. And, as I walk away from the brook, I no longer question all the pain in life but am thankful for all its pleasures.

You Being You

2007-04-16T01:13:00.000-04:00

Over the years and under the bridges waters flow like some people’s tears. It is a story known by many but a message experienced by few. So rare is its child that even the parent is unaware of its birth. Such is the case in most cases: life’s story tumbles on while its characters – we, the human body – remain ignorant to its unfolding.

When one arises and proclaims a lesson or two, a truth or three, to be gleaned from the seemingly drunken ramblings of a sober poet, he is called – by the crowd and the loud – a lunatic. When one stands up and tries to make a difference in an indifferent world, he is branded – by the masses and the asses – a homeless outcast. But, just because someone doesn’t feel comfortable in a home with a leak, it doesn’t make him homeless; and, just because someone doesn’t feel fine by bending to the status quo, that doesn’t make him an outcast.

And if it does, then so be it: I’d rather be a homeless outcast trying to make a difference than a homebody incast trying to live up to standards created by standard people.

They say that after we graduate from this world to the World of Truth, where one does not need HD to see things clearly and definitively, they will not ask us, “Why weren’t you this and why weren’t you that?” they will ask you, “Why weren’t you you?”

It is an unbelievable blessing – and, therefore, responsibility – to know that you can be you, to know that no one else can be you and no one else can do what you do. It is such a blessing that most people choose to shun it like the plague. It is damn scary, knowing you can change the face of existence. If you acknowledge the power and you don’t do anything about it, you are a failure; but, if you just choose to ignore it and make believe it doesn’t exist, you are off the hook. “Hey,” you can say, “I don’t believe I can change the world so I’m free of any yoke and responsibility.” Of course it’s denial, but denial feels so good.

So, what’s it going to be, a house with a leak but at least a house or a dream for a perfect home, where we may have to knock down a few strong walls but only to build stronger bridges?

What’s it going to be, easy-as-pie denial or tough-as-nails growth?

It’s you being you so you decide.

Purple Haze

2007-04-08T08:43:00.000-04:00

Have you ever heard a wine connoisseur describe a wine? It sounds as if he is describing a human being – full-bodied, rich color tones, strong bone structure, sweet disposition – some of my best friends aren’t that characteristic! And if that is not enough to deflate an amateur drinker’s self-confidence, just watch the way a wine expert drinks the stuff – he caresses it like a long lost child, he stares at it like a smitten sixteen year old, he sniffs it like a firehouse dog, and he gargles it like a mouthwash. I don’t mean to belittle wine and its sommeliers, but what is going on here?

Wine represents the hidden dimension, the part of us that can work for hundreds of years just to produce a mere few ounces of pleasure. It is called Life. The soil, the vine, the cultivation, the grape, the squeeze, the process – all culminating in a perfect wine, a perfect universe.

My tongue is still purple from all the Passover wine, the four cups of freedom, so what better time to write of wine than now?

Drink responsibly.

Wine
Red flow, sparkling
Dark pools of purple
Ink, writing sacred
Words on

winewineWhite

Shirts.

Hear the news on the
Grapevine:

Walk through the vineyard
It looks like a graveyard
But it’s really a backyard
With three feet of lanyard
And the passion of a spanyard

I wish you could look through the
winewinewineS
winewinewineT
winewinewineE
winewinewineM
winewinewineM
winewinewineE
winewinewineD
winewinewiGlass,
Into the burgundy depths –
wineAnd know my wine
winAnd not my whining.

This vintage is G-dly
If it weren’t such a pun
I’d call it:
The Grape of Divine

(We all want taste but we
Don’t want to wait for maturation)

It is dry but wet
Enough to whet my palette.
Semidry humor and semisweet
Smiles.

You can smell the bouquet
As you stick your curious snout
In other people’s business
(Which is fine if you don’t
Sneeze).

Grapes of Wrath:

Trying to flag down a yellow cabernet
Don’t say I don’t pinot!
Muscat got your tongue?
David killing Goliath with a
Riesling shot.
The highest of the high
The merlowest of the merlot
Don’t chardonnay say
Lest it be champagneful.
My grape juices are flowing
Barreling through the casket
Out of the spout, unto your lips.

The silence is worse than the grape.

Time to climb out of the wine
winewineCellar
winewinewinewineAnd into the message
winewinewinewinewinewineIn the bottle.

The sunlight hurts my eyes
Blinding
I am beginning to feel heavy
And my head is starting to spin.
I guess I better put a
Cork in it.
Now unwined.

(Need a designated driver –
But the road I travel can only be
Driven by me
Dilemma
Such is the life.)

Sanitizing the Insanity of Pesach

2007-03-26T17:38:00.000-04:00

The brooms have come out of the closet, sweeping the crumbs off their feet. The mops have come out of retirement, mopping the brows of the hardwood floors in a swooshing rhythm. The dusters have been dusted off and are scattering the little feathery minutiae that congregate in corners and atop cabinets. Cleaning agents (don’t you just love that term, “cleaning agents,” sounds like little suds in dark suits and darker glasses, chasing grimy filth around in their government-issue, tinted-window sedans) have soaped and shampooed any surface that is, well, surfaced. And every book (which in a good Jewish home is more than the goyishe coffee table number and essential cookbooks) has been aired and its pages flipped. Such is the life in the Jewish home during the hectic pre-Pesach weeks – every nook, cranny and crevice is squeakily cleaned, hygienically sanitized and flawlessly spic-and-spanned.

Ironically, it seems, the holiday of freedom has imprisoned us in the Siberian gulag of chores; the time of exodus has shackled us to the tough bristles of the broom; the hour of redemption has exiled us to the dominion of domestic servitude. What is going on here – are we free to do as we please or has our exodus only been a transfer from the cell of Egyptian bondage to the pits of solitary confinement?

Ever since I was a child when, from Purim on, I was not allowed to bring food or drink into my room lest a rebellious crumb escape the plate’s status quo and defile my chometz-free bedroom, I’ve wondered about the whole Pesach cleaning thing – is it really necessary to blowtorch pots, silver-foil faucets and plastic-cover countertops?

(I’m sorry to burden you with this pun, but the whole Pesach cleaning experience seems to be wishy-washy. Ouch!)

As the human race would have it, there are those that would rather go with the faucet flow and not ask these dirty questions. And there are others that would go as far as calling these questions apikorses, bordering on the heretical (if not the hysterical). But, as I’ve been taught and as the holiday of Pesach demonstrates, we are nothing without our questions and if one were to deny a question – that would be heretical; it would mean that we believe the Torah was not intelligent enough to answer legitimate questions. (What would the Babylonian Talmud be without questions? Unanswerable if not unfathomable.)

If the perennial Bubby was around at the moment, she’d probably say to my questions, “Nu, megst fregen,” nu, so you’re allowed to ask, which, in my vast experience with such shrewd shrug-offs, would be a clear sign that there was no answer on the horizon (though, in all honesty, the fact that I’m allowed to ask may be the greatest answer of all). I guess her thinking would be, “Just because Judaism begets questions doesn’t mean grandmothers beget answers!” True, o wizened one, but where does that leave me?

Thankfully, in not only advocating (and supplying) questions but answers as well, Judaism and its blueprint, the Torah, has opened my eyes, pockets and cupboards to the deeper cleaning of Pesach: the brushes and soaps that reach beneath the polished surface and into the raw self.

The physical Pesach cleaning process, where we rid our homes, possessions and environments of any chometz, is but a reflection of the spiritual Pesach cleaning process, where we rid our personal selves – mind, body and soul – of any chometz.

What is physical chometz? Chometz (rhymes with summits) is any grain product – like bread, cake, pasta or pizza crust; be it wholegrain, multigrain, half-grain or even migraine – that has had the chance to ferment and rise.

Spiritual chometz is no different: it is the inflated self, the bacterial part of us that has had a chance to ferment way out of character and rise way out of proportion. Anything within ourselves that considers itself an identity all its own and has an ego that rises like warm yeast, is a piece of chometz. Like the physical chometz, the spiritual chometz tastes very good, is very fattening, and gets real moldy and real stale really fast.

If we want true freedom we have to throw away that yeasty garbage, we have to washout our dirty laundry, we have to clean up our micro-mess. Scrubbing our indecencies and selfishness away allows for our true beings to shine forth. Sweeping our minds of any crumbs left from our inflated – and, therefore, crumbling – egos allows us to uncover who we really are – people of the free, cut clean from any Egypt or confine, running unhindered and unrestrained (not to mention unsoiled) to the Promised Land.

So, before you throw in the towel, stop moping and start mopping – after all, if one was to clean not only the bottom of the shelf but also the bottom of the self, one would have to turn up the heat to a whole new level – to “self-clean” perhaps?

Bittul - A Prelude To Tomorrow’s Post

2007-03-22T04:25:00.000-04:00

I recently came across this and in one line it really captures what Bittul is all about. Most people misinterpret it or don't interpret it altogether. I think tomorrow I'm going to post more on this. (Hey, if one doesn't have Bittul at least they can write about it.)

“Ultimate Bittul is not only searching for the vices in yourself but also for the virtues in another” – The Rebbe (Printed in Lekkutei Sichos vol. 17, p. 7.)

Writ & Read

2007-03-11T03:56:00.000-04:00

Writ sits in solitude, fingers tap-dancing a rhythm out of key: Letters sprinkling like chocolate on vanilla; Words embracing like Adam and Eve; Sentences fastening like speeding locomotive cars; Paragraphs supporting like old-age-home banisters.

Writ writes himself – that is, Writ writes himself into the pages. Writ never writes fiction – there is no such thing as fiction: if someone says there is, then that someone is a fictionist. Many writers hide behind their words – after all, it never feels good to be naked in a clothing store – Writ, however, words his way out of hiding: letters are the fingers with which he unbuttons his shirt; words, the hands with which he undresses his soul.

Read stands in company, fingers dog-earing pages yellowed: (Paper)back hunched like Quasimodo; Spine tingled like A. Christy mystery; Preface blushing like the cheek of Cosette; Epilogue experienced like Jean Valjean.

Read reads others – that is, Read reads what others have written. Read never reads non-fiction – after all, for non-fiction Read has but to look out the window. It is fiction, that thing only found in endings fair and tales fairy, what Read so desperately craves.

Who are you, Writ or Read?

Purim 2007

2007-03-01T02:11:00.000-05:00

“Whoever reads the Megila retrospectively – out of order; back to front – has not fulfilled the mitzvah.”
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz– Talmud, Megila, beg. Ch. II.

“Whoever reads the Megila retrospectively – as if it was just a story of the past; irrelevant to the present – has not fulfilled the mitzvah.”
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz– The Baal Shem Tov

“…The king made a feast for all those…(Esther, 1:5)”

We lie here in exile, fat and growing fatter, content to go through the routines of life, satisfied with the status quo of existence. And why not, when we are invited to feast off all the world’s pleasures?

And what a feast it is: impure-silver contentment interwoven with purple-silk temptation; gold goblets brimming with self-righteousness washing down pompousness stuffed full with vanity; onyx encrusted limitations draped over platinum plated coarseness.

Life is beautiful – well, at least our monies can buy beautiful things – and we are free – free to enslave ourselves.

We are drunk on our own insecurities, but who cares so long as we are in denial. We are broken-up inside, but who cares so long as we smile on the outside. We have been exiled for a while now, but with such exile who needs redemption.

It seems the physical feast has become our spiritual famine. Why do we not realize that when we feast off the world we are also allowing the world to feast off us?

“…But Mordechai did not bow…(3:2)”

And yet, even as the rest of the world bows to the idol, there is a part of us that remains upright and true, never exchanging a few moments of bliss for an eternity of pain.

It is not easy, standing up for your values in a room where everything is valueless. It is most difficult, keeping your identity when surrounded by people who’d rather bend to peer-pressure. It is the greatest of challenges, holding your head up high when the majority bows theirs so low.

It makes people envious, sure, when they see someone who stands for what s/he believes – and that envy, instead of using it as inspiration to change themselves, causes them to get angry and enraged at the situation.

“…To destroy, kill and decimate…(3:13)”

Good and Evil (or whatever term you wish to use to word the positives and negatives in life) cannot coexist – where Good flourishes Evil falters, where Evil flourishes Good falters. Subsequently, when they meet at the inevitable crossroad called Life, a battle ensues, with Good trying to best Evil and Evil trying to best (worst?) Good.

When Evil sees Good faltering, when he sees it feasting off things physical instead of sustaining from things spiritual, Evil tries to come in for the kill. Evil tries to hang Good from a gallows made of a million broken promises.

“…On that night, the king could not sleep…(6:1)”

But Good doesn’t play by the same rules as Evil; Evil’s power is limited to this world alone, but Good’s power reaches far beyond to a place that transcends evil. Evil cannot take a warm smile and make it a cold smirk, but Good can take a cold smirk and make it a warm smile.

And so it is at night, in the darkest hour, when the miracle begins, when a dire situation turns for the better.

“…And everything was turned upside-down, inside-out…(9:1)”

What seemed to be terrible yesterday is wonderful today. He who wanted us to bow to him now bows to us. The Evil that wanted to smite us is now being smitten. And the world is a better place.

But how can there be such a drastic change, from yesterday to today, so drastic that those who were our enemies are now our friends, so drastic that those who wished for us to swing form the gallows now swing themselves?

It is because everything is turned upside-down, inside-out. Yesterday we saw things at face-value; today we see things at soul-value. Yesterday we looked at things for their physical price; today we see things for their spiritual worth. Yesterday we were feasting in the palaces of kings; today we feast in the palace of the King of kings – and no feast was ever more satisfying.

“…For the Jews there was light and joy, gladness and honor…(8:16)”

~~~
Last years Purim piece: Faced By...

~~~
Sneak peek: In honor of Purim, this weeks Weekly Poetry will address "Masks." If you've recently been born or have just learned to read, you can subscribe to the Weekly Poetry by emailing me jakeyology@gmail.com, sub. "Subscribe."

Why Joy? Joy Because!

2007-02-25T01:53:00.000-05:00

The saddest thing is a sad child. Children are supposed to be happy, unadulterated joy. If a child is sad, if a child has been hurt, if a child has been scarred, it is the saddest, most hurtful, most scarring thing. It is innocence defiled.

We are born pure. Over the years, as childhood turns to adulthood, we become contaminated. Layer after layer of things insignificant pile atop the forgotten child, turning him into an adult. Maturity is really nothing more than a big cloak shrouding our innate purity. Growth, as defined by the world, is just forgetting one’s natural state.

Because a child is pure, a child is joyous. Of course there will be the inevitable tear when the child doesn’t get the candy or toy, but that is not true sadness; that is momentary dissatisfaction. Give it a minute or two and the child will go back to its natural state – Joy.

The same goes for adult happiness. Just like child sadness is momentary, so is adult happiness momentary: merely a fleeting satisfaction. Adult happiness, be it bought with dollars or gained with favors, is a temporary happiness, as substantial as the dollar or favor that birthed it.

There is a reason people need possessions, need extravagant things. People need belongings because they need to belong. There is a void here that has to be filled. And this void is no insignificant void. It is the greatest of voids. A void created by the lack of Self. So, what can replace Self? Nothing. But we try. We try with things physical and we try with things mystical; we try with things cynical and we try with things sexual; we try with things whimsical and we try with things hysterical. But, no matter how many possessions we possess, no matter how hard we try, the void always remains. True, we may forget the void for a while, even for a mean while, but it is always there, begging to be filled and fulfilled.

But how?

There are those times when the unadulterated purity shines through all the layers, when the child peeks through the curtains with his irresistible smile. We all have such moments in life, when we are not happy because we have this or don’t have that, but we are joyous just because, just because we are.

True Joy is not something unnatural and acquired (or even required, squired, esquired, enquired, or quagmired). Real Joy just is. A child isn’t happy because something has made him happy; a child is happy because he is. The adult – who is really just a huge plastic mask – also has this happiness within him, but, because of all the distortions, it isn’t as spontaneous or evident. Still, there are nevertheless those triggers that ignite something that has always been there, just waiting, impatiently, for these moments of truth.

Joy is going back to where we once were. Joy is recognizing that we are here not because we have possessions or because someone tells us we are important; Joy is knowing we are here because we are who we are, indispensable in the greater scheme of things, irreplaceable by something or someone else. Joy is smiling at the fact that there is no void, because no matter how many masks, no matter how much makeup or how many false personifications created, there is me, me how G-d made me, me who is needed, needed not only by people but by the creator of people; needed not only by our networks but also by reality.

Joy isn’t found somewhere. Joy is realizing that something was never lost. And that something is Self.

Adar and Purim, the most joyous of times, not because we have something this month or this holiday that we haven’t had before; it is the most joyous because we realize something we’ve always had –

A Why and a Because.

(This weeks Weekly Poetry email covered the Joy topic. If you would like to subscribe to the weekly email, let me know at jakeyology@gmail.com, sub. “Subscribe.”)

What is Joy?

2007-02-22T19:10:00.000-05:00

I would like your insights...

I will post a piece on this later tonight.

Weekly Poetry

2007-02-15T19:17:00.000-05:00

People of the world,

Inspired by a many few, I have decided to send a weekly POETRY email to all those I know and some of those I do not yet know.

If “words are the pen of the mind, and music the pen of the heart,” then poetry is somewhere in between, straddling the no-man’s-land between word and music. Because it is in a no-man’s-land, neither here nor there, poetry is extremely difficult to define – and because it is extremely difficult to define, poetry can say whatever the hell it wants, bar no bars, limit no limitations, restrict no restrictions.

The weekly poem will sometimes be sad, sometimes happy; at times frustrating, at other times inspiring. But, no matter what genre, mood or circumstance, there will always be an attempt at making it real – that is, addressing and undressing something relevant and meaningful.

Some of the poems may have appeared right here on the blog, some may have been printed before, and some may be seeing their first light. All are my original "creations."

Comments and feedback, be it critical or complimentary, are always welcome and appreciated – after all, a poet may learn much from the language but he learns most from the reader.

If you would like to sign up (or know someone that would) , just email me at jakeyology@gmail.com Sub. "Subscribe."

I hope you will enjoy our weekly climb up the poet-tree and I hope it will sprout into many branches and give-off the sweetest fruit.

(In no way will this interfere with my weekly blog posts.)

2007-02-12T01:30:00.000-05:00

Romance is not very romantic: in literature it usually refers to stories excitingly exaggerated or highly imaginary; in music it usually means short, simple melodies of tender character; and in life it usually equals a forty-year-old spinster awaiting her prince in shining – by now, rusted – armor. Yet, where would we be without it?

Romance is like the dash of salt in a dish, like the tinge of blush in a cheek – the difference between tastelessness and delicacy, the fine line separating boredom and excitement.

Romance and I

I walk barefoot, down a path dripping with cynicism. Acid tears fall from my eyes; steely sirens pierce my ears. There is an iron rosebush on the side of the path. I reach to touch it. Prickly thorns tear into my skin; black rose petals lie shriveled on the ground.

I roam the streets by night, looking in the shadows for what I do not know. I lie in bed by day, staring up at the ceiling of my dreams. I walk with no one holding my hand; I lie with no one breaking my heart.

One day, as I ride the subway, going through the daily routine – looking at the black-and-white graffiti flashing by like the years of my life, listening to the trains grumbling like the mood of my heart – I happen to glance up – and there she is, staring right at me, a mother-of-pearl smile on her lips. She just keeps on staring, keeps on smiling. I cannot turn away. I am transfixed.

…She takes me to a place I’ve never known, a place where dreamers are made and dreams are made of. We walk hand in hand on a rainbow bridge over crystal-clear streams. I reach out to pick a yellow dandelion from the millions growing by the brook. I tuck it behind her ear. She looks in my eyes and kisses my cheek.

We lie on the green velvet grass looking up to the blue silk sky scattered with white cashmere clouds. I follow her finger, drawing pictures in the firmaments above. She takes my hand, uncurls my finger, and draws an angel with it in the heavens…

Someone bumps my elbow and I am shaken from my daydream. The train is crawling to a halt and I realize this is my stop. But before I get off I must know her name, the name of the woman that changed my life forever. I glance around, looking for a clue. And right before the doors open, as I weave my way through the throngs of humanity, I see on bottom of the ad, just below the mother-of-pearl smile, the words – “Romance by Ralph Lauren.”

Of Menus And Men

2007-01-25T11:05:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Life, the most exotic in universal dining. My name is M. Endel d’Jaquebson and I shall be your host tonight.

Life, more than just a ubiquitous smorgasbord of edibles, is a place where one can experience anything – from the delicate to the flamboyant, from the pleasurable to the painful, from the ravishing to the revolting.

Please, let me take your coat and show you to your table. I know you have waited more than five thousand years for this seat and, once you have begun dining, you’ll see that the wait (if not the weight) was well worth it. Now that you are all seated, I will leave you to navigate our bill of fare. Remember, Life is a journey, one that should be embraced with an exquisite palate. Choose wisely.

Carte Du Jour (in English: A Day In The Life)

Chef de Cuisine: Der Aybishter

Appetizers
The little things that go unnoticed until they’re gone

Flirtatious Fritter
a secret whisper, batted eyelash, hair tossed over shoulder, sashaying hip

Spring Rolls
melted snow, rolled up sleeve, sprouting flower, blued sky (served at 71 degrees Fahrenheit)

Total Jerky
horns of bully, stolen lunch money, elastic wedgie

Envy Empanada
bitter covetousness, jealous smirk, sour discontentment

Soups
The watery things that may not be as substantial as they seem

Cream of the Crop
very rich dad, spiced in ivy league, toothpaste-ad smile, captain of football team

Laced Mushroom
acid reduction, kaleidoscopic hallucinations, dancing portobello belles

Soup du Jour
every day, a new energy; every energy, a different bowl

Salads
The flowery things that are sometimes tossed

Hearts of Charm
three dozen red roses, sensitive scents, topped with a valiant vinaigrette dressing

Teaser Salad
just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce) dressed in the slinkiest of negligees

Sun-Dried Humor Salad
funny bone shards, tickled cucumbers, peels of laughter, topped in egg-joke

Entrees
The big things that change the shape of the world (and the shape of our hips)

Filet of Soul
sparks of spirit, finished in an organic mystical glaze

Braised Short Fibs
luscious falsehoods, garnished with hustle sprouts and raspberry sham

Chilean Sea Ass
buttered buttocks and pompous sycophant on a bed of crack-ers

Rack of Lamb
tender fragility wrapped in a warm cocoon

Cornish Men
masculine muscle, stuffed full of himself

Darkest Hellibut
fiery (apricot) pits, sinful shadows, deviled eggs

Steaks (or Stakes)
Those meaty things that are rare, yet well-done

High Stake
a deadly (b)risk-it cut, served in a saucy gamble

Reserve Cut
filet of self-restraint, seared in anti-social truffle oil

Rhyme Rib
iambic pentameter cut, accented with french-fried haikus and epic lymph odes

Black Angst Beef
anxiously grilled to imperfection, served on a toast of multi-grain dread

From the Bar
The liquid things of matter which contain the spirit

Peacocktail
with a vainglorious kick

Whisker Sour
mustachioed frowns

Con Yak
motor-mouthed scam-artist

White Zen-fandel
meditation on the rocks (garden)

Cham Pain
it hurts so good

Desserts
The indulgent things that make us feel sweet

Tear-amisu
sadness served with a broken heart

Off the Walnut Cake
drizzled in craizen syrup

Blackberry Short Cake
wireless capability

Sore Bey
many flavors, all charley-horse

~~~

I hope you’ve enjoyed your meal.
There will be 20% gratuity added to the tab either way.

Colorblind

2007-01-19T02:45:00.000-05:00

Not everything is Black & White

Snow White in a fairy place
Dollar Bill green with envy
M&M red in the face
Bronzed skin on Mr. Penny

Blue Oyster’s Cult
Deep Purple’s riffs
Pink Floyd’s revolt
Black Sabbath’s spliffs

Hendrix in a purple haze
Lennon in a yellow submarine
Dylan tangled in a blue maze
In a white room lives Cream

What can brown do for you?
Just address the yellow pages
The bottle cops of NYPD Blue
And the gold-hearted sages

A Clockwork Orange tick-tock
Flemming with a Goldfinger-print
The Pink Panther runs chick-chock
Like The Green Mile at a sprint

The Picture of Dorian Gray
More Wilde than The Color Purple
Primary Colors on Election Day
Sherlock in the Red Circle

Once in a blue moon I have a glass of red wine and I unwind
Or maybe it was a red moon and a glass of blue wine – I’m colorblind!

Culture & Religion

2007-01-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

Can Religion Be Cultured? Can Culture Be Religious?

Religion, the word itself scares most people silly. It is a word that speaks of irrational belief, naïve commitment and pathetic escapism. Religion is associated with boring, stale routine, where human creativity gives way to divine intervention. Religion, for many, is the euphemism for inadequacy, mediocrity and complacency.

Culture, on the other hand, is a word that embraces the finer things in life. It is a word that speaks of artistic accomplishment, literary genius and mind cultivation. Culture is associated with exciting, pulsating wantonness, where the human condition is tuned to perfection and the human consciousness is perfected to a tune.

As the universe’s DNA would have it, the paths of religion and culture do not often cross – and when they do, they usually stare at each other crossly. Therefore, rare indeed is the possibility of jumping the fence dividing the polar opposites – never mind straddling it.

Last week, I had the opportunity of shuttling between the creativity of Yiddish culture and the commitment of Yiddish religion. One day I’m in a shtetl called Kerhonkson (Yiddish in phonetics but English in genetics), the next I’m in place called Crown Heights (English in phonetics but Yiddish in genetics). The dichotomy between the two cannot be lost even on one who speaks no Yiddish:

In Kerhonkson, I was at a Yiddish cultural and folk arts program. It was secularism at its best – or, as the religious would have it, at its worst: choir boys were bowing to the notes of music, fanatics were worshipping the letters of literature, devotees were praying to the strokes of visual arts.

In Crown Heights, I was in a Chassidishe Shul. It was religion at its best – or, as the secular would have it, at its worst: old men in white flowing beards were swaying to and fro, their prayer shawls soaked in tears; people were yelling at each other, a farbengen reaching its zenith; children were pulling on their fathers’ kapotes, begging to go home for kiddush.

Both Kerhonkson and Crown Heights spoke the same language, Yiddish, and played the same songs, Chasidic niggunim, but there was something very different about the two.

~~~

Culture is a body; language – music, literature, art – its limbs. A body is a beautiful thing, to be cherished, cultivated, and challenged. However it is not an end in itself: Culture, like the body it represents, must have a message, a reason, a purpose with which to perpetuate. You don’t think so? Well, just ask the Greeks and Egyptians. (What, they’re nowhere to be found?!)

Have you ever walked in a forest and seen, among the evergreens, a tree whose branches bare (!) no leaves and whose skin has turned a cold gray? That is a body without a soul, a culture without a purpose, a life without meaning.

Of course, the cultured would argue that culture is for culture’s sake alone and does not need a “higher purpose” (higher, that is, than man) with which to make it come alive. But then what happens once the song stops, once the sentence ends, once the art fades, will culture then still continue to live?

It is a beautiful thing words – but even more beautiful is what they say. It is a beautiful thing music – but even more beautiful is what it sings. It is a beautiful thing art – but even more beautiful is what it paints. That’s where religion comes into the picture (or photo if you’re cultured – a la movie vis-à-vis film). If Culture is the messenger then Religion is the message: religion does not replace culture, just like culture shouldn’t replace religion – they should walk hand in hand, one complimenting the other.

A healthy relationship between body and soul is when the body communicates the soul’s message and the soul energizes the body’s communication. So should the relationship between culture and religion be, with culture communicating religion’s message and religion energizing culture’s communication.

The problem of course lies in when one or the other is misused and, thus, abused. When one worships culture as if it were religion or when one treats religion as if it were culture, then both culture and religion become distorted.

This is why many people are “scared silly” (to quote the first paragraph) by religion – the religion they’ve come across is less religion and more culture, that is, less soul and more body. And, this is also why many people see culture as false – the culture they know is devoid of any soul and spirit.

So, yeah, religion ought to be cultured and culture ought to be religious. However, don’t confuse the two words – after all, we wouldn’t want to wear a pair of jeans called “true culture” and go to the doctor for a “throat religion.”

MSK/SIB

2006-12-31T22:25:00.001-05:00

Move in a crooked rhythm
Dance on a tiled ceiling
Chained in an iron prism
Bow to a statue kneeling

Sell your soul to the devil
Buy your body from the lord
Don’t give me no medal
I just want the tip of your sword

Kiss your lips to my cheek
Bite the tongue of your people
Only the deaf hear you speak
Swinging from a church steeple

Light Reading

2006-12-19T00:39:00.003-05:00

I watch the flames as they dance and burn. I lean ever closer, trying to hear the story they tell. I look at the colors moving in rhythm; the red waltzes with the blue, the white tangos with the yellow. The glittering lights reflect off my transfixed eyes and as I stare into their dazzling faces I can feel myself being pulled into their warm embrace. It’s as if I no longer watch the flames but they watch me; it’s as if I no longer listen to their story but they listen to mine – and, as the space between the flames and myself begins to blur, I am transported to a place far away, far away within me: I have become part of the story…

…Winds howl in the frostbitten night. The slivery moon, waning with yet another month, looks like an icicle in the blackness above. Through my visible breath I see the tail of a shooting star frozen in mid-flight.

I stand there shivering, rubbing my numb hands together in an attempt at creating some semblance of feeling. I am bundled in many layers, covered in many coats, but no material can thaw this bone-chill, no fur can melt this iced heart.

All the homes, once places of light and warmth, have been destroyed: rubble and debris line the cobblestone streets. I can feel its murky stale breath on the back of my neck; an ominous gray cloud brushing against my consciousness. My trembling lips, bruise-purple from the cold, try to speak words, but all that comes out is a steely whimper.

I look to the holy Temple, for the luminance that once radiated the entire world, for the warmth that once blanketed the entire earth; but all I see is a hard darkness: I see people worshiping a thousand idols, their G-d long forgotten; I see bodies sculpted by Achilles, souls long ignored; I see minds shaped by Aristotle, hearts long resigned.

I crawl on all fours, sifting through the rubble, looking for a drop of the purity that once was. I look for hours, for days, but all I find is hopelessness. All has been defiled; all has been soiled. The darkness is too deep; the depths are too dark. It seems once we’ve become guilty we can never retrieve our innocence. It seems once we are lost we can never again be found.

And then, as my numb fingers begin to fall limp, as my frozen eyelashes begin to close, as my trembling lips begin to lie down, I see it. Beneath the countless layers of filth, under the heaping piles of stone-cold idols, underneath the filmy mounds of soot and dust, I can see hope. With the last of my energy, my hand reaches for that little spark buried way down below. And, as my tingling fingers caress that last drop of purity, I know that darkness doesn’t stand a chance…

… I blink and the flames come back into focus. And, as the flames continue to speak, I realize the story still dances on. The search for light in darkness, the search for truth in falseness, the search for purity in defilation, the search for warmth in coldness, happens every day.

Chanukah, the Festival of Lights: no matter how dark things may seem, no matter how bleak a situation may be, there is always that drop of oil that can never be contaminated, that drop of oil that always floats to the top.

I am watching the candles; the candles are watching me. I listen to their story; they listen to mine. Their warmth is my warmth; their light is my light; their story is my story – it is the story of light.

~~~

Here's a post from a while back: Shadow. Enjoy!

Easy Reading, Hard Writing

2006-12-04T02:12:00.000-05:00

The writer sits in solitude, wording his thoughts with the ink of his pen (or, in this electronic era of ours, the keys of his computer). With every letter scribbled (or typed) a piece of the writer remains on the lined paper (or streaked screen). The naked words leave him most vulnerable to the reader’s discretion (or indiscretion); and though he tells himself it doesn’t matter, he yearns for the reader’s approval nonetheless.

It is fascinating the evolution of a literary piece – how white purity of thought becomes black drops of ink, how black drops of ink become letters, how letters become words, words become sentences, sentences paragraphs, paragraphs chapters, chapters books, books libraries. Like the growth and maturation of a fine wine is the growth and maturation of a fine writ – just the right balance of density and subtlety, the perfect harmony of simplicity and complexity and, if you’re really lucky, the everlasting memory of a delightful finish.

The 19th century American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne (who would turn scarlet whenever he wrote a letter), worked hard on the easily read aphorism, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” And though one could say he lived in The House of the Seven Fables, nevertheless, I think the adage of his remains truer than Twice-Told Tales.

The writer’s sweat and blood (or, for the pedestrian, quill and ink) let the reader enjoy an easy read without so much as turning a page. The countless discards are never discussed, the sleepless nights are never mentioned, the hours of brain racking are never published; all the reader knows (and needs to know) is the finished product and its synthetic rhythm.

In today’s colorful e-world (blue-teeth byte on infrareds), the antithesis reigns supreme (hi-tech capability, low-key ability; surf in broadband, think in narrow-mind) – and not only in the rhetorical: on one hand it is much easier to write, on the other hand it is much harder to read.

Ten years ago, except for professional journalists and published authors, it was very difficult for a regular Joe sitting on his potato farm in Nowhere, Idaho, to communicate his thoughts and feelings to a regular Punjab sitting in the lotus position in Somewhere, Katmandu. But, today, in a Googlized world where Myspace is your space and Youtube is my tube, communication of one’s self is pretty much limitless – a long, bleach-haired surfer (that is, the modern surfer, surfing the web, not the ocean; riding the keyboard, not the surfboard) could stumble upon (like I’m sure many of you have) pretty much anything.

And, as any surfer will attest, every wave has an upside and a downside: the upside, like many upsides, is obvious – the power to reach 6 billion people with the click of a button. The downside, like many downsides, is not so obvious until the wave has begun its descent – because it is very easy to write and communicate, it is also very difficult to read and understand. Since life in the blogging world is so simple (even the regular Joe and Punjab can proclaim themselves literary geniuses with a message of heavenly proportions) it begets absolutely no effort from its constituents, and because no effort is begotten, no effort is made, and because no effort is made, the writing comes easy, and because the writing comes easy, the reading becomes hard.

Still no matter how easy or difficult, the writer sits in solitude, wording his thoughts with the ink of his pen (or, in this electronic era of ours, the keys of his computer) – and all he can hope for is that some of them make sense.

With every letter scribbled (or typed) a piece of the writer remains on the lined paper (or streaked screen) – and all he can pray for is that just one of those letters remains in the reader's heart.

The naked words leave him most vulnerable to the reader’s discretion (or indiscretion) – and all he can ask for is honesty.

And though he tells himself it doesn’t matter, he yearns for the reader’s approval nonetheless – and all he can say is thank you.

Finality

2006-11-23T01:21:00.000-05:00

My grandfather passed away last week and I’ve written this poem in his honor.

I watch as the grainy face fades away
Like the paralyzed sun’s midnight ray
I peek in to a broken looking glass
Wondering if I’d see just one more day
But I guess that too will come too pass

That which once was will never be again
The ink is weak and I haven’t another pen
Still I try to write in my blood and sweat
But it dries faster than a calculating yen
And I’m left with not even a tear that’s wet

I gather the courage to look into the grave
He’s lying there as if he got more than he gave
Under a leafless branch a bagpipe sings
A trembling lip is trying to act very brave
And Finality has gone the way of all things

I turn to leave and feel someone watching me
I look upward and don’t believe what I see
Through my blurry eyes and the shinning sun
I see heaven and him there running free
And I realize Finality has just begun

Double Talk

2006-11-12T19:12:00.000-05:00

As the political stage in the United States is heating up, with the demagogic Democrats and the reprehended Republicans, not to mention the indifferent Independents, at each other’s throats like a starched priest's collar, there is a lot of doubletalk going on.

If not for their forked tongue, politicians would have no tongue at all. Such is the life of the public servant: the right hand signs the bill while the left tears it in half. Of course one must be polished in his method, and when walking on anything polished the chance of slipping is immense. Yet, it is precisely at these precarious times, when the spotlight’s glare highlights every botox induced smile, that the master statesman is separated from the amateur filibusterer – the master turns his slip into a waltz, while the amateur falls flat on the seat of his rented tuxedo.

Though the political stage has turned the doubletalk into an art form, it is nevertheless played on stages all along the gamut: at the blackjack table a card player will say, “I double-down;” at the bar a lone drinker will mutter, “Make it a double;” in the stadium an impish umpire will signal a “ground-rule double;” at work a boisterous boss will shout, “On the double;” and in kindergarten an exasperated teacher, when eyeing the twin red-heads sitting in the last row, will sigh, “Uh oh, here comes double-trouble.”

Doubletalk, the cruder version of doublespeak, stems from a double standard: if one would have standards set in concrete, steadfast and true, then talk too would be the same, consistent and unwavering. However, we live in a world of fragmentation, where today’s Yes is tomorrow’s No and therefore, to justify our flexible integrity, we walk the doublewalk and talk the doubletalk.

It is not only the glib politicians and groomed aristocrats preaching what the choir wants to hear; all of humanity does it to some extent. We are born with two souls, two totally opposite perspectives, and therefore live double lives – one of the spiritual and one of the physical. The challenge is for us to combine the opposites by tapping in to a place beyond fragmentation, a place neither physical nor spiritual, a place just true.

Before the soul descended into this world, the soul was in perfect bliss: she did not have to deal with the pettiness of the body, did not have a challenge she could not overcome – in fact, she did not have any challenges at all – and was content to bask in the glow of infinite radiance. There was only one talk she knew and only one talk she spoke. But, still, there was one thing the soul was lacking – she could not reach beyond her own self. Not that she cared or anything – she was content – yet, the soul was imprisoned by her own perfection.

So, enter imperfection – the universe. The delicate soul, a stranger in a strange land, roams the imperfect universe, looking for something familiar, something true to hold on to. She finds nothing: the world is doubled-over and its people are two-faced. She doesn’t understand why she had to leave the comfort of heaven for the discomfort of earth.

But then she learns of places and people that transcend the dual-reality of doubletalk. She learns of the men and women, her ancestors, that lived “double” lives – on the one hand they were of flesh and blood; on the other, their flesh and blood spoke of spirituality and a higher purpose. She learns of the place where they rest and watch over their children: the Double Cave in Hebron, the gate to the Garden of Eden where heaven and earth meet, where physicality and spirituality, the “double” barrel needed for life, are not two separate entities, but, rather, one and the same – and she realizes that her descent from the predictability of heaven was so that she too, along with her body, would reach this level of transcendence.

So here we are, going through life, trying to fuse matter and spirit. It is this week that Sarah, our grandmother, becomes alive, alive through her grandchildren making everything around them alive.

All this talk may be very doublesome, with the reader doing a double take and the writer scratching his double chin. All the same, I think there is a bit of truth in these lines and, if I’m not overly ambitious, they may even double as entertaining.

~~~

A piece I wrote a year ago in Chevron: The Life of a Princess

Frayed Shorts

2006-11-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

Envy
If Miss Envy would see a man dying,
She’d wish she were in his place lying.

Greed
One might be greedy, greedy indeed,
If, when knifed, is too greedy to bleed.

Experience
The things that one finds when one is lost,
Can never be bought at any cost.

Humor
Some say it is well-disguised insanity;
I think it’s just magnified reality.

Innocence
Like the child’s cry in a thunderous sound,
‘Tis easily lost, difficultly found.

The Storm Before The Quiet

2006-10-26T20:47:00.000-04:00

A neon flash through the pouring rain
An arrow points to the falling sky
For the faceless man it’s all the same
No sarcasm was ever this dry

Landscapes painted in a graying chalk
On a steel branch owls sit and stare
Bare footprints quickly slip and balk
Little droplets drip from tangled hair

As the puddles grow and turn to pools
Makeup streaking leaves you naked
Head falls back to catch the jewels
Nighttime speaks in hushes sacred
You try to listen in to the storms wonder
But through the flying daggers… all you hear is thunder.

A soaked image falls against the door
A hand reaches in a warm embrace
Feels like we have been here once before
Sitting on the rug by the fireplace

The embers grow and begin to flame
Mirrored dreams sparkle on the river
Eyelashes drip melting rainbow rain
Daytime speaks in a secret whisper
You try to listen in to happy ever after
And through the sun-kissed glint… all you hear is laughter.

Overtime

2006-10-22T03:01:00.000-04:00

“It aint over till it’s over” – a Yogism

It is all over: the food is left over; the people are hung over. A drunken form has just rolled over; a sober schmaltz herring has just flipped over. I don’t know what has come over me, but I’m overcome with emotion – nine days of pure ecstasy have just gone over the hill, and here I am, speaking in overtones.

Of course, stating, “It is all over,” would make one think the writer was overly pessimistic. But, glass-half-empty or not, the four walls of temporary vertical stature going the way of indefinite horizontal dust-collecting, along with the wind-chime sound of empty glass bottles clinking against one another in transparent blue recycling bags, seems to suggest that it really is over.

And yet, as the month seemingly devoid of any apparent holiday approaches, as the leaves haphazardly fade into winter, as the cashmere sweaters replace the threadbare t-shirts, I realize that it is all just beginning: the year is beginning; the world is beginning.

“In the beginning…” the singsong voice reads from a parchment handwritten in fiery letters. The first sentence of the Torah is alive, dancing off the parchment into our bodies and souls. It is begun – our lives, our purpose, our reason is begun.

When the innocence of prayer swayed us – we did not want to begin. When the presence of perfection stunned us – we could not begin. When the clouds of glory surrounded us – we would not begin. When our dancing soles knew no heaven or earth – we never ended to begin. But now – now when it has all ended, now when we are aware of ourselves – it is time to begin.

“…G-d created heaven and earth,” the voice sings still, the letters creating that which is. Before it was all over, when the bottles were not yet empty and the people not yet full, we could never have known creation – how could we when heaven and earth were irrelevant – we were beyond, way beyond; but today, today when the highs have reached their lows, today when true reality has given way to daily unreality, it is time to create creation – time for heaven to look down at earth and earth to look up to heaven – time for the great divide.

It is easy to be elevated when the time calls for it. How difficult is it, really, to reach heaven when there is no earth tying you down? How difficult is it to dance when the music is playing loud and clear? How difficult is it to smile when all is perfect?

But now there is creation – heaven no longer embraces earth, earth no longer wishes for its embrace. “And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep…” We are born into a world deaf to its own music – we cannot hear the song that is being sung, we cannot read the notes that are written on the walls. Of course, if we could, there would be no challenge, if we could, we wouldn’t be needed. So, we are born in darkness, in a world deaf and blind, not knowing if we are coming or going.

And yet, we learn: we learn how to create music where there is no sound, we learn how to create a spark where there is no light, we learn how to light a fire where there is only ice – “And G-d said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

So, yes, it is all over – but only so that we can begin. All that heavenly bliss of days past will surly be missed – but only so that the true potential of earth can be found.

(Some might say this overview was overdone, and that it was overanxious in being overt – but, hey, at least the word “over” wasn’t overused.)

Bamboo(zled)

2006-10-11T18:36:00.000-04:00

(Intimidating are its brick walls, unyielding its solid ceiling. I want to enter through its doors, but I’m afraid of the impossibilities. It is made of definitions and I may not fit into the mold. The solid lines create its comfort, and that makes me very uncomfortable. I wish I could just walk right in, fit right in, let the light in, but I can’t. I can’t because this is a home and I am homeless; I can’t because this is normal and I am not; I can’t because this is them and I am I.

So I stand, the light reflecting off my brown eyes as I look through the window, wondering what would be if I was born like them.)

Blue-tarp walls – to go out on a shaky limb and call them thus – flutter with the breeze’s every exhale. Bamboo(z) and (for)evergreens crown this temporary existence. Light bulbs, perilously dangling from creaking one-by-twos, throw mystery-book shadows on an already mysterious situation. It may be the beginning of the fall, but I’m just about to arise.

It lacks in every comfort – chilly weather, wobbly chairs that fold, counterfeit cutlery, plastic tablecloths, moths circling the light bulbs, bees treading the honey – yet, I’ve never felt this comfortable. And as I wallow in the understanding hug of glorious clouds, I look around and see many faces – all the same in their joy and glow, all different in their journey here.

There is an older man in the corner, round tortoise-shell glasses and lower-east-side immigrant cap. He has found his way here through the keys of a piano. He still sings the blues, but life has taken on a jazzy progression.

A young woman, with porcelain features and golden curls, seems to be innocent and guilty all at once. She has journeyed down a path overgrown with confusion. She now sits in the warmth and smiles into her steaming tea.

A laugh resonates from a man not sitting on a folding chair. He may be heavy in the stomach but he’s light of heart. The bouquet of pure enjoyment wafts over his face with every sip of wine’s river. And a flush comes to his cheeks.

A Rabbi, or at least that’s what his flowing beard suggests, sings softly to himself. He sings softly but the tune seems to carry a lot of weight. His eyes close, little cobweb-wrinkles, like crows feet, turn his face into a wise painting.

The by-the-book young man near him, never out of control, absentmindedly begins to hum along. Some might call it interrupting; but in these four walls, I think it would best be described as harmony.

A tipsy girl – not sure if from spirits or spirituality – with that I-know-the-secrets-of-the-world smile on her lips, is preaching to no one in particular. She is going to have a splitting headache on the morn. But for some people, it may be worth the headache – if only to be reminded that they have a head.

There are many more faces, many more details, but as the night wears on, they seem to blur and remain out of focus.

It is Succos: the many kinds come together in one binding. We all sit here, different in our faces, different in our clothing, different in our journeys. Still, we all sit under the same bamboo, within the same four walls, all traveling in the same direction, all praying for the same destination.

Now, after I’ve folded up the chairs and wrapped up the plastic tablecloths, the sun begins to rise. I hold the four kinds in my hand and, as I shake them in unison, I shake my head – first in wonderment and then in understanding.

previous Succos posts:
G-d, (wo)Man, One
Reconciling Differences, Differentiating Reconciliation

Real

2006-10-03T00:44:00.000-04:00

I had a real Yom Kippur. Really real. I hope you did too.

I apologize for not posting before Yom Kippur - what I had written was just too raw (in a good way).

I'm going to post about Yom Kippur and then about Succos. I hope to make 3 "real" (not like this little 5 liner) posts before the start of Succos.

Wow, what a Yom Kippur!

What Should I Write?

2006-09-26T22:29:00.000-04:00

I would like to write something on Yom Kippur and I would like the esteemed readers to choose one of the following (or even something not stated below):

"Gold Clothing" and "White Clothing"
A short story (true-fiction) depicting Yom Kippur's power and energy
A poem (topic?)
On the 10 martyrs
On Teshuvah (Return)
Our relationship with G-d
None of the above

Creation – 5767 Years Later

2006-09-19T23:14:00.000-04:00

Is the new year "so last year"?

Five thousand seven hundred and sixty seven years ago a world was born. It has wondrously crawled through the teething of infancy; it has innocently grown through the purity of childhood; it has brazenly rebelled through the transition of adolescence; it has beautifully settled through the maturity of adulthood; it has desperately struggled through the crisis of middle age; it has knowingly wizened through the experience of old age, and it now stands at the next step – the culmination of its life’s work.

Over the past five thousand seven hundred and sixty seven years, the world has gone through many moments, some memorable, some forgettable. As the scarred spines of the history books can attest, the world has witnessed much pain and experienced much suffering; nevertheless, here we are, well into our sixth millennia and, in our old age, neither are we senile nor are we “losing it.” In fact, many would say that we have “found it” – that the world, white beard and all, has never been this close to perfection.

Perfection, of course, meaning a world where the purpose of creation is realized: taking a seemingly deserted world and making it a home for the Divine.

But, as every New Year approaches and every old year passes, we tell ourselves that this year will be the year the world finally reaches its ultimate state. Yet, here we are, 5767 years later, and wars are still being fought, children are still being killed, people still cannot stand one another, and we still expect this year to be different.

All these years of expecting so much from the coming year, has almost made us immune to the New Year’s power; we wait almost warily as it approaches. To best explain the feeling, a paraphrasing of the “Watchtower” might be in order: “Outside in the distance a wild cat did growl, the New Year was approaching, the wind began to howl.”

No matter how cynical it may sound, the New Year seems to have become old.

But then, even as we fashionably convince ourselves that the New Year is “so last year,” we remember that every second the world is being created anew, and every moment – certainly every year – is like no other. Every breath we take has a unique energy specially tailored to fit that specific breath, and, if the energy would alter but slightly, the breath would cease to exist.

One of religion’s greatest, and most legitimate, critiques is its apparent lack of originality, its seemingly robotic nature. You wake up in the morning, go through the same routine, pray the same prayers, bless the same blessings, don the same Tefilin, light the same candles, celebrate the same holidays, and, yes, every year embrace the same new year. This is why many people would rather associate themselves with “spirituality” as opposed to “religion:” spirituality is like a gazelle running freely through strawberry fields; religion is like a lazy cow tied-down to her muddy farm.

But, truth be told, one who separates spirituality from religion is like one who separates music from its notes. For one to play beautiful music, music that talks to the soul, one must follow the notes, lest the music be only noise. And for one to reach spirituality, spirituality that talks to the soul, one must follow the spiritual notes, lest the spirituality be only an excuse for physical self-indulgence.

And here lies the musician’s challenge: every concert, in fact, every song he plays is made of the same notes, how then does he make it unique, how does he take a limiting language and make it reach places unlimited? Ah, this is what separates a genius maestro from a one-man Bar Mitzvah band: the one-man band, though good at what he does, can never leave the confines of self, and therefore gets caught up in the staleness of his own music; the genius however, reaches inside to a place beyond himself, where it is not about himself but about the music, and he therefore sees notes not as limiting individuals, sees colors not as static elements, but rather he sees notes as an indispensable part of a greater composition, sees colors as an indispensable dynamic part to a greater picture. And that is what makes him a genius.

It might seem like the New Year is getting old; then again, it might seem as if the music is out of tune. The question is, are we one-man bands who see things in their little “Mary-had-a-little-lamb” world, or are we maestros who see things on a philharmonic scale? Do we see the blowing of the Shofar as just another routine, or do we see it as piercing through the deepest layers? Do we see prayer as a familiar habit, or do we see it as a means to communicate with something beyond ourselves? Do we see all these physical rituals as robotics, or do we see them as tools with which to change the spiritual (and physical) worlds?

A New Year is approaching, one where we will blow the same Shofar, sway to the same prayers, and dip the same raisin challa into the same honey. Yet, we’ll be doing this all for the very first time. Never before has the energy of 5767 been, and never will it be again.

The entire universe was created for humanity, for us to make the “down here a dwelling place for G-d.” May we all have a happy and sweet New Year, so that we can finally finish the job that started all those five thousand seven hundred and sixty seven years ago.

DASH—ING

2006-09-14T23:37:00.000-04:00

Isn’t this feeling totally hip-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Hop
Love to do a crazy flip-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Flop
Off that mountain’s tip-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Top
Don’t wipe the tears' drip-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Drop

I laughed terribly like a hee-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Haw
Looked far but could not see-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Saw
Tried to paint could barely D-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Raw
So I lie resigned to enter pre-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Law

I played some music in a riff-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Raff
I hit a note so high like a G-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Raf
I tried to choke down that pi-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Laf
Washed it down with black de-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Caf

He told me he’d bust my knee-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Cap
So I set up a stinging bee-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Trap
Now he lies in a total rip-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Rap
That’s what I call a huge mis-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Hap

I wanted to order without de-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Lay
The salesman said I had to pre-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Pay
He looked at me as if it were D-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Day
Then scanned my item with X-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Ray

She wasn’t gorgeous just drop-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Dead
It gave me a fever and a hot-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Head
I couldn’t even enter pre-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Med
So now I turn to read the op-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Ed

I never knew the lyrics to sing-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Song
Is that the front door’s ding-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Dong
I thought I was larger than king-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Kong
And life is the bounce of ping-
mmmmmmmmmmm-Pong

Some are diamonds, some just rust.
But when all crashes,
All are alike: from dust to dust
D-ashes to d-ashes.

Labor Daze

2006-09-06T01:18:00.000-04:00

Boom, boom, boom, it feels as if I’m sitting on a frantic heart, whose rapid palpitations seem to beat a jack-hammer rhythm on the collective ribcage, threatening to burst forth at any given moment.

Like a finger on a stage-frightened pulse, the violent vibrations turn the parkway into a trembling trampoline. Long flatbeds, stacked with enough watts of speaker to furnish a thousand Escalades, crawl at a snail’s pace and a hyena’s volume; MCs with mike in hand, intone popular dancehall mixes, while shouting for the people from Trinidad to “jump-jump-jump” and the people from Tobago to “shake dat ting;” DJs, the woof-woof of the sub-woofers keeping them “a-float,” cut and dice their way through the sea of rippling humanity; all the while, barrel grills – barbecuing the likes of jerk-chicken and some non-Kosher looking stuff – spew a West-Indies smoke, blanketing the air in a curry fog and the nostrils in a Cajun quilt.

~~~~

It never ceases to amaze me how things flesh with physicality remind us of things flush with spirituality; and, as I watch an older man with an even older machete expertly remove the shell of sugarcane, so that one can access the sweetness within, I wonder if he knows that the king is in the field, and that – without the walls of a palace pulling rank – one does not need a machete to access the sweetness within.

“I am to my beloved, and my beloved is to me.” There is a relationship going on here, I reach for my beloved (Issarusa D’l’sata), and my beloved reaches for me (Issarusa D’l’eyla); yet, most people think that it is some Beatle lyric.

A float has just passed, the tingling of steel-drums (the bumpy bowl you see the guy playing in the subway) pierces through the many bodies. But, this month, there is another tingling sound, one that pierces the soul.

I am in a daze: it is Elul – the past year in review, the coming year in plain view – but the world doesn’t know it. They think it is September, with the baseball season coming to a close and the U.S. coming to an Open. How can they not know of Elul?

Is it because they haven’t been taught?

~~~~

Now the garbage crews and cleanup trucks (those beasts, with the rotating bristles, that pull us out of bed for alternate-side parking), with their flashing yellow lights and reflector vests, have begun cleaning up the parade’s residue. Block by block they methodically remove any trace of mess. Within a few diligent hours, the parkway has resumed its normal traffic.

Will it take a good cleanup to remove the laboring daze?

The Amateur

2006-08-29T01:38:00.000-04:00

I saw a man today was down on a knee.
He wasn’t praying, nor was it blasphemy.
I wondered maybe he was a little cuckoo –
His fingers were tying the lace of his shoe.

I saw a woman today sitting on a bench.
She wasn’t clean, nor was there a stench.
I wondered if maybe she was jesting –
I could swear she was off her feet resting.

I saw a girl today pushing a carriage.
She wasn’t in love, nor was it marriage.
I wondered if maybe she was a quitter –
She had a sign that said, “babysitter”.

I saw a guy today had stains on his pants.
He wasn’t hip, nor was it askance.
I wondered if maybe he was a bummer –
The letters on his van said he was a plumber.

I saw a teen today give someone the finger.
He wasn’t rude, nor was he a bling-blinger.
I wondered if I might not understand –
The above finger was really a hand.

I saw an adult today wearing a mask.
He wasn’t a thief, nor did I ask.
I wondered if it was even possible –
He walked straight into a hospital.

I saw a man today pointing a stick.
He wasn’t threatening, nor was it thick.
I wondered if I was losing my mind –
His sunglasses reflected he was blind.

I saw a boy today was writing poetry.
He wasn’t very versified, nor did it rhyme.
I wondered why he wasn’t my soup-de-jour –
It seems he is only an amateur.

Random Toughts

2006-08-22T02:36:00.000-04:00

Random I
When one starts dressing dull moments in imitation silk – like burying milky Gefilte fish in triple-action horseradish – you know it is time to start creating new moments (or, at the very least, start buying real silk or stronger horseradish). Though it is much easier, definitely cheaper, to sprinkle a plastic Timex with diamonds than it is to set them in a platinum Cartier, it would be like making an omelet out of Faberge eggs. It is always easier to wear your talents in sackcloth than in royal robes, and easy is the name of this game.

Random II
If one were to place in front of you two boxes, one containing many small diamonds within a large coal, the other containing many small coals within a large diamond, which, of the two, would you choose – ugliness plated in beauty or beauty plated in ugliness?

Random III
Hopeless sits on a rickety bench. Desperate limps over to him and asks, “Can you please help me out?” Hopeless says, “I don’t think so”.

Walking her dog, Lonely passes by the rickety bench. Hopeless stops her. “Excuse me, what’s your name?” “Please go away,” she begs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lonely walks on the green grass and her brown dog follows. The brown dog bites Violated tanning on the lawn. “I’m so sorry”, Lonely says. “Don’t be”, Violated tells her, “I’ve been bitten before”.

Random IV
Shall I tell you an old de-tale, one of humanity and divinity? It goes like this: G-d created man in His image. Period. Perfect. Now methinks, “I am created in the divine image, so everything I do is divine”. But then you-thinks, “I am created in the divine image, so everything I do is divine”. How original. A bit of a conflict in interest, don’t you think? You do realize what just happened here – instead of Man created in G-d’s image, G-d is being created in Man’s image.

We are blind as far as the I can see.

Why Do You Smile?

2006-08-08T02:07:00.000-04:00

(Continued from Between The Confines)

Rabban Gamaliel, R. Elazar Ben Azariah, R. Jehoshua, and R. Akiva were going to Jerusalem. When they arrived at Mount Zerphim, they tore their garments; when they approached the Temple Mount and saw a fox running where the Holy of Holies used to be, they began to weep; but R. Akiva smiled.

They asked of R. Akiva, “Why do you smile?”

He replied: “It reads [Isaiah, 8.2]: ‘Witnesses, Uriyah the priest, and Zecharyahu…’ Why is Uriyah conjoined with Zecharyahu, was not the former at the first Temple and the latter at the second? It was because the passage bases the prophecy of Zecharyahu upon the prophecy of Uriyah. Uriyah said [Micha, 3.12]: ‘Therefore for your sake shall Zion be ploughed up as a field…’ Zechariah said [8.4]: ‘Again shall there sit old men and old women in the streets of Jerusalem…’ As long as the prophecy of Uriyah was not fulfilled I feared the prophecy of Zechariah will not either come to be realized, but now since I see that Uriyah's prophecy is fulfilled I am sure that Zechariah's prophecy will also be fulfilled in the near future.”

Upon hearing this, they said: “Akiva, you have condoled us, you have condoled us!”
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(Loosely translated from the conclusion of Mesechta Maccos)

It has been another week now and the child hasn’t left his perch on the roof. He still trembles from the booming thunder, and can feel the menacing gray clouds about to unleash another barrage. The confines have gone nowhere and destruction is everywhere. He can hear the enemy’s chant – and a fox runs where the Holy of Holies once stood.

He would love to tell of how a manufacturer in the south, whose rival company in the north was forced to close its operations due to the falling rockets, extended the use of his factory to his competitor; of Ro’i Klein, a thirty-one year old commander who sacrificed his body on a grenade so that no one else would get hurt; of people giving up their homes so that misplaced families would have somewhere to stay; of a silver lining in this bleak coal; of a slice of heaven in this jagged hell.

But how can he when he turns his head and sees a good man die?

The child stands on green grass, under a tree. He is surrounded by stones, people’s names engraved on them. It is the funeral of his friend’s father and the summer sun has the chutzpah to smile. The child can hear the women sob and tears flow everywhere, even down the sides of melting water bottles.

The saddest day in the Jewish calendar has come and gone, but the sadness has not. We sit on normal chairs and wear shoes of leather, but there are those who sit on the ground and wear shoes of canvas. The Shabbat of Consolation has consoled us, but there are those still in need of consolation. The daughters of Jerusalem are dancing in the vineyards, but Jerusalem still has daughters who sit under the vines and weep.

The child sees the Rabbis weep. They weep not for themselves but for G-d’s humiliation – how can Divinity’s resting place, the Holy of Holies, the purest place on earth where no man can enter save for the High Priest on Yom Kippur, be defiled so?

And the child weeps. He weeps not for himself but for G-d’s humiliation – how can His children, imbued with His spark, created in His image, fade like yesterdays?

The child sees R. Akiva smile. He smiles for he sees not pain but pleasure. He smiles for he sees not tears but laughter. He smiles for he sees not destruction but rebuilding. He smiles for he sees not exile but redemption.

The child tries to smile, but it’s so hard.

Between The Confines

2006-07-30T01:59:00.000-04:00

We’ve been surrounded for some time now; the walls barred and chained. I watch from the roof as the enemy prepares to enter the city. It is the 17th of Tammuz, and I know I’ll never forget this day.

The noise is deafening: battering rams, like a thousand dreaded knocks on your front door, pound out a rhythm of destruction. They pierce the majestic walls of our holy city, dirty feet marching on clean soil.

The adults say I should run to the shelters, but I cannot move from the roof. Red fireballs fly over the stone skyline, black smoke billows from the narrow alleyways, the smell of burnt flesh mingles with summer garbage. People, like tablets broken, crawl through the empty streets and split archways.

I watch as my studious older brother, with barely a sprouted beard, and who, until today, has never left the Yeshiva, grabs a sword from a fallen man. I can see my mother holding on to his tunic, wishing him back. He uncurls her whitened knuckles and runs down the street. On her knees, my mother watches his flying Tzitzus fade away, and tears fall freely from her eyes onto cobblestone.

I remember when this city, this land, was so perfect; the sidewalks were soaked in dignity, the date palms rooted in sublimity. But today sidewalks are soaked in blood, date palms rooted in acid.

I remember the weeks past, the arguments and unreasonable hatred (is hatred ever reasonable?). The overzealous youth burnt our last reserves so we would be forced to leave the gates and go to war; the complacent elders condemned the youth and spoke of going to Oslo. I remember sneaking out of bed and eavesdropping on the adults’ midnight meetings. My childish mind could not comprehend of exchanging land for blown-up busses. I just wanted to come out of my hiding place and tell them that when we are united no one can touch us, but I was afraid I would get punished for being out of bed. Anyways, who would listen to a child?

It’s funny how I remember all of these things standing here on the roof, watching the horror unfold. I should really be thinking about important things, like how are we going to survive, how are we to live in a world that destroys truth?

It has been three weeks now since the enemy has broken through the walls and destroyed everything we’ve stood for, and I have not left the roof. It is the 9th of Av. The Temple, a dwelling place for the Divine, has gone to flames – impurity has painted over all that which was once pure. A home that once spoke of peace upon all humanity now screams of divisiveness; a sanctuary that once held solace for an entire people, now lies idolized. It is like a child, pure at the core, being burnt alive.

And we stand around, watching a good man die, listening to a good woman suffer. I’ve never known exile before. Sure I’ve learnt about it in school, but who has lived it? Today, as my roof collapses, I live it – I am a child, a child in exile.

A Few Thousand Years Later:

A child stands on the roof, watching as the gray storm-clouds gather. The clouds open and rockets rain upon the land. Thunderous booms echo through the valleys; lighting bolts flash across the hills.

The adults tell him to run to the shelters, but the child remains rooted to the roof, asking: “Why do the adults shelter me from reality instead of changing it?”

Soldiers, their cheeks still smooth, are called to arms. A world in self-denial, too afraid to face its own demons, pontificates to a nation eternal, “Thou shall negotiate with thy cancer.” – And the child finds it strange when the sick patient condemns the healthy doctor.

The child has been standing for a while now, waiting for the smoke to clear, hoping for the day when Divinity will once again have a home.

(to be continued)

Roar & Peace

2006-07-17T23:38:00.000-04:00

He lies lazily in the mid-afternoon
Sun:
Glorious mane dreadlocked, wizened eyes
Dulled.
Roaring words that make profanity
Blush

He has been like this for a while
Now:
Too tired to yawn, awake enough to
Know.
The king of the jungle, the pauper of the
World.

Snakes crawl through the dried, tall
Grass:
Inching ever closer to the lion
Limp.
They take little bites, and he thinks it's a
Kiss.

Camouflaged in a diplomatic
Suit,
Fresh bloodstains leave a guilty
Trail.
But the lion mistakes blood for
Honey.

He licks his own wounds, thinking how
Sweet.
But we look at blown-up busses, thinking how
Sour.
And snakes spew venom disguised as
Elixir.

They nibble away at lion and want a little
More.
“I’ll just give them my finger if they leave my
Hand.”
Today he walks around with a wooden stump for an
Arm.

Now his cubs begin to grow thin and
Gray.
He looks for a doctor, but they’ve all
Gone.
He holds his child, wondering how we came to
This.

It is the time for reckoning, does the lion
Arise?
Snakes don’t like war: cowards like to kill in
Peace.
It is time, time for the lion to show his true
Dignity.

The heavy smoke has now been cleared
Away.
He lies victorious in the mid-afternoon
Sun:
Roaring words that make humanity
Smile.

Inherent Value

2006-07-10T03:10:00.000-04:00

Where there’s a will there’s change

As the rather elaborate buffet of news pieces regarding Warren Buffett’s $37 billion dollar gift begins to come to crumbs and the media looks for some other delectable item in which to sink its teeth and satisfy its palate, a dish of an exotic and poignant nature simmers sinfully over a low fire – Inheritance is its name and spicy its effects.

For some, the dish of Inheritance is most fulfilling – nothing like savoring an ambrosia someone else has cooked; for others, the dish of Inheritance is most nauseating – how can one appreciate something they’ve never earned; and still others, the vast majority I should say, have never even had a taste of this rare-yet-well-done delicacy.

As delicate a dish 37 billion spices may produce, the dish of Inheritance seems to be more delicate yet. Mr. Buffett, with his $37 billion reality check, has opened a safety-deposit box containing Pandora. But though some might see Buffett’s act as a nuisance to their impurely selfish selves – who need question our inherent existence – many see it as an opportunity to understand our inherent value – does the dish of Inheritance make humanity more appetizing or does it give us a stomachache?

Whether the second richest man in the world[i] thought the majority of his $44 billion would be too much for his next-of-kin to digest, and therefore announced his decision to donate it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, only he alone can tell; what we can tell is that Warren E Buffett does not believe money is earned to be a measuring stick for personal value – if he did, he would not give %85 of his fortune away, lest he become %85 less a man. From Mr. Buffet’s charitable actions, one can see he believes the buck does not stop at individual gain.

In fact, Buffet himself has said: estate tax[ii] is “in keeping with the idea of equality of opportunity in this country, not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged;” while repealing the tax would be the equivalent of “choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.”

***

As far as dishes go, the original Inheritance recipe (to my limited gastronomical knowledge) is in this week’s Torah portion, Parshas Pinchas[iii]. Over the years, through the great study halls of Babylonia to the mystical mountains of Tzfat, the fine ingredients of Inheritance have been pondered, argued, pulled apart, put back together again, and fine-tuned into a comprehensive collection of laws made to maximize this dish’s scrumptiousness[iv].

The Torah[v] – a divine cookbook for all participants in the culinary delights of Life; not just for the black-coated, gray-bearded specialty chefs lost (and found) in the yellowed pages of the Talmud – does not define the process of inheritance[vi] as an estate being transferred from one, deceased entity to a second, separate entity, by and by enhancing that second entity; rather, the Torah defines the process of inheritance involving but one entity, with the inheritors continuing – and, in fact, perpetuating – the “deceased’s” estate[vii]. Inheritance (all money, or life, for that matter) is not about any individual gain, but rather, about the gain of a better world.

We live in a world that looks at one’s net worth but ignores one’s inherent value; we choose to see the diamonds around someone’s neck but fail to see the diamonds in someone’s soul.

Is a child born to rags any less a child than one born to riches; is a baby born with a silver spoon in its mouth any more a baby than one born with barely a plastic spoon in its mouth?

The Torah says no: we do not choose to be born into poor families, nor do we not choose to be born into rich families[viii]. The only choice we really have is what we do with that which was given to us. While many may see the dish of Inheritance as a guarantee to never have to cook another meal, the Torah sees it as an obligation to feed those who are hungry; while many may see Inheritance as a great burden lifted off weary shoulders, the Torah sees it as great responsibility to use the means bestowed upon you to make the world a better place.

***

Ever since the beginning of time, a global needle has constantly been perpetuating a common thread of purpose through the universal lining, slowly but surely stitching together a world of perfection. From father to son, mother to daughter, an inheritance invaluable makes its way along the annals of history, through present-day life and, if one man’s 37 billion reasons are any indication, into a bright future.

We are all inherently valuable; otherwise, we wouldn’t be. The only question is not whether or not the will changes us but whether or not we have the will to change the world.

[i] Forbes magazine, 2006.
[ii] The taxation of a deceased individual’s estate.
[iii] The Chumash, the Five Books of Moses is split into 53 Parshos, Sedras or potions. Every week we read and “focus” on another portion, so that at year’s end, on Simchas Torah, we would have covered the entire Written Torah.
[iv] For detailed Inheritance Laws, see Encyclopedia Talmudis, Erech Yerushah (The section of Yerushah, Inheritance). See the footnotes there for sources – the RaMBaM’s Mishnah Torah, Hilchos Nachalos; Hachinuch, Mitzvah #400; SMah”G, Positives, #96, amongst others.
[v] See Lekkutei Sichos, vol. 28, pp.174 (Pinchos), at length.
[vi] Bamidbar, 27,8
[vii] And, therefore, in the Gaonim and Risohnim, there’s a dispute whether or not one who leaves the beliefs of his father is fit to inherit his father’s estate. (see Encyclopedia Talmudis, vol. 25, pp. 190, at length)
[viii] Nidah, 16b

Don’t Lie (Down)

2006-07-03T00:15:00.000-04:00

Here we go again
mmmmmmmmcrawling through the fog-smitten alleyways
mmmmmmmmslipping down the frost-bitten solar-rays
Tail of mice n’ men
mmmmmmmmtalking through the deaf-leopard sign-language
mmmmmmmmlooking down the blind-shepherd sacrilege
Once was now n’ then
mmmmmmmmsifting through the pre-modern telegraphs
mmmmmmmmfalling down the post-undern moses-staffs
Wonder where n’ when
mmmmmmmmpeeking through the barbered-wire picket-fence
mmmmmmmmknocking down the harbored-ire wicked-sense
A quarter past ten
mmmmmmmmsleeping through the after-noon street-bustle
mmmmmmmmshaking down the before-moon neat-hustle
Past bedroom n’ den
mmmmmmmmskipping through the near-empty city-gates
mmmmmmmmfeeling down the near-plenty pity-rates
Have yearning n’ yen
mmmmmmmmpiercing through the sub-zero heartless-freeze
mmmmmmmmhopping down the pub-hero cutlass-pleas
Lay down thought n’ pen
mmmmmmmmreading through the inky-blue chapter-lines
mmmmmmmmwriting down the very-true after-signs

mmmmmmlosers now winning; the sun hasn’t set
mmmmmit’s just beginning; don’t lay down just yet

Imagination

2006-06-23T02:42:00.000-04:00

Imagine this, beautiful dreamer –
Smiles painted on coffee creamer,
Flowers colored in children’s crayon,
Fists clenched in a misdemeanor,
Tears trailing down synthetic rayon.

Imagine that, feral cupid –
Smart answers to questions stupid,
Morals cemented in elastic,
Hallucinating until it’s lucid,
Genius but not very scholastic.

Imagine this, stunning utopian –
Candy-apples shellacked in opium,
Ice cream trucks playing rock n’ roll,
Pancakes fried in crude petroleum,
Cheerios floating in a toilet bowl.

Imagine that, glorious princess –
Fecal malodorous they call incense,
Golden bricks cinderblock plated,
All five giving into the sixth-sense,
Teenagers some wish were sedated.

Imagine this, and imagine that –
It’s easy to pull a rabbit from your hat.
Miners digging cranium in exploration,
It don’t have to be perfect, tit-for-tat,
Cause it’s just a pigment of your imagination.

A Sub-title

2006-06-15T17:01:00.000-04:00

Amidst the chaotic Sub-world, some orderly Sub-stance

Two globes green stand on either side of the staircase – sentinels guarding a shrine. They barely blink as we pass through their uncrossed swords. Muted do the blaring horns wax and eclipsed does the glaring moon wane. Smells of spring foliage meeting summer night give way to the dusk muskiness of non-perfumed foundations.

Talk to a human with a robotic voice through perPlexiglas. Swipe two dollars for a plastic card and then swipe plastic card for a chance to turn (in) style. Cross (or, uncross) the steel elbows and find yourself on the other side of the border.

On the bench with uncomfortable hand-rests, wood polished by a million derrières, sits an older woman dangling her cane near a child dangling her legs. Looking at the map partially painted in spray, a fanny-packed couple in matching khaki shorts points their fingers to the tune of tourism. Leaning nonchalantly with a beaming smile on a smiling beam, a young man in flat-billed baseball cap nods to the hip-hop beat I-Tuned from his I-Pod. People stream in clogs (clog in streams?), heels, sneakers, loafers, boots, sandals, moccasins, flip-flops, and even platforms – yes, this platform is a platform of diversity.

Earth rumbling a quake no Richter can scale – an express expressing her desire to pass us locals by.

Light piercing the end of the tunnel, moves not at the speed of light. It crawls ever so slowly, seemingly at a snail’s pace. Finally it is illuminated that this is not the long overdo “light at the end of the tunnel”, but only a tumbling subway train – a tumbling train of thought perhaps.

Riders snap to attention as the doors snap open. Some get off; most get on. “Stand clear of the closing doors please.”

A seat is harder to come by than one in the Israeli Knesset (or, to be sure, one to the Beatle Comeback Tour). Standing room only, and, therefore, no room for error. With the subway’s jerk, the jerk behind me bangs into my hip. “I’m sorry”, he does not say. “No problem”, I do not reply. Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to New York.

“Next stop, Bowling Green,” the computer-generated voice alertly says. The real-life conductor, not to be outdone, crackles inarticulately: “This is the ‘baseball special’, so Bowling Green is the last stop. To go to Brooklyn wait for the next number 4 train. We would like to apologize for any inconvenience, but don’t think it is necessary.”

Prior to the infamous announcement – must have been somewhere between Union Square and Brooklyn Bridge – seats were vacated and we moved right in. A man walks into our car and, with oratory skills known only to the desperate, tells us about the fire in his house and his starving three-month old and nine-year old. Do we have clothing, food, even a penny to help him? Anything, he begs. The faces around the car, no two the same, have all gone unnatural – some have gone unnaturally indifferent, some have gone unnaturally sympathetic, but no face remained as it was. Two people give something; most think him an addict. (Does an addict not need help?) Moral decisions abound.

Alas, Bowling Green has arrived. Doors snap open and that inarticulate voice of crackle ushers us out into a tunnel of darkness. Amidst the throng of “baseball special” derelicts awaiting their ticket to Brooklyn, I see two older Chassidim, one in a navy-blue baseball cap with an interlocking NY on the front, the other clutching an ultra-religious-family-size bag of peanuts, their Tzitzus and white flowing beards swinging in the underground breeze. And as I watch these two 50-something-year-olds, probably using “America’s pastime” to better understand a deep mystical concept, I know that the circus in New York’s underground is well worth another act.

Writing Nothing, Reading Everything

2006-06-08T03:49:00.000-04:00

There Really Is Much Ado About Nothing

It is an art to write about nothing; it is a much greater art to write about nothing so that your readers think it is everything. Many have perfected the art of writing nothing; but few have perfected the art of making that nothing seem like everything.

(At the incalculable risk of boring the hell out of each other, we will not use our valuable ink and invaluable time to actually write about something – unless, of course, it is in the context of nothing.)

Nothing is more exciting than something: something demands something in return – a thought, an emotion, at least a reaction – nothing, however, demands absolutely nothing – not even a shrug. You shrug? Well, that was superfluous.

If a writer writes about nothing, and a reader nevertheless takes his precious time to read that nothing, does that make the writer great or does that make the writer disappointing? Artistically – things-are-beautiful-because-that’s-who-I am – speaking: the writer is great; I care not if something or nothing was conveyed, all I care about is the beauty of the conveying. Practically – things-are-beautiful-if-they-make-a-difference – speaking: the writer is a disappointment; I care not for the means of expression, I care only for the message expressed.

Of course the psychology student would argue: “It is an impossibility for the writer to write about nothing: every nuance, meaningful or seemingly meaningless, is something and not nothing.” Of course the Talmudic student would argue with that. However, we do not discuss here whether one can or cannot write about nothing; we merely discuss whether a brilliant writer consists of his message or of his method.

But that too was not what we originally setout to accomplish: all we ever wanted was to simply write about nothing. But, as nothing cannot be bottled, we are having a terribly difficult time trying to stay focused:

If one were writing about something, say food, it would be most exhausting (or, at the very least, most unpalatable) for the writer to flow into plumbing – lest the writing become clogged and, therefore, the reading flooded. But, for the collective we, the collective we who write about nothing, it is most impossible (or, at the very least, a nonentity) to remain at simply nothing without branching off into nothing at all – lest nothing be limited to nothing.

So here we go, writing about nothing, from one nothing to another… with nothing holding us back.

The beauty of writing nothing is that we can conclude with nothing (if we began with nothing why should we not conclude with nothing as well?). The ugliness of writing nothing is that there is no structure – nothing, absolutely nothing, has a structure problem like nothing.

The title of this no-thing, “Writing Nothing”, implies that this writer writes nothing. However, the words following the title and subtitle, “It is an art to write about nothing”, seem to suggest that this writer does not write nothing, but rather, about nothing. What is the difference, you ask? Take poetry: one can write poetry – from haikus to ballads to limericks – and one can write about poetry – analyze, study, dissect the poetry another, (or, for the self-conscious (defacing?), oneself) has penned.

So, does this writer write nothing or does this writer write about nothing? I, the leader of the collective we, think this writer writes neither nothing, nor about nothing – rather, this writer writes nothing about nothing.

Why, then, is there so much ado about nothing – if indeed it is nothing, should it not be treated as such?

The answer lies not in the writer of nothing, for he writes what he breathes – if he breathes life, he writes life; if he breathes hot air, he writes hot air; if he breathes nothing, he writes nothing – only, the answer lies in the reader – as long as the reader reads everything, the writer will continue to write nothing.

After all, the costumer is always right.

Three

2006-05-31T03:42:00.000-04:00

“[i] Blessed he that gave a tri-book, to a tri-nation,
Through the third one, on the third day of the week,
In the third month[ii].” A guide through tri-bulation.

In the first month: barred in heavenly bliss.
In the second: toil the earth’s darkness bleak.
– Oh, but in the third: heaven and earth kiss.

One knows just oneself: is One unified or lonely?
Two knows not another: does Two hide or seek?
– Three is one and two: Three must be one and only.

“Lofty lowered to lowly” – are the lowly to blame?
“Lowly elevated to Lofty” – was it a lofty eke?
– Lofty and lowly need not travel to be the same.

The mind journey’s only as far as it thinks.
The heart beats only until it gets so weak.
– But the essence never gets lost in inks.

There are those that say, “The Body is our God.”
Others say, “It is the Soul of which the Prophets speak.”
– Both make a life; don’t we need the tri-pod?

Southpaws would have you believe right is wrong.
And Benyamins say, “Don’t be left in the reek.”
– But isn’t the straight path shorter than the long?

Are you going to be tied-down in world’s finality?
Are you going to run to heaven’s endless creek?
– Or are you going to unite the two and create reality?

For one is one, and two is two –

Only three can unite me and you.
_____
[i] Inspired by Lekkutei Sichos, vol. 2, pp. 301
[ii] Shabbos, 88a; Rashi – “Tri-book”: Torah, Neveim, Ksuvim. “Tri-nation”: Kohanim, Leveim, Yisraeilim. “Third one”: Moses (Miriam, Aaron, and Moses). “Third month”: Sivan (Nisson, Iyar, Sivan).

Talking To Myself

2006-05-28T02:39:00.000-04:00

Stop. I feel like saying don’t go. But who am I to say that. I talk to myself, all the time. Stop eavesdropping you sneaky thing. Some things are private. But, then, it wouldn’t be interesting if it were public, would it now. Are you still listening though I told you not to. Good. I told you so only to make it interesting. How would it sound if I said gather around y’all, come hear what I have to say. Wouldn’t that work, work to chase everyone a way. So, I make it exciting: I whisper; I tell you don’t listen; I throw suspicious looks at myself. And you get excited, as do I. You’re excited for you listen in to a private conversation between myself; I am excited because now I really have something to talk about.

“Who wants to be excited anyway?” I ask myself. “Everyone,” I answer myself. “That was a rhetorical question,” I tell myself. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” I reprimand myself. “Don’t talk down to me,” I say to myself. “Look who’s talking,” I cynic myself. “Touché,” I reply to myself. “Ye, I always get the last word,” I rub it in to myself.

They say talk is cheap. They are wrong – talk is free, free speech. Talk all you like, but don’t say a word. Saying what you talk would be wrong. Talking what you say would be weird. So don’t mix your talking and your saying. Do you hear what I talk; do you say what I hear.

I listen to myself talking and I don’t like what I hear. It’s kind of funny listening in to yourself talking to yourself. It’s like listening to a recording of your own voice – I don’t sound like that.

They say only crazies talk to themselves. I wonder if they were listening in to themselves talk. Not only crazies talk to themselves (true, only crazies talk crazily to themselves, but) even normals talk to themselves – albeit normally.

This is writing: talking to yourself so others could listen in.

Blindly, I See Him Looking At Me

2006-05-16T02:47:00.000-04:00

In honor of my grandfather's first yartzeit (anniversary of passing).

He sits there amused, watching the goings-on of a narrow-minded world. The nitpickiness of neophytes disguised (or undisguised), leaves him grinning from tear to tear – Why don’t they just open their eyes? he wonders.

It is comedic, sadly comedic I’m sure, as he watches the bespectacled lemmings: we run around like blind mice, and, when he tells us so, we say, “Not true, we are not blind mice at all – we are merely blind”.

Blind indeed.

We sit here mourning: the tears potent from a year’s maturation, the emptiness as unfulfilled as eyes filled. And he writes:

Why do they mourn for me when I rejoice for them?
Why do they cry up to me when I smile down at them?
Why are they empty of me when I’m full of them?

Anyway you put it, he is not here. No matter how brilliant the mind’s response, the heart’s question is never answered. And he is hysterical – Vus bulbest du? What the hell are you talking about? You think it’s about answers and questions? You are young, just be.

He is surprised – There you sit, crying over my no-show; you think I’ve disappeared, so you’ve despaired. O, you foolish child, why not look past the decay of skeleton and into the eternity of spirit; why not scrape away the surface of the body so you can touch the essence of the soul?

Yes, I know, a blind man cannot see his blindness; an ignorant man knows not of his ignorance; a sleeping man does not feel he sleeps.

But, alas, I, I who is neither blind, nor ignorant, nor asleep, can pry-open your eyes, teach-away your ignorance, shake-off your sleep.

Just let me, please. I know you do not understand – if you did, it wouldn’t be worth it – but, still, just believe in me, trust in me, have faith in me, for here I sit, in a place eternal, believing in you, trusting in you, having faith in you.

I’m sad, but I do not mourn: I'm sad because my eyes are closed; I do not mourn because I know his are open.

I mourn, but I am not sad: I mourn because I cannot see him; I am not sad because I know he sees me.

Ah, yetz't du redst - now you're talking.

a piece i posted a year ago on this blog, right after my grandfather's transition to places better http://jakeyology.blogspot.com/2005/06/impressions-of-grandson.html

Is He Serious?

2006-05-07T00:19:00.000-04:00

Most people do not know
Everyone is so confused
Not yours truly though
Always I stand excused
Come fire or even snow
He who lives abused
Eagerly looks high and low
Myself I just stand amused

Merely a flash a thought
Enters my overworked mind
Not thinking what I was taught
Don’t like knowledge of that kind
Especially when it is bought
Like a shopper’s gleeful find

Just want to do something new
Always in an innovative way
Careful not to copycat you
O to write an original screenplay
Be it false or maybe even true
So long as it ends in hooray
Of course you hold me a shrew
Nevertheless you can kiss my touché

I Forgot To Put A Quarter In The (Poetry) Meter

2006-04-24T22:02:00.000-04:00

On jagged peaks lower than despair:
Sits a barefoot child,
Hair running wild,
And clear blue eyes looking out to nowhere.

I don’t remember what it was like then:
Maybe like a cloud,
So very proud,
And no one ever said just be like them.

We weren’t running in squares circled:
Happy and sate,
More food than plate,
And cheeks were not yet puffed and purpled.

But now the cheeks are running with blackest coal:
Mind is coiled,
Soul is soiled,
And we wipe the dirt with a snow-white prayer shawl.

Now the child cries out to a trans-parent:
Tongue is blistered,
Cry is whispered,
And things that normally are now aren’t.

Back home they all gather by the fireplace:
Toothy grins,
Washed from sins,
And no screeching scars on this higher-face.

Oh but no flame reflects in these blue eyes:
Only bland ice,
No salt or spice,
And warmth can only be found in a few lies.

The child is imprisoned in the grownup:
Keyless chains,
Horseless reins,
And purity lies in a pile of truth thrown up.

Purity was never easy for a pig to digest:
Like the flu,
Impromptu,
And you know even before the blood test.

So you are about to toss your cookies:
Chocolate chip,
Jumping ship,
And your child is two-to-one at the bookies.

A sign says: the blue eyes are forever closed:
You bet and lost,
At what a cost!
But signs always lie: the eyes only dozed.

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbDo you believe in signs or do you believe in truth?
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbIs it the man who bites the hand that feeds or is it the tooth?

For Questions

2006-04-11T18:34:00.000-04:00

Vertical
Shadows crawl over the world.
Things
Are painted in a zebra
Pinstripe.

I
Wonder what the world would
Looklike
If the view were not filtered through
Ironbars.

Eyes, so full of emptiness, don’t even blink when the child is whipped. Child, branded by whip and scar, looks into the empty eyes and sees a reflection of a stranger vaguely familiar – it is himself.

He doesn’t understand why the eyes won’t do anything to help him. The eyes turn away and the child sees the smooth crisscrosses on his father’s back. Now he understands. His father too was once a child.

As he grows, the scars begin to close over the raw pain and a tough shell, a crust really, forms over that which was once called delicate. He has joined the family tradition – a slave to his master, just like his father.

Bound wrist to wrist, father and son lay brick after brick, building a pyramid to nowhere. Coarse clothe, like blistered palms, burn the sweaty skin off their shoulders – and smooth scar meets worn scab like foamy wave meeting spongy sand.

Child watches the sun set through the bars. Moon, working the graveyard shift, seems to be dressed in prisoners black and white pinstripes. At a closer look, it is the bars that are creating the pinstripe illusion.

(A slave seems to project his slavery unto others. And it is true: if there be but one slave in this world, then we, the free, are all slaves, shackled to that man’s lack of freedom.)

During those nights, looking at the stars, a million diamonds sown into crushed velvet, the Child’s mind wanders: Why am I a slave? Why is he a master? Why am I confined to complacency, shackled to mortality, barred to boredom, chained to impossibilities, cuffed to ordinary? Why can I not just break out, reach for that crushed velvet – who knows, I may just grab a diamond?

In the purple haze of before sun’s budding and slave’s toiling, Child asks Father all of these questions. Child, before Father’s scar covers his eyes, sees a glimpse of something he cannot word, though we, the so called “free”, with our dictionaries and thesauruses, would recognize it as pain. Quicker than its arrival into Father’s eyes is its departure, and therefore Child thinks it a trick of dawn’s awakening. Father tells Child, we are slaves, and slaves have no right to ask questions. But why are we slaves? That’s just the way it is; don’t waste your energy on childish questions, save it for your bricklaying. Forget your questions.

But telling a child to forget is like telling an adult to rebel, and as child grows, though scars grow as well, he always remembers his questions and sneaks peaks out the bars into the unknown.

Now older (it is difficult to tell a slaves exact age), he feels something inside of him, below scar tissue and under calloused skin. He doesn’t recognize it, though it is somewhat familiar – kind of like his childhood face.

That night, instead of collapsing on his stone bed, he looks through the bars – and those million lights in the dark unknown set off a million lights in his dark unknown. Questions, long buried under a thousand bricks, climb to the surface.

In that same purple haze of before sun’s budding and slave’s toiling, he gathers his friends – all young enough to revolt yet old enough to be taken seriously – and asks them his questions. They say we have asked the same questions and have gotten the same answers.

As the darkness of the crushed velvet illuminates the million stars (it’s funny how the brightest things are illuminated in the darkest places), the slaves join arms and questions in revolt. As there are inevitably more slaves than masters (for many reasons), and now nothing, not even their steel silence, coming between them, the slaves easily bust through the iron(y) bars and barb(ed) wire.

They are free at last. Free from scars. Free from masters. Free to ask questions – why should we not, I ask you?

(Though a bit abstract – how else to relate the struggles and limits of ones being? – I have tried to portray the going out of slavery, both personally and globally, in the light of a metaphor, one which I hope was more “freeing” than “enslaving”. May we, the “young enough to revolt yet old enough to be taken seriously”, never except that which is imposed upon us, and always question that which seems wrong.

A Happy and Kosher Passover.)

The Title Would Give It Away

2006-04-05T06:26:00.000-04:00

Smile upon me, oh my faithful son.
Cry beneath me, o selfless servant.
Be so kind to pardon this uh-pun
You watchers who be so observant:
Please unravel this riddle I spun.

I see with my ears; with eyes I hear.
I’ve known much status but little quo.
I am neither here nor am I there.
Of ignorance I will never know.
Of indifference I could not care.

Sure I can walk down the beaten path –
But I can beat my own all the same.
Yes I’ve inspired in Him a wrath –
But merely one tear and He is tame.
It is an old joke yet still I laugh.

I cannot speak but I have said much.
I cannot walk but I have wandered.
I cannot feel but all I can touch.
I cannot think but I have pondered.
I cannot limp but I have a crutch.

[Eros eroding the bottom lines.
Pieces peace together the fixture.
Axioms axing axis-confines.
Scholars de-scripting a new scripture.
Termites de-terminating de-vines.

Refurbished reefers re-ding re-fines.
Deities depicting de-picture.
Signor’s signature signing de-signs.
Mixing minxes mixing the mixture.
Sum-one sum-where as-summing sum-times.]

I’m a-verse to the itty-bitty.
Never liked getting lost in de-tale.
But when it gets to nitty-gritty,
I like to purchase bulk in re-tail.
And that’s me in a witty-ditty.

[Am I the reader or the writer?
who am i who are you Cigarette or lighter?

Are you the writer or the reader?
who am i who are you Follower or leader?]

Wedding Pictures

2006-03-31T03:39:00.000-05:00

How does one put down something so powerful on a piece of paper? How does one bottle an eternal moment? How does one express that which he cannot understand?

All of these questions have been plaguing me for a week. I do not know where to begin and I do not know where to end. The things that are easy to write about – my flight, Hong Kong, Sydney, the beach, the people, the trip, the partying – seem so trivial in the light of why we all traveled thousands of miles to a city more focused on the prowess of the body than on the purity of the soul; and to write about Moshe’s and Chana’s wedding, the reason we’ve all crawled down under, is most difficult.

As something has to be written – lest this paper remain blank – I will attempt to write images, images of those moments that are most difficult to write about – after all, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here I go writing pictures.

We drink Glenlivit 18. It is three in the afternoon. Levi, Shloime, Shmuly, Natan, Zalman, Yossi and myself have chosen the end of the table and the whiskey stops here. Little finger-foods compliment all those years of the single malt’s maturation. Some like them young, that is, twelve years old; I myself am not too picky. Moishe sits at the head of the table, looking about as comfortable as the tie around Yossi’s neck. He keeps on glancing in our direction, as if he wishes he were sitting with us, or, maybe, us sitting with him. A song is being sung, and then Moishe gives-over the Mammer. He looks much more relieved.

The Daled Buves is being sung. Moishe stands with his head bowed and a raincoat draped over his shoulders. Chana, veiled, is being guided through the backyard towards the Chupah. They circle seven times. Tears are like the giggle-lube: once you see the first fall there is no stopping them. But then there is Shmuly: if anything gets too serious, he pops his head into the picture, and you cannot help but laugh. Yossi sings Boruch Haba. The blessings are blessed. Zalman, the ring-bearer, hands the ring to the Rabbi. Moishe places the ring on Chana’s finger. Smash!! A glass shatters. Mazzal Tov!!

Finally I get to Moishe. We hug and kiss. That’s it.

We take a bus downtown, to the hotel where the reception is being held. We are early. They set some bottles on a table for us where the pictures are being taken. We are quite inebriated at this point. And it is not yet six o’clock. Finally the waiters come around with trays boasting mini foodstuffs. We, the intoxicated musketeers, stand around a tray until nary a crumb can be found. There are a lot of people, socializing as we wait for the doors to open.

From here on the picture gets hazy, as if the positive negative has been exposed to too much light. Well, what would a wedding be if not for the “too much light”? Sometimes the picture must be sacrificed for the moment’s sake.

Ah, and what a moment it was. In the beginning, before one has lost all inhibition, the dancing can get a bit awkward – where do I put my legs, my arms? Do I just let loose? – But as the ice melts (in the scotch), things start becoming natural: you begin to move in sync with an inner rhythm. Swirling bodies, twisting hips, sweat shooting off faces glowing, hands flying in directions never known before, and my toe is stepped upon. Do I feel it? How can I when all I feel is joy? I dance with Moishe in hug, and, for a “second” time just stops; it’s as if G-d hit pause on the dance floor and only Moishe and I were moving, though like in a dream. It is an amazing thing to be happy, but it is even a more amazing thing to be happy for somebody else. And here we are, both happy for each other: I’m happy for him because he is now complete, no more a mere half-soul; he is happy for me because I am happy for him.

I walk over to Moishe’s and Chana’s table to make a L’chaim to them. He tells me to stop thinking so much. (What do you think he meant?) I tell him I’m not thinking. But the truth is I am thinking: I think about how lucky he is to have found Chana; I think about how lucky I am to have him as a friend; I think about great it is to be here with the guys, just wild; I think about many things. But now that Moishe tells me stop thinking, how can I refuse?

I am on a high. Haven’t slept in thirty-five hours. I’ve drunk too much spirit. Yossi sings a song for Moishe and Chana. I ask him to tell the ten-piece band to play a hip-hop rhythm. This one goes out to Moishe, the hip-hop lover. I’m not sure what a rapped about (except for Ritchie’s Red Sox), and I’m not sure anybody else knew what I was rapping about, but, through the haze of airplane meals, sweat, booze and joy, I can see Moishe smile as I try to find a rhyme for “Witkes”. And that makes it all worth it.

The image is quickly fading into oblivion, and it seems the roll of film is reaching its end. So let me just leave you with this picture.

Faced By...

2006-03-19T14:13:00.000-05:00

Elegance floats by like a cloud. Hair, like a clear waterfall, softly cascades over carefree shoulders and down a perfectly sloped back. Eyes, like emeralds set in the finest china, framed by lashes of peacock feather. She is perfection beyond reason, beauty beyond heartbreak, delicacy beyond subtlety – innocence too fragile to handle.

Dirt sits in a cardboard box, wrapped in a soiled wool coat many sizes too big, its pockets with room enough for a pint but not room enough for a penny. A face rougher than his wool coat frames eyes red from constipated tears. The only smoothness this face knows is a scar cutting through his left cheek. But that scar is nothing compared to the scars underneath; it is what we call, “the tip of the iceberg”.

I watch as Elegance crosses the street. She walks naturally, artlessness too artful to articulate. Dirt sits with a head bowed, surrendered in submission, oblivious to Elegance’s presence. She walks passed him. He sees her shoes, looks up and, though it is hard to tell for certain from this distance, their eyes meet. He lethargically looks away. She quickly rummages in her purse, and, without getting too close, flips him a coin, a silver one I think.

The next day the same thing happens. The day after, she walks up to him with a steaming cup of coffee and a sandwich. He knocks the coffee out of her hand, spilling it on her skirt. Elegance has not been elegantly treated. She turns away and I see her face. Her lips tremble, her eyes let a single tear. I watch as it softly rides down her cheek and hangs from her jaw. There is a sadness I see that makes you want to smack Dirt for causing it. Slowly she walks away while he turns his head to the side and the cap off his bottle.

Night passes away and dawn is born. Dirt’s alarm clock is shining its rays and the city awakes. I watch all day, but Elegance doesn’t show. Is that a fidgetiness I see under the oversized coat? I don’t know; but he has definitely smoked more cigarettes today than I have ever seen him smoke before.

Another day passes without Elegance’s showing and Dirt is definitely showing signs of impatience. I know this because for the first time his eyes seem to be seeing things.

As the moon spotlight’s the stage called Earth, shining almost directly unto Dirt, I see that familiar walk of Elegance, making its way towards the spotlight. Dirt, with the moonbeam blinding his eyes, cannot see Elegance approach. When she stops in front of him, and he sees her shoes, his head snaps up, the quickest and surest move I’ve seen him make yet. Elegance bends down, grabs Dirt by the shoulder of his coat, and pulls him to his feet. He wobbles and falls on her. She almost collapses under his weight, but ever so elegantly steadies herself until he is leaning on her in more ways than one.

They walk together, he dirtily, she elegantly. I follow at a safe distance. I don’t want them knowing they are being watched. They cross the bridge. They aren’t talking; just walking. They walk into the park. They walk down the main path, walked by thousands every day; but, if I’m not mistaken, it looks as if they are walking along their own path, as if no one has ever walked it before. Passed the pond they go (while I’m pondering), and when they stop to look into the still water, I can see their countenances reflected: what an unlikely couple they make, he with his hard face and perpetual snarl, she with here soft innocence and hopeful expectations.

As they continue on to no apparent destination, I realize that this journey is the destination.

After a period beyond time has passed, they sit under a tree. Dirt looks at Elegance and lifts a calloused hand to his prickly chin. In a fluid motion Dirt peels away chin, cheek, and face – roughness and scardom give way to purity and naturalness. There is a glow emanating from his being, as if someone lit a candle in a dark room, or, more accurately, blew the dust from a bright diamond.

I am stunned. Elegance, however, seems not to be. And, as I watch, I see why:

In the light of “Dirt’s” face, I see Elegance: she lifts a delicate hand to her fragile chin. In a shaky motion, Elegance peels away chin, cheek, and face – beauty and delicacy give way to reality and truth. It is not about the face of Elegance anymore – how could it be when Dirt himself is faceless – now it is about two people, formerly known as Dirt and Elegance, who sit under a tree somewhere in a park passed the bridge, looking at each other for the first time. Now they don’t “face” each other; all they do is be.

And as I, the Spectator, walk away from the whole fiasco, I reach up, peel, and toss my face into the pile of retro-faces. I feel the rush of fresh air on my “cheeks”, and though the story goes on and on for all eternity, the Spectator gets buried under retro-face after retro-face, and must therefore cease telling that which he can no longer see.

Just face it.

Part Of The Story

2006-03-11T17:15:00.001-05:00

This is part of a story I'm writing. I'm not really sure why i'm posting it; I always liked doing things i'm not sure of. Or, maybe not... I'm not really sure.

This is why Man is closer to Essence than Human is to Surface: he has not these faltering falsehoods to believe in, only truth and its consequences; he hasn’t any superbly superficial – by superficial I mean, mortal – objects to worship. However, the Human has all this f------ bullshit to take into the equation. So, doesn’t it just suck royal p---- to be a wealthy sycophant? What would you rather be: a prick that knows it all, or a know it all that’s a prick? No answer, well… I don’t blame you. But I do envy your indecision: if you had decided, one way or another, you would be wrong; but now that you are indecisive, we do not know either way – you could be right or you could be right. It’s like asking the Man: “Are you apathetic or ignorant?" and he replies, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Yes, there is – no matter what you, as a Human, believe – a certain common thread, which connects the Unattainable with the Unfathomable. There is that needle endlessly perpetuating a thread so profound that it can never penetrate the unknown; it can only know the impenetrable. The question is: what makes us Human?

What makes us Human? Is it our intelligence? Dolphins are intelligent. Is it our stupidity? Mice are stupid. Is it that we breathe? Flowers breathe. Is it that we cry? Alligators cry. Is it that we laugh? Hyenas laugh. Is it our compassion, or maybe our lust; is it our love, or maybe our hate; is it our brevity, or maybe our fear; is it our possessions, or maybe our impoverishes; is it our losses, or maybe our victories; is it our children, or maybe our parents; is it our students, or maybe our teachers; is it our achievements, or maybe our demolitions; is it our ambition, or maybe our complacency; is it our charity, or maybe our thievery; is it our pain, or maybe our bliss; is it our knowledge, or maybe our ignorance; is it our possibilities, or maybe our restraints? Then, would we become inhuman once we were to lose any of the above? Or maybe the right to choose between any of the above is what makes us what we are, Human? But are then slaves not Human? And are we all not slaves, to each his master? Maybe it is the ability to ask these questions that makes us Human – I highly doubt that those intelligent dolphins ask “what makes us dolphins?” – but then again, if we weren’t to ask, would that warrant us inhuman? No: if we weren’t to ask, we would be exercising our inalienable right to choose – to the extent of choosing between asking and not asking. If the powers that be – who ever they are – would force us to ask questions, firstly, it would be 1984 all over again, and secondly, it would be like the checkout clerk asking, “Cash or credit?” a question, which, in regards to the cashier, is as relevant as birth-control in a monetary, holds as much substance as Quixote’s windmills, and is only put forth out of necessity. On the other hand, questions of curiosity, of sincerity, of exploration, of discovery, of study, are not posed by rote; they are a means to understand a something otherwise unattainable, they force you to leave that four-cornered box of yours for the unknown, they require you to see not the “What” of the object, but rather the “Why” of it – “Why is this”, or, for that matter, “Why is this not” – that is the question.

Doing What You Are Told

2006-03-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

Comical comics ignore
The philosophers of yore
And philosophers of old
Didn’t do what they were told
By the warning on the door

Old men that were once young
Tell the youth bite thine tongue
And some youth will even heed
‘Til it begins to bleed
Onto the chord that was strung

Tzfat

2006-02-27T13:02:00.000-05:00

Hills and valleys roll in and out of each other like paint on canvass; paint on canvass seems to be everyone’s profession. The view is very misty to the naked eye; the vision, very mystical to the naked soul. Organic food stores proclaiming the perfection of body neighbor organic Kabbala schools proclaiming the perfection of soul. Streets, more cobble than stone, go in no obvious direction – as do some of its inhabitants. The structures seem to crumble as you look at them (this place was never one for structure) and the energy just bounces off the rubble (rubble always got along well with energy). It is a place more prone to Spirit than Matter – for some the right Spirit is what matters and for other the Matter is the right spirit. Doors painted blue appear to blend in with the rapidly approaching skies; rapidly approaching skies never seem to reach their destined destination. The mood is very airy; the blinding clarity, eerier yet. It is built on many graves, but it is more alive than glowing flesh. Yes, here even the cemetery dances in life’s delight: I guess when one is confined neither to the spirits of spirituality nor to the physics of physicality one dances on as if generations hadn’t passed. People are trying to carve out their unique niche: some succeed, while others just bore holes. It is glaringly funny, really, how earth plays heaven’s mirror: there is much spirit floating in the air here and, as a reflection, there is much craziness going on: this woman tries to out-costume the other woman; this guy’s prayer shawl attempts to out-color the other guy’s prayer shawl – until all this focus on things earthly distorts the view of things heavenly. If you are not a painter, you are a musician. If you are not a musician, you are a rabbi. If you are not a rabbi, you are a student. If you are not a student, you are a tourist. That’s it.

It is a place of Self-Expression – the question is: what is your agenda, the Self or the Expression.

Bullshitsky Boulevard

2006-02-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

Take a walk down Bullshitsky Boulevard
Where you can buy a pack of lies.
Take a walk down Bullshitsky Boulevard
Where even masks are disguised.
Take a walk down Bullshitsky Boulevard
Where you don’t need no alibis.

Hustlers hustling by your purse;
Grafters grafting in your mind;
Liars swearing at a curse;
Stoners tripping up the blind.

There’s a beard covering a sinner.
There’s a tear hiding a whore.
There’s a loser say’s he’s a winner.
There’s a bourgeois who says he’s poor.

A good cop will pick your pocket.
A fireman will light a match.
A scientist will blow his rocket.
A pirate will sell his patch.

With your eyes you see skin deep.
With your ears you hear the noise.
You can buy talk that is cheap.
You can sell your latest ploys.

Ignorant teachers run the schools.
Illiterate authors write the books.
The wizened ones here are fools.
And the queens are switched for rooks.

A supreme judge bribes a thief.
A gory guru washes your brain.
A sane saint laughs in disbelief.
A stormy cloud shrinks in the rain

Near the lamppost there’s laughter at bad humor.
Leaning on the fire hydrant is a false mustache.
Growing near the tree is a malignant tumor.
Scratching on the sidewalk is a rust rash.

You can give this piece of bee ess a rave review
‘Cause you are walking down Bullshitsky Avenue

(This is a song I'm working on; please let me know what you think.)

A Treetise

2006-02-14T16:19:00.000-05:00

Just A Piece Of Poetree

He stands there, branches spread and spreading some more. Fruits, dangling from his very limbs, sway in a ripened rhythm. Skin, now weathered and lined, is still more bark than bite; while arms and legs, though creaky and shaky, have not yet woodened. As a new leaf is about to be turned, he goes back, gazing into roots now sprouted.

It was a time before sprouting, when he was no more than a seed, a thought really: a conceptual idea – maybe coming to fruition, maybe not – that can be everything or nothing. And like most good ideas, he was forgotten in a miasma of uncultivated genius – tossed into the dirt, buried and left to rot.

What happened next is very unclear, a green haze. All he really remembers is that he felt at ease, surrounded by a bunch of tall and strong saviors, protecting the delicate good idea from the harshness of reality. A seed, a young brain, is like wet cement: whatever is etched in it is etched forever – a scarred seed becomes a scarred tree, a healthy seed becomes a healthy tree – and now, as he looks back at this vulnerable time of his, he realizes how close he came to being just another seedy idea.

With much patience and care, he was nourished back to health – cultivated, watered, and sunned. And he remembers the pain, a good pain – the pain of growth. But how it hurt then: the discipline, the breaking of self, the rotting of things past, the leaving of comfort zones, the disintegration of shell until virtually nothing – and then the sprouting; o, what pain it is to sprout.

Ah, but then the pleasure: the pleasure of independence – sure he still needed guidance lest he take a crooked path, but he was an entity all his own now; the pleasure of discovery, learning things he couldn’t even imagine; the pleasure of possibility, dreaming of things he will do; the pleasure of creativity, creating things all his own; the pleasure of giving, knowing he can give back to the world all that (and more) of what it has given him; and of course the pleasure of self, just knowing that he is here, an indispensable detail (and world) in the mass scheme of things.

And his limbs grow thicker, and they grow limbs of their own. Seasons are changing his body, changes are seasoning his soul, and he grows past adolescence into adulthood. He had some rebellion in him – he let his hair dreadlock, even pierced a twig and dabbled in some herb – but that is gone now; he has become a responsible individual.

And he looks back at the wonder of his first fruit, these little things that are so fragrant and sweet. What he enjoys most is the pleasure they give others; just knowing that something he created can have such an impact.

And now his own fruit themselves start to seed, going through the same trials and tribulations he went through. He watches as they try to find their own roots, their own unique ground, and it reminds him of his own early days.

His fruit are now giving off fruit of their own, and he looks-on with a content smile on his lips as all that potential comes to fruition.

It is the beginning of another year; a new energy exposed to earth. It passes through root, trunk, branch, twig, and fruit, energizing a world much in need of inspiration. All we have to do is plant (“He who plants with tears will reap with joy”) those seeds, water (“The water of life” – Torah) those roots (“He shall cause Jacob to take root”), cultivate those trees (“For a man is a tree of the field”), and give off those fruit (“Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit”).

May all this work, sowing and planting, finally give off the ultimate fruit (of our labor) – truly arriving in the “Good Land” a “Land of wheat, and barley, and grape vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil, and honey” – both physically and spiritually.

To Forge Ahead

2006-02-07T13:06:00.001-05:00

Horses, their masked riders in black urging them on, trample over a crowd of young men and women; clubs and batons, in a furious rhythm, go crack against skulls and their caps; girls’ ponytails are used as handholds to drag them away; demonstrators, tens of thousands perhaps, fill the streets; parliament members, blood streaking down their noses and cheeks, cannot act diplomatically; homes, once a place of joy and comfort, now being torn away; families, who were changing their little part of the universe, are now homeless. Welcome, my friends – welcome to the Promised Land.

The Escapist:
The world is a horrid place: everything here dies. We hate each other, like only two brothers can. It is cold and dark, and I am numb from the false pretense of existence. I feel them closing in on me and I make a decision – I will jump, commit physical suicide, escape from the prison of Body and dedicate myself solely to my soul. I will hide behind my books, crawl under my prayer shawl, and wrap myself in pure ecstasy. What of everybody else, will I just let them freeze to death? It’s not my problem; let someone else care for them. I do what I have to do: this is a dog-eat-dog world and I am not going to starve, or be someone’s puppy. Survival of the fittest, and I think I’m fit to survive.

The Slave:
I feel the confines slipping over me like a vaporous cloud. I cannot stop it. I haven’t the power to fight. What can a little nothing like me do? Nothing. So I sit resigned to fate. Sure I’ll do what is asked of me, maybe even help my fellow if in need, but I do it because I’m bound to it; not because I want to. I worship Environment: cold normalcy is my eye, and status quo my vision. Why don’t I become alive, step out of this robotics of mine? Simply: because it is too damn hard. So, instead I lie here, letting the chains tighten around my wrists and ankles – and am thankful that at least the chains are predictable.

The Zealot:
The enemy is coming closer; we are trapped and must strike out: attack them with brute force. Life is war, and the only way one wins a war is by fighting a war. Peace? Ha, now that’s a laugh. See where peace has gotten us so far – to the grave, to the grave it has gotten us. No, we will take up arms, brothers in arms, and battle it out. What if the arms you take up are against your brothers – is that still “brothers in arms”? I don’t care: they want war, and they will get war. We will not go like sheep to the slaughter. Oh no, we have done that before and look where it got us. We will fight. But why waste your energy on fighting a war when you were told to use all your energy to receive the Torah, to forge ahead? Why fight, which has many non-casual casualties, when you can continue on? Why fight when you were never told to fight? I fight because I have to fight. That’s why I fight. What if I told you there was another way, would you still fight? There is no other way. There is only one solution – war, and only war, will save us now.

The Dependant:
What can we do? We must pray. I feel the dark cloud surrounding even our possibilities, even our hopes, even our beliefs, we must pray. When there is nothing else, there is always prayer. I will put my life in His hands; let him guide me. What do I know? I know only one thing: You and only You can save me now. So, here take my prayer and do as you see fit. What about you, don’t you think you can change your fate? Who? Me? Who am I? I am nothing. Only He, He who created me, can change my fate. I am fated to fate. I don’t want to jump in the Torah Sea and hide behind my fur coat; I don’t want to return and enslave myself to normalcy; I don’t even want to go to war; I just don’t want to make the decision: I’ll pray and He’ll decide. What about the power vested in you to change the universe? What power? What you? What change? What universe? He is all and all is He – I am nothing, nothing but a prayer.

The Forger:
Then there is I, The Forger – he who forges ahead. I don’t care what anybody says – water, no water; Egyptians, no Egyptians – G-d told us we are going to the Mountain, so we are going to the Mountain. There is water in front of us? So what? G-d also created water: water is also G-dly. I’ll just wave my hand over the water and show you how the water is but an extension of G-d. You don’t believe me? Poof, it splits. What was once hidden is now revealed: the sea split to show you how underneath it all, it too, the final boundary between exile and redemption, is but a tool of G-d’s and, therefore, a tool of ours. But it is so hard, finding the truth in everything and revealing it. Yes, but if you were to find the truth in yourself, split your sea so that your essence is uncovered, would it then be so hard to find the essence in everything else? I don’t think so.

(We live in weird – or normal – times, where all of our dreams seem to be trampled on by horses, and none of us can agree on what to do: some say we should escape; some say we should succumb to slavery; some say we should go to war; and some say we should pray and depend solely on G-d. What do we do? Do we rely on our own intuition, on our own feelings? Then certainly we would never agree. We seem to have no leader, no Moses to tell us what to do. But, as Yud Shvat dawns, the day the Moses of our generation accepted the leadership, I realize that the answer to our question must lie in the teachings of the Rebbe. And so it does: no one should be an escapist, nor a slave, nor a zealot, nor a dependant – one must forge ahead, ahead to the receiving of the Torah, by spreading that which the Torah stands for and, therefore, spreading, in fact “splitting”, all that which seemingly stands in our way.)

Street Talk

2006-02-01T10:12:00.000-05:00

I stand on Zalamn Shazar’s glasses, waiting for the light to change. After the fundamental transition from red to green, I walk down the stories of Ben Tzvi, and make a left up the toga of Agrippas. Now passing through the tents of Machana Yehudah – where, like in days past, you can sell or buy anything, from your soul to apples – I emerge at the shores of Yafo, the foamy waves of twisting busses lapping at my shoes. At the intersecting canonic Kikar Davidka, I dream my way into the prophetic Haneveim. Up the “Titanic” Strauss we go, until we hit the rule of Malchei Yisrael. Now, after riding on Yechezkial’s chariot and Shmuel Hanavi’s leadership, we tread with tribulation on the tribal Shivtai Yisrael. The hundred gates of Meah Sheorim, only accessible to those dressed modestly, bring us to the “universal” Bar Ilan. Yirmiyahu’s true vision guides us through Hertzl’s distorted one. The presidential Weizmann leads us under the bridge, and up Betzalel’s architecture. A right on Usishkin’s right wing philosophy, heading toward the Ramban’s Torah commentary; when we reach the end of Nachmonides, a left on King George’s crown. Now we word our way through Ben Yehudah’s dictionary, balancing between Hillel’s “actuality” and Shamai’s “possibility”. Now through the black and white editorials of Agron’s “Post”, and down the political Keren Ha’Yesod. Past Washington’s apple trees, Mendele Mocher Seforim’s books, Lincoln’s lack of mustache, Sholom Aleichem’s Yiddish, and Jabotinsky’s revisionism. We recite the iambs of Shmuel Hanagid’s poetry, comment on Abarbanel’s prayer commentary and Ibn Ezra’s Pentateuch commentary, while engaging the disengaged Derech Azza. Achad Ha’am seems to be split, as does Ha’Palmach. Ben Maimon’s thirteen principles seem to be deserted, and they think Alfasi is a wine. Now back around and King David seems to be beckoning us. His grandson is around here somewhere, just waiting for all the streets to come together, to unite as one.

And I can see the Old City in the distance, its magnet drawing me in. Down the stairs we go and our foreheads rest on the Wall. Road-weary and tired, I realize all this roaming through wild streets and deserted deserts was worth it: our homelessness is just the journey, and our Home, the destination, is not so far away.

Scenes From #6

2006-01-23T16:27:00.000-05:00

In the last row, three teenagers are talking too loud. Headphones, probably blaring a hip-hop number, peek out of pierced ears: maybe that’s why they talk so loud; then again, maybe they just want to be heard.

In front of them, a little girl sitting on her mothers lap looks across the aisle at a soldier with a gun sitting on his lap. He gives her a tired smile; she buries her face in her mothers shoulder. He turns away to look out the window.

A middle-aged woman with a purse in her lap and pursed lips on her face takes impatient glances at her watch, trying with no obvious success to speed things up.

Watching her watching her watch is an older man with a knowing smile on his face. It seems he too once tried moving things along quicker than necessary. I wonder if the pursed woman will be sitting here a little further down the road, a knowing smile on her face.

The older man with the knowing smile on his face reaches up to push the “stop” button. It appears that he has reached the end of the road. This is his stop. He looks around one last time, still smiling. Maybe he is remembering all the roads he has traveled. He says, “Excuse me”, and walks off into the unknown.

As he ends his journey, two little children begin theirs. Innocent faces, neither wizened by experience nor scarred by failure, press their eager noses against the glass, taking in all the sites like a sponge takes in water. The purity of their presence seems to affect the others and even the teenagers in the back row turn down the volume.

Closer to the front, a woman in a big sweater is nodding off. No one sits near her and the unpleasant odor emanating from her direction seems to be why. Plastic bags of many colors surround her feet as if she were planted there, in a bed of bags. These bags seem to be full, but bags full are usually full with nothing. Then again: how would I know? (Even the narrator cannot judge the subjects of this ride, no matter how objective he claims to be, lest he judge incorrectly. All he can do is observe and tell.)

A studious young man, at least his glasses and balding head portray him as such, is consumed in the pages of his book. Will he ever realize that he must stop reading in order to start writing? Probably. But sometimes it easier to read than it is to write.

An arrogant twenty-something year old scribbles pompously on the back of a sacred text. Will he ever realize that he must stop writing in order to start reading? Probably. But sometime it easier to write than it is to read.

Right in front of me sits the man behind the wheel. Stopping at a red light. Going at a green one. Letting passengers on. Letting passengers off. He clicks a ticket. He counts out some change. He exchanges some words. He is just another person along for the ride, just another indispensable part of the puzzle – albeit with a wheel in his hand and a pedal under his foot. But then don’t we all have a wheel in our hand and a pedal under our foot?

Then of course there I am, a rare-view mirror observing the comings and goings of bus number six. I am just hanging here, relating a tale of life. Oh, but wait, over there, near the rare doors, an interesting group of people have just…

So it goes, on and on – or, on and off. And as the wheels keep on turning, the driver sees me observing, and knowing what I’m thinking, he gives me a wink.

What’s Your Name?

2006-01-18T10:02:00.000-05:00

Crack. A whip rips at your back. Still you don’t change your name. You feel the blood pouring out of yet another open scar. Still you don’t change your name. Your broken nails try in vain to lay a brick. Still you don’t change your name. Ankles rubbed raw from chains too tight. Still you don’t change your name. Cracked cheeks sting from your salty tears. Still you don’t change your name. Your son thrown into the river. Still you don’t change your name. Your daughter made to live like them. Still you don’t change your name. No, you will never change your name.

And we go through the daily routine, confined to petty detail, limited by our (im)possibilities, restricted to our naiveté. We awake to the same alarming ring; drink the same coffee, black with a shot of espresso; fold the same newspaper; pass the same people; catch the same train; work the same hours; talk to the same friends; ignore the same foes; read the same books; write the same checks; eat the same supper (or, maybe mix things up – go out to eat, though probably to the same restaurant); waste the same time; bored with the same things. Or, if you were a “pioneer”, you might do it all differently: awake to a different alarming ring; drink a different coffee, milk and two sugars; catch the next train; work overtime… And no matter how different you are, no matter how many sugars you use to sweeten your coffee, your life still remains bitter – like the Egypt of yesterday, the Egypt of today is a “life of bitterness”.

How does one escape a cyclonic cycle (psycle?) – does one just peddle away? Or, maybe this is the ultimate, a life restricted yet predictable: yes, you are stuck in a bind, but at least you won’t float away; true, you are tied in do-knots, but at least you won’t trip on a rebellious shoe lace.

One famous Jew, a Mr. Zimmerman, once said, “The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter is that his name wasn’t Henry Porter”. Names are all we have to go on. The only way to relate – or relate to – an idea, thing, emotion, is by naming it. If a something remains nameless, then it remains reticent as well: a thing unnamed is a thing unapproachable, and, therefore, reproachable.

Essence, on the other hand, cannot be named – if it could, it wouldn’t be Essence. Though it is the source – indeed, because it is the source – it remains aloof, untouched by terminologies, languages, lexicons, or any other anthropological (or illogical) terms. Essence can therefore never be contaminated – it is beyond those petty daily routines.

“These are the names of the Children of Israel that came to Egypt”. As a child, I could never understand how the second of the Five Books Of Moses, Shmos (Hebrew for Names) etymologized into Exodus – one is referring to the enslavement of the Jewish People, while the other is referring to their “exodus”?

The first line of Shmos says it all: “These are the names… that came to Egypt”. Only a part of the Jew descended into the limitations of Egypt, (in Hebrew, the word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, finds the same root as Maytzar, boundary, as in restriction.) namely: their names – only an external, albeit vital, part of them. However, the Divine Spark, the Essence, never even descended into the parochial Egypt, and therefore can never be mummified by some Egyptian bondage (!).

But if one were to exit Egypt the way one entered, with no essential change, then wherein lies the purpose of the whole ordeal – if no ascent, why the descent? Ah, yes, of course: though names are certainly not Essence, they most definitely are Essential, and can therefore furnish Essence with something it does not “possess” on its own – overcoming obstacle, turning dark into light, throwing off the chains of Egypt.

This named ability – to change routine and, consequently, Essence itself – stems from the pure Essence never exiled, while (because and besides the fact that it is rooted at the source) branching out to all things named.

Thus, “essentially”, both Shmos and Exodus are connected (Shmos however is a word of The Holy Tongue, and must therefore microcosmically encompass all of the Book Of Shmos, with no room for error on any level): by the Jews not changing their “names” to Egyptian ones (imagine Pharaoh Goldstein or Potifar Rosenberg), by their remaining true to their expression of self, by remaining pure not only internally but externally as well, the Exodus was brought about.

And today, every moment of our lives we strain against the bonds of Egypt (you think there’s a middle-eastern investment firm, Egyptian Bonds?), trying to bust out of the status quo so that we can take all things named and make them essential. That is the name of the game – tapping into your Essence so that you can hold on to your Name.

So… Hi, What’s your name?

Surrounded By Possibilities

2006-01-10T13:46:00.000-05:00

The walls are surrounded. We have no hope of escaping the city; the city has no hope of escaping destiny. Destruction is inevitable; it is but the beginning of the end. I can see the enemy fires burning in the near distance. Thousands of their soldiers are silently laughing, reminds me of a movie. Panic spreads overhead like an overcast sky. The future is as bright as thunder; the streets are as noisy as lightning. Black smoke billows from everywhere (destruction is always accompanied by black smoke). Stone that once looked like gold bricks in the setting of the sun now looks like gray flesh in the setting of siege. The walls have not been breached – no, the enemy is using them as a coffin, burying us alive. Soon the food will run out. Parents will start eating their children; children will start begging to be eaten. Some say we should leave the walls and fight; some say we should pray; some say we should put the swords to our necks; some say we should turn the swords into plowshares – or at least into pens. We cannot even agree to disagree; we are broken into a million little pieces. They say our division is the reason for our destruction, and, therefore, our unity would be the reason for our resurrection – but no one seems to see it that way: we’d rather be right than alive.

And here we are, once again imitating history. Confined to our walls are we, surrounded by falsehoods. There is but little hope of escaping this darkness. Destruction seems to be upon us; it looks like the end is approaching. Is that an overcast sky? Or maybe an undercast earth? Are we living in a bad dream, a nightmare perhaps, where the lightening bolts blind our eyes and the thunder claps leave blood poring from our ears? It is very cold, I think, and we are bitten by the frost. And we still do not realize that two people can look at the same thing and see it differently. The world is freezing to death, while we are busy arguing who should light the fire; people are dying from thirst, while we fight for the distribution rights. We are of one body – we use are left arm to sever our right. Does the Left not feel the pain of the Right? Does the Right not feel the pain of the Left? Are with this immune, this indifferent to our own selves? And still the walls are surrounded.

But then I sit by a Shabbat table, where so many different backgrounds step into the common foreground. I see a child drop a coin into a shaking cup. A Rabbi puts Tefilin on his brother, almost in slow motion, really. A stranger helps a woman with her baby carriage. A backpack-yielding student gives her seat to a cane-yielding grandfather. A wizened old man, with a green tattoo on his arm, smiles. A rebellious teenager channels his energy into a book that possesses the meaning of life. He questions everything; sometime he finds answers, sometimes answers find him – either way, he’s alive. Moments of truth are momentous – and they are everywhere.

We just have to open our eyes.

Suddenly it doesn’t seem like we are surrounded anymore. All that was once destroyed is now being rebuilt. Foe is becoming friend; challenge is becoming possibility; dream is becoming reality –

And in reality we are all one, because, in truth, there is but one reality.

Snow

2006-01-05T12:48:00.000-05:00

Snowflakes pass me by –
Like the years of my life.
Snow flurries fall to the ground –
Like youthful expectations.

Snowballs are molded –
Like innocent minds.
Snowmen are sluggish –
Like men of flesh and blood.

Snowstorms bury the dirt –
Like beautiful bodies.
Snowplows uncover it –
Like moments of truth.

Snow iced by the cold –
Like frozen hearts.
Snow melted by the sun –
Like delicate souls.

Snowhite waiting for her prince –
Like the children of Israel.
Snowledge of G-d will cover the earth –
Like the waters cover the sea.

Shadow

2005-12-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

I just pulled this out of the vaults: 'twas buried under the weight of many a Greek Idol; but I think it remains pure.

Somewhere,
In the vicinity of a candle,
There lurks a shadow.
He looks on,
From a cold, dark viewpoint,
With jealous eyes.

He doesn’t know he’s jealous –
But he is.
He doesn’t even know there’s a candle –
But there is.

How do you know? You may ask.
I may tell:
When the darkness of night reigns,
Shadows haven’t a place;
But when the sun rises
And the sky turns a soft blue,
The Shadow is born.

It has no entity its own:
Without the candle it doesn’t exist.
The greater the light –
The greater the shadow.

Then why isn’t it warm and true,
Like its source?
For if it was to be so…
It would have no power its “own”;
And, wherein would lie the challenge?
Certainly not in the shadows!

Who am I writing to?
Doubtfully the Shadow,
For he can’t read!
I only write to the candle,
As only he alone can teach;
Only he alone can create.

Teach whom?
Teach what?
Teach the shadow –
How to read.

Create what?
From whom?
Create a Light –
From, The Shadow.

Winter

2005-12-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

Raindrops streak across the window, leaving a trail of watery fragileness. Menacing gray clouds, with big bushy eyebrows, growl at the earth. Gathering winds, demonstrating maybe, crowd the cracked squares and stoned streets. Temperatures are falling to a certain degree and temperaments are rising to a certain chill. Cheeks are beginning to rose; noses are beginning to run. Gloves are being handled; scarves are being necked. Bodies are being coated; hats are being headed. Ears are getting muffed; lips are getting chapped. Breath becoming visible in a foggy way; fog becoming invisible in a breathy way. Daylight now much shorter; shorts now much longer. Beaded sweat replaced by knitted sweater; ice coffees replaced by steamy espressos. The outdoor heaters join the outdoor diners for dinner. The security guards bounce from foot to foot. The passengers enter the bus with a gust of frigidness. Vents blowing artificial heat into rooms; heat, then, is being artificially vented. Less humanity outdoors: maybe because it is too fresh. Fewer people hanging out: maybe they are just trying to hang in. Hands rub together, trying to imitate flint stones; stones are stone cold. The trucks exhaust exuding exhausted excuses shaped like steam smelling of chemical. Shivering skins looking for a pocket; pocketed shivers looking for some skin. Feet cold on the bathroom floor; toes colder in open sandals. Fingers holding the cigarette are uncomfortably numb; as are some minds. Umbrellas are pulled inside out, they look like giant funnels; everybody is pulled together, trying to bring their limbs outside in – and I just stand there bundled in my fur coat, amused –

Yes, it is winter in Jerusalem, but it is also winter in my heart.

Black & White

2005-12-12T14:22:00.001-05:00

It is dark, both in its street and its heart. Maybe moonshine will reflect once in a while, and stars might even blink, but street and heart remain black.

We – who have come from the white stone – can see the (b)lack of light as it reflects off shadow onto sidewalk; and if you listen closely you can hear it speak dirty, and dark, words.

Between crumbling cement walls tattooed in graffiti, we wait on line (though offline) for our tickets. It is strange, (maybe Jewdicious?) knowing everyone around you is Jewish: kind of feels like the splitting of the Sea – except here there is no Moses and no sea; all that seems to be left here is the split.

Now we secure ourselves past the security, and bounce ourselves past the bouncers. As we make our way along posters advertising bands mundane in letters holy, the shivering darkness seems to crawl along with us, intensifying with our heart beat – boom, boom.

Things are shaking in and out of rhythm – boom, bam. Smoke swirling in lights very colorful, flash, flesh. Quiet, the cover band has ended. Only stagehands moving about, tuning gilded guitars, fastening symbolic symbols, slapping basic basses, maneuvering speechless speakers, wiring ample amplifiers. And all is dark – and silent.

Some nervous whispering, maybe a catcall, but that’s it. It is really quiet and dark.

Then a piercing note is heard, like an alarm not at all alarming, and darkness starts turning to light. A tall man, dressed in the customary suit and hat, black and white, is using reggae as a tool – a craftsman expertly transforming Barby, a Tel Aviv nightclub, into a Jewish experience.

He places his right hand over his eyes and, with somewhat of a Jamaican tanginess, says Shema Yisrael. Dreadlocks listen intently, and sway insatiably, as he sings of light coming out of darkness – lyrical not only in words, but as this once dark club and cold city can attest, in action as well.

Warmth permeates through the wires and out the speakers, into hearts once cold. “If you are already there, there is no where to go”, he sings; “If your cup’s already full, then it’s bound to overflow” – and here the cup really does run over, but with a message of Truth.

Of course there are those that say a club is not the place for a Hasidic man – but then neither is the body a place for the soul, nor earth a home for heaven. Unfortunately we live in a dark environment, where anything pure is concealed; but if not we, than who will reveal the light within the darkness, who will turn a club into a sanctuary, who will transform the earth into a home of G-d?

Yes, we live in a world of challenges – but do you wish to be the challenged or do you wish to be the challenger? Do you wish to listen or do you wish to speak? Do you wish to be a spectator or do you wish to be a player? Life is a challenge, yes, but (therefore) life is challengeable no less – either you challenge it, or it will challenge you.

Now we step out of the club. Everything is lighter, both in its street and its (and our) heart. The moon still reflects, but now off our faces; the stars still blink, but now it’s more of a wink.

I guess it really is kind of like the splitting of the Sea: there is a sea of knowledge, and though we seem to be split, there is a Moses within every one of us – as a bearded reggae Hasid just proved – that can inspire a club, a people, a world, into turning black into white, darkness into light, Tel Aviv into Jerusalem.

“In the spiritual desert things are not what they seem – you just got to chop ‘em down.”

Breakfast @ Dovid’s

2005-12-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

Aluminum tables glint in the breakfast rays. A half-full ashtray lies near a half-empty red Coca Cola napkin dispenser. A mug with coffee-line marks and lipstick on the rim sits abandoned between butted ashtray and napping dispenser. A backpack with a worn out orange strip dangling in resignation rests against the leg of a chair. A man and woman are sipping on muddy espressos and nibbling on flaky pastries. Busses are dropping-off those that have reached the end of the road and picking-up those who have only just begun their journey.

In front of this morning backdrop, a bunch of guys sit around waiting for their food. Some have ordered omelets, some sandwiches, some French toast. While my stomach grumbles for the chaotic Shakshukah (don’t even ask), I invite the lonely newspaper at a neighboring table to come and join me. He is more than happy to unfold his creases.

He tells me about a bombing in Netanya. Five people killed. But all he really gives me are the cold facts. He doesn’t get emotional. Maybe for him to exist, to see people blown apart day in and day out, he must resort to numbness. In fear of falling apart, he does not cry; not one tear falls from his black and white eyes. But he must be affected: no one can ignore such pain.

Then, when he starts opening up to me, I start to see a whole different story – something about Kadima and Likud – and realize that maybe the murder of innocent people can be ignored.

Ah, but my steaming Shakshukah has arrived; and, as we insensitive human beings tend to do when faced with an escape from an awkward position, Mr. Newspaper is once again left all alone, yellowing into yesterdays news.

After Shakshukah has gone the way of Newspaper, we here breakfasting at Dovid’s, as is custom, have a ten-minute “discussion” on the day’s Torah and Tanya portion. The Torah relates the story of Jacob: before he left the Holy Land for Choron he had a dream about a ladder; the Tanya speaks about the different energies we create and inspire through our learning, through our prayer, and through our actions.

Interestingly, the Torah says that angels went up and down the ladder. However, as angels are heavenly creatures, the wording of the Torah seems to be disordered: first the angels should have descended (from heaven) and only after ascended (from earth) – how can a heavenly angel ascend from earth without first descending from heaven?

We all have our personal “leaving the pure for the mundane”. But before we go, we have our own personal ladder as well, with angels going up and down. The story is telling us: no matter where you may be, no matter in what situation or circumstance, no matter how purely impure you life seems to be, there is that angel climbing up the ladder, following us to the border of the Holy Land, to the edge of purity; and when we cross over the border, there is another angel climbing down the ladder, watching us, giving us the energy to “make here [this mundane earth] the Holy Land”.

And the Tanya goes on to explain what, and which, energies we create through our learning, through our prayer, through our actions, our tools for turning the “here” into a Holy Land.

When we climb this ladder, bridging both worlds (Be’er Sheva and Choron), I think the headlines of the breakfast newspaper will read a little differently.

May tomorrows headline read, “Here has been made into the Holy Land”.

The Life Of A Princess

2005-11-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

Like a fresh stream of clear rainwater, humanity flows down the stony hills and into the earthy valley. The setting, yet unsettling, sun reflects off these streams of consciousness, faces glaring back like diamonds at an angle. Ancient olive trees and mumbling stones flash by the stream as it rolls along, downhill, ever picking up speed. Now the stream bends ever so sharply and pools ever so gently, as if a destination is sensed. And then, when vision is no longer detoured by leaf or branch, the waves of flesh and blood lap at the gate of heaven, as if to water the Garden of Eden.

It has been a while since this gate has been formed, but it gathers no rust; it has been a while since this stream has begun flowing, but it shows no signs of drying up. On the contrary: with every generation, the stream grows stronger and stronger.

It was a woman who started it all. Some four thousand years ago she gave birth to a people, to a stream of knowledge that would flow down the mountains of confusion, through the valleys of despair, over the stones of materialism, spreading a message of spirituality and peace throughout the world.

There is nothing like it: not Jerusalem with its burning vibrancy; not Tzfat with its mystical spirit; not Tiberius with its lucid water. It is a city of earth, a city of caves. Here it is about lows and highs – the lowest matter, earth, rooted in the highest place, heaven. A city – as its name can attest – of connections – connecting both matter and spirit.

Now, four millennia since Abraham signed the first real estate deal in history and secured this portal between earth and heaven for all eternity, his and Sarah’s children, their “life”, converge on this spot of paradox: on the one hand, here is where it all ends; on the other, here is where it all begins – here Sarah is buried, here Sarah becomes alive.

Nowhere is earth more heavenly than here; nowhere is heaven more earthy than here. Yet, in a world where contradiction is more of a crutch than a limp, it is the contrast, and not their fusion, which looms large: the contrast of a calming peace on a bloody battlefield; the contrast of a wailing mosque trying to drown out the wail of an orphaned child; the contrast of a heavy body weighing-down a lofty soul.

Nevertheless, with the thousands thronging to the “Double Cave”, the contrasts seem to fade into fusion. The life of the princess seems to be pulsating through her children’s very being. Is this not proof enough that the princess is still alive? Is her children’s following in her footsteps not sufficient to say, “She’s alive”? Is our existence, our mission in life, not adequate testimony to the stream’s endless flowing?

Have all the earths been covered with this stream of G-dly knowledge? The presence of green camouflage and red blood seems to be saying no. But does that mean we, and our mother, are not alive? Or, maybe it means that we haven’t yet reached our true “life”, our true potential?

Still, as the stream fades back and out of the valley, the earth and stone – here trodden by the “Heel” generation, the last link in a chain wrought for thousands of years – will never be the same – after all stone and earth have been touched by a Princess alive.

May Chevron (chibur) connect that which is seemingly disconnected, and may we see how the end – earth – was always wedged in the beginning – heaven.

Falafel Balls & Pita

2005-11-22T12:43:00.000-05:00

Many a lafa consumed, many consumed a lafa; many a Shekel spent, many spent a Shekel; many a conversation argued, many an argument conversed, many a taxi metered, many a meter taxied – I’ve been here for a week and a half and it feels like… well, at times it feels like forever, and at times it feels like for never.

I find it extremely difficult to write in Israel. It is like drinking underwater: so much water, so few cups. It is every chickpea’s (or bakers) greatest nightmare: too many falafel balls, not enough pitas. Yes, for me Israel is an influx of oros and an outflux (copyright) of kaylim.

You know those moments, when the understandable becomes the actual; when the “idea” becomes the “ideal”, when the “huh” becomes an “oh”? (Answer optional). Well, when I turned on my computer, clicked on Word, and attempted a sentence, the whole concept of oros and kaylim became less of a “concept” and more of a “resonation”: the what-it-means-is-this has become the so-that’s-what-it-means”.

Everywhere but here, the writings flow and the emotions congeal; everywhere but there, the writings congeal and the emotions flow. Here, there is more ink than pen; there, more pen than ink. Of course, kaylim exist here like everywhere else – otherwise “here” wouldn’t exist at all – here however, for me anyway, it is much more difficult to bulb the light than it is to smith the iron – that is, it is much easier to fill the container than it is to capture the light.

Before the blanks (and scrapes) caused by “writers (stumbling) block” became an issue, I learned that both oros and kaylim are needed; now I know it. It’s like those times, when you step out of the book and actually see the words jump off the pages and into reality.

If Ohr is self-expression, Kayli is its captor. You, and you alone, decide if the captor should brandish handcuffs or merely the cuffs’ prefix, a hand: should the captor be a stumbling block or a stepping stool.

Back in the States, the writing would come easy but the words would come hard; here the words come easy and it is the writing that comes hard. Until now, I’ve only known why, now I see why: in the states, the conveying is easy, only it is the ideas that are hard; here, the ideas are easy, it is only conveying them that is hard. It is much more difficult to convey an idea that resonates than it is to convey an idea that is disputable. Truths are hard to be true to, while falseness is as true as you make it. It is much easier to harness an expression that might or might not have consequence, than it is to harness an indisputable expression of consequence. It is easier containing a broken light in a smooth container than it is a smooth light in a broken container.

When writing over there, the expression can be expressed expressly; here the expression must be expressed expertly – otherwise, instead of conveying truth, one might not be doing the truth justice. When that happens, the truth becomes distorted.

In the Holy Land, everything resonates and nothing is resonated. To convey a power like that is most difficult: it is messy filling a small pita with big falafel balls; for Falafels to express themselves in a well-rounded way, a round flowery lafa is needed. Likewise, for the writer to express the great oros of over yonder, a corresponding great kayli is needed.

Fear not my friends, construction is on the way.

Would you like chumus with that?

Letter From Jerusalem

2005-11-14T11:38:00.000-05:00

I am back. Back to where I once was. Was not long ago. Ago in a time different. Different yet the same. Same places same people. People never change. Change is great. Great to be back. Back to where I once was. Was not long ago…

It may be a cycle, yes, but I have just started a new spin. Am I spinster? Maybe. But, then, aren’t we all. We all turn, turn, turn; only, some of us turn to good and some of us turn to alternatives.

Yes, the Holy Land. Ah, the Holy Land. Oh, the Holy Land. (I sound like a skipping (or not) Beatles vinyl.) It’s funny how truths remain the same. I will leave you with the third poem (actually a song) I have ever written, incidentally while studying in the Holy Land. It may be a bit moldy, as it has been sitting at the bottom of my closet for the past five years; but mold never really affects truth – and truth never really fits a mold.

Though exciting, it is weird showing something so simplistic that you wrote as naïve nitwit; but I guess everything I do will always be simplistic and I will always remain a naïve nitwit, albeit more conscious of the fact. Well, here it is.

I write a letter from Jerusalem –
The land of our fathers; the land of gold.
I write a letter from Jerusalem –
A letter of happiness; a letter of hope.

Coming upon the city of old.
Stones disguised as bricks of gold.
You feel that little twitch we call soul.
It’s warm outside but you shiver in the cold.

Before your heart starts to speak
It’s so hard to say what you feel.
But wants your eyes begin to weep
You realize that it is all so real.

All the sparks come together in one big flame.
All the threads come together to form a knot.
For some reason you feel ashamed.
You feel the tears rolling down and they are all so hot.

The sun sparkles before going to sleep.
The wind shutters in a satisfied sigh.
The skies open and begin to weep.
You spread your wings and begin to fly.

You soar over the mountains of fear;
And through the valleys of despair;
Passed the fields of iniquity;
Into the pages of history.

And as the words of the heart, which we call tears,
Join with the thousands shed throughout the years,
You brush your hot lips on that cold stone.
And you feel that you are finally home.

(n)Ode To Wisdom

2005-11-07T19:27:00.000-05:00

There are four gaping holes in me where wisdom used to be. “Wisdom, from nothing is she found”, and now to nothing is she lost. Much blood hath been spilled over her removal; much pain hath been felt over her passing; much swelling hath she left in her wake. But with a little help from my friends – Vic Otin, Cody Eine, and Moore Fine – I do get by

Wisdom, or the lack thereof, has made a pill pusher out of me. Nevertheless – no matter how many pillars I’m pushing, or how many pushers I’m pillaging – everything is swell – well, not everything: only my cheek. Still, when the cheek ego gets inflated, the cheek gets real cheeky: “I want real food”, Ms. Stomach is grumbling. “Ha Ha”, Dr. Cheeks bellows, “you only get soggy oatmeal and congealed Jell-O”. So, though only my cheek is swelled to imperfection, my entire body is affected – you know, the small-having-a-big-affect thing, micro(wave) affecting macro(media).

Its funny, you know: wisdom usually comes with age, but I’m only twenty-one and I’ve already lost mine.

Will I ever be wise?
Should I ask all these Whys?
Should I fork all the Y’s?

They say you grow through pain; but, even with all this pain, my poor teeth will never have a chance to mature. They lie, along with bloody gauze bandages and surplus stitches, in One Hanson Place’s incinerator, that is what I insinuate, and it makes me nauseate.

Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.
Yes, but why is learning like pulling teeth?
Who is wise? He who sees the outcome.
Yes, but why so painful that it hurt's to breathe?

Now the deed is done, and now the deed can never be undone. But perhaps for one to gain in wisdom one must first lose in wisdom. Maybe like Heine said: “Who never acted foolishly, he also ne’er was wise”.

What I have learned from this whole experience, from all this pulling of teeth and pushing of pills: I am still none the wiser –

Maybe it is not when you lose your teeth that you lose your wisdom; maybe it is when you lose your wisdom that you lose your teeth.

Just something to sink your teeth into; but don't bite off more than you can chew.

So cliche.

How Can I Title This?

2005-11-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

(In honor of unrolled beards)

I never thought I would be writing like this, but then these types of things are rarely thought of: they just are. To write like this is not easy for me – actually it’s very hard – but I think my ease does not really hold precedent in this post.

Sun setting, airplanes droning, people circling, seven blessing, ring fingering, glass breaking, everybody Mazal Toving, and I stand somewhat detached, not feeling much, not wanting to feel much. Happy? Yes. But somewhat of a generic happiness – how nice these two people married – nothing that I cannot handle.

And then we are dancing in a manic circle, like a vortex pulling us into an unknown abyss, and emotion wells up in my heart, now it threatens to spill over and out of my eyelids. I have never felt so much joy for somebody else. I have never felt so much joy for myself. I cannot explain it. Period.

But how will it look if I cry, so I have another drink: alcohol was always the best scapegoat, emotion’s designated decoy. Oh, but I’m drunk on happiness and joy and it takes a lot of booze to sober me up.

And I dance. Most people cannot tell how happy I am, and that’s the way I like it. Of course some can, but those that can are just as happy as I am.

I don’t know, dear reader, if you realize how difficult it is for the words to come and, when they do come, how difficult it is to put them on paper. An inner battle – do or do I not show this side – one that, as your reading proves, the “personal” side has won.

But this is not about me – if it were I would never be able to write this – it is about two halves (one of which I’ve had the honor of dorming with for two years) coming together to form a complete whole.

May you have much happiness and joy and whatever the hell you want on your journey together through life…

Ok, let me publish this before I lose my guts.

p.s. sorry for kicking your ankle.

G-d, (wo)Man, One

2005-10-23T22:48:00.000-04:00

Sitting,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmSurrounded, encircled in an ambiguous hug.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmFeeling, knowing, floating in glorified clouds.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmStill, some can stand the non-understandable;
You never could.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmBut when I sit in here I don’t have to.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmNow the rain falls:
mmmmmmmmmmmmmIt takes some time for it to seep through;
But when it does,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmAnd the drops are zooming by me,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmMAGNIFIED,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmLike everything caught in a vortex with only me and,
You, the only one,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmSomehow rooted in place –
mmmmmmmmmmmmmEven the flying objects seem to bounce off,
mmmmmmmmmmmmmNot leaving so much as a streak.
Wonderful.

Reconciling Differences, Differentiating Reconciliation

2005-10-15T22:29:00.000-04:00

“Said the Holy One Blessed Be He: they should all be tied in one binding, and they will atone one on the other”.
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhVayikra Rabba, XXX, XII.

“Said R’ Yehuda Ben Babba: neither all men, nor all places, nor all times are alike”.
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhMishna: Yevomos, XVI, III.

Differences differentiate our oneness. Divisions divide our identicalness. Details detail us strangers. It is the blessing and curse of humanity: we are all the same – all the same in that we are all different.

Similarities simulate sameness. Generalities generate resemblance. Equality equals equivalence. It is the blessing and curse of humanity: we are all different – all different in that we are all the same.

Time and again the importance of unity, of no man is better than another, is stressed. Yet, simultaneously, every man looks for that exclusive niche, that path less (or never) traveled, to make him unique, to make him special in the eyes of his peers. So, what is it going to be – bleak unity or unique division?

Unity is a thing of the root. The closer to the root, the more united it will be. Everything, from the sciences to the philosophies to the arts, is rooted in unity – that is, when rooted it is united; only when a something begins expressing itself, when it starts branching out of its root, does it detail into fragmentation.

Uniqueness, on the other hand, is a thing of the branch. The more a something branches out, the more unique it will be. At the root, it is covered in soil; when it branches out, it will bare exotic fruit. Branching, as a form of expression, is expression: the more one expresses himself, the more detailed and, therefore, the more unique that expression will be.

(There is the argument that subtlety is more unique than surplus – an argument which seems to suggest that uniqueness does not find itself in detail. That argument would be true only if detail meant excess; however, true detail is true subtlety.)

After all of that unique talk about unity (or that united talk about uniqueness), how to reconcile the branch of unique individuality with the root of defragmented unison?

Have you ever seen so absurd a sight as this – a man standing in a hut, in one hand he holds a lemon on steroids, and, in the other, a bulimic branch; together he shakes them. Tell me please, is this bringing him closer to G-d, is this how one celebrates the culmination of Creation, Forgiveness, and Life?

Ah, but you look only at the shell – never judge a branch by its leaf, nor a fruit by its peel – just look beneath the surface and everything will be clear.

The Four Kinds – four kinds of personalities: the Esrog, a man rich both in taste and fragrance; the Lulav, a man rich in taste, but not in fragrance; the Hadas, a man rich in fragrance, but not in taste; the Arava, a man rich neither in fragrance nor in taste. These four are much more than some agricultural mixed-breed of tastes and fragrances; they are the four general personalities of man.

Some of us, albeit a precious few, are Esrogim, have both Taste, the delicious lettering of the Torah, and Fragrance, the heady scent of doing good deeds, Mitzvoth; others are Lulavim, concentrating full time on the taste of the Torah and focusing but marginally on the fragrance of the Mitzvoth (marginally because, “one who says ‘all I have is Torah’, even Torah he doesn’t have” (Yevomos, 109,2.): one who learns but doesn’t do, doesn’t truly learn.); then there are those who are do-gooders but are not necessarily great scholars; and finally there are those who, as of yet, are Tasteless and Fragrant-less, they lack in both the “palate” of Torah and the “perfume” of Mitzvoth.

No one is like another, another is like no one; you have something I do not have, I have something you do not have. Herein lies the beauty: G-d says, “Tie them all [the different personalities] in one binding [unite them all], and they will atone one on the other” – alone I am imperfect, alone you are imperfect, but just bind us together and we become perfection. Pure beauty.

There is Unity and there is Harmony. They are not contradictions in terms; they are but two ways of looking at something. In the Holy Tongue the words would be Yochid and Echod – Yochid, the one and only; Echod, one as opposed to two. At first glance, it would seem that Yochid is greater than Echod, for nothing exists besides for it – it is the one and only. And the first glance would be true in that Yochid has something which Echod does not, the “only” factor; but it would be false in thinking that this factor deems it greater, for Echod has a factor that Yochid does not. Echod is Harmony: true, there exist details, each unique in their own way, but they lay together in harmony. Beauty is not one color splashed on a canvass; Beauty is many colors interacting to create a masterpiece.

Orchestrate an allegorical symphony: there are a hundred musicians, instructing different instruments, noting different notes, pitching different pitches, sounding different sounds; majoring a major, flattening a flat – alone, a bunch of detailing individuals; together, a symphony of sound.

There are two ways of looking at it – the Yochid way and the Echod way: in the Yochid way they are all musicians; in the Echod way they are all playing different instruments.

Here is where Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur differ from Succos: on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we are all musicians, all equalized by the Shofar’s blowing and united by the prayer book: on Rosh Hashana we are in a Nation to King relationship, in a state of awe; on Yom Kippur we are in a Wife to Man relationship, in a state of newlywed wonderment. Ah, but Succos, we let loose: yes we are all musicians, but we all play our own unique instrument; yes we all sit on the same stage, but we all stage our own unique chord – and we do it all in Harmony.

So, the truth is, one cannot be truly unique unless one is truly united, and one cannot be truly united unless one is truly unique. As we, the four different kinds, sit under the stars, surrounded by the Clouds of Glory, may we bind together as one, with you making me complete, and I making you complete – complete, yes, but not completed.

Turn, Return, Overturn

2005-10-11T20:02:00.000-04:00

Everything is turning: the leaves are turning; the hands of the clock are turning; the wheels are turning; my mind is turning; the pages of the book are turning; the world is turning.

The present turns into the past. Tomorrow turns into today. Today turns into yesterday. Yesterday turns into history. Everything gets its turn to turn. Motion never ceases; energy never relaxes; movement never lies still.

Now, you can hear the voices of the past echoing in the valley of history, but you can never silence them. Now, you can build on the things once done, but you can never undo them.

What of things regrettable, I ask, can they never be undone? Naturally not: once you turn, there is no turning back.

Enter Yom Kippur, a time on whose watch one can never be “at the point of no return”. Yom Kippur says, true everything in this universe turns, but we have something inside of us that can also return: we can ascend to a place above sharp turns, above blunt limits, above time.

On Yom Kippur, a “Time of Return” (RaMBaM, Laws of Return, I, VI), we have the ability to take the regrettable turns in our lives, and (through returning) overturn them: when one ascends to a place above time, where past, present and future are not in the vocabulary, then one transcends time, making it timeless and, for that matter, timely.

This is why the RaMBaM calls Yom Kippur a “Time of Return”, seemingly an oxymoronic phrase (either it is a “time” – a thing limited – or it is “return” – a thing unlimited –): you see, when one transcends time, time itself, the turn of creation, becomes transcendental – it becomes not an end in itself but rather a means to return back to perfection.

On this day of chances, Yom Kippur, we are reminded that no matter where the turns on the road have taken us, we can always overturn them – and no matter where we have been, we can always return home – that is, to our true selves.

In our quest for a perfect world, may everything take a turn for the better, may no stone be left unturned, and may we see not only an investment but also a return.

inS(h)ofar

2005-10-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

There’s a pile lying in the gutter
A falling breeze watches it shutter
A pigeon’s beak wrinkles at its stink
Nearby leaves beginning to mutter
The tired sun now in a prolonged wink

Suited bodies pass by and away
From backstage to the comedic play
The no-thing still lies there all alone
The muttering leaves turning to gray
The suited (for what?) flesh turns to stone

What’s that guttural (de)form so soiled?
It’s a man whose silver plan was foiled
Its enthusiasm now street curbed
Its past thoughts now not even recoiled
Just wishing to (un)rest (un)assured

It has fallen insofar away
It’s preyed upon yet it cannot pray
It knows not letters never mind words
(Even kookarikoo it can’t say)
The shepherd impastured by the herds

Wait what’s that? like a vocal needle
Piercing those strong and even feeble
Mending the rips stitching the tears
Think all you want! It aint cerebral
The cry of a street child past his years

Is it the tear that inspires the horn
Is it the hear that inspires the torn
Is it the sore that inspires the rose
Is it the throne that inspires e thorn
Matters only in world of suprose

Ye you can be deep down insofar
As to wish you could develop scar
But even from gutter you see sky
And remember the lower you are
With a sound the higher you will fly

(All of as have our own personal gutter – some gutsy, some gutless – but no matter where or what it may be, no matter how deep or how shallow, the sound of the Shofar can pull us out of the gutter and onto the sidewalk – out of the depths of our bodies and into the depths of our souls.

May the “Pintele Needle” pierce all our layers, mend all our rips, stitch all our tears (both the tearful tears and the torn tears); and may we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.)

Humor Me

2005-09-27T02:42:00.000-04:00

(Just mixing it up a bit before we continue on "Letteraly")

On the way to eternity, I met the joker man:
Ha, “where you are going that’s where I am”.
You can’t always see me, but I’m always there.
Just hang around me; I’ll make everything clear.
Where there is fire there is smoke,
Ye, and life is just a joke.

Ha, look at the baby crying, aint it a shame?
Ha, look at the man dying, what a wonderful game.
Ha, look at the lady beaten, don’t it make you laugh?
Ha, look at the child bleedin’, what a beautiful gaff.
If it aint fix don’t make it broke.
Ye, and life is just a joke.

His lips in constant smile; his heart in constant frown.
His nose red: not from shame – he’s just a clown.
Cynical ‘bout being skeptic; skeptical ‘bout being cynic.
His shrink says this is a clear case for the clinic.
I say it’s a genius of a stroke.
Ye, and life is just a joke.

The dim-witted say: he’s just a fool.
The illiterates say: he should go to school.
The politicians say: he should tell the truth.
The barbarians say: he’s just uncouth.
I say: look at the will, not the spoke.
Ye, and life is just a joke.

Funny, isn’t it, how we use our limp as a crutch.
Don’t say, “not I”: even I have succumbed to such.
But, then again, maybe we use our crutch as a limp:
It’s always harder to be the bully than the wimp.
But even the frog will croak.
Ye, and life is just a joke.

Laugh all you wish; still your eyes will be red.
Turn up your lips; still your tongue will be bled.
Scars, crisscrossed, trying to find tissue;
But even that will not resolve the issue.
You need some dagger and cloak.
Ye, and life is just a joke.

These three are extra; bending hunch
of mine:
Now the jokes over; grinding crunch
time.
Ouch, you cringe at the bruising punch
line.

Letteraly

2005-09-19T16:46:00.000-04:00

It was a time before generation Y, yet after generation X, in a city not accustomed to letters of that kind. At the time, we were a people of the Letter, with most of them written in Holy Tongue, Yiddish, or Aramaic. Of course, there was the contraband – or, contrabook – sandwiched between mattress and board, or unfolded with our pants in the cubbies; but they were the exception, not the norm.

The Jekyll and Hyde show was on, just as it is today, and we played the part to perfection. When the sun’s shining cheeks radiated, so did Dr. Jekyll; when the moon went a peek-a-boo from behind the clouds, so did Mr. Hyde. During the day we would sit in chairs long molded to our derrières, learning timeless sacred texts; during the night we would lie on beds sandy from swirling desert winds, perusing first-rate secondhand books. At times, Day and Night would switch roles, but only so when Time was measured by the clocks hand; when measured by the hearts ticking, Day remained Day and Night remained Night.

As healthy seventeen-year-olds with even healthier imaginations, during the navigation through endless passages of Talmud we would discuss, for better or worse, topics foreign to the Aramaic language. These discussions would naturally turn to the argumentative, and then, inevitably, full-out war. Even when discussing mundane themes, it would seem, the Talmudic knack for dispute would intervene.

One such discussion, based on the pages of the secondhand bookstore’s stock, was whether or not the writing geniuses – genius by our teenage standards – were grammatically correct. I, being the anarchist that I am, held they were not. Most of the others, I’m sure they are reading this and remembering that, insisted they were.

If my memory serves me correctly, for it hasn’t in the past, the argument, like most arguments in that era, was more for the sake of arguing than for the sake of clarification. Now, some four years later, for the sake of clarification, and because this topic has always haunted me, I will attempt, to make a gram of sense out of this grim grammatical grime.

Letters need rules – in fact, Letters are rules. A, B, and C are tools with which to express oneself. They are finite, but they can create infinite amount of words. The writer (I use writer, but this is true with any language form) has the ability to manipulate letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into books – until these letters, so miniscule on their own, convey a profound message as a whole.

Accordingly, for the reader to understand the writer – which is, after all, the writer’s objective – he first must be able to read that which the writer writes. Therefore, the writer cannot just combine letters as he sees fit: lest he, and his letters, be deemed misfits. This is why rules were imposed upon the rules, that is, grammar upon the letters, to ensure that reader and writer are on the same page.

These rules, both the letters and their structure, are manmade. Therefore, when a man whose expression is not bound to conventional methods comes along and manipulates the letters in a way never before manipulated, the manmade rules take a new, manmade form. Sure, at first, he is titled Crazy, but, when successful, he is titled, Genius. At first he plays beyond the rules, then he creates new rules. There are innumerable examples I could bring, and will therefore bring none.

Mundane language is manmade; it is therefore also prone to man’s creative genius. As grammar is not an end in itself, but only a means with which to formulate comprehensive ideas, then, if one were to find a better means with which to formulate his ideas, he would be foolish not to use it.

Of course, one must be an extremely talented individual to invent new means of expression, and grammar is therefore needed for us underprivileged creatures. But, wait, we are "extremely talented individuals", each to his own – so why play by the rules when we can create new ones?

(For the fear of length, to be continued...)

Knowledge & Education

2005-09-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

At times Education can get educational; but usually it remains uneducated. At (other) times Knowledge can get ignorant; but usually it remains knowledgeable. So, wherein lies the difference between a programmed Education and an acquired Knowledge?

(Though Mark Twain says, “Do not let your schooling interfere with your education”, I have taken the liberty of kneading Schooling and Education into one doughy ball of curriculum, while maintaining Knowledge as its antithesis – this in no way means School and Education are one and the same; I am merely using Education and Knowledge as “model-verbs” if you will: the former as a model for our “natural programming”; the latter as a model for our “unnatural acquirements”.)

This predicament of Knowledge and Education leaves no room for educated guessing, no matter how schooled it might be; nor, for that matter, does it have time for projected assumption, no matter how knowledgeable that might be. For us to fix this fix of ours, an unbiased, non-partisan third party is needed. Let this party be known as Innocence.

Without Innocence (or, a synonym along this artsy theme of ours, Artlessness), no Knowledge or Education would ever be needed. We would all know it all – and, therefore, we would all be bereft. Could you imagine a world where no one was innocent – it would be like a prison where no one was guilty. The purity of Innocence is our greatest asset: it lets us learn, search, thirst, for something over yonder.

Thus, in the Kabbalistic lexicon, Knowledge would be Ohr, Education would be Kaily, and Innocence would be Atzmus. Knowledge: the thirst for something beyond the norm, beyond the school rules. Education: the rules one must learn, and follow, in order to quench that thirst. Innocence: the ability to fuse these two opposites. Or in “worldly” terms: Knowledge would be the world of Sovev, a vague-yet-encompassing intangible force; Education would be M’maleh, a clear-yet-limited tangible force; and Innocence, once again, would be Atzmus, that Essence which is neither this nor that, yet is both.

These questions we ask about our education, each to his own, are part of our education: imagine a student who wouldn’t question his teacher’s answer – it would be like a teacher who wouldn’t answer his student’s question. And though school can only give you so much, only the tools, nevertheless, with the right tools one can build anything.

Yes, of course, you ask, “What are the right tools”? For some students it can be musical notes; for others, paint brushes; still, for others, a surgeon’s scalpel. Who decides what to teach to whom – what may be right for you may be (and probably is) wrong for me? And vise versa?

Imagine an Education that transcends Knowledge, imagine a Knowledge that transcends Education – it would be an Education and Knowledge of Innocence. Such an education and knowledge (notice the lack of capitalization: they are no longer alone) would not be subjected to the views of Man, nor would the hands of Man design them – they would be, solely, a guide for Man. (Whenever I use the Masculine form, the Feminine is included; it is just out of convenience, and familiarity, that I use it.)

This “form” of “education” (sorry about the use of all these “pseudonyms”) is called the Torah. I can hear the collective groan, but it is true – the Torah transcends manmade curriculums, syllabuses, prospectuses, or any other Latin euphemism for ignorance.

The problem, at least this writer sees it as one, is that the Torah is usually taught in the wrong way. Either it is made out to be archaic, or dogmatic (Is that the same as archaic?), or parochial (The same as dogmatic?), or downright boring (The same as the other three?). But, in truth, the Torah is anything but: it is the most exciting form of education – comparing, of course, only those with which this writer has made his acquaintance – ever known to Man.

As for the Torah being parochial: any and every subject, from the artless Humanities to the human-less Arts, finds itself within the ancient wisdom and modern understanding of its pages – the only, and no small, feat, is finding it.

And once you have found what you are looking for, it is time to start looking again – lest the truth become stale for you.

When this transcendental “edification” will become the “curriculum”, Education will become Knowledgeable and Knowledge will become Educational – with Innocence innocently smiling on the side – and in the middle.

ARTificial ARTifacts & ARTiculated ARTicles

2005-09-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

PART I:

Look at those bacterial phenomena, the Darwinian Homo sapiens: they muse in music; they pant at a painting; they smile at a simile; they’re pro prose; and they climb the poetry. They consort with concert halls; they go gala at a gallery; they feel liberated at the library; and they teeter at the theater. Or, in Shakespearean lexicon: “alas, finest of creatures, thou art artlessly artful”.

O. Henry’s conman in “Masters of Arts” put it best: “you and me will have an Art to Art talk”. Yes, there is a common artery running between the Fine Hearts and the Fine Arts; as any Aristotelian artiste can attest: “Art is not about the filling; it is about the feeling”.

From diverse languages of many shapes, to many shapes of diverse languages, the feelings of the heart have many vehicles: Musicians speak through their music; Orators find their music in speech; Artists have an inkling with paint; Writers are painting in ink.

And, like the languages of Art, its periods and movements are just as periodical and moving: the Masters found their “rebirth” in the Renaissance; Neoclassicism gives a renaissance to the canonic classics; emotion holds precedent in Romanticism; Cubism creates new precedents for emotion.

And then, of course, the greats who have made Art their language: Homer is epic in his writing; Dante is hellish in his. Michelangelo’s painting raises the ceiling; Monet’s is impressionable. Amadeus’s music is Mozart; Jimmy’s is wow-wow. Hugo tells a story Le Miserably; Dickens tells it in the best of times and the worst of times. Van Gogh lends his ear to his brush; Salvador’s is surreally Dali-cate. Dylan’s music is tangled up in the blues; James is tangled up in Brown. Robert’s verse is a bit Frosty; Byron’s is a bit Lordly.

Still, no matter how many categories it can be broken into, Art in its purest form cannot be categorized – or broken into. Within the artist, Art is like the heart – delicate and raw – only once expressed does it becomes either an ism – Surrealism, Cubism, Classicism – or a period – Renaissance, Modern, Post-modern – or a person – Shakespearean, Homeric, Quixotic.

This Blog will now like to concentrate on the purity of Art, without isms, periods, or persons. However, in order for that to be done, we must have some artillery with which to express ourselves – lest I write and you not understand. So, though the new name is ARTicles, a classified partisan art form, nevertheless, the stress is placed more on the ART than on the icle: the article is but a means with which to reach the Art. Or, as James Joyce might pun it, “the article is but a particle, a start to the art”. Ok, that sounded more like Dr. Seuss, but you get my drift.

I don’t know about you esteemed readers, but this article has made me, the estranged writer, artichoke.

Transition

2005-08-29T18:29:00.000-04:00

As Busapest has, at least for me, now entered those antiquity-stained yellow pages of History, this will be the last piece to be posted under the page titled "Budapest". The Blog will continue; if anyone has an idea for a new page name, please be so kind as to share.

Transition is a word in motion. Or, in this eerie era of E prefix dominance (e-mail, e-commerce, e-bay), Transition is a word in e-motion. E, the e-xperts say, is the most commonly used letter in the E-nglish language. Now, there may be some of you who have an irritating itch to stop reading the words and start counting the letters; but don’t even bother: that “Eerie” word in the first line has definitely proved the theory right.

Transition must be a very unpopular word – it possesses a total of zero E’s. That unsavory race, Humankind, seems to neglect Transition: they cannot stand moving from a friendly environment to one that is foreign. Really, who can blame them? Friendly is held together by an E, as is Foreign; it is that Transitory state, between Friendly and Foreign, that lacks the common E-nominator, and is therefore shunned by the common folk – after all, which commoner would want to associate his common self with an uncommon word. Ironically, the word “Common” itself lacks that most common of letters: I guess it too is uncommon. More ironic: in this e-say, even the word “Uncommon” is common.

If Emotion were Electronic Motion – as Email is Electronic Mail – then pure Motion would be the movement of the static, while pure Emotion would be the movement of the dynamic. And one gives birth to the other: your eyes swivel – a Motion – what they see causes a feeling – an Emotion. Or vise versa: You feel an intense inner stir – an Emotion – which, in consequence, prompts tears to fill your eyes and roll down your cheeks – a Motion. Even if the E of Emotion was not meant to represent Electricity, which I’m sure it wasn’t, nevertheless, there is a connection – albeit more of a dynamic one – between Emotion as the Webster defines it, and E-motion as the Web (minus “ster”) (r)E-fines it.

Electricity – though blind to the naked, or, for that matter, dressed, eye – is an energy that can power entire cities. Emotion is just as powerful, and, therefore, just as incognito. Sure Motion is a force to be reckoned with – picture the Unrolling Stones – but Motion is tangible, is visible, and is therefore limited to our vision. Emotion however, is intangible, is invisible, and can therefore play beyond the rules. (True it too has rules, but they are not dependent on our vision.)

Thus, Transition is a word of Motion and E-motion: Motion, because that’s what one does to transit from one environment to another; and Emotion, because that’s what happens when one transits from one environment to another.

Why we fear Transition? We don’t. Yes, our Inner Robot – the E, as in Electric, side of us – cannot stand the unexpected, but that is to be expected of him – after all, he is a robot. Our other side, the side of us that knows no limits, the Inner Human if you will, cannot sit motionless, and cannot stand motionlessness; it must move, must reach beyond the norm, and does therefore not fear Transition.

This Blog is in Transition, transition from the friendly to the foreign – but before long the foreign too will be friendly and then it will be time to move on again, not stopping until all foreigners become friendly.

So, Budapest – that place once so foreign and now so friendly – with this Transition I close your chapter, but I only do it to open another one.

Going With The Flow

2005-08-28T19:17:00.000-04:00

He hates loss – but hates gain even more. He sits on his talent… while watching the potential slip from under him.

Maybe he is afraid of losing that which he has gained, consequently, instead of going through the pain of loss, he just doesn’t gain – thus leaving himself with nothing to lose.

When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

All he wants is to simply get out of life alive, nothing more, and therefore, nothing less.

The cliché “No pain, no gain”, he conveniently changes to “No gain, no pain”, and he lives a painless – yet infertile – life.

He thinks ignorance is bliss, but why hasn’t he thought of the fact that ignorance can also be lost – and along with it his bliss?

Maybe because he’s ignorant.

Or maybe he has thought, and therefore holds on to that ignorance with white knuckles, so afraid of losing his lifeline, his sustenance, his ignorance:

You see, the only way to lose ignorance is by gaining knowledge; and once you gain you can always lose – hence his white-knuckle grip.

(But, then he isn’t exactly “ignorant”: at the least he has “thought”.

Well, I guess it all depends on whether “thinking” negates “ignorance”; or whether one can be a “thinker” and an “ignoramus” at the same time.

The word “ignorant” itself, probably finds its roots in the word “ignore”, which would lend some sense to our invented predicament:

One can only “ignore” that which actually exists – in this case – his “thought”. If he weren’t to “think”, then what would he “ignore”?

Thus, we conclude: one can only be “ignorant” if he has something to “ignore”; otherwise he is just naïve – the former, obviously being a lot worse then the latter: the latter is not his fault.)

He’s not alive because he was born; he’s alive because he hasn’t died. He’s not alive because his heart beats; he’s alive because he hasn’t had a heart attack.

For him life is a commercial, not the program. He cannot wait for the commercial to end so that he can get on with the program.

What he so haphazardly fails to see is that the commercial will end… only if he turns it into a program: only if he refines it.

Were he not to do so, following the commercial there would be no program; instead he will find every hopeful viewer’ greatest nightmare: another commercial.

When one is a viewer, one follows behind; when one is a doer, one leads ahead.

When one is reactive, at best he participates; when one is active, at worst he initiates.

So… get off of your potential: instead of viewing, start doing; instead of being indifferent, do something different – beg to differ – thus making a difference.

Festival Pix

2005-08-22T19:42:00.000-04:00

He is baring his soul
Yes, Jimmy, move over With the bassist and guitarist of Roots Manuva, a UK band who played the main stage
For every question an asnwer, and every answer a question Putting the rap on it.

The Sziget Festival

2005-08-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

Ten minutes from the heart of Budapest, on the Danube River, floats the Sziget, the Obudai Island. Every year, in the beginning of August, the Island sees hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world coming together under the common sky for the largest open-air music festival in all of Europe.

On the Island: Dreadlocks are not dreaded; tie-dyes have not died; and to be a hippy is, once again, to be hip. Hygiene is looked upon as nuclear energy; mud is welcomed as a natural phenomenon; and normalcy is the natural enemy. Beer flows like the infinite watts of music; the drugs here do not come from any pharmacy; and sobriety is lying under a rock somewhere with a hangover.

Amidst all the chaos, and not thirty seconds from the main stage, there stands a little nucleus vibrating with energy. Young rabbis, their beards not so uncommon in this rowdy crowd of Beatnik wannabes but their reasons for being here very much so, have pitched tent.

They are here for only one reason: to cover their little corner of the universe with knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea. They encourage all Jewish men – not caring if tattooed or pierced – to come put on Teffilin. Their philosophy: no ink or needle can ever tattoo a Neshama and no stud or ring can ever pierce a soul.

The ways of covering the Island with knowledge of G-d are many, and the seven days with which to do it very few. The young kindred spirits exploit every means, and take advantage of every second, to spread that knowledge along the collective human body like an epidemic – an epidemic that cures. Indeed, people would pass along the contagious phenomena to their friends – “did you here about the Jewish Tent?” – and the next day the friends would pass it on to their friends – until the “Knowledge” was really getting into the know.

The question of “What exactly happened at this ‘Jewish Tent’?” must be tackled in two time periods – “When The Sun Was Up”, and, ”When The Sun Went Down” – because they are as different as, you guessed it, night and day.

When The Sun Was Up

At noon, when the “Islanders” peek out of their tents for the first time and squint at the glaring sun, they see four kippa-sporting young men weaving through the plethora of bodies, schlepping sound systems and tangled wires passed the main stage, along the many booths and tents that line the walkway, their Tzitzis flying in all directions, until they reach a tent with a sign reading Zsido Sator, or Jewish Tent.

After all is set up and Jewish music – from classical Chabad Niggunim to Hasidic reggae phenomenon Matisyahu – is blaring from the speakers, the people start showing up. The “Ask The Rabbi” stands, where one can do just that, start heating up. The Island is probably the most popular place to be a rabbi. Questions range from the intellectual to the emotional to the sexual, from the physical to the spiritual to the hypothetical, from the practical to the theoretical to the whimsical – and, yes, everything, and anything, in between. One man asks, “How do I curb my anti-Semitism”? One woman asks, “What’s the recipe for Charoseth (a Passover dish)?” “Is it expected of a rabbi to know the recipe for Charoseth?”

One person wonders, “How can you guys sit here at this festival all happy when your brothers and sisters are being pulled from their homes in Israel?” Wow. The reply: “We believe the only way to really achieve peace in Israel, and for that matter the world, is by spreading the knowledge of G-d, or whatever word you wish to use if you do not like the G word, throughout the world. And that is how we, here on the Island, are helping our brethren in Israel.”

“What exactly is this knowledge of G-d”? The questioner continues. “The knowledge that all things physical and, of course, spiritual, are G-dly, and that, at the root, we all come from the same place – G-d”, the young rabbinical student answers, and then continues, ”if we would all see the world that way, there would be true peace upon all humanity.”

And then there is the Teffilin, small leather boxes containing sacred passages from the Bible that Jewish men place against their hearts and on their minds every morning to bind them to G-d. Though Teffilin is not as popular as “Ask The Rabbi”, for the simple reason that only Jews can put on Teffilin and asking the rabbi is limited to no one, hundreds of Jewish men, many for the first time, connect their hearts and minds to G-d.

“Are you Jewish”? The answers vary: mostly “No’s”, very few “Yes’s”, and an occasional “Half” or “Quarter”. “Which quarter?” “My mother’s mother.” “So you are Jewish.” “Really?!” This exchange happened more than once.

When The Sun Went Down

Things may have seemed pretty orderly when the sun was up, but once the sun departed so did all pretense of order. In the shadows of the moon, chaos reigned. The young rabbis, who in daylight were “mind & soul doctors”, with dusk turned into “rock & roll doctors”. And that is exactly what they did – rock n’ rolled.

A rabbinical student plugs in his electric guitar and – “Jimmy move over, let Mendy take over”. Near him, another young Hassid has his fingers caressing the keyboard as if it were a geshmaker sugya in Gemara, a delicious portion of the Talmud. The rest of the “free wheelin’ yeedin” are dancing in front of the tent with more energy then should be legal. A semi circle of about 200 wide-eyed people forms; they have never seen anything like it. Before long, the spectators become participants and the dance floor, dirt and beer caps, is soon beaten by hundreds of feet. Of course the men and woman dance separately – its all part of the novelty.

Close to midnight, the beat turns into a Hip-Hop slash reggae progression and one of the rabbinical students starts improvising a reggae rap. After the crowd gets over the initial shock of seeing a Hasid with a beard, Tzitzit, and Kippa, doing a Jamaican accent and an inner city ghetto rhyme, they start bouncing – and it gets crazy from there. You had to see it to believe it: hundreds of deadlocked, tattooed, pierced, stoned, drunk, half-naked people screaming after the rapper words like “We are all created in the image of G-d” and “We want Moshiach now”. Just wild.

When the music, dancing and rapping comes to a rap, around one in the morning, the crowd wants more; but the rabbis, after a full day of spreading the knowledge, wish to spread out on a bed and recharge for tomorrow.

After seven days of this type of chaos, we can only hope that this epidemic of knowledge has spread passed the Island and into the Mainland. And as one of the Hungarian newspapers quipped: “If you haven’t seen the joy at the Jewish Tent you haven’t seen true joy” – a line which, knowingly or not, comes from the Talmud’s description of the joy that was in the Holy Temple.

Before the sun has once again come up, may we, with our physical eyes, see the true joy of the third and eternal temple, and may we dance, with our physical feet, to the beat of the Levites.

Israel: The Feeling, The Mood, The Reality - Part V

2005-08-08T09:57:00.000-04:00

We sit in a dense traffic. My face pressed against the bus window, watching private cars and public busses from all around the country inching towards a common destination. At every junction, the merging traffic is like hundreds of branches drawing towards the root. Groups descend from the busses, turn to face the sun setting over Gaza, and begin praying Mincha(afternoon prayer service). The sky is red, the mood orange – and we are four kilometers from Sderot.

Cars line the side of the kvish (road), as people make their way to the entrance of Sderot. We join the masses making their way down to the center of the town. From the blaring speakers it seems that the program has already begun. We weave our way through a plethora of bodies – mothers pushing baby carriages, grandfathers leaning on canes, families with sleeping bags on their backs, teenagers strumming guitars, children running around, girls sitting on the grass, newsmen atop of vans, plain men selling watermelon – alas, we reach the podium.

MK (Member Knesset), Effi Eitam, has just been introduced to address the crowd. Everyone cheers when his name is announced. When the “disengagement” of the settlements in Gaza and Northern Samaria had been voted in, Eitam resigned his post as a minister in Arial Sharon’s government and is a major activist in the anti-expulsion of Jews from their own land. With a voice raised in passion and a fist raised in defiance, Eitam says, “A Jew does not expel a Jew”. The crowd roars.

Rabbi Drukman, the leader of the Bnei Akiva movement, ends his speech with a song, one of victory. The crowd sings along.

“On the way here, a reporter asked me, ‘when are you going home [from this anti-expulsion rally]?’ I’m going to answer him in front of all of you: we are not going home; we are home. This is our home: Sderot is our home, Gush Katif is our home, Northern Samaria is our home”. These are the words of Rabbi Alon, the head of Yeshivat Hakotel.

Speakers call on Prime Minister Arial Sharon to come here, to Sderot, and see true democracy. They say to Sharon, “Don’t to be a dictator”; they tell him, “You can go down in history as a great man, or you can go down as the opposite”. But the theme most stressed throughout the night was, “The army, the police, are not our enemy; they may use violence, but we will not. They are our brothers and we will not fight them – no matter what”.

The crowd of an estimated 35,000 men, women and children, after the speeches have come to silence, start on their way to Ofakim, where they will camp out until six o’clock the next evening; then they will continue on to Gush Katif. I myself have a flight to catch in twenty-four hours and start the daunting task of hitchhiking back to Jerusalem. After a half hour of fruitless thumbing the air, a man stops and offers to take me as far as Efrat. Once we reach Tzomet HaGush, he lays down an ultimatum: either you tremp (hitchhike) from here to Jerusalem, a twenty minute ride, or you sleep by me tonight and catch a bus in the morning. Only in Israel will a man you’ve met an hour ago for the first time invite you to his home for a night. Though we choose to tremp, it is people like these, who see another Jew as someone they’ve known their whole lives and not some foreign stranger they’ve just met, what Israel is lacking.

Imagine: every person in Israel would invite an unfamiliar “hitchhiker” – be it a physical or a spiritual one – to their home for a night, or even for a Shabbat meal; what would Israel be like then? I doubt we would be having this “Orange vs. Blue” conflict.

But now I sit in Ben Gurion Airport, watching the multitude of human traffic bustling about, and cannot help but reminisce to a time when we all left Egypt together, stood “with one heart” at the foot of Sinai, “hitchhiked” as a nation through the desert, and reached, not individually, but as the Jewish People, the Promised Land.

As the Torah is not a history book – even one of historical proportions – but rather a guide – to the perplexed and, especially, to those in the “know” – to life, ‘those’ times occur and reoccur every second of our lives.

So, yes, today the Promised Land doesn’t look so promising. But if we were to read the “writing on the scroll”, a scroll that was given solely for peace, and apply it, that is, “Love your fellow as yourself”, I don’t think the Land would be in confusion.

How do I know? G-d promised it – after all, it is the Promised Land.

Israel: The Feeling, The Mood, The Reality - Part IV

2005-08-01T10:46:00.000-04:00

The alarm goes off. The candles are lit. The sun goes down. The Queen has arrived. It is Shabbat in Jerusalem.

I walk down the stone stairs, through the metal detectors, and: There are groups of all different sizes and people of all different shapes; there are faces of all different colors and tourists of all different nationalities; there are thoughts of all different textures and emotions of all different sorts; and there is The Wall.

With three minutes left until the sun calls it a day, a lone man puts Teffilin on three familiar strangers. Sixty Chabad teenagers, a Safed summer camp spending Shabbat in Jerusalem, sit in full circle, singing classical and soulful Chabad Niggunim (songs). A beautiful L’cho Dodi melody can be heard from the left corner of The Wall, it is a group of Hassidim praying in the most surreal way, their bodies swaying to the rhythm of their souls. At the far right, near the Mechitza (partition between the male and female worshippers), with their hands interlocked, a mixed bunch of guys dance to a Carlebach tune – dreadlocks, side locks, and gunstocks, bounce in unison.

Friday night in the Old City of Jerusalem, there is nothing like it. Even the stones seem to be resting; and when everything is at rest, the pulse is felt. For those few hours at the Wall, there is peace – no pro this, no anti that, just peace.

However, at the Shabbat meal, it is anything but peaceful. The arguments and opinions of the situation in Gaza are as diverse as the dishes that adorn the table. A commander in the Nachal brigade of the IDF says, “We all have our part in ensuring Israel’s peace, and, if we do not meet our potential, we are just as guilty as Prime Minister Sharon”. “What would you do if ordered to expel Jews from their homes in Gaza?” asks a guest at the table. “I’ll worry about it when it happens”, replies the soldier, “meanwhile I’ll put Teffilin on my ‘brothers in arms’”. Another soldier, who has been in the army for eight months, says, “there is no way I’m going to Gaza to pull out my brothers, but I really don’t know what to do – I don’t want to get kicked out of the army”.

A man from New York, who has been in Gaza for the past three weeks, says, “Forget about the disengagement for a minute; until the residents of Gush Katif are forced from their homes, they are legitimate citizens of Israel, and, with an average of four rockets a day falling into their communities, they are entitled to protection from the government”. “The government wants the Jews to feel scared, and will thus leave their homes with less hesitation”, says the host.

But let the truth be told, this Shabbat table saw only one side of the story – that of those who come to Shabbat tables. To find an alternative view, I ask some youngsters hanging out in the Russian Compound, where the bars are bouncing as if it were just another night, what they make of the whole thing. “Chabibi, ze lo echpat lee, buddy, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got a beautiful girlfriend, what else do I need”. An older, more sober, man tells me, “Listen, Sharon makes sense: the Arabs are human, they want peace just like we do; but, in order for us to live in peace, we must make some concessions – give them homes and their own government to control them – and all will be good”.

Throughout Shabbat, I cannot help but notice the contrasts of the Holy Land – on the one hand, it radiates a peace not felt anywhere else; on the other, only here can you know such chaos.

But, once again, the sun has set and the stars have come out – it is time for Havdala (separation of Shabbat and week). The cup is full with wine. The incense handed out. The candle burns bright. We are leaving the holy Shabbat for the mundane week.

Do you think we can make some of the Shabbat peace rub-off onto the weekly chaos?

I don’t see why not.

Israel: The Feeling, The Mood, The Reality - Part III

2005-07-28T07:06:00.000-04:00

In the center of town, on Ben Yehuda street, there is a festival going on: a trapeze team is doing acrobatics in the air; a tightrope walker is balancing his act; two jugglers are passing knives back and forth; a magic show for children has just come to applause; and all along the “Midrachov” (main pedestrian street), the street venders, from nuts to hot dogs, vend their goods.

A mother smiles at her child; a couple dances to the jazz band playing on the stairs in front of Bank Hapoalim; a man exhales, releasing streams of content cigarette smoke; a stooped man will take your picture for five shekel; the beggars will give you a red string in return for your generosity; two mimes walk by, their faces masked white; the fireworks explode, lighting the sky in colorful rain. It is summer in Jerusalem.

Still, is this mood – is this feeling – the reality? The events of the past few weeks seem to say that it is not.

I wander over to a cotton candy stand, and ask a man how he balances this regular summer’s eve with the irregular current events. “Just because I’m having a good time doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s going on”. What is going on? I ask this self-conscious Israeli. “Israel is about to embark on a civil war,” he replies in reference to the nation’s split on whether or not land for peace is the answer. “So”, I question, “what are you doing about it?” “Me? What should I do?”

That seems to be the question, “what should I do?” Of course, being Israeli, there are those that have it all figured out, they say the government should do this and (Prime Minister) Sharon should do that, the soldiers should disobey when ordered to pull people from their homes in Gush Katif, and the Jews in the Diaspora should make Aliya to Israel. But, when asked, “What are you going to do?” most Israelis, uncharacteristically, have nothing to say. Even the cab drivers, notorious for their opinions, are mute when confronted with this question.

Yes, there are those few that are active in their opposing of the disengagement, but the majority is not. The ironic thing is, besides for a few orange t-shirts and bracelets life in mostly anti-disengagement Jerusalem goes on with virtually no change, not unlike life in mostly pro-disengagement Tel Aviv. So, what real difference is there between those who see the backing out of Gaza as a problem and those who see it as a solution?

All the responses given seem to imitate that of the man by the cotton candy stand: they just plain and simply do not know what to do. There seems to be a lack of leadership – not only in orange Jerusalem but in blue Tel Aviv as well.

“We will take it from there”, is a woman’s response to what will be after the disengagement. But, do you think it is worth the risk, pulling out and not really knowing the consequences? “These are desperate times and they call for desperate measures”.

So, is this lack of leadership, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the only thing they have in common?

“No”, says a person sitting near me on an Egged bus, “we are all Jews – and that is part of the problem”.

Or, maybe it’ll be the solution.

Israel: The Feeling, The Mood, The Reality - Part II

2005-07-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

It is three thirty in the morning and I am standing outside of Jaffa Gate talking to a man in a long black coat that nicely offsets his dangling Peyot. ‘The disengagement of Gaza doesn’t bother me one way or the other; I think the Israeli government should give up the whole land to the Arabs’. But wouldn’t that endanger Jews? ‘Ok, Maybe not to the Arabs, but definitely to the UN’. So, if you do not believe in the State, what brings you to Israel? ‘I do not believe in the State of Israel, but I believe in the Land of Israel’. Then he continues, ‘when the land of Israel is controlled by the Jews, bad things happen; when gentiles control the land, we can all live in peace. Only the Messiah will allow the Jews to rule the land’.

Three Arab teenagers sitting in front of a restaurant long closed by now, have extremely similar views to that of the Satmar Hassid: ‘Israel should give back all the land they have taken from the Arabs, including parts of Jerusalem, only then can we live in peace.’ But, as history can attest, whenever land is given for peace, the bombings increase. ‘That’s because we were kicked out of our homes,’ the teenagers say, ‘give us back our homes, and we will have peace’.

Most Arabs I have spoken to, however, seem to be hesitant when Gaza is mentioned. But, no matter what they do or do not say, undercurrents of mistrust flow like the Mediterranean. I feel them looking at me as if I don’t belong there, as if I were an intruder, as if I, with my questions, were disrupting their routine.

The many tourists enjoying the Israeli summer are almost as diverse in their opinions as the Israelis themselves: an Asian man with a camera perilously dangling from his neck cannot understand the Arab point of view. An African in colors brighter than the sun cannot understand the Israeli point of view. An American girl in pigtails cannot understand one Jew fighting another. A Canadian with a maple leaf on his backpack cannot understand where G-d comes in. A South American with a bongo in hand cannot understand why we cannot just all live together. And I myself cannot understand anything.

Yet, on the other end of the spectrum, there is unity. The 17th Maccabiah games just ended, and the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem saw thousands of boys and girls from all over the globe coming together under the pretense of celebrating the prowess of the body, when, in fact, they were celebrating the prowess of the soul.

With the nation divided by opinion, these “Maccbians”, many for the first time, went down to the Western Wall, a place transcending our differences, and hundreds put on Tefilin. When binding mind and heart, we are all color – be it orange or blue – blind.

Maybe this is where the opinions end.

What’s your opinion?

Israel: The Feeling, The Mood, The Reality - Part I

2005-07-22T06:06:00.000-04:00

Colors divide the nation: On a street corner at the entrance to Jerusalem, with the central bus station in the background, stand boys with big knitted kipot and girls with long flowing dresses: they are tying orange strips to the antennas of automobiles waiting at the red light. In front of the Izraeli Mall in Tel Aviv, young men and women hand out strips of blue. The orange represents the anti-disengagement of Gush Katif; the blue represents the pro-disengagement.

But it is not colors alone:

The square in the Jewish quarter of the old city in Jerusalem is known for its tolerance of many opinions. I’m sitting on a bench, watching young girls selling orange t-shirts; their slogan – “Jew, do not expel a Jew”. Near me sits a thirty one year old man from Los Angeles: ‘I do not really know what to make of the whole disengagement thing. I am confused’.

In Bat Ayin, a village some 20 kilometers south of Jerusalem concentrated on organically cultivating the Israeli soil, and known for its radical right wing views, there is no confusion: ‘this is the first time in our history that it is Jew versus Jew; Sharon has definitely lost his mind’. Another resident, when asked if he was going to Gush Katif, replied, ‘why go there, I should just go strait to jail’, a cynical response, highlighting the police’s thirst for arrests of anti-disengagement protesters.

A day after Gush Katif is closed off to none residents, I am hitchhiking from the Rishon Letzion junction to Jerusalem. The driver asks me, ‘so, nu you gonna go to Gush Katif? You can switch papers with one of its residents, or maybe tunnel in like the Arabs do from Egypt to Gaza.’ I’m not sure if he was serious or not.

Shabbos in Chevron is empty. Many of its residents have gone to Gush Katif. ‘It is not about Gush Katif’, a Chevroni tells me, ‘it is about the whole of Israel’. Throughout Shabbos there is scarcely another topic discussed. One man’s fourteen-year-old daughter sits in prison for protesting in Gush Katif. ‘It is a communist state’, says a resident, ‘imagine holding a fourteen-year-old girl in America for weeks – never!’

We are about to begin Maariv by the tomb of Yishai and Ruth, but an argument has broken out between a leading member of the Chevron community and a young soldier. ‘You, as a Jew,’ says the man from Chevron, ‘have the responsibility to leave the army’. ‘Would you not send your son to the army?’ asks the soldier. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he replies and then continues, ‘how could I send my son to send his own father from his home?’ With that we recite Baruchu.

I flip on the news, a girl in the Gush Katif area is asking a policeman, ‘how can you not let me walk the road on which my brother was killed?’ A white haired man says he hasn’t seen anything like this since the Holocaust – and then it was the Germans.

But, back in the old city, the Arab shuk is full with Israeli tourists, one bargaining for a Bedouin coffee press, another for a Nargila. Are they bargaining for the wrong thing? ‘Life must go on’ they say.

Well… will it?

From Israel With Love

2005-07-18T07:47:00.000-04:00

Sunday, the tenth of Tammuz, Bat Ayin, The Holy Land.

It is light. Darkness may come in a few hours, but now it is light.

It is dark. Light may come in a few hours, but now it is dark.

I have spent the day in sunshine: My bare feet caressing the cultivated soil, my bare hands weeding the grapevines; my bare mind thinking nothing, my bare heart feeling everything; my bare body aching to exhaustion, my bare soul aching to G-d.

The Holy Land has spent the day in darkness: its bare feet caressing yet a few more wounded bodies, its bare hands bleeding in the grapevines; its bare mind thinking we’ve gone crazy, its bare heart broken in halves; its bare body too exhausted to ache, its bare soul aching to be recognized.

Dirt under my fingernails, dirt under my skin; sweat pouring down my back, sweat soaking my shirt. I climb over the Judean hills, a towel wrapped around my head. I reach a stream flowing through the sun-drenched stones, pooling into a two thousand year old Mikvah. I jump in: the water is freezing – so cold it warms my heart. I come out, into the sunshine, clean.

Dirt under its fingernails, dirt under its skin; sweat pouring down its back, sweat soaking its shirt. It climbs over the Judean hills, but no one has wrapped a towel around its head. It is begging to be allowed the stream, for that freezing water to shock it into reality; but no one cares. It wishes to come out, into the sunshine, clean; but we don’t give a damn.

We are having a BBQ under a fig tree, over a grapevine, hotdogs and cold beers in the setting sun. The rhythm of a helicopter’s rotators matching the rhythm of my rotating heart. The sun is falling fast: now only a half is seen, wait, now only its red expression. Now nothing, only darkness.

It is sitting, alone, waiting for its children to come home. It hasn’t even seen the sun rise so how can it see it set? But in darkness there is hope: it knows someday the sun will come up from behind the hills.

It is a time of change. Yes, now it is dark, but light may come in a few hours –

It is up to us.

Many Pieces Making One Peace

2005-07-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

Disagreements tend to get disagreeable. Disputes have a knack of getting disputable. Arguments usually flirt with the argumentative. Quarrels, in all likelihood, will have you on your knees quarrelling. Still, we cannot resist them. Or, more accurately, we do not wish to resist them.

“Imagine all the people living in the world agree”. With all do respect to Mr. Lennon – both John and Vladimir – Imagination, chemically enhanced or otherwise, just aint gonna cut it. Agreed, we need an alternative to disagreement, but I do not think the Lennon approach is it. If it were, we would either be “Day Trippers” in the LSD sense, or living on “Animal Farm” with the pigs running the show. Now what a pigsty that would be – or, in Johns case, a pig-high – it gives a whole new meaning to “Back In The USSR”.

He did not fancy laced mushrooms, nor was he a Marxist (Carl, not the brothers), but Korach felt that, if we are all holy, why should some of us be more holy than others; if we are all “dyed blue” why should we need “fringe” benefits; if we are all full of holy books why should we need a Mezuzah on our door. A tremendous question; and by the Torah dedicating an entire segment to Korach – indeed his name titles it – it is telling us: this is no mere detail in history; it is lesson for all of eternity – a lesson of not only how we should not act but, also, of how we should act.

Where exactly did Korach go wrong? He thought that all people were High Priests: we are all G-d’s children and, therefore, not subjected to the views of Man – an extremely valid and correct observation. (One of) the underlying difference(s) between the Jewish belief and that of, say, the Christian, is that we Jews do not believe in intermediaries, we do not need a “middleman” to “enhance” our relationship with G-d. This was Korach’s legitimate claim: why should Aaron be “closer” to G-d than, say, I; why should he be a High Priest and I but a lowly Levite?

With methodology that will undoubtedly make Freud giggle in his grave, let us uncover the root of Korach’s “issues”: it was partly his parents’ fault; as well as the fault of his environment; and let us not forget the sibling rivalry.But most of all, as we shall see, it was his issue with Moses, the brother of Aaron, that really messed with his id – or shall I say, his Yid (sic):

He came from oil, whereas Aaron was only anointed by it. His lineage suggested a naturally imbedded transcendence, like oil, which mixes not with the “inferior” species; however, Aaron received the oil as an anointment, not an inheritance, and was thus not, at least in Korach’s eyes, intrinsically inclined to the High Priesthood. Couple this with Aaron’s involvement in the Golden Calf, while the Levites remained pure, and Korach seems to have a pretty bona fide argument.

He lived in a “deserted” area, a desert. Esoterically speaking, the desert, that is, the Inner Desert, is a place that knows no challenges: it represents a place above physical labor and beyond deadlines; it is a place where one eats “heavenly bread”, sleeps in “clouds of glory”, swims in a “split sea”, receives the “blueprint of life”, and, plain and simply, lives it up. Korach lived in an environment that bred complacency. It was the greatest of generations, a “generation of knowledge”; but along with greatness comes one of the greatest challenges: realizing that this greatness is a G-d given gift, nothing you’ve earned, and, therefore, if one were not to capitalize on its vast potentials, it evolutes into a conceited self-righteousness, one that causes a complacent smugness.

Korach, a descendant of Levi, was a cousin to Aaron and Moses. He sees their power – one a Leader, the other a High Priest – and says, ‘why not me’. How would you feel if one of your cousins was a Leader appointed by G-d himself, and another was the only one allowed to enter the Holy of Holies? There would definitely be some feelings of envy there – if not down right animosity.

All of the above has, no doubt, shed some light on Korach’ behavior. But the thing that really got Korach was Moses. He simply could not fathom of a person with absolute Bittul – a person who knows that every gift that he has, every talent he possesses, in fact every breath that he emits, comes solely from G-d – so Korach says, ‘why should you decide who is to be the High Priest, why should it be your brother and not me?’ He saw it as some kind of family mafia with Moses as its don. So Moses replies: ‘I too want this High Priesthood, but there is only one G-d and only one High Priest’. He continues, ‘it is G-d sending me to do all these things, it is not from my own heart’. Korach was skeptical; he just could not understand someone doing something “not from his own heart”. And all of his complaints of why we, the Chosen, are not equally holy, stemmed from his lack of trust in Moses.

But, if you notice, the Medrash quotes Moses not as denying Korach's claim, but, rather, as acknowledging and, furthermore, agreeing with it, “I too want this High Priesthood”. Why does Moses not deny Korach outright; why does he say, ‘I too wish to be a High Priest”?

Herein lie the beauty of the Torah and the extent of Moses’ Bittul: a man who opposed the very essence of Torah, Peace, was not incorrect in his intentions; he was incorrect, down right wrong, in his method. Yes, Moses is saying, personally every single human being must strive to be a High Priest, more, he must be a High Priest for himself, but as for the general High Priest, the one who enters the physical Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur to pray for all the people, there is only one. We must strive to be a High Priest, a person beyond the mundane world, but, in actuality, there is but one High Priest – and he is Aaron.

By Korach creating a rift, an argument, within the Jewish People, he was demonstrating the exact antithesis of a High Priest and the Torah: Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, was a man who exuded Peace, a High Priest cannot leave the holy city of Jerusalem, a city whose very name is made of Shalom, Peace; the Torah was only given to bring peace into this world, and anyone or anything that opposes peace, that is, true peace, opposes the Torah. By Korach it was a vicious – literally – cycle: he opposed Moses, thus disturbing the Peace, which, in return, caused him to oppose he who exuded Peace – Aaron – leading to his unavoidable opposition to that which was given to keep the Peace – the Torah – and, inevitably, it’s creator – G-d.

As the Torah is eternal, each and every one of us has this opposition to Peace within ourselves, the Inner Korach. But, we also have within ourselves the power to transcend differences, the Inner Moses. As the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya: this thing, this power of Bittul, is very close to every person; why, because each of us has a piece of Moses, a piece of the leader of the generation within our own souls.

The Moses of our generation, the Rebbe, gives us the power to transcend any differences that the physical body inevitably creates. True, Judaism believes not in intermediaries – that is, intermediaries that create G-d in their own image – however, a Rebbe, a Moses, is what is called a Memutza Hamechaber, a Merkava, a conduit through which G-d shines, whose mouth G-d uses as a vehicle. When one strives for a state of Bittul that a Rebbe has, where there is nothing besides for G-d, then there is no place for any outside influence – in fact, there is no outside – all is G-d and G-d is all.

This is what Moses tells Korach, and what Korach failed (or chose not) to see: everything that “I” do comes not from my own heart, only, it comes from G-d.

One can – and must – strive for this Bittul, to be a Rebbe, a Moses, a Kohen Gadol, over himself, a man of Peace in the truest sense of the word; but one can only strive for this Bittul: you see, there is only one Rebbe. One exclaiming, ‘why should we all not be equally holy’, is like one exclaiming ‘why should we all not be the captain of the ship’. We all have our extraordinary job on this boat named life, but there is only one captain. We all play our unique instrument, but there is only one conductor.

May our Inner Moses, the power of Bittul, influence the “opposition”, our Inner Korach, until the whole world will resound with “Moses is True and His Torah is True”.

May there be Shalom, Peace, upon all humanity.

Nahutz T’cheelahson B’soifon (End Rooted In Beginning)

2005-06-30T14:46:00.000-04:00

Forking roads adjourned
Where the sharpest turned
Sharpest turns retrace
At a different pace
All that we have learned

Spooning the same food
Where meets mouth and mood
And mood cannot speak
Yet sate with a peek
Albeit while nude

Knifing through layers
Passed the die players
Dice player your role
When my bell will toll
I’ll say my prayers

Cupping my last cent
Must be last week’s rent
Week’s rent in my hand
But that is too bland
Must be heaven sent

Plating my heart gold
A move very bold
Very bold indeed
For now it will bleed
Henceforth plated mold

Bowling with ten-pound
You hear view or sound
Or sound is the deft
But we hear bereft
Just one piece of ground

Euphemism

2005-06-27T09:25:00.000-04:00

I question not, says he –
I only wonder.
I do no wrong, thinks thee –
I only blunder.

I don’t argue, says she –
I just disagree.
I’m not content, thinks me –
I am just lazy.

I feel no pain, he says –
It is but a hurt.
I am not black, she begs –
It is simply dirt.

I’m not ugly, she flays –
It’s merely a mask.
I’m no beggar, he prays –
All I do is ask.

I’m not choking, he gasps –
I just can’t breathe.
I’m not going, she rasps –
I just need to leave.

I’m not joking, he smirks –
It is but humor.
I don’t gossip, she lurks –
‘Tis but a rumor.

It’s not fashion, she feels –
‘Tis but a trend.
It aint over, he squeals –
‘Tis but the end.

An Unfinished Article

2005-06-19T15:46:00.000-04:00

How do we balance the passing of a loved one with the continuity of life?

The routine of normalcy, trying, naturally, to normalize my routines, keeps on knocking on the door marked Different. Do I wish to return to the shallowly mundane environment of the “Status Quo” or do I wish to imitate that infamous Infiniti tagline: “more status, less quo”? I think the Infiniti of automobiles reflects the Infiniti of the Divine – yes, the Divine would never settle for the “quo” (with quotation marks) – not even for a quid-pro-quo.

Still, the question remains: after the transition of a loved one from this world to the next, should we wish for the normalcy of every-day life or should we hold on to the memories of the one we hold so dear? On the one hand, it would surely be an insult and dishonor to try and forget the one we love; on the other, life must go on. However cold and cerebral the question may sound, this query has been plaguing my conscious, as well as subconscious (albeit unconsciously), these past few days: how does one balance the shock of death with the realization life? Where do we go from here?

On Sunday, chof Iyar, I am sitting in our apartment here in Budapest, my fingers ever so softly dancing over the keyboard of my computer – I am writing an article for the Algemeiner Journal. I begin by quoting from the fourth Perek of Pirkei Avos, “unwillingly do we live; unwillingly do we die”; then proceed to go into an elaborate, though by no means original, account of Tension and Resolution – Rotzoi v’Shuv – how one Yearns to Return and then Returns to Yearn: the Ying-Yang saga called life. Unfortunately, I never get to finish the article; instead, my phone rings, the uncontrollable sobbing on the other end informs me that my grandfather received the ultimate press-pass – heaven.

Back in Budapest, after a rather morose and intense week in The States, I find myself reading the article that I had begun writing. That first quote passes off the LCD screen of my computer through the pupils of my eyes, and into the gray mush of my brain – bam, it sends me reeling – the answer to that age-old question posed above, is, indeed, right there in the Mishnah.

Coincidence, coincidently, is nothing more than G-d sending a message; it is G-d saying: there is a meaningful connection between these rambunctiously random and neurotically natural events. A leaf floating to the ground is more than just a leaf floating to the ground – what it is, we do not always know – that leaf affects the whole of creation. If this is the case with an unsuspecting event, a leaf falling to the ground, how much more so with a suspecting event, the passing of a loved one. The question, unquestionably, has been answered before it has been asked. There is no doubt in my fragile mind that G-d flashed before me that line from the Mishnah, and the Rotzoi v’Shuv concept, to belie any doubts that might creep into that psyche of mine.

After all that mumbo jumbo, truly how does one balance the shock of death with the realization of life?

Life is made of paradoxes. We are made of paradoxes: here we have the Body; here we have the Soul. In one corner, weighing in at an astronomical two hundred pounds of pure flesh and blood, sits the Physical; in the other corner, weighing in at nothing at all but pulling a lot of weight, floats the spiritual. The boxing idiom is more than apt for this battle of Body vs. Soul: the two of them are thrown into a ring called earth; the Body has a nasty left hook called Matter; the Soul has a wicked uppercut called Spirit; they spar, no shadow boxing here; round one to Body; round two to Soul; on and on until we reach the final round; now, when it really counts, who will land the last punch, who will push his opponent to the ropes. But is this it – are we just fighting through life, hoping for a knockout or, at the least, a favorable judges decision? Is Life nothing more than a battle?

Life is not a battle in the classic sense: it is not to be won by beating your opponent; the only way to be victorious in this match is to realize that your enemy is really your best friend, to see that your opponent is really nothing but catalyst egging you on. It is called friction. It is rubbing two stones and creating fire. In truth, the Body is as important to life as the Soul. The Soul without a Body is a flame without a wick, a painting without a canvass. And, of course, a Body without a Soul is words without a language, an instrument without music. Thus, the Body and Soul are not fighting until death; they are fighting until life. They clash not to strike the other; they clash only so that they can fall into a passionate embrace.

This is the Rotzoi and Shuv of life: the Soul yearns to heaven; the Body returns to earth. The Soul returns back to earth only to yearn for heaven; the Body yearns for the Soul only to return it to earth. You have the Yearn without the Return and you have a lively death; you have the Return without the Yearn and you have a deathly life. You have the two of them and you have life the way it was meant to be – lively.

The Tension is as necessary to life as breathing – but only if it leads to Resolution; if it doesn’t, it becomes as detrimental as walking into a furnace.

How do we balance the passing of a loved one with the continuity of life? By imitating the loved one:

Zaidy was unique in that: on the one hand, he was a newspaperman and, on the other, he was devoted to a cause beyond the “front page”. For him, the newspaper was more than just news, it was more than filling the margins – it was a vehicle, a tool with which to relate a message of Unity and of Truth, a means with which to “cover the earth with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea”.

How did he balance the “Tension” of a physical deadline with the “Resolution” of a spiritual purpose? Simply – he was beyond the pettiness of their dispute; he saw them not as two different entities, but, rather, as one entity with a common goal – making this earth more than just earth; and, for that matter, making heaven more than just heaven.

“Unwillingly do you live; unwillingly do you die.” In this one line the Mishnah says more than entire books. Unwillingly does the Soul leave the bliss of heaven for the pains of earth; unwillingly does the body leave its mission here on earth for the predictability of heaven. This is life: true, ours is a physical universe, and thus a physical life is needed to transcend it; however, one should remember that we are only here by default – unwillingly do we live – and that this physicality is not an end in itself. Yet, after the persons mission on this earth is over, unwillingly does he die. Why – if one is here only by default, why should he not leap to return to heaven? Because the person knows that he is only seeing half a picture. Yes, we are here out of necessity – necessity to change the universe – but we are also here because this is where it’s at. Heaven, for all its wonderful pros, has one con: it can never be more than it is; whereas earth, with the humans touch, can become Divine. Therefore unwillingly does one transit from earth to heaven.

Zaidy epitomized this line in the Mishnah: on one hand, he lived life as a mission; on the other, his mission was life – he was here because there was a job to be done, but he was also here because this is where it’s at.

So, let us imitate our loved one. Let us live life with a purpose, with a meaning, with a mission. Let us continue Zadys dream of combining the physical and the spiritual, of uniting the yearning Soul and the returning Body.

This is how we balance the passing of a loved one with the continuity of life.

A Saint In Fur – Ah Tzadik In Peltz

2005-06-16T19:26:00.000-04:00

On sleeted slate the child sits shivering in the cold
Not two feet away there is a sight to behold
A man so knowledgeable he’s always fur-sure
He can answer you with its worth in gold
He is known the world over as a saint in fur

The only thing warm are the tears on her cheek
Falling faster even before Tom can take a peek
But the s-reason in his universe isn’t winter
Her lips are feeling bluish they won’t speak
But his lips form the smile of a saint in fur

Icicles hanging from frozen eyelashes
The burning wood long gone to ashes
She can’t even muster the heat to shiver
She’d swear for the feel of forty lashes
He can’t be bothered when he’s a saint in fur

His brow is fur-rowed deep in text and thought
He leaves the store not knowing what he bought
His little box is square satisfied selfish secure
He’s got all the answers but hasn’t found what he sought
How can he whilst he is a saint in fur

She thinks the cold is fact not speculative
You see she has never known the alternative
Even fog is clear when you’ve only known blur
When you only know one entity nothing is relative
He knows both grasses but remains a saint in fur

Just take the S out of scared and put it into mile
You’d be a caring fellow with a warm smile
Replace the fish of self with the less of help my sir
You’d be a selfless help to an innocent child
That mi--ing S make- you won who -aint in fur

You thought he would be freezing too if you weren’t a liar
What did you not know that his fur is now fuel for the fire
Ye he has shed his coat of harms found himself a new fur-vor
He has changed his spinier uni-verse into one of inspire
Banishing his coat her cold your curiosity my poem fur-ever

He can never say hanging up my coat is too much a bother
Fur the only way of warming yourself is by warming another

Impressions of a Grandson

2005-06-07T05:10:00.000-04:00

I roam the streets of Budapest, somewhat in a daze. The taillights of speeding cars blur in slow motion. It is two AM. A few drunken lips are laughing while tears streak down my sober cheeks. My heart should be heavy, but I don’t feel a thing. I gaze out into nowhere, into everywhere. I look at everything and I see nothing. I am in shock: my Zaidy has died.

Three hours later I am on the way to the airport. The taxi driver is so courteous. The world moves around me so normally. How can that be when everything has changed?

I go through the airport routine. But this time it's different. I buckle my seatbelt. But this time it's different. I don’t watch the safety video of how to inflate my life-vest. But this time it's different. I scan the in-flight magazine’s crossword. But this time it's different. I’m flying thirty thousand feet above the ground but I have never felt so low. Yes, it is definitely different.

I am waiting for my connection flight in Amsterdam. One man is buying a book at a newsstand. Another is talking on his phone. A woman is sipping a coffee. Another is cuddling her baby. People are being paged. Pages are being turned. The airport is alive; my Zaidy is dead.

I land in JFK. I have checked no suitcases but I carry a lot of baggage. I get my passport stamped and the man tells me, "Welcome back". Thank you.

I step out, into the yellow swirl of emotions and cabs. I look out the window of my friend’s car and into the window of the unfriendly world. What I see looks familiar but I do not recognize it. We stop by a red light. It seems to be mocking me. It is saying: I will always be here. Without warning it turns green. I guess it too was wrong.

I walk through the door, expecting Zaidy to be sitting at the table, his head hiding behind a newspaper or six. But instead I see an empty space. I see people sitting on low chairs and between them an empty space. I see wet eyes and behind them an empty space. I see ripped shirts and there too an empty space. In my heart, an empty space. The room is full, full with empty spaces.

I sit in the hospital three weeks before he died. He asks the doctor: "Why are doctors always healthy and patients always sick?" The doctor laughs. He was lying in bed, machines attached to every part of his body, tubes sticking out everywhere – and he was making the doctor laugh. He just wasn’t the dying type. Life rarely is – and he was Life.

He would tell me: "Why do you hang out with a sick man, go live life, go home". I don’t think I had to tell him that he was healthier than anyone I knew. Standing near his bed, listening to him talk, watching him struggle, I don’t think I ever lived life the way I did that day. I don’t think I realized it at the time, only now – now when it is gone.

He just wanted to get out of the hospital. It was like a soul imprisoned in a body. One day that soul just said, "I’ve had enough". It left the hospital; still, they say it hasn’t left us. But it’s hard, so hard. You may be able to look at a soul but you cannot see it. You may be able to feel a soul but you cannot touch it. Is it so bad to want not only a soul but also a body? I don’t think so.

My father and uncles are saying Kaddish – I have never heard anything so sad. Everyone is crying – outside, the world still spins.

Nothing will ever be the same – not even the things that are different: no longer will Zaidy compliment our flaws; no longer will we take those slow walks up Brooklyn Avenue; Friday night will no longer see Zaidy making kiddush. Yet, in the world nothing is different – not even the things that are the same.

So, what now? Zaidy is roaming the gardens, going from an interview with Moshe to an interview with the Baal Shem Tov. His press-pass allows him unlimited access. But what with us? Do we go back to our normal lives? Do we try to follow the earth’s unchanging cycles? Do we?

No. We take that unchanging universe, that “normal world”, and we try to make it different, we try to make it worthy of a scoop.

That is what Zaidy would want.

Shadows In The Shade

2005-05-22T11:50:00.000-04:00

If one were to exclaim, ‘I’m in the shade’, the image evoked is of a person lying under a beach umbrella, or perhaps under palm trees, or maybe even on a hammock sipping Pina Caladas. But if that same person were to exclaim, ‘I’m in the shadows’, the scenes of pure relaxation and impure contentment change to scenes of scared insecurity and frigid frightfulness. True, when speaking in personalities, a ‘shady’ character and a ‘shadowy’ figure can denote the same thing; when talking in images, however, shade and shadows – though an alliteration – paint completely contrary pictures.

Of the many methods and methodologies used to unravel the mysteries of Jewish study in general and of the Babylonian Talmud in specific, there is one where Relativity holds precedent; to use the Yeshiva terminology: does this law, passage, argument, or opinion refer to the Gavra or the Cheftza – are we referring to the Subject or the Object. When we look at an object or at a subject, we can either look at it objectively or subjectively. A famed example, Chametz on Pesach: can we not eat it, or can it not be eaten? Is the subject forbidden from eating the object, or is the object forbidden from being eaten period? To add some of the Talmudic knack for the unpredictability, and as you know when two Jews meet you have three opinions, maybe both are correct?

Sitting in Hungary, the Land of Shadows – people here live in the shadow of history. The sinister shadow of the Holocaust hangs over Budapest like a shroud; the dark shadow of Communism turns the Danube into a murky abyss; the cold shadow of insecurity prompts an identity unwanted. Here, the Jews chose not to be Chosen; as one person tells me, ‘my grandmother’s dream was that all her children would marry non-Jews. When my father married a Jewish girl, his mother was heartbroken’. I know it’s hard to believe, but in this country even the Jews look at themselves as inferior.

Really, who can blame them: their families were wiped out just for being Jewish; the Judaism they were taught is one where a bullet is the messiah; and the only thing they know about being the Chosen People is that we are a people chosen to be persecuted.

They lie in the Shadows.

What is a Shadow?

When an object comes between a ray of light and a surface, the shadow is born. It has no identity of its own; it is but a reflection – if we can call it that – of light: if there were no light there would be no shadow. However, light alone cannot create a shadow; there must be a surface as well: only when light attempts the illumination of a surface, and a third party, say a person, interferes, will the shadow exist. Without light there would be only surface; without surface there would be only light; when they come together, the shadow comes out of the shadows.

Light, in Kabalistic terms, is the expression of G-d; it is Spirit. Adversely, Surface (or container, receptacle) is the means with which the light is expressed; it is Matter. Take the fine art of painting (pictures, not walls): the expression within the art – the feeling, the heart, the soul – would be the Light, the Spirit; and the means with which this expression is realized – the strokes, the colors, the body – would be the Surface, the Matter. Thus, if there were no surface the light could not surface, if there was no container to contain the light, the light would consume all. And just the same, if there were no Light, the Surface would be just that – a surface. Imagine a painting without soul: it would be a glob of paint, a bunch of misconstrued (or shall I say, misconstroked) strokes – it would be a carcass. Imagine a painting without body: it would be blank – no paint, no strokes, not even a canvass.

Strutting down the stuttering streets of Jerusalem – stuttering because they are so unpredictable – through the sun-drenched arches and finally reaching the shade of The Wall, I could not help but notice that here The Wall throws not a ‘shadow of coldness’ but rather a ‘shade of warmth’.

Thus the question re-arises: what is the difference between ‘a shadow’ and ‘the shade’ – they both are created by that same third party coming between the Light and the Surface?

True, when looking at Shadow and Shade objectively, they differ only in name (and even in that by only an “OW” or “E” suffix); when looking at them subjectively, however, they are as different as light and darkness. They are the same object caused by the same reasons and reasoned by the same cause. But this objective identicalness remains so only when untouched by the subject; once man gets his hands on the object, all similarities cease to remain similar:

The key word here is perception: when you look at an object how do you, the subject, perceive it? Do you see it as a means or as an end, do you see it as a good thing or a not-good thing, do you see it as a help or a hindrance, do you see it as a ladder with which you reach above or as a ditch in which you fall below?

Consequently, the difference between Shadow and Shade is not in their own natural makeup – for in that they do not differ – but rather how we perceive them: if we concentrate on the Surface the shadow is perceived, and we remain bound to the Surface; but when we concentrate on the Light the shade is conceived, and we reach passed the Surface and into the Light. There are (at least) two ways of looking at something: either as an expression of G-d or as an expression of ourselves; either we look at the Light of the object or the Surface of it.

Indeed we need both Light and Surface, the question is, however, what is the primary objective of the object, what is our priority: is it the Light or the Surface, is it the Physical or the Spiritual, is it the Object or the Subject?

If one were to conclude, from what was here stated, that we must turn our faces to the Sun, to the Light, and ignore the Surface, he would conclude wrongly; if we were to think thus, we would cease to exist. Only, we must stand on the Surface, on the physical earth, and allow the Light to reflect off our up-turned faces and into all of creation. True, we need Surface as much as we need Light (Body as much as Soul), however, as the Surface exists – we see it, we know it – there is no need for us to “create” it; but the Light – the Light which no one sees, no one knows – leaves us with no alternative but to “create” it.

How can we, humans of the Surface kind, combine, fuse, the two opposites: how can we take the physical world and unite it with the spiritual realms, how can we blend the Light and the Surface? Here the answer way surpasses the question: why shouldn’t the two – physical and spiritual, body and soul – live together, they are both but an expression of G-d. If we are created in His image, why shouldn’t we be able, like He Himself, to merge both the Light and the Surface: if we are above – which we are – both the Light and the Surface, why shouldn’t we join the two. Essentially they are one – so why not practically?

Good question. Actually, no it isn’t: if we are One why shouldn’t we be One? If the Human is, practically if not actually, G-dly, why shouldn’t we act that way: why should we not fuse opposites, why should we not take the Surface and make it more then its surface, why should we not take the Light and make it more then its light, why should we not take G-d – how we understand it – and make it more then G-d, why should we not take ourselves and make it more then what we are. Why not, please tell me?

Because we are full of ourselves – is that what you think? Let us say we are full of G-d, would our position then change? Why not? Our only problem is how we perceive ourselves: if we were to perceive ourselves as G-dly would then all our actions be G-dly – of course they would. But if we were to perceive ourselves as nothing more than what we are, then we are nothing if not ourselves. That is, once we aren’t what we are, we are nothing; but, with G-d, once we aren’t what we are, we are everything: once we step beyond ourselves, once we step beyond normalcy – we step beyond that which the world demands of us and into that which G-d asks of us – we reach beyond our limited selves and into our unlimited selves. We peel away all the layers and “become” what G-d meant for us to become: G-dly.

We are what we perceive ourselves to be. Definitely nothing more and certainly nothing less.

So let us step out of the shadows and into the shade: let us perceive the Light in everything, let us know that though we live in a physical world where the Light is seemingly shaded, it is but G-d telling us – you can be G-dly: all you have to do is see the Light in every Surface, all that is needed is a change in our perspective. When this perception is achieved, not only will the Light shine in its radiant glory but so too will the Surface. And when both Light and Surface are exposed for what they truly are – expressions of G-d – there will be no room left for shadows – nor for shade.

Timeout

2005-05-15T22:37:00.000-04:00

Are (H)our Achievements More Than Minute Details?

Time moves a lot quicker than the hands on a clock indicate; pages in the calendar turn faster then the dates allow: according to the calendar this would be my eighth month here in Budapest, but according to that thing that “waits for no one”, Time, it seems like I’ve only been here a few days. Where have those eight months gone?

The countdown is on. We’ve started three weeks ago, counting down the days and weeks until we reach our destined destination – Mount Sinai.

What is a countdown? In boxing it’s a knockout, in Times Square it’s New Years, in a casino it’s an artist, and in NASA it’s takeoff. But, spiritually speaking, is a countdown just some way to pass the time; is it like the optimistically insecure procrastinator, always putting things off until post-present? Are these forty-nine days dismissed as nothing more than obstacles in our path to Sinai?

If one were to believe that all things worldly could be elevated to a state beyond their natural existence, then – without getting into the arguments on whether or not Time is a physical creation – the same must be true for Time as well. However, here is where all of creation differs from Time: where every other creation is static – you can bottle it – Time is dynamic – it is in constant movement. You cannot just walk up to a clock and say ‘hey, I’m a little busy here, would you mind waiting for an hour or so’; if you could do that, either you would be crazy or you would be very rich. Time just doesn’t wait around on street corners looking for something to do. Time doesn’t get bored. Time doesn’t even get tired. Time just moves in that endless cycle.

Ironically, the thing most limited in it’s existence is also the most unlimited: on (the clock’s) one hand, Time is stuck in its second, minute, and hour ritual; on the other (I guess, the second) hand, Time is the sole creation that is a constant: there are never more than sixty seconds in a minute and never less than sixty minutes in an hour.

Time, in it’s most primitive form, is the G-d given ability to live. Along with the “ability” comes a “responsibility”: by G-d telling you ‘here is your Time’, He’s also telling you, ‘from now on you make the choices, you can choose to “waste your time” or you can choose to “take a minute” and make that minute more than just a simple minute – you can make it Divine’.

The obvious – to those willing to admit it, of course – question arises: How can we, people trapped in the hourglass, make our hours more than just a grain of sand; how can we, people handcuffed to the wrist by the watch, make a minute more than just some hand moving across a plastic face; how can we, people imprisoned within the clock-tower, make a second more than just a “minute” detail?

So, along with the ability and responsibility of Time, G-d gave us the “how-to” as well. Just like every Chronograph must have “timed precision” – just ask the Swiss – so too every second that the Chronograph emits must be used with timed precision. If but a tiny spring is misplaced in a Rolex, the whole of “time” would be affected. How much more so when talking on a cosmic level: if but one detail is “misplaced” the whole of creation suffers.

No twenty thousand dollar timepiece comes without a manual (even if it is digital), and no one would buy a diamond encrusted Cartier without a guarantee.

Imagine you knew you were getting the manual – and thus, guarantee – to the universe. What would you do? Would you say no, thank you? Some did – it’s a lot easier returning the watch than fixing it. Would you be skeptical? Some were – it is hard to believe that there is actually a solution to this puzzle. Or, would you do whatever it takes to make yourself worthy of this “Divine Blueprint”?

Some three n’ a half thousand years ago, a people recently emancipated from Egypt, were told, ‘you have forty nine days to prepare yourselves for the giving of the Torah’. Some, when faced with an unrelenting sea, said it’s not worth it – let’s go back to Egypt; some said let us blame it on G-d, He who took us out, for us to die out here; some said this and some said that. Only one man took the plunge, and the rest is history.

Every year the question re-arises: How badly do you want answers to life’s riddles? Would you change yourself for the chance to change the world? Would you be a coward or would you take the plunge?

The forty-nine-step program of refinement, you would think, is but a means to reach an end – Mount Sinai. True it is a means; however, it is not – by any means – but a means. It is not ‘you’ve done good, you get a reward’. It is merely a result: by refining oneself, the Torah is the natural outcome. You can stand at the foot of Sinai from today until tomorrow, but if you have not committed yourself to the Torah’s message – turning this barren desert into a flourishing orchard, a dwelling place for G-d – if you have not refined your own “barren desert”, how do you expect to receive, and accept, a Torah built on this premise and principle.

Thus, the countdown is not some way to pass the time; it is not standing idly by until we reach the destination. If it were, we would never reach it. Only, the countdown is a process: it is the process of changing ourselves, and the process of changing Time.

Time alone, as stated before, is unchanging. That is, Time alone. Enter the human being – the human being created in the Divine Image. Now, with the human involved, Time is no longer neutral, it can no longer tick dispassionately away into history – either it is Time wasted or it is Time elevated. Throughout the year we have different ways to elevate (that is, to make it more than its some of the parts) Time – by blessing the month, observing (not only visually) the holidays, and so on. In this period between Pesach – freedom – and Shavous – what to do with it – we have the ability, and, thus, responsibility, to take Time, all forty nine days of it, and make it Timeless: by our refinement of self, we refine Time; by exposing the Divinity within our own image, we expose the Divinity within the clocks face.

In consequence: true Time may move faster than the hands on the clock indicate; the question is, however: are those “bygone times” wasted or are they elevated? Have they gone forever to oblivion or have they gone forever to a higher place, a higher purpose – transforming the universe?

I can only hope that those past eight months of mine have gone to the latter.

A Tanyatic Journey

2005-05-03T14:24:00.000-04:00

As things have begun falling into routine and the dish called life is not as spicy as it had been when I first arrived in Budapest, I start experimenting a little here and a little there; the test results are something so unexpected yet simultaneously so simple that the dichotomy of this discovery nearly causes my entire experimental lab – vials, potions, gizmos, gadgets, thingamajigs, thingamabobs, and whatnots – to unceremoniously (or, as we are Jewish, ‘ceremoniously’) explode.

The result is a wee-hour Tanya class.

This unceremonious hour (even Jews cannot make a ceremony out of the wee-hour), sees the homeless alcoholics, who have no choice but to climb out of their cardboard beds when the sun climbs out of its fluffy blanket, shuffling their half frost-bitten feet in search for a glass bottle to call home. This forsaken hour sees those who sport generic ties, wear clichéd shoes, and carry run-of-the-mill attaché cases peddling in that vicious nine-to-five (though here its more like eight-to-four) cycle. This transiting hour sees the supers of buildings, cigarettes perilously dangling from half parted lips, hosing down their sidewalks, putting out the green garbage cans for the garbage men to empty, and looking at life as a mouse looks at a cat – uh oh, what now? This miserably depressing hour also sees yours truly walking from 19 Wessalany utca, up Nagy Diofa utca, past Dob utca, through Kiraly utca, and finally into 5 Vasvari Pal utca, all prepared to face yet another day.

It is seven o’clock – A.M. mind you – and any minute now our class should start. Gabur is already here; Asher should be here before I finish writing this line. Ah, I can here his footsteps shuffling up the concrete stairs, hear his hand on the door handle, and, poof, here he is.

I am writing five weeks after our so-called “class” left its seeds and is now sprouting not only branches but fruit as well. Perek Aleph Tanya, three innocent words, innocent words that have exposed the innocence within. B’Soif Perek Gimel D’Nidah, four seemingly simple words, simple words that have uncovered our own simplicity. Our journey started somewhere between spirit and matter: we thought that spirit did not matter and that matter had no spirit. Oh, how wrong we were. Let us follow our journey down Selfishness Street, through Cynic Square, along Interstate ‘I’, passed Apathy Avenue, and across Boundary Bridge. We have reached the other side. (Sure beats Highway 61, even revisited, don’t it?)

The aromatic steam rises from our freshly brewed java, but no one notices. People start arriving for Shachris, but we have been praying for an hour now. Seven has turned to eight, but all the clocks in this room are timeless.

Five weeks now, five weeks of intense traveling: we have traveled over the plains of the soul, through the valleys of our hearts, and passed the hills of our minds – and we are just getting started. On one journey, we discovered that, when in touch with that G-dly spark within, the fusing of Spirit and Matter is easier then knowing only Matter – or for that matter, only Spirit. Why not, they both come from the same G-d?! On a different journey, though leading to the same destination, we came upon the meaning of the word “Leader”: a true Leader is not he who creates followers; a true Leader is he who creates leaders. And that is (an aspect of) The Rebbe: a Leader who exposes the Leader within every human being. On still a third journey, we see Free Choice, not the limited Free Choice of Good versus Bad, Body versus Soul, but rather the Free Choice that is our essence: the ability to do something beyond our nature, the ability to combine both Good and Bad, both Body and Soul. On this journey we take no exits, no rest stops, and even the gas stations, with their coffee fragrance spilling into our vehicle, goes unnoticed. We are one with the Tanya and the Tanya is one with us.

Oh, but they need a Minyan downstairs, and we make-up the ten. O, how we don’t want to leave this journey of ours, how we want to stay on this highway – yes it most certainly is a highway. But then it hits us: we are not leaving the journey, we are not getting off on some exit; no, we are but continuing our journey, through Shachris, passed breakfast, and onto whatever path you take, whatever your journey may be, whichever which way you fuse Matter and Spirit. But no matter what, no matter which way our journey leads us, we will always know – we will always know that tomorrow morning, within that unceremonious, forsaken, transiting, and miserably depressing morning, there lies yet another Tanya class.

See you there.