Day 16 of the Omer

Emanating loom

Flames and

Heat

A spark spans

Colors no color at all

Dolor

The word

Resolute and

Patrician

Opaque

Transparent

Opaque

-- Tal-Orot, the Dew of Light

Day 16

The Fig tree is saying, “The one who watches over the fig tree will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 27:18)

Care and husbandry impart a kind of ownership.  This is a natural law, a principle first vivified in my imagination by the story “Horton Hatches the Egg.”

Day 15

The Vine is saying, "Thus says God: As the wine is found in the cluster,and they say, 'Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,' so I will do for my servants' sake, and not destroy everything." (Isaiah 65:8)

Do not destroy it, 
for there is a blessing in it.

Do not 
destroy it, 
for there is a blessing 
in it.

Do not destroy it.

Tuesday, 4.29.14
After Dark
Day 15 of the Omer

Through an espaclaria*

You will see future

Past

You will look back

You will look forward

You will see east to west

Stand that way: East

Now turn this way: West

Where you are standing?

East-West

Past-Future

Trap a single grain of sand

By your hand

Take a breath

One breeze

-- the Dew of Light Tal-Orot

*clouded glass

jsg.usa

Monday, April 28

Ascended he did

To the top

Of the chariot of Ezekiel

It was covered in the

Dew of light

Tal-Orot

From there he saw and

Understood

Everything

Only

He may not have seen

Far enough

-- the Dew of Light Tal-Orot 

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Day 13 / Yom HaShoah

A VOGN SHIKH (A Cartload of Shoes)
Avrom Sutzkever, Vilna Ghetto, January 1, 1943

The wheels roll on, roll on,
What do they bring?
they bring me a wagon
with flopping shoes.

The wagon, like a khupa
In the dusk of evening;
The big pile of shoes
Like a dancing throng.

A holiday, a wedding . . .?
Who has blinded me?
The shoes . . .
now I see what they are.

The soles klop out a rhythm:
Whither? whither? whither?
From the streets of old Vilna
They drive us to Berlin.

I must not ask "whose,"
but there is a tear in my heart.
Tell me the truth, shoes:
Where are the feet?

The feet from each pair
With buttons like dewdrops.
Here--where is the little body?
There--where is the woman?

With all the children's shoes
why do I see no children?
Why isn't the bride wearing
those sandals now?

Through children's shoes and scraps,
I recognize my mama's shoes!
The slippers she would put on
Just for Shabbes.

The soles klop out a rhythm:
Whither? whither? whither?
From the streets of old Vilna
They drive us to Berlin.

You can also hear Sutzkever himself read the poem in Yiddish; look for the Yiddish transliteration in the comment section below the video.


***

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam,
And because we are only made of stuff and leather
And not of blood and flesh, 

each one of us avoided the hellfire.

Morris Shulstein

Today is twelve days, which equals one week and five days of the Omer

WEEK TWO—GEVURAH—The Landmarks

The rains are saying, "You poured a generous rain, O God; you refreshed your heritage when it languished." (Ps. 68:10)

Weakened

Resistance low

Quiet the machine from within

Drawn close

By thirst

Yearning

The early rains ceased to sustain

Drought

Thirst

Heavens opening

Drink me

-- Later rains

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Day 12

The rains are saying, "You poured a generous rain, O God; you refreshed your heritage when it languished." (Ps. 68:10)

For some reason, this verse became part of my everyday consciousness about 26 years ago.  I think of it often, especially during those steady, gentle rains that sometimes come when we most need them.

Big Talk Small Talk

Generally we don’t talk about big things

we talk about details. Particulars

In the sense that everything is contained in something

we talk about big things

But only in that sense. 

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Day 11

The thunderheads are saying, "He made darkness his screen; dark thunderheads, dense clouds were his pavilion round about him." (Ps. 18:12)

The clouds of glory are saying, "He loads the thunderhead with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightening." (Job 37:11)

There are two different words for clouds here.  Neither one refers to the rows and flows of angel hair, the ice cream castles and feathered canyons of the Joni Mitchell song.  Both of them are rain clouds: the dense thunderhead (av); and the cloud (anan), often, as here, illumined by lightening.   The illumined cloud is frequently mentioned in the Torah in the phrase “pillar of cloud.”

Perek Shira does not mention the thunder itself, but that too is seen as a hierophany, especially in Psalm 29, where it is no less than the voice of God.

Day 10

The stars are saying, "You, only You, are God; you made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host; the earth, and everything that is in it; the seas, and everything it is in them; and you preserve them all; and the host of heaven prostrate themselves to you." Nehemiah 9:6

It was a dark and starry night.  Not even a campfire competed with the dazzling array of the lamps of heaven.  Looking up at lights whose source originated in the distant past, Abraham believed in a promise that stretched far into the future.

Like the stars and their light, the promise extends over time in a way that dwarfs the lifetime of a man, even a septuacentenarian like Abraham.  This contrast between the longevity of the promise and the brevity of human life is what gives Abraham’s story its poignancy.  He was promised numberless descendants, but is well into old age before he has even one. He is promised the land of Canaan.  Toward the end of his life, as a grieving widower, he finally comes to possess a small part of it: a field with a cave where he can bury his wife, Sarah.

Day 9

The moon is saying: "He made the moon for the festivals; the sun knows the time of its coming.” Psalm 104:19

Perek Shira also has a verse for the sun, but I found it incomprehensible.  I guess this is appropriate, since one can't look directly at the sun.

Day 8

The day is saying: "day to day utters speech, and night to night relates knowledge." (Psalm 19:3)

The night is saying: "to speak of his kindness in the morning, and his faithfulness by nights." (Psalm 92:3)

The verse from Psalm 19 presents the speech of the inorganic world as a conversation with itself, not directed at us, a conversation which we do not so much hear as overhear. 

For me, this text will forever be connected with the music of Steve Reich, who derives tremendous energy from its Hebrew speech rhythms. Reich's "overlapping" style fits perfectly the cosmic antiphon described in the Psalm.  Listen to it on this video, performed by Alarm Will Sound, a fine young chamber group that makes frequent visits to St. Louis.

hashâmayim mesapperiym kebhodh-k'êl 

The heavens recount the glory of God

uma`asêh yâdhâyv maggiydh hârâqiya`

and the sky declares his skill

yom leyom yabbiya` 'omer 

day to day utters speech

velaylâh lelaylâh yechavveh-dâ`ath

and night to night relates knowledge.

'êyn-'omer ve'êyn debhâriym 

Without speech and without words

beliy nishmâ` qolâm

Nevertheless their voice is heard.

bekhol-hâ'ârets yâtsâ' qavvâm 

Their sound goes forth to all the earth

ubhiqtsêh têbhêl millêyhem

Their words to the edge of the world.   (Ps. 19:2-5)

Day 7

The rivers are saying: "Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing for joy together." (Ps. 98:8)

The wellsprings are saying: "Singers and dancers alike shall say, all my springs are in you." (Ps. 87:7)

The midrash to the Psalms identifies the "springs" in this verse with sources of wisdom: "Just as new waters flow from the well each moment, so does Israel sing a new song each moment, as it is written, as singers who are like dancers are all those who study You."  Wisdom renews itself as it is pursued, taught, and remembered.

Day 6

The waters are saying, "When his voice resounds there is a rumbling of waters in the skies; he makes vapors rise from the ends of the earth, makes lightening for the rain, and brings forth the wind from his storehouses." (Jeremiah  51:16) 

The seas are saying, "More than the sound of many waters, the majestic waves of the sea, majestic on high is YHVH" (Ps. 93:4)

To understand the first quote, recall that in Genesis 1 there are "waters above" the sky (from whence rains come) as well as "waters beneath"

The quote from Psalm 93 is best appreciated in tandem with the preceding verse.

The waters have lifted up, O LORD,

The waters have lifted up their voice, 

The waters have lifted up their pounding waves.

More than the sound of many waters, 

the majestic waves of the sea,

Majestic on high is the LORD. 

I love the way the repetition suggests a wavelike movement and builds to a climax.

There's a musical counterpart to this climax in Debussy's La Mer, in the first movement, "From Dawn to Noon at the Sea."  Eric Satie once told Debussy, "I really like the part around 11:30"; if you listen to the piece, you'll know exactly what Satie is referring to.

Day 5

The Fields are saying, "YHWH founded the earth by wisdom; He established the heavens by understanding." (Proverbs 3:19).

Two Voices in a Meadow

A Milkweed 

Anonymous as cherubs 

Over the crib of God, 

White seeds are floating 

Out of my burst pod. 

What power had I 

Before I learned to yield? 

Shatter me, great wind: 

I shall possess the field 

A Stone 

As casual as cow-dung 

Under the crib of God, 

I lie where chance would have me, 

Up to the ears in sod. 

Why should I move? To move 

Befits a light desire. 

The sill of heaven would founder, 

Did such as I aspire.

Richard Wilbur

Day 4

The wilderness is saying, " The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert  shall rejoice and blossom."  (Is. 35:1)

Even regions that we can travel to may baffle us. A wilderness area may seem at first nothing more than a waste land. But on closer inspection, there is purpose and life.

So when it says that the wilderness will "rejoice and blossom," is it talking about a future transformation? Is it talking about our eyes being trained to perceive the vital sparks and signs that we initially overlooked? Or is it affirming that everything has its special season, like a springtime in the Sonora, when it is closed with a special grace?

The Hebrew word for wilderness, midbar, has as its root the same three consonants as dabar, the Hebrew word for "word." Rabbi Jim Goodman talks about the wilderness as "the place of the word," perhaps because the sparseness of the desert helps focus our hearing the divine speech.

I don't know that I want to live in a wilderness. But I do want to visit there. In fact, I believe I'm overdue.

***  

"Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen. You can soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. A foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theaters, can teach you no more than a few can.  Then retire and hide; and from the valley behold the mountain. Have solitary prayer and praise. Love the garden, the barn, the pasture, and the rock. There digest and correct the past experience, blend it with the new and divine life, and grow with God. After some interval when these delights have been sucked dry, accept again the opportunities of society. The same scenes revisited shall wear a new face, shall yield a higher culture. And so on. Undulation, Alternation, is the condition of progress, of life."  (from the journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Day 3 

The Garden Of Eden is saying, "Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon mygarden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits." (Song of Songs, 4:16)

Gehinnom* is saying, "For he has satisfied the longing soul, and filled the hungry soul with good." (Ps. 107:9)

Yesterday I referred to ancient Jewish speculation about what supports the earth.  The maps and myths of the ancients usually contain vivid reminders that the world we see, the world of everyday experience, depends on and interacts with realms beyond mortal ken.  The mappa mundi of Perek Shira includes the distant realms of paradise and a realm of punishment after death.

The verse ascribed to Gehinnom (usually translated hell) is particularly striking.   Either hell itself is glad for having been fed so regularly and so well, or the sinners in hell are glad because they know their punishment is temporary and purgative.

Day 2

The earth is saying, "The earth is YHWH's and all that is in it; the world and those who live in it." (Ps. 24:1)

From the sky, the horizon of aspiration, we move to the earth, to our groundedness, our roots.   When I walk out of my door in the morning, I experience the earth as a foundation, a solid weight beneath my feet .  

The earth supports us. But what supports the earth? For the author of this psalm, the earth is built on the primordial waters; God "has founded it upon the seas, and has established it upon the flood" (Ps. 24:2).  The seeming solidity of terra firma is poised above a swirling chaos.

The Talmud speculates as follows: 

Woe for people who see but don’t know what they’re seeing, stand but don’t know what they’re standing on!  As to the earth, on what does it stand? On the waters: “To him who spread out the earth on the waters” (Ps. 136:6).  And the waters stand on the mountains: “The waters stood over the mountains” (Ps. 104: 6). And the mountains stand on the wind: “For behold, he forms the mountains and creates the wind” (Amos 4:13). And the air depends on the storm-wind: “The storm-wind fulfills his command” (Ps. 148:8). The Holy One, blessed be he, made the storm-wind like a sort of amulet suspended from his arm, as it is said, “And underneath are the arms of the world” (or “everlasting arms”; Deut. 33:27).  (Hagigah)

Day 1

The heavens are saying, "The heavens recount the glory of God, and the sky declares his skill" (Ps. 19:2)

"The sky shows itself as it really is: transcendent, something quite apart from the tiny thing that is man and the span of his life. . . . Even before any religious value has been set upon it, the sky reveals transcendence simply by being there.  It exists because it is high, infinite, immovable, powerful."  Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 38-39

Prelude: The little book known as Perek Shira has a long and obscure history.  Parts of it go back to the time of the Talmud; fragments of it dating to the 10th century can be found in the Cairo Geniza.  The first full edition we possess was printed in Venice in 1576.

The text is only a few pages long; it can be found here, with translation by Rabbi Natan Slifkin.