Velveteen Rabbi

This week's portion: water from the rock

WATER FROM THE ROCK (CHUKKAT)

When Miriam died    there was no water
the wadis dried up    the springs didn't flow

as though the desert    were mourning her passing
her living waters    blocked by stone

we thirsted for wisdom     we drank salt tears
we ripped our robes    and wailed for the Black Land

all Moshe could imagine    was striking the rock
the water he called forth    was chalky and tasteless

not like Miriam's melodies    not like her dance
when our feet wove grapevines     and our hearts were bells

---

This week we're reading two Torah portions: Chukkat and Balak. The Torah poem I wrote this week comes out of the first of those portions, Chukkat, which contains the death of Miriam, sister of Aharon and Moshe. The recounting is simple: "Miriam died there and was buried there," Torah tells us, and adds immediately "The community was without water..."

From this juxtaposition, this week's Torah poem was born. Miriam is often midrashically connected with water. A story holds that a well followed the Israelites in their wanderings through the desert. Filled with mayimei chayyim, waters of life, the well renewed all who drank from it. When Miriam died, her well disappeared. Torah is often described with the metaphor of an ever-flowing wellspring. God, too, is sometimes known in this way: as Source of Life (in a desert climate surely this denotes water) or as the Wellspring of all that exists. So it's possible to see Miriam as deeply connected with Torah and with insight.

Because the Israelites have no water, they turn on Moshe and Aharon. God tells Moshe to speak to a rock and it will yield water; Moshe strikes the rock instead. It does yield water, but God is incensed, and tells Moshe that he will not be able to enter the promised land. Generations of commentators have struggled with the question of what exactly Moshe did wrong. Is it that he slightly shifted God's commandment? Is it that he related to the rock with violence instead of with gentleness? One way or another, it's a fascinating literary moment in the Israelites' wilderness story.

So this week we remember Miriam. What does she represent for you?

[water.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Chukkat.

This week's portion: fruit

FRUIT (KORACH)

in God's hands
the staff of my body
blossoms
and brings forth almonds

not a sign
that I am favored
or especially fit
for divine service

just garden-variety
transformation
the blessing
of whatever comes

---

This week's portion, Korach, tells the story of the rebellion of Korach, who argued that surely the whole people Israel could be holy and therefore a priesthood wasn't necessary. In this week's Shalom Report email, Reb Arthur Waskow gives over a teaching from Martin Buber, to wit, that "Korach thought the whole people was holy regardlesss of how it acted...It could kill, or worship gold, or rape the earth -- it could do anything, thought Korach, and still be holy." Moses understood, Reb Arthur explains, "that the people had to become holy, always and over and over -- had to act to make holiness out of ordinary life."

Anyway, that's a bit of a side note, because this week's Torah poem arises out of a piece of the story which comes after Korach's rebellion. God tells the Israelites that the head of each tribe should take his staff and carve his name on it, and then all of the staves are placed in the tent of the covenant. The following morning, Aaron's staff has burst into bloom. For me, rereading the text this year, that was the most resonant image, so it's what sparked the Torah poem. How does the image (how does the poem) sit with you?

[fruit.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Numbers.

This week's portion: apart

APART (B'HA-ALOT'KHA)

The people wailed
every clan apart

no one sought
her sister's arms

bundled in nostalgia's
snug swaddling clothes

until God rose up
in our whining image

and quail rained down
we ate ourselves sick

too busy gorging
to be grateful

shreds of bitterness
in our clenched teeth

---

Toward the end of this week's Torah portion, B'ha-alot'kha, there's a story about the children of Israel bewailing the lack of meat in their lives. (This is Numbers chapter 11.) They get whiny; Moses gets angry; God becomes furious, and rains down quail six feet high all around the camp. The people gather everything they can reach and begin to consume, but before they've finished their meal, they're struck down with a plague.

To me, this year, this reads as a morality tale about unhealthy cravings, ingratitude, and overconsumption. So that's the direction this week's Torah poem went in. I'm curious to know, how does the story read to you? And what do you make of the brief episode of prophecy which is contained within it, which didn't make it into the poem but is a fascinating digression from the narrative?

[apart.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Numbers.

This week's portion: nazir

NAZIR (NASO)

I don't want to eschew
fat grapes bursting on my tongue
raisins sticky-dark sweet

to lose the sensation of
emerging from the funeral parlor
blinking in the wet sunlight

to set myself apart
never raising my glass in song
unthreaded from the tapestry

so I settle into the chair
I tip my head back, close my eyes
and relish the clench of towel

afterward, I toss my head
to feel the swish, the gift
of air on the back of my neck

and all the oaths
I haven't uttered
crackle salty on my tongue

---

This week's Torah portion, Naso, contains much to work with. The prose d'var Torah that I posted earlier this week (a Radical Torah repost) focused on the ritual of the sotah. This week's Torah poem, in contrast, rose out of a different part of the portion: the laws of the nazir (sometimes rendered "Nazirite" in English), someone who takes on particular stringencies as part of a vow to God.

Because it is no longer possible to end a term as a nazir (the Torah ritual depends on making sacrifices at the Temple which hasn't stood in two thousand years), rabbinic authorities today discourage the taking-on of these vows in the strongest of terms. Judaism has never been a tradition of asceticism. But I found the images in this part of this week's Torah portion deeply evocative, and they sparked the images in this week's poem.

Does anything about the idea of the nazir speak to you, either in a positive way or a negative one? What does this poem, or this Torah portion, raise for you?

[nazir.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Numbers.

Read write prompt #77: opposites attract

FAR AWAY SO CLOSE

The clouds were cotton-candy pink.
My first evening in the city of gold
I hadn't thought to prepare a toast.
I walked the unfamiliar streets.
People brought roses.
In the distance, dark cypress spikes.
I admired the handwritten names
and limestone buildings gave way.
After dark, when the night sky
yielded to desert, cut by a cement ribbon
only barely lighter than the hills
snaking, separating here from there,
I walked on a carpet of herbs.
I wanted to turn to you and say
a rainbow of paper lanterns gleamed
isn't it beautiful, isn't it strange
as though fireflies circled the deck
but you were too far away to reach.

---

This week's prompt at ReadWritePoem fascinated me. The challenge was to write a set number of lines about a happy memory, and a set number of lines about a sad memory, and then interleave them into a single poem.

When I sat down to write, both of the memories that came to mind were from last June: one of a night at home spent celebrating with our friends and family, and the other of the first night that I spent in Jerusalem. (That second memory isn't so much a sad memory as a bittersweet one; I remember being amazed and awed that I was actually there, but also feeling the deep ache of being far from Ethan and knowing that we wouldn't see each other again for two months.)

I think both memories have a wistful quality. I changed a couple of words to make the syntax work, but otherwise, this is a faithful attempt to live up to the exercise in question. I think it's stylistically different from what I usually write (maybe especially from the Torah poems I usually post here) -- but I really enjoyed the process of writing it, and I'm fascinated by how it turned out. Does it work for you?

Oh, and I borrowed the title from a Wim Wenders film. Thanks for the loan, Wim.

(If you want to read the other poems submitted for this prompt, go to ReadWritePoem on Thursday -- there will be a "Get Your Poem On!" post, where we'll all leave links to our submissions in the comments.)

[soclose.mp3]

Technorati tags: readwritepoem, poetry, Jerusalem.

OCHO #24: Twitter Poets

Early this month, Collin Kelley posted about poets on twitter, and a list of poets who twitter quickly accrued.

Because this is the internet and because collaborative joint projects are fun, the list of twitter poets quickly turned into a call for submissions as Collin and Didi Menendez decided to put together a special issue of OCHO dedicated to Twitter Poets. And that issue just came out! It's available for free (as a download or to read online) at issu, and a print-on-demand issue will be available in hardcopy soon. I'm pleased to announce that one of my poems appears there.

OCHO #24 (@ issuu) - read it online or download

or, order a print copy (coming soon) - OCHO #24 (The Twitter Edition)

I especially like Marie-Elizabeth Mali's "I Celebrate the Husband" (p. 24), with the line "I plunge greedy hands in -- my green / my fear -- and never come up empty," and Stacie Boschma's "Why My Mouth is Always Filled With Feathers" (p. 22) which begins "There are crows in the sky like poems."

Thanks for bringing this cool project so quickly to fruition, Didi and Collin. I'm jazzed to be a part of it.

Technorati tags: Twitter, poetry, OCHO.

Vortex: a radiant node or cluster

Lately I've been cleaning out my study. I've had this same study for ten years, and I have packrat tendencies, so the cleaning-out is long overdue. The cleaning and reorganizing has been deeply satisfying. It's allowed me to rid the world of a lot of dust bunnies, and to throw things away, which can be pleasantly cathartic. More than that, it's allowed me a chance to rediscover and sort my books (poetry over here, rabbinic texts over there) and to excavate my memories and hold each one up to the light for a while.

During one day of cleaning, I spent a solid hour immersed a pile of notebooks from my years at Bennington. They're plain narrow-ruled spiral-bound notebooks, which were also my journals of choice for a number of years; they doubled as a place to take workshop notes, so now they offer a record of the experience on two levels at once.

I don't write much about Bennington here, but it was pretty formative for me. Next month will mark ten years since I graduated. I can't imagine when I'll ever wear my master's hood again, not being the sort of academic who routinely marches in commencement ceremonies, but Bennington was an amazing experience. It was an apprenticeship in learning to take myself seriously as a writer. If there is good in the poems I'm writing now, ten years later, credit is surely due to the writers with whom I studied there.

There's something powerful about immersing in old journals. It's amazing how quickly the old emotional dynamics come spinning back. One of the first scribblings I read was "Vortex: a radiant node or cluster," which was written on a blackboard the day my cohort arrived at Bennington. That was the phrase that Liam Rector, of blessed memory, used to describe the Bennington experience. A vortex, in Ezra Pound's locution, was something "from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing." Bennington was a vortex, for sure.

Reading these journals feels like stepping back into that vortex. The emotional ups and downs of having my work critiqued. The interpersonal politics of the residency experience: when I felt securely-planted and when I felt peripheral. And, of course, the rushing waters of my ordinary life, within which the residencies were contained. From being newly-engaged, down the long road to becoming married. The ups and downs as my parents and I began to navigate new ways to relate. Buying our first house, in which we still reside.

I couldn't have imagined, then, that I would be in my fourth year of rabbinic school now. My relationship with Judaism was complicated in those years. But many of my best poems from those years were my Judaic poems. I had an advisor who counseled me to try writing prayers or psalms -- advice I wasn't ready to take then, but have long since taken to heart.

An oft-mentioned statistic at Bennington during my years there was that ten years after graduation, most MFA-holders are no longer writing regularly. Though the poem a week I'm committed to now (sometimes I write more, but sometimes not) is scant output compared with the times at Bennington when I wrote a poem a day, I'm grateful that poetry is still one of the primary ways I interact with the world. And I'm grateful to have created a place at Velveteen Rabbi where I don't entirely have to separate my Judaic interests from my literary ones.

I think the dual passions feed and inform each other. Those years of intensive immersion in poetry will, I hope, make me a better rabbi... and these years of intensive immersion in Judaic studies and rabbinics are, I hope, making me a better poet. As I re-shelve my books, there are well-defined sections of the library for Judaic subjects (liturgy, Talmud, Zohar, Hasidut) and for poetry -- but there are also shelves where the two interrelate and intertwine. That's the kind of integration I aspire to now: to read (and write) Jewish texts with an eye to their poetry, and to read (and write) poetry with the Jewish sensibility that's central to who I am and what I do.

Technorati tags: Bennington, poetry.

This week's portion: head by head

HEAD BY HEAD (BAMIDBAR)

Take a census
family by family
listing the names
every female, head by head

record them in their groups
all those in the community
who can weave wool
and spin tales

do this with women
alongside you, each one
the recognized head
of her ancestral house

count each girl and woman
able to plant seed
and nurture new growth
to turn grain into bread

each one who can teach
the ways of her mothers
imagine if our Torah said this
how different our story would be

---

This week's portion, Bamidbar, begins with instructions to take a census of the Israelites, head by head, each man attached to his ancestral household. In some ways it's a peculiar locution, given that Judaism has historically operated in terms of matrilineal descent. (Today the Reform movement accepts patrilineal descent as well, though it's still a controversial subject in many quarters.) The tradition traces Jewishness through the mother, but this census takes note of men and their fathers -- no mention of the women at all. That's the disjunction out of which this week's poem arose.

[head.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Numbers.

This week's portion: borrowed

BORROWED (BEHAR-BEHUKKOTAI)

You are a stranger
resident with God

even the body you wear
is borrowed

a temporary sublet
from the Holy One

when the rent comes due
out you go, whether

or not you feel
ready, whether or not

you were enjoying
where you were

hush, says the messenger
pressing one finger

to your philtrum
and just like that

everything you knew
is forgotten,

all you can do
is wail.

---

This week we're in parashat Behar- Behukkotai, a double portion which contains all kinds of great stuff, including material on the Jubilee Year and the need to let our land rest.

The verse that leapt out at me this week is Leviticus 25:23, "But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me." What does it mean that we are strangers resident with God? That idea mixed, in my mind, with a conversation we had in my Hashpa'ah (spiritual direction) class last week about people who work as midwives for the dying, helping them through the physical and emotional processes of letting go of this life, and from the intersection of those two notions this poem arose.

If the reference to a messenger is baffling, remember that this is the language Torah uses for what we might call angels. There's a story which holds that in the womb, we know all the Torah there is to know -- but at the moment of birth, an angel presses a fingertip to our mouths and we forget everything in order to re-learn.

Is this a poem about death, or about birth? If you have an answer, feel free to weigh in; I'd love to know how the poem reads to you.

[borrowed.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Leviticus.

This week's portion: fix

FIX (EMOR)

God fixes the festivals
like gems in a crown

God places them definitely
and more or less permanently

God puts them in order
like a woman adjusting her hair

fixed like a black and white image
coming out of a chemical bath

fixed like a game whose winner
is always already known

God makes them stable
converts them into useful compounds

these are God's fixed times
which God tells us to proclaim

but we're the umpires
ain't nothing 'til we calls 'em

---

In this week's Torah portion, Emor, we read, "Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions." (Lev. 23:1-2.) The text goes on to list Shabbat, Pesach, Shavuot and the counting of the Omer, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.

The idea of the fesivals as "fixed times" intrigues me. Shabbat happens on its own rhythm, week after week; every seventh day is Shabbat, a time for rest and connection with God. This rhythm mirrors what we read about in the beginning of the book of Bereshit (Genesis) -- six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. But the festivals are something different; God asks us to observe them, or to declare them, which suggests to me that on some level, we participate in making them what they are. It's our observance that makes them festivals.

Anyway, the notion of God "fixing" the festivals is what gave rise to this week's Torah poem. The last stanza comes from a joke about three baseball umpires in conversation. The first one says, "I calls 'em as they are." The second says "I calls 'em as I see 'em." And the third one, of course, trumps the first two. Does that resonate for you, as a way to think about the moadim?

[Fix.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Leviticus.