tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121413612978715922023-11-15T07:55:04.687-08:00My Portion<br>
<br>
Poems about the weekly Torah readingMiriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-77489554880845916972010-09-05T22:55:00.000-07:002010-09-05T22:55:02.041-07:00This is the Blessing<i>Friends, I'm going to cheat a bit this week. The parasha is Ha'azinu, which takes us almost to the end of Deuteronomy. The last bit, V'Zot ha-B'rakha--"This is the Blessing"--is read on Simchat Torah. But I'm going to jump ahead, wish you a very happy new year, and close "My Portion" with this poem. Thank you for reading along with me.</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote>In the same way Moses lived his life in the public sphere as leader of the Israelites, so he concludes it in a public way by blessing the people according to their tribes. [“This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, bade the Israelites farewell before he died” (Deuteronomy 33:1).] There is no mention in his farewell address of his own two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.</blockquote><br />
I ask a blessing in the name of Gershom,<br />
about whom we know only: he did not succeed<br />
his father; a prayer for Eliezer, who is no more <br />
than a “begat.” If Asher dips his foot in oil<br />
and Joseph reaps the bounteous harvest<br />
of the moon, let the sons of Moses stand <br />
for all of us whose names are just recorded<br />
in the family Bible with no deed inscribed<br />
beyond birth and dying. Say of us:<br />
The Lord has sent them rain in its due season<br />
and when it pocked the grapes with mildew<br />
and set the corn to germinating in the ear.<br />
The Lord has smote the loins of their foes<br />
and cut their own sons down on the fields <br />
of Degania and Lachish*. They have rested <br />
between His shoulders and fallen beneath His feet. <br />
He has tested them at the waters of Meribah**<br />
and with the blood libel at Kishinev***.<br />
They have invited their kin to the mountain<br />
and the stranger to drink the finest wines.<br />
They have born sons and daughters who know<br />
but do not speak the name of God.<br />
<br />
*Degania was a kibbutz, attacked by the Syrians in 1948. Lachish was one of the fortress towns protecting the approaches to Jerusalem, laid siege to and captured by the Assyrians in 701 BCE.<br />
**The “place of testing,” where Moses is told to call water from the rock but instead strikes the rock with his rod.<br />
***Site of a pogrom, or anti-Jewish riot, that took place in 1903 when the Jews were accused of killing a Christian child to use his blood in the preparation of matzos.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-63365662812682883272010-09-03T00:47:00.000-07:002010-09-03T00:47:28.872-07:00My Portion<blockquote>When people are bar or bat mitzvah, they chant a section from the Torah, which then becomes “their portion.” The chanting is done according to an ancient notation system called Torah trope. The mnemonic power of such chanting is foreseen in this week’s second parasha, "<i>Vayelekh</i>," where G-d tells Moses, “Therefore, write down this song and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be My witness against the people of Israel…since it will never be lost from the mouth of their offspring” (Deuteronomy 31: 19-21).</blockquote><br />
No occasion, no feast or fast<br />
marks this Sabbath or the passage<br />
I will chant, as did my fathers.<br />
G-d’s word advances on <i>kadma</i>. * <br />
I lavish, as <i>darga</i> requires, <br />
a trill on “write this song”;<br />
as <i>gershayim</i>—drive out—predicts,<br />
I chant the people's “turn to other gods.”<br />
This is a different path to knowing:<br />
a detour to scatter notes—<i>zarka</i>;<br />
a reach, as for a bunch of grapes—<br />
<i>segol</i>. So much attention heaped<br />
on single words—“Be strong"—as if<br />
we must add music to make sense<br />
of the pedestrian commands,<br />
as if the most mundane detail, <br />
warmed by our absorption in it,<br />
might burst out in dazzling song.<br />
<br />
*The Hebrew words in this poem are names of tropes, which either refer to the shape of the notation or the way it sounds.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-9038545348649216382010-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:002010-09-01T11:11:38.494-07:00Apologia<blockquote>“I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).</blockquote><br />
Sometimes the morning crashes through the blinds,<br />
noisy with light; today, fragmented by fog,<br />
it must be reconstructed as the eye <br />
pieces together the bed, the man beside me,<br />
the dear faces in the silver frames. <br />
This is the life I’ve chosen so easily<br />
that even a stormy dawn like this one fails<br />
to ready me for your call, your small request:<br />
a reason not to end your life at the end<br />
of our conversation, one oval analgesic <br />
after another. You know how to do this <br />
having learned from previous attempts,<br />
but nothing prepares me to explain why<br />
the same pale capsules on my shelf promise <br />
a more benign relief. Through the curtain <br />
of rain, persimmons glow in the leafless tree.<br />
Every year, warblers puncture the skins <br />
and feed. As sad as I have ever been, <br />
such recurrence cheers me. Your brand of grief<br />
is out of my depth. You want the ordinary:<br />
husband, child. How can I, who have both, <br />
swear I’d manage on the thinner broth <br />
of friendships like the one I offer now?<br />
Even the rainbow, flung between our houses,<br />
is just a promise that the world goes on.<br />
I don’t know how you make yourself go on;<br />
the truth: I only know I want you to.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-39739721016228025272010-08-26T18:16:00.000-07:002010-08-26T18:16:05.227-07:00History Lesson<blockquote>One theory of the Torah’s authorship (if you accept that it was not written by G-d Himself) is that the five books were written by four different authors. Deuteronomy, according to this “documentary hypothesis” was based on material from pre-Exilic times but was actually written down by a single author, the Deuteronomist, in the age of Babylonian exile, the mid-sixth century BCE. So, in this parasha, when the Deuteronomist describes the blessings that will rain down on the children of Israel as they enter the promised land, he also knows that exile is in their future, and he describes this as well with a passage beginning, “Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.” (28:16).</blockquote><br />
Predicting the past is easy. Telling the future<br />
from further ahead, the Deuteronomist,<br />
sees clearly how the wheel will turn towards woe. <br />
The kneading bowl, once brimming with yeasty life, <br />
lies empty; the city with its proud towers <br />
is disassembled stone by holy stone;<br />
and every male body, the mark of the covenant <br />
etched into it, bursts out in scales and boils. <br />
So, the moment of entry into the land—<br />
promised, longed for, glad—is tinged for us<br />
by knowing what comes later: how the people,<br />
heads bared, trudged into captivity<br />
behind the captured vessels from the Temple <br />
they had yet to build. There were good years, <br />
when all the bees made honey, and sheep,<br />
descendents of the flock brought out of Egypt,<br />
gave milk. Blessings, curses; blessings, curses:<br />
what other word for this than history?Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-59256396315083170622010-08-20T10:01:00.000-07:002010-08-20T12:18:22.284-07:00A Trick of Memory<blockquote>This parasha contains one of my favorite lines of Torah: "You shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven—you shall not forget" (Deuteronomy 25:19). During the Exodus, the Amalekites attacked the Israelites,"smiting the hindmost, all that were feeble behind"(1 Samuel 15:2).</blockquote><br />
Mostly, we’re supposed to remember:<br />
the Sabbath day to keep it holy—<br />
our tiny lights and our libations<br />
rescuing that sundown from resemblance<br />
to every other dusk—and all <br />
613 commandments, we remember<br />
when we see the periwinkle fringes <br />
of our prayer shawls like string <br />
around a finger, like “Every good boy <br />
does fine.” We remember we were slaves<br />
and how G-d freed us with a mighty hand,<br />
with Technicolor signs and wonders: <br />
blood red sea, green frogs, black night. <br />
We even must remember to forget<br />
like the magician transmogrifying<br />
lead to gold by stirring the pot <br />
without once thinking, “hippopotamus.” <br />
So we blot out the memory of Amalek,<br />
the warriors like carion crow, ravening <br />
among the stragglers, their black caftans<br />
flying in the wind, the points of their spears <br />
like beaks. We work so hard forgetting, <br />
remembering becomes the heart of who we are.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-58252485584216828752010-08-12T17:00:00.000-07:002010-08-12T17:00:00.810-07:00For the Berkeley Tree Sitters<blockquote>When Moses instructs the Israelites about besieging a city, he warns them not to cut down the city’s fruit trees. He asks, “Are the trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?” (Deuteronomy 20:19) The sense seems to be that the trees can neither defend themselves nor be hostile, and are therefore <i>hors de combat.</i> When I was working on this portion, a group of tree sitters who had been encamped in a grove of oaks on the UC-Berkeley campus, were forced to come down. They had been protesting the university’s plan to clear the trees for an expansion of the football stadium. </blockquote><br />
The last of the trees’ defenders descend from the crown<br />
like australopithecines testing the feel of the earth<br />
on their delicate soles. Twenty-one months, they nested<br />
in the crotches, draping the limbs with bracelets of rope,<br />
assembling their hideaways over the knees, where the trunks<br />
bent abruptly, searching for light. On their perch,<br />
even the eating of energy bars, the layers<br />
of garb became a dumb show, their every gesture <br />
intended to sing: We are no more important than oaks. <br />
In the end, interposing the body, frail as a bud,<br />
between the keen blade and the heartwood seems silly,<br />
outlandish as much as it’s brave. Still, who will defend<br />
the trees of the field with the sitters besieged and brought down?Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-14618913735317950822010-08-04T14:07:00.000-07:002010-08-04T14:07:25.727-07:00My Idea of Heaven<blockquote>When the people cross over the Jordan, G-d decrees, “You are not to do—according to all that we are doing here today—each-man whatever is right in his (own) eyes” (Deuteronomy 12:8); in other words, the people will no longer be free to pray wherever and however they like. Instead, the Israelites will be required to make their sacrifices only where G-d “chooses to have his name dwell” (12:11)—at a central sanctuary. From the first moment, the promised land is not at all about license but about the yoke of commandment.</blockquote><br />
This is what the promised land will be:<br />
the old joke, where hell’s a conga party,<br />
and heaven, five old men twirling their payes <br />
while they read the Mishneh-Torah, nibbling <br />
an occasional bite of tuna on rye.<br />
It’s what we want to want—sacrifices<br />
offered as prescribed, on the altar, <br />
not the high places where strange gods, <br />
toppled in our conquest, may yet reach out <br />
their marble arms and grab us at our feasts.<br />
What we really want is simpler: meat<br />
brought down with spears and roasted on a spit;<br />
the thwack of chests, their meeting greased with sweat,<br />
the abandon of alien fire. What we gain,<br />
choosing among the beasts of the field only<br />
those that ruminate; among the men,<br />
those that bear the scar of covenant;<br />
among the many gods, the One—just that:<br />
In lives bounded on one side by birth <br />
and on the other by a sentence, we choose.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-8576298518243642522010-07-28T09:12:00.000-07:002010-07-28T09:12:50.108-07:00Bless This House<blockquote>With the people nearing the promised land, God predicts, “When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8: 12-14). Here, I try not to forget.</blockquote><br />
O Lord, our dwelling place in every generation, bless, too, this house, its balustrades and finials, the frayed couch and curly maple table. Flood it with Your light, flowing over the gold bowl, the Imari plate. May it be Your will to visit this kitchen where the lemons pickle and the scent of yeast transforms from ferment to bread. Consecrate the beds—the trundle where our daughter tosses away her comforter, sleeping open to Your will; the mattress that our son outgrew, his feet poking beyond the blanket; our bower, where embrace outlives its evolutionary purposes. Let no fear ascend the stone steps, past the carnations in their clay boxes. Bestow abundant holiness upon the roses, upon the patio, upon the gravel paths. Allow peace—which is everything we’ve known here—to be all we ever need to know.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-86226704025908071622010-07-20T20:18:00.000-07:002010-07-20T20:19:43.373-07:00The Sin of Moses<blockquote>One of my most poignant memories is standing on the top of Mt. Nebo, in Jordan, where Moses died. Behind me was the dry, endlessly repeating “wilderness”; ahead, the first glimpse of water and the life that springs up around it--the Promised Land. What, I couldn’t help wondering, could Moses have done to deserve the cruel half-granting of his request to G-d: “Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan” (Deuteronomy 3:25).</blockquote><br />
The children of Yocheved and Amram*<br />
are wearing out--too many years of lifting<br />
the people’s spirits with a dance or a well,<br />
approaching on their behalf the blinding fire<br />
of Adoshem*, suffering their whining.<br />
Miriam goes first, buried without fanfare,<br />
as though she simply gave out, a spring gone dry,<br />
leaving them without water. Then Aaron—<br />
his vestments stripped like shorn epaulets—<br />
is left by son and brother on Mt. Hor.<br />
And though he lives, Moses learns his sentence:<br />
to gaze across the Jordan, its green banks shocking<br />
after so much sand, and breathe his last,<br />
like in a fable, granted only the half<br />
of his wish he meant as metaphor--to see,<br />
but not cross over. G-d could always cite<br />
a reason, having made them out of dust,<br />
to find them undeserving: striking a rock,<br />
smelting a calf, claiming a prophet’s mantle—<br />
one was as flimsy as another. If death<br />
is punishment, no one is innocent.<br />
<br />
*The parents of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam<br />
*A respectful term for G-d, which avoids saying the name used in prayerMiriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-40725600431218898042010-07-13T22:30:00.000-07:002010-07-13T22:30:36.621-07:00D'varim: Words<blockquote>The Book of Deuteronomy is called D’varim, or Words in Hebrew, referring to the “words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan” (1:1). In the book, Moses reiterates the Israelites’ history, as well as reviewing various laws. But there are significant variations between the version presented here and the one in the earlier books. </blockquote><br />
<i>To my daughter, going off to college</i><br />
<br />
My chronicle diverges in important ways<br />
from received wisdom, just as the words<br />
Moses addressed to Israel don’t match<br />
the previous account. Whatever tradition<br />
is handed to us, we must modify,<br />
as an actor speaks the dialogue that’s written,<br />
but means “to be or not to be” filtered<br />
through her encounter with a father’s death,<br />
a mother’s shortcomings. So I begin<br />
to catalog your journey to this point<br />
where you and I part ways, and only you<br />
may cross over into the promised land.<br />
You believe you started under these palms.<br />
But as you sculpted your own heart-shaped face,<br />
your small frame from fragments of your father<br />
and me, you carry the ways we have adapted<br />
to the long journey from Sinai. Our people<br />
wove woolen blankets for Graf Pototsky’s sleigh,<br />
deciphered secret meaning in the quotient<br />
of the Hebrew letters for G-d’s name,<br />
made sacramental wine on the cold hillsides <br />
of Geneva, Ohio, nearly flamed out <br />
in the ovens of Birkenau. Take up this story,<br />
which will sometimes be a burden to you;<br />
tell it now in your own words.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-62593281309650065492010-07-09T17:59:00.000-07:002010-07-09T17:59:48.559-07:00Matot/MasseiDouble Portion this week<br />
<br />
<b>All My Vows</b> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>The Torah and subsequent rabbinic commentaries are very uneasy about vows. These are not the promises we make to each other or our intention to follow the law, but rather added obligations a person might take on—in the Bible, typically abstention from wine, sex, foods, bathing, or haircutting. Once such a vow is taken, it becomes a sin not to fulfill it. On the evening of Yom Kippur, Jews recite the prayer Kol Nidre, which means All My Vows. In that prayer, we ask for dispensation from unfulfilled vows of this type. In Numbers, a husband is given power over his wife’s vows: “Every vow and every sworn obligation of self-denial may be upheld by her husband or annulled by her husband” (30:15).</blockquote><br />
Open my womb, and I will give<br />
its first fruits to the Lord,<br />
as if my child were meat or bread.<br />
Spare the ones I love from death;<br />
I’ll cut my hair, abstain from wine, <br />
from raisins, grapes, and, vinegar.<br />
Bring winter rain in its due season,<br />
and I will sing a song of praise<br />
each morning though the ice be hard<br />
upon the pavement, the wool scarf<br />
wet with breath. Send peace to the land,<br />
and I will sacrifice a sheaf<br />
of paper, a record of my life.<br />
These are my promises to G-d,<br />
and I am free as any bird<br />
to enter into or betray them.<br />
Upheld or overruled, my vows,<br />
which I have vowed, I do repent.<br />
They are meaningless as words.<br />
<br />
<b>Promised Land </b><br />
<blockquote>In the final chapter of Numbers, we get a preview of the mercilessness that the Israelites will be expected to practice toward the tribes that reside in the promised land. “When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land” (33:51-52).</blockquote><br />
It’s the unapologetic ruthlessness <br />
that makes us queasy, believing that, for once, <br />
they did as they were told without murmuring, <br />
inserted themselves in the abandoned cities <br />
of their enemies, with no more scruple <br />
than cowbirds laying their eggs in an alien nest. <br />
We must believe that it was right; the text says <br />
G-d required it, and we can glean some reason<br />
in what they are commanded to destroy:<br />
altars and idols, the toys of trifling deities, <br />
excuses to perform a vulgar act,<br />
then lay it, like the sacrifice of entrails,<br />
at the feet of gods. Or did they hear <br />
their G-d decree what they desired? A patch <br />
to claim where they might build sheepfolds<br />
for their flocks, shelter for their children;<br />
a land they might dole out with perfect fairness—<br />
to the many, more; to the small, enough—<br />
in perpetuity. Was it too much to ask?Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-63857487841254693172010-07-01T22:28:00.000-07:002010-07-01T22:28:11.681-07:00What I Had Hoped<blockquote>A second census in the book of Numbers, taken after yet another rebellion and its punitive aftermath, finds that there is not one person remaining from the original group who left Egypt. In theory, that might have meant that the people who crossed over into the promised land would not make the mistakes of their parents. But, of course, that’s not what happened.</blockquote><br />
<i>for my son</i><br />
<br />
If I could send you into the promised land, <br />
as you were the instant you revealed<br />
through some complex cascade of signaling<br />
that you were ready to come into this world,<br />
you might be free; you might encounter G-d<br />
uninflected by the long whine<br />
of adult disappointment. But once you started<br />
down the birth canal, the limits of me<br />
began to mold you. Your head, misshapen for days<br />
after that journey, filled with the lullabies<br />
I remember my own mother sang on the banks<br />
of the Nile; you ate what my body could concoct<br />
from manna and briny water. I did what I knew;<br />
it was not enough to enter Canaan.<br />
My love for you is boundless as the sea,<br />
but I am human, standing on the shore;<br />
to G-d, the sea is water in a tub,<br />
and upbringing, a stain spreading through it.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-41816976911856481442010-06-23T11:20:00.000-07:002010-06-23T11:20:15.534-07:00How Beautiful<blockquote>Balak, the king of Moab, is none too pleased when the wandering Israelites camp on the steppes of his kingdom. He sends the prophet Balaam to curse them. But on Balaam’s way to deliver these imprecations, his donkey keeps balking because, unlike his human rider, the donkey catches sight of “the angel of the Lord standing in the way” (Numbers 22:23). Finally, God allows the donkey to speak—the only instance of an animal talking in the Hebrew Bible. When Balaam finally listens, he, too, is able to see and hear the divine messenger. When he reaches the Israelite encampment, instead of cursing, he marvels, “How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!” (24:5)</blockquote><br />
We’re old friends, my friend’s dog and I,<br />
from years of walking, or in her case, darting<br />
after squirrels, deciphering a message<br />
in the stink of marked bushes, lapping at a ditch <br />
after the morning sprinklers have done their work. <br />
Sometimes the leash goes slack; bred to herd<br />
and anxious that I lag, she drops back<br />
harrying me till I rejoin the flock.<br />
When I let her lead, the sights and scents<br />
of the world beneath my feet reveal themselves:<br />
Behind the hedge, a tomcat raises his hackles;<br />
the smell of newly planted salvia<br />
competes with the pleasing odor of roast meat. <br />
Perhaps an angel stands in my way, ready<br />
to show me how the world is full of blessings.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-86563601339281577282010-06-15T19:00:00.000-07:002010-06-15T19:00:46.339-07:00Bitter<blockquote>Miriam dies in this week's portion, in a single sentence sandwiched between the laws of purity and the incident at Meribah, where G-d instructs Moses to "tell the rock" to yield its water, and he strikes it instead, resulting in G-d's refusal to let him enter into the Promised Land. Not surprisingly, I've always felt a kinship with Miriam and no small resentment that she often seems to get the short end of the stick. Her very name means "bitter."</blockquote><br />
My mother, placid, lucid, already gray,<br />
considered—between the moment of quickening <br />
and my emergence into the harsh light<br />
of Labor and Delivery—if pressed<br />
to name me for my father’s long-dead aunt, <br />
at least she’d add fillip of romance:<br />
Miriamne, like the heroine<br />
in <i>Winterset</i>. She settled for the Bible,<br />
ignoring the root—<i>marah</i>—so I am bitter, <br />
reading the story of my namesake, a prophet <br />
who wasn't even gathered to her kin;<br />
whose greatest gift was to repeat in dance<br />
whatever her favored younger brother said; <br />
whose punishment was to be rimed with scales <br />
for the utter chutzpah of her claim<br />
to speak with G-d, as still I try to do.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-61439878639432771582010-06-09T09:31:00.000-07:002010-06-09T09:31:19.136-07:00The Covenant of Salt<blockquote>G-d promises Aaron and the tribe of Levi that they and their children will receive all of the tithes for their own sustenance, ending with the declaration, ”It is a covenant of salt for the ages” (Leviticus 18:19). Commentators point to the permanence of salt and to its preservative qualities to explain this phrase, although it's still a homely substance for G-d to swear by. </blockquote><br />
It is no covenant of gold, <br />
malleable, valuable<br />
only insofar as we ascribe <br />
value to the sparkly. <br />
The Egyptians called all gold divine, <br />
worshipped it as they did Ra, <br />
the sun god, flashing<br />
in the pitiless blue,<br />
but we don’t swear by shiny.<br />
<br />
It is no covenant of amethyst,<br />
building its lavender chambers<br />
in the heart of hollow rock.<br />
The Greeks said Bacchus wept<br />
drops of wine to see a maiden<br />
metamorphose into boulder,<br />
and so transformed the stone<br />
to purple crystal. We do not swear<br />
by what is changeable. <br />
<br />
<br />
Ours is a covenant of salt—<br />
plain, useful, dangerous—<br />
to spice a dish of lentils<br />
or ruin the field that grew them.<br />
We might exchange some grains,<br />
knowing one crystal is like the next, <br />
and we will never cull <br />
our neighbor’s from our own<br />
once they are mixed in the pouch.<br />
<br />
So the bond we make<br />
is inextricable. We swear by salt.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-87149416026947904552010-06-03T19:21:00.000-07:002010-06-03T19:21:57.451-07:00Sacrifice<blockquote>“When you enter the land to which I am taking you and you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set some aside as a gift to the Lord” (15:18—9). The bread Jews traditionally eat on the Sabbath, challah, is named for this portion, which the ancient Israelites were required to separate from their dough and give to the priests as a “heave offering.” Separating challah is one of three commandments specifically enjoined on women; when making bread, it is traditional to remove a small piece of dough and throw it in the oven in memory of this sacrifice.</blockquote><br />
The loaf is still alive when I pinch off<br />
the offering: a mite of yeast, egg, and flour.<br />
This, I roll and char to a black nub<br />
only to discard, though bones and peels<br />
seem unseemly company for bread<br />
that You require. Or is waste a part<br />
of sacrifice? We say, “I forswear <br />
the first fruits, the unblemished calf,”<br />
commit them to the priests or to their fires.<br />
“Sweet savor,” “satisfying aroma”—<br />
what might these translations of the offering <br />
mean to One who has no nose? Just this:<br />
There is no virtue in letting go of things<br />
we do not love. Once I thought this deed—<br />
“challah,” the memory of immolation—<br />
was better than what Abraham performed,<br />
jollying his son up Mt. Moriah. <br />
They are one gesture. Approaching the divine,<br />
we’re lesser dogs scrunched down before the Alpha. <br />
This must be what You want, acknowledgment <br />
that though we bake and strew with poppy seeds, <br />
the bread is ours only by sufferance. <br />
So, my shiny loaves, my only son—<br />
everything is on the table, and You<br />
may eat them, though I pray that this black token—<br />
the rabbis say the size of a single olive—<br />
appeases the hunger You aren’t supposed to feel.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-39247561792158992802010-05-25T19:09:00.000-07:002010-05-25T19:09:00.322-07:00Murmuring<blockquote>When I read, as we do this week, about the unremitting complaints (sometimes translated as “murmuring”) coming from the children of Israel, I’m perplexed. G-d dwelled with them. He was a friendly cloud by day, taking the edge off the scorching sun, and a fire by night to ward off the wild animals. He fed them manna and found them water. What’s to complain? But then, even here, in comfortable California, I can find plenty to murmur about.</blockquote><br />
Start at the bottom, where the aesthetics are bad enough:<br />
Toenails are talons beneath the pathetic polish;<br />
bunions excresce from the joints like galls on oak. <br />
And G-d forbid a woman should yearn for stilettos—<br />
the toes rebel, screaming all night like babies <br />
frantic to be fed. The knees revolt <br />
(alas, in both senses of the word), <br />
the thighs rise up in anger at the stairs.<br />
Forget the traitor stomach, churning over chocolate;<br />
the shoulders, sweltering; the elbows, shot.<br />
Worst is the head: Dawn starts the eyes to singing, <br />
like morning birds, their exquisite notes <br />
of pain, until by evening, they have hummed<br />
whole arias of parchedness and weeping. <br />
The nose grows; the skin darkens. The brain, <br />
which cannot find a word, a key, the face <br />
of my mother as woman my age,<br />
remembers all its petty grievances <br />
and whines in front of G-d and everyone.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-83137208537296887472010-05-19T21:21:00.000-07:002010-05-19T21:21:13.907-07:00Standing Before the Lord<blockquote><i>Sotah</i>, sometimes translated as the Ordeal of Bitter Water, is one of the strangest (and most misogynistic) rituals in the Hebrew Bible. It was invoked when a husband was overcome by a “fit of jealousy” although he had no evidence that his wife had been unfaithful. According to this law, the wife was forced to ”stand before the Lord” (Numbers 5:30); that is to come before the high priest. He would concoct a potion of holy water, dirt from the Tabernacle floor, and written curses containing God’s name, which had been dissolved into the water. The accused would be forced to drink this brew, and if it made her ill, (according to some commentators, if it made her miscarry) she was considered guilty. If not, she was allowed to ”bear seed.” </blockquote><br />
My mother, may she rest in peace,<br />
always muttered, “You can tell <br />
who wrote the book.” The men accuse; <br />
the women have to stand for it. <br />
You’ve let your distrust grow, a plant <br />
in a dark place, rangy and fruitless. <br />
What time had I for treachery?<br />
I owe my hours to the grindstone,<br />
the child on my back, or throwing the weft <br />
across the loom: blue, white, blue.<br />
It’s you who trek into the hills<br />
for nights on end, herding the sheep, <br />
or so you say. Jealousy <br />
may be a fit for me as well. <br />
I see how Elisheva’s gaze <br />
follows when you leave the camp<br />
warbling on your fine <i>khalil</i>.* <br />
I hear her purr the same refrain<br />
when we gather by the well.<br />
Whatever you make me do this day—<br />
bare my head, touch the offering,<br />
drink the water of bitterness—<br />
if you have pledged to her, I swear,<br />
I’ll grind your oath to bitter meal;<br />
you’ll eat your words, and I will cry<br />
Amen, Amen.<br />
<br />
*a fluteMiriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-3674871406594407682010-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:002010-05-11T22:35:40.255-07:00Numerology<blockquote>The book of Numbers begins with another census. All of the men, we are told, number 603,550 (Numbers 1:46). Or at least that’s the translation if <i>elef</i> means one thousand, as it does in modern Hebrew. This is unlikely, given the forbidding terrain through which they traveled. The wilderness would have had to support at least four times that figure to include the Hebrew wives and children—not to mention the hostile tribes they encountered over the 40 years of wandering. More probably, scholars believe, <i>elef</i> was some kinship group of uncertain size.</blockquote><br />
So much has changed since the people pulled up stakes<br />
and marched away from Sinai—Temples built <br />
and sacked; <i>Kohanim</i>, who touched the Ark <br />
and lived, reduced to neighbors, who for one instant,<br />
cover their heads with prayer shawls and convert<br />
on Yom Kippur to priests, claiming once more<br />
the power to bless us*. Is there not one constant <br />
we can carry forward, the remainder <br />
in a complex sum? No, even numbers<br />
must evolve. Six hundred thousand men?<br />
The land, promised or merely slogged across, <br />
could not support them. So we learn, their thousand <br />
is not like ours, no more than is their G-d.<br />
<br />
<i>* The ritual referred to is the Birkat HaKohanim, the priestly blessing. On Yom Kippur, all those who are descendents of the priestly class, or Kohanim, cover their faces with their prayer shawls, ascend the altar, and offer the traditional blessing, “May the Lord bless you and keep you…” </i>Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-30309328257344008502010-05-06T19:12:00.000-07:002010-05-06T19:12:46.626-07:00The Lord is My Shepherd<blockquote>Another double portion this week. This one introduces the idea of the tithe; that is, the duty to give a tenth of what we have to G-d (or to the priests). When a shepherd tithes, he is not to discriminate, either by setting aside the worst or best for his offering: “Of all that passes under the shepherd's staff, every tenth one shall be holy to the Lord. He must not look out for good as against bad, or make substitution for it” (Leviticus 27:32-33).</blockquote><br />
The shepherd trails the stragglers through the scrub<br />
where they have strayed looking for a shoot, <br />
a nubbin of clover. These sheep have been his charge<br />
since his father culled them from the flock, <br />
and lonely in the nights with only a stone <br />
for pillow, he laid his head on the warm wool <br />
of a lamb and drew his cloak across them both. <br />
Now he must pass the sheep beneath his crook <br />
and, willy-nilly, sequester every tenth<br />
for sacrifice. He must not spare the good,<br />
but like G-d descend upon these creatures<br />
for reasons they would never understand.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-42728667623797681682010-05-05T19:26:00.000-07:002010-05-05T19:26:26.013-07:00B'Har: At the Mountain<blockquote>Suddenly, at the beginning of parashat B’Har (At the Mountain), G-d begins speaking to Moses “on Mount Sinai,” not, as He had been doing since the beginning of the book, from the Tent of Meeting. Many scholars believe that this chapter is interpolated from a different version and that locating G-d on Mount Sinai is meant to emphasize the importance of what follows. </blockquote><i>for my husband</i><br />
<br />
As the mountain is purely background,<br />
part of the story insofar <br />
as everything important happens <br />
against it, so you are here<br />
in this manual for priests: <br />
Do this. Do that. There is no love<br />
amid the unadorned decrees.<br />
And yet, this week as I have studied<br />
“At the Mountain,” I’ve seen your face<br />
behind the words, not because<br />
they have the slightest thing to do<br />
with you, the man whose beard, whose lips,<br />
whose gray-green eyes are the last things<br />
I’ve looked into for twenty years<br />
before sleep overtakes me<br />
but because you are the ground<br />
against which every story unfolds.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-36216341631394377122010-04-28T20:00:00.000-07:002010-04-28T20:00:13.331-07:00Fixed Times<blockquote>This week’s parasha includes an enumeration of holidays: “These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (Leviticus 23:2). But because Jewish holidays are lunar, they actually move around the Roman calendar. If we adhered strictly to the lunar system, the holidays would eventually become disconnected from what they celebrate. Succoth, a harvest holiday, might end up in the winter; Passover, with its symbols of rebirth, might migrate to September. To correct this problem, once every four years, the Jewish calendar adds a leap month.</blockquote><br />
Every leap year, we lasso the wandering feasts—<br />
Succoth, which strays too far into the rain,<br />
the palm fronds dripping on the challah, returns<br />
to harvest time. Shavuoth replants its roots <br />
in June. Pesach, wrenched from Easter Sunday<br />
at its birth, returns to nodding acquaintance <br />
with its old twin. The Days of Awe blast us, <br />
once more, with heat, our dresses stained with sweat,<br />
as if to remind us that for a people wandering<br />
in the desert, G-d required fixed times. <br />
We do not come from temperate lands or Lords.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-36396119915517887382010-04-22T19:17:00.000-07:002010-04-22T19:18:31.371-07:00My Father's Kingdom<blockquote>At the dead center of Torah, midway between Genesis 1 and Deuteronomy 34, comes a group of disparate laws sometimes called the “Holiness Code.” The second of this week's portions, K’doshim, or Holiness, begins by enjoining the whole Israelite community: “You shall be holy, for I, your G-d, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1). How do we accomplish this? The first rule is to revere our parents.</blockquote><br />
My father could fix anything. The aunts came in procession,<br />
bearing vacuums, beaters, toasters, fans, and he laid hands<br />
upon appliances until they rose up from the dead.<br />
He tightened sprockets, straightened spokes; the bike wheels hummed<br />
the music of the spheres and all their orbits aligned. <br />
He fashioned blazons out of copper salvage, reliquaries<br />
from balsa boxes, still redolent of his cigars; we filled them<br />
with river stones, cicada shells, white cowries he brought back<br />
from some great service rendered to the nation in a far-off place—<br />
each object sacred because he taught us how to notice it.<br />
His bed was high; most weekdays, he descended in a cloud<br />
of talc before we woke, went off to pace the girders, riveting<br />
the I-beams that delimited the corners of our world.<br />
But Sabbath mornings, we could visit him, plump his throne <br />
of pillows, cluster at his feet. We cherubs, whom he lifted <br />
in ecstatic somersaults and pirouettes, we worshipped him.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-83225253161360748212010-04-21T20:42:00.000-07:002010-04-21T20:42:13.933-07:00Goat in the Wilderness<blockquote>The origin of the "scapegoat" can be found in this week's parasha. In Levitus 16:21, Aaron confesses all of the peoples' sins "on the head of a goat." The animal is then set free in the wilderness. As I tried to picture this ritual, I realized that the Bible is very stingy with description.</blockquote><br />
There goat is in the text, but no scrub.<br />
No creosote bush clings to the crust of the dunes.<br />
No pale crag martin nests in the cliffs. No cliffs,<br />
orange, gray, or parched. No darkling beetle<br />
with the scavenged barley from their sacks<br />
scuttles like a thief across their path.<br />
No metaphor of any kind. Their eyes<br />
can’t make connections in this wilderness,<br />
which is not like Egypt. They sigh for leeks, <br />
for fish, while a G-d they hardly know<br />
speaks his sentences: “Do not uncover."<br />
"Do not lie down.” It is an abstract world<br />
they will inherit: a Land they’ll never reach,<br />
a holy word, a G-d who turns the face <br />
He does not have toward them and away.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112141361297871592.post-86745087327046945692010-04-12T21:58:00.000-07:002010-04-12T21:59:36.121-07:00Tazria-M'Tzora<i>A two-fer today, as we read a double portion this week (and I fly off to Washington tomorrow). Both portions deal with the duties of the priests, who were responsible not only for the purity of the sacrifices but also for the purity of the camp. </i><br />
<br />
<b>In the Emergency Room</b><br />
<blockquote>One function of the priests was to check people afflicted with various communicable diseases and sequester those who might pose a danger of infection. The passage reminded me of a trip to the emergency room, where the doctors' insistent questions can have the same incantatory quality as these priestly examinations: "If the priest sees that the eruption has covered the whole body — he shall pronounce the affected person clean; he is clean, for he has turned all white. But as soon as undiscolored flesh appears in it, he shall be unclean; when the priest sees the undiscolored flesh, he shall pronounce him unclean. The undiscolored flesh is unclean; it is leprosy. But if the undiscolored flesh again turns white, he shall come to the priest, and the priest shall examine him: if the affection has turned white, the priest shall pronounce the affected person clean; he is clean" (Leviticus 13:13-17).</blockquote>Are you having any pain in your arm, in your chest, in your heart?<br />
Is there tingling in your hand, in your shoulder if you twist toward your back?<br />
Can you breathe when you lie down, when you rise up, and when you walk?<br />
On a scale of one to ten, is your pain like the breaking of a rod on a rock?<br />
On the treadmill, do you trudge like a woman climbing stairs<br />
with their tops in the sky? Do you sense the plasma pound in your veins<br />
as the cuff constricts your arm like the fingers of a demon? Is the pattern<br />
on the screen of your breathing and your heart, prophetic as a screed<br />
on the evils of your youth? If the enzymes in your blood betray damage<br />
to your core, can you live outside the camp of the hearty and the well?<br />
<br />
<b>Plague House</b><br />
<blockquote>One of the afflictions the priests checked for, sometimes translated as leprosy, was a kind of lesion that might appear on a person, a fabric, or the wall of a house. It was the duty of the householder to report potential infection with the odd locution, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house” (14:35). But according to the Talmud, "The house affected by the plague never existed and is not destined to exist. It was stated for the purpose of edification" (Sanhedren 71a).</blockquote>This house, with green and reddish veins<br />
that spread through the grout like sepsis<br />
streaking from a lesion to the heart,<br />
does not exist and never has,<br />
the rabbis say. Why <br />
of all the implausible stories—<br />
talking asses, parting seas—<br />
should this wall blossom<br />
into parable? Deconstructing<br />
the erupting house, stone<br />
by imaginary stone,<br />
carrying the abstract debris<br />
to an unclean place outside the city<br />
that will come to be inside<br />
the Land, we learn that what is hard—<br />
plaster, rock, timber, plague—<br />
is a kind of language, pointing<br />
to something realer than we know.Miriam Flockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00311176877332346087noreply@blogger.com0