Sailing from my Grandparents’ Synagogue
I
Wholly unprepared,
the small boy stands at the threshold
of a red sea crossing
between regimented rows
of unregimented Jews
in musty theatre seats,
dressed in festival best,
appearing to see and be seen.
In the center of the sea in a floating box
sit The Officers in Pompous Top-Hats.
Behind the detached box, Mount Sinai rises;
atop the bimah, a snowy-robed Moses—
an odd pompom wobbling on his hoary hat—
intoning intently in improbable tones,
gaze fixed heavenward, rapt.
Lighting the celestial heights,
a tidy line of luminous nebulas
twinkle among dangling crystal globules.
Modestly secreted about the stratosphere,
elegant painted ladies prating in soaring galleries.
From the choir loft, angelic voices float gently
down, heavenly feathers titillating somnolent souls.
Flanking the Holy Ark, a ruffling pair of great copper wings,
(strangely like dismembered pterodactyl trophies, the boy thinks)
tokens of menacing matching cherubs brandishing blazing blades,
guarding Eden’s Gate, barring banished Adam’s passage
to the Way of the Tree of Life
Whose Mystery beckons behind the blue velvet veil.
O how the impatient boy longs to flee the theater,
the Pompous Top-Hats, the pompom, the painted prating ladies,
and throw open the curtain
and expose the Secret, and run recklessly amuck
down the uncharted way to Who, Why and What.
But to Life’s mysteries there is no shortcut.
Heeding the dreadful cherubs, downcast yet inspired,
the boy embarks on the exile redemption requires.
.
II
Outside, cold night spreads
across the valley like the shadow of death,
the death of another day,
unlamented by unrepentant killers,
the careless killers ever oblivious
that the doomed dead day was theirs.
In the windows of the cells
that pock the crags of the concrete canyon,
the dark light flickers; acolytes absorb the oracle’s subtle programs:
(Think this) (Feel this) (Value this) (Need this) (Purchase this)
(Beautiful) (Ugly) (Idolize) (Despise)
(Relegate) (Prioritize)
(Good) (Evil)
(Subscribe, satisfaction certified!)
Down below, shiny soulless shoals stream endlessly
in dry flumes, sullying the valley with blare and fumes.
Along the sidewalks, the shackled huddled masses tread,
dying to live, dry bones of the living dead,
blind to the stars and the quiet light within,
rashly chasing the flashing neon lodestar
of desolate souls’ never-never nirvana.
In a trance they dance about the cusp of the abyss,
pursuing amusements, fleeing the creeping crisis,
craving stimulus after dulled stimulus to affirm a dubious existence.
Delights soon tire, fashions swiftly shift,
yesterday’s delicacies today’s feces,
matter crumbles, fleshy things scab and sag and wrinkle and rot.
The day fades. The shell cracks. The abyss sucks.
Lies and crushed life drain, all that remains:
a waning shadow of hollow pain.
Vanity of vanities, all is vain!
.
III
In the valley’s shadows the small boy grows.
Whispering, hissing, howling winds taunt,
haunting the perplexing winding alleyways,
a glossy windowed maze of tricky mirrors showing
what they deem you ought to be, or what you’re taught to be,
but what you will never see is reality.
The gap in-between snaps your equanimity.
Watching parched wretches madly suck the mirage’s sand,
the baffled boy tries to unpick the twists of bliss and
torture tethering tormented fellow travelers.
Desperately needing to flee that pathless wasteland,
no horizon, no signs, no map, no compass in hand,
he seeks antique wisdom, or an erudite old man.
In a shaft of light, he sights an old book, and a sage,
he obtains a key to unlock the vexatious cage.
He learns to discern the lies, to avoid the decoys.
Like launching to a distant galaxy, Truth’s odyssey
begins by breaking free of earthy gravity.
Turn from the dark light dancing in the dismal cells,
drawing frenzied moth-Man to its artful fatal flame.
In the gloom, seek the stars, as far as they may seem.
Struggle to grasp the endless light behind the night.
When you succeed, you’ll find the quiet light inside.
.
IV
Everyman’s heart holds a hole deep and dark,
unbounded, unexplored, disregarded.
Its voracious vortex moves mindless man
to mitigate the mystical maelstrom,
to seek a rock, a font, a champion,
a potency to stop the cavity.
Weak wooden manikin seeks relief
in identity, polity, or celebrity.
The narcissist works to wad the void
with a self, swollen and illusory.
Endless pleasures and instant fixes fail
to fill the hedonist’s ravenous nexus.
Substance cannot stuff an abstract emptiness.
Infinite as space gapes the gulf from self to Perfection.
This abyss is the swelling source of the soul’s distraction.
A lonely exile languishing in an alien land,
longing for lost Shangri-la, Soul’s lingering reveries
crash into cold concrete container’s callous barricades.
With no way to escape the maze other than play the game,
Soul must purchase redemption in cold concrete currency.
.
V
Inchoate embryonic notions coalesce in an abstract womb.
In a still squall,
a brimming heart spills black blood from a poet’s quill.
In bursting squiggles furious lines curl and coil, twisting letters fuse,
choice new words crowd tight verses
basking in vast ambient blank spaces.
The nascent scribbled song lies silent on the delivery table
awaiting a redeeming reader to discover bursting color
latent beneath the perceptible prosaic black-and-white cover.
Amassed floating notions and flickering images form grist for a
poet’s curious wit. An inquiring man of spirit, likewise, tries
to find ideals that hide in an unlikely sensual setting,
collecting samples of inert, vegetal, and animate matter.
Skillfully securing severed smoothed sticks and hewn dressed stones,
knitting worked-wool and goats’ hair and linen coverings,
coated in animal-emptied hides,
adorned with gold, silver, and copper, mined and refined;
with hand and mind, he strives to rebuild a temporal, amoral world.
With concrete elements he weaves a divine poem, a humble ode
to a Majesty, transcendent, yet immanently hidden in view
of fleshy eyes that need to seek the source and potentiality
of their owner’s majesty, lapsed in a spasm of impetuosity.
Sensing mysterious Majesty, ensuing fealty and self-
mastery sate the soul’s boundless hole, restoring mislaid majesty.
With consecrated space defined,
time enshrined,
and substance sanctified,
with covenant and consequence, duty and trying mortality,
frail man is empowered with agency and responsibility
to transform inexorable fate into glorious destiny.
A vexatious mortal coil can be reframed, reshaped, remade,
redeemed.
Man’s elemental poem basks unseen in vast ambient blank spaces,
lingering in squandered time, awaiting keen redeeming readers
to release its contained radiance upon the waiting blankness.
.
VI
If adhering man will not release the concrete, redeem its symbols,
and let his soul float to the remote boundary of infinity –
sanctuaries, ceremonies, and pieties are mockeries.
If soaring steeples, sumptuous temples, and luminous hued windows
fail to inspire humility, awe of Infinity, a search for Divinity –
architectural artifices and cold leaden edifices fashion
only flamboyant monuments of narcissists’ self-adoration.
If in prayer man will not search the musty niches of his heart,
if eyes won’t well, nor throat swell with agonies and ecstasies,
if a soul won’t soar on the urgent wings of fervent yearning,
then preserved liturgical words emerge as stale air mindlessly
expired tenuous echoes of vacuous cultural gestures.
.
VII
The journey to the Way of the Tree of Life
starts in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
The trail is ever forked with fateful choices.
They’re truly only two whispering voices:
Impulse’s velvety purr promises pleasure,
and the squalor of mortal slavish compulsion;
Conscience’s quiet murmur chains and tames the beast
Man contains, releasing its acceding master;
the nobility of sacrifice and service,
and the surety of persistent purpose,
bequeathing him fitting kingly dignity.
Look beyond the Valley, its turmoil, its darkness and curses.
Lift your eyes to a gleaming Zion upon the mountain yonder,
where soaring earth and sweeping heaven embrace improbably.
Break the brittle shackles of inertia, blame and apology,
choose only life, blessings and eternity,
as you journey from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
to the far-off Tree of Life immortal.
With righteous deeds you can redeem
the scattered seeds of infinity
concealed in crude physicality.
In the end you’ll taste eternity,
the boundless ambrosial bounty,
ripe on Eden’s empyreal Tree.
.
. . . Baruch Price. . .
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
… from every person whose heart moves him you shall take My offering… gold and silver and copper; sky-blue, and purple, and scarlet wool, and fine linen, and goats’ hair; rams’ skins dyed red, and goats’ skins, and acacia wood; oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil, and for raising the smoke of the incense, gemstones… and they shall make for Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell in them.
Exodus 25:1-8
“And they shall make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell in them” – it is not written as one may expect, “that I may dwell in it (the sanctuary)” rather it states “that I may dwell in them” for the Divine does not wish to dwell in a tabernacle, but within human beings, if they are wholesome and worthy.
Commentary of Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh (Exodus ibid., Psalm 78)
Moses said before the Holy One, Blessed is He, “How can [the Tabernacle] be constructed by a human-being?”
[The Holy One, Blessed is He,] said to him, “Occupy yourself with its construction with your hand, and it will seem that you are setting it up, but it will rise by itself.”
This is the meaning of what is said (in the passive voice), (Exodus 40:17) “The Tabernacle was raised.”
Midrash Tanḥuma, Pikudei 11
Moses saw all the work and behold! They had done it as the Lord had commanded, so they had done; and Moses blessed them.
Exodus 39:43
And Moses blessed them -he said to them, “May the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands. ‘May the pleasantness of my Lord, our God, be upon us; and establish our handiwork for us, establish our handiwork.’”
Commentary of Rashi, ibidem, citing Psalms 90:17
