Vayeira

 בס״ד

Vayeira

Like Noach, Lot is loathe to leave,

Still the warning’s very clear,

Though society has become corrupt,

The unknown’s a greater fear.

Noach’s world, by water drowned,

Lot’s was burned by fire,

The tevah lands on Ararat,

Lot climbs a mountain, with his daughters.

The girls then get their father drunk,

They give him too much wine,

Noach drinks a bit too much,

Of the product of his vines.

An empty world must now be filled,

Maybe true, or just perception,

But, in the process, there’s a tragic flaw,

Of moral indiscretion.

Avraham Avinu left all he knew,

Unhampered by hesitation,

So unto him the lot does fall,

To launch a chosen nation.

Lech Lecha

 בס״ד

Lech Lecha

It seems to me, from Adam on,

There’s little time to rest,

Any place we feel at home,

Is temporary, at best.

Avram must leave his country,

A place where he is known,

And be uprooted from his birthplace,

The field where he was sown.

And last of all, his father’s house,

Though he’s the youngest son,

He could have lived a cushy life,

Out there in old Haran.

It’s no small thing to pull up roots,

But stability is an illusion,

Our fortunes are like a water wheel,

A flood of time allusion.

At mabul’s end, our land calls out,

Like Lech Lecha, above,

A place, at last, our foot to rest,

Like Noach’s ivory dove.

Noach

 בס״ד

Noach

The dor of Noach falls flat on it’s face,

Even the earth is corrupt,

The animals, too, except for the fish,

From whose depths the dark waters erupt.

From Ararat’s peak, to the plains of Shinar,

One could say that it’s downhill from there,

Boulders are scarce, so they kiln the red mud,

 A challenge of bricks scrapes the air.

Though mankind is scattered, a shimmer of hope,

Just a trickle from Ur Kasdim,

Once Avram ben Terach discovers The One,

No fiery furnace stops him.

Bereishis

 בס״ד

Bereishis

Tohu v’vohu

a vacuum, not empty,

but less than empty,

a false vacuum

From this the world began,

not with perfection,

but imperfection

fundamental to the fabric of nature

Imperfection

at the very heart of creation

essential, unavoidable

the seed crystal of existence

Our primordial parents, driven to slake

an emptiness that must never be sated

and in the attempt

bore new life

Every act of creation stems

from that singular event

when nothing, rendered less than nothing

produced everything

*see Thinking About Creation, by Dr. Andrew Goldfinger

Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah/V'zos HaBracha

 בס״ד

Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah/VZHB

It can’t be by chance that,

 With arba minim,

We seek to unite His name,

As His Torah we complete.

Yisroel’s la-med,

The beis of Bereishis,

Become one, in our joy,

Forming a lev shalem.

His people and His world,

One created for the other,

The marriage sealed,

With this loving embrace.

Only beis and la-med can join,

With the letters of the Shem Havaya,

To make entire words,

Mine, His, Hers.*

In the verbalization of Creation,

Beis opening, la-med closing,

At the behest of the One,

Who speaks.

* Kli Yakar

Sukkos

 בס״ד

Sukkos

Every season has its time,

It all happens by His will,

The world is neither yours nor mine,

Do all our efforts come to nil?

To find meaning I applied my mind,

But found existence way beyond me,

Madness, folly, just as blind,

How these questions weigh upon me.

“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery,

Inside of an enigma”,*

All existence, and all history,

We’re all at sea, so there’s no stigma.

Koheles sought but never found,

The key to heaven’s system,

But passed on to us his words profound,

To teach the path of wisdom.

* Winston Churchill, 1939

Yom Kippur

 בס״ד

Yom Kippur

airplane flights where i

pored through a chumash

reading each line carefully

searching for meaning, direction

purpose

getting lost in Leviticus

one big “Huh?”

it must be here, it must be

somewhere

or not

digging deeply into

ashkenaz, sefard, chasidus,

and Marvelous Morocco

(those people are alive on the

planet)

but that is not mine either

kids whose paths are all different

from mine

but full of purpose

i like to think that perhaps 

i had something to do with all that

just by being alive

may it all come to testify

on my behalf