בס״ד
Haazinu
Just listen,
Let the musical words wash over you,
This, the final echo of the shofar.
Just listen,
Triumph, Defeat, Return,
Like the ebb and flow of the tides.
Just listen,
Touched by the winds and currents,
Drifting, silent, beyond time.
Just listen,
Floating upon this song of
Sorrow and Joy,
Disappointment and Achievement,
Separation and Connection,
In equanimity.
Just listen,
As if you are the sea,
In symphony with the phase of the moon,
And know that I am One with it all.
בס״ד
Vayeilech
The shmita is complete -
the land stretches and yawns
from her year-long sleep.
earthen arms prepare to embrace hoe and plow
as she awaits the life-giving rain.
The year recedes, and -
with the raising of the sukkahs,
the King, newly coronated,
teaches Torah once more,
from the holy mountain,
to a thirsty people.
בס״ד
Netzavim
Shleppers of water and hewers of wood,
The poskim all seem to surmise,
They’re the very last ones on the social scale,
And might be Canaanim, besides.
Yet from what I have seen in my 70 years,
They’re the ones with a box full of tools,
Who check on the toilets and heat and the like,
In the batei midrash and the shuls.
Think of the listing, here in Netzavim,
As a pyramid (‘scuse the expression),
Those above are supported by those at the base,
And there’s no one who is an exception.
But no one is lower and no one is higher,
When they’re oskim b’tzarchei tzibur,
They all should be held in our greatest esteem,
And long may their patience endure.
בס״ד
Ki Savo
My bikurim rest in the Kohen’s hands,
In the place You established Your shrine,
I tell him: “Your G-d promised me this land”,
Which is odd, because aren’t You mine?
But next I recount a time that has past,
Before we had entered our land,
Then call out to our G-d, and offer a tithe,
From the gifts of Your generous hand.
In truth, are we not all gerim of a kind,
Till we recognize all that You’ve given,
The milk and the honey and all that abounds,
In the land that You brought us to live in?
Now as Elul goes by, and Tishrei comes near,
From what are the tithes that we’ll bring?
Our first fruits are our acts of mashpia lishma,
And we’ll offer these up to our King.
בס״ד
Ki Seitze
She shall spit before,
The reluctant surviving brother -
The crumb.
Who de-levirately refused her,
And would sooner be unshod -
Ye bum.
בס״ד
Shoftim
A righteous judge is a tree that bears fruit,
Since justice is what he pursues,
He tends it with care and shields it from harm,
From actions he knows are untrue.
A man is compared to a tree of the field,
If to tzidkus is what he aspires,
No swing of an axe can e’re bring him down,
His fruit will ascend ever higher.
Sustaining are trees that bear forth the truth -
If in foreign field one should flourish,
The angels themselves have planted it there,
From its fruit you shall surely be nourished.
בס״ד
Re’eh
Two opposite mountains,
From which could be heard,
The words the Levi’im would utter.
Two opposite ways,
To respond to those words,
With reverence, or with a mutter.
Did the Bnei Levi give over for real,
All the words that we read in the parsha?
And precede each pronouncement,
From the valley below,
With the preface of klalah or bracha?
Or was it the people,
Who heard in their minds,
On the slopes of the mountains,
Just mentioned,
The message that they were inclined to receive,
Depending upon their perception?
