and when your children ask you what
do you mean by this rite tell them
in the beginning we offered late night sacrifices
and supplications while our god meted out
punishments against the gods of egypt later
we hid behind behind doorjambs swelled with
dread murmuring pour out your wrath on
those who seek our blood and destroy the nations who know
not your name but now we observe by bursting the
gates of fear wide open proclaiming let all who’ve been
broken gather each another’s scattered
shattered pieces let all who seek liberation
come to the table let all who are hungry
come and eat
god said to moses i established my
covenant with abraham isaac and jacob to
give them the land of canaan this sounds to me like the
voice of imperial ambition god said to moses i will harden
pharoah’s heart that i may multiply my signs and marvels in
the land of egypt this sounds to me like
the voice of insecurity god said to moses i
have spared you in order that my fame may resound
throughout the world this sounds to me like the voice of
hubris god said to moses lift your rod and
i will strike the nile with the blood of our babies let
it overrun the land of egypt until it rots this sounds to
me like the voice of pain god said to moses i have heard the
cries of the israelites i will free them from their
bondage and set them free to serve an even greater
good this sounds to me like the
voice of god
the israelites cried out to god a
shout hurtling into space shining like a
star that would not die like a luminous
ball of plasma burning on and
on like the thermonuclear fusion of endless boundless
hydrogen that can never be exhausted
light emanating from proxima centauri takes
4.22 light years to be seen on earth it took 400 years
for oppression to transform into
liberation burning white hot but
never consumed
now israel’s eyes were dim with age he said
i can see the one in whose
steps my father walked even when they led straight
into the fire i see the one who answered
my mother but could not relieve her
pain i can see so plainly my own reflection masked
and unmasked deceiver and deceived ascending
descending wrestling embracing fleeing
returning yes i see quite clearly these scarred and
withered hands are the hands of jacob but the face is
the face of god when he was ready to stop
struggling jacob drew his feet into the bed
breathed his last breath
and finally returned
home
he looked down at his kneeling brothers
peeled off his robe of fine egyptian linen
to reveal his bloodsoaked coat and said
i am your brother Joseph
the one who has dreamed
who has waited so long for this moment
the one for whom you never had one kind word
the one whom you cast into an empty lifeless pit
the one whom you sold to traders like so much dead meat
the one who was taken down to egypt in chains
while you sang so sweetly to our father
your son was surely gutted by a wild beast oh
yes i am the one who slept for years
in that stinking dungeon floor with nothing
but these dreams of vengeance to keep me alive
and now you come to grovel here before me
pleading for my food for my pity my compassion
after joseph seized the child Benjamin and
had him impaled outside the city gates
his servants woke him and said if you please master
there are eleven israelites asking for you
and they claim to be your brothers.
joseph was brought up from the
dungeon scrubbed clean his hair
shaved and stripped naked layer by painful
layer until he realized it’s not me it’s
never been me god has been dreaming
these dreams for us all along
then he was dressed in robes of the finest
linen a royal ring was slipped on his finger and
a gold chain was placed around his neck he was given
the name zaphenat-paneah but joseph secretly named himself
manasseh that means i don’t mind the pain any more and
ephraim that means come i am ready
to feed you
and jacob said go see
to the peace of
your brothers take off your
coat peel off your
outer skin fling yourself down
the rabbit hole down
straight down into the
narrowest of narrow places
where your prison awaits and
you won’t be free until
they carry out your barest
bones will you do this for us
and joseph said
hineini
he tells him let me go the sun is rising but
jacob doesn’t hear all he hears is esau the elder esau the
stronger esau his father’s favorite who had eagerly
entered his father’s tent he’s hearing those awful
cries don’t you have a blessing left for me bless me
too father bless me too the words bursting out of
the tent please please bless me too
father over and over and over their bodies are writhing the
dark water splashing against the cold night air please bless
me too father bless me
he pins him against the slope of
the riverbank now jacob is screaming please bless me father he
shakes him like a limp rag doll sobbing i will not
let you go until you BLESS ME
the sun peeking over the jabbok jacob
looks down at his face and sees
his father beaming with love and pride at
long last his mother saying
it is safe to come home now my son his
brother saying seeing your face is like
seeing the face of god jacob blinks water
from his eyes the river is silent still mirror
clear he stands up sees the sun
and slowly limps his way across
the water
Been listening nonstop lately to Basya Schechter’s new album, “Songs of Wonder.” I’ve long been a big fan of her and her band Pharaoh’s Daughter – I particularly love the way she effortlessly synthesizes so many different kinds of world musical influences to create Jewish music that is both original yet somehow utterly authentic in its energy.
In her new solo effort she has set the Yiddish poems of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to music. If you didn’t know the venerable Jewish theologian/civil rights activist had written poetry, you’re probably not alone. As it turns out, Heschel wrote them when he was just 26 years old and still a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. They were published in a wonderful bilingual edition in 2007 – according to the Amazon review:
(This) is the intimate spiritual diary of a devout European Jew, loyal to the revelation at Sinai and afflicted with reverence for all human beings. These poems sound themes that will resonate throughout Heschel’s later popular writings: human holiness, a passion for truth, awe and wonder before nature, God’s quest for righteousness, solidarity with the downtrodden, and unwavering commitment to tikkun olam. In these poems, we also discover a young man’s acute loneliness, dismay at God’s distance, and dreams of spiritual and sensual intimacy with a woman.
For her album, Schechter assembled a posse of the best of the best musicians from the downtown NYC Jewish music scene and recorded ten songs that melded the young Heschel’s spiritual yearnings to her trademark eclectic Jewish sound. It’s a fabulous, mesmerizing album.
If you’re like me and you live outside subway distance of the Upper West Side/Lower East Side, just click above to see her performing “My Song.” (The music starts at about 1:07). And you should check out this very thorough piece on her by the Forward’s Alexander Gelfand.
jacob came upon a certain place and
stopped there for the night for
the sun was setting he took a
stone placed it against
his head and lay down in
his dream he saw a ladder set
on the earth its top reached the heavens
angels going up and down according to
freud don’t call it jacob’s ladder he’d probably call
it jacobs phallus after all he’s reckoning with his childhood
passion to please his mother just look where
that got him and according to jung the
ladder is the axis of communication between jacob’s ego
and self in other words he’s building a stairway
from lower to higher realms of
consciousness the hindus might say
the stone on jacob’s head opened his anja
chakra did you know that spiritual
energy from external environments enter your
body through this gateway and did you also
know that this spot corresponds to
the pineal gland which descartes believed
was the seat of the soul and the
point of connection between body and
the intellect or maybe this certain place was a
vortex and when his head rested upon
it earth energy spiraled up whirling
toward the open heavens then came roaring
back down whispering i am
with you i will protect you wherever you
go i promise
Yedid Nefesh 