For Sue Kurtz

on the Dedication of

The Malcolm Rosenberg Hillel Center

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

April 21, 2013

We have not come into being to hate or to destroy

We have come into being

To praise, to labor, and to love

A year ago this plot was clay. Now, quarried 

in Roanoke and Jerusalem, in Tidewater and Tiveria, 

Hokie stone rises from red ash borne 

by an orange and maroon bird, reborn 

from the dust of the six million and the blood 

of the thirty-two shot and killed in madness. 

Thirty-two. Gematria for heart, for purpose, for resolve, 

for Yah keeps, Yah assembles, Yah is good,

but also for hollow out, for pierce, for hide. 

So many different visions to be incorporated,

so many arguments for the sake of heaven,

so many shekels needed to build this tabernacle, 

this dwelling place in the Virginia wilderness, that

we were not always certain we’d see this day.

New generations will be born in this house,

not a headstone for he whose name it bears, 

but a school for justice, a home for souls, a vineyard. 

This is the fulfillment of those who came, 

furriers, spice merchants, schmata men, teachers, 

and scientists, in hope of life without pogrom,

without persecution. And those who did not come, 

who were lost in fire. 

This is our meaning, our community, our family.

This is our purpose, to struggle, to build, to continue.

This mishkan. This people. This blue day. This. 

Indian Summer

November bore a balmy morn

after a week of frost

and recalled September’s golden girl

we’d given up for lost.

Nights grow long, yet chill relents,

though nature’s half undressed.

Abuela in a tattered gown,

hair a graying mess.

Winter is a callous aunt,

Summer her glowering son.

But in Autumn’s muted madras,

a kind of sweetness comes

amid the wreck of bloodied leaves

and contraction of the days.

She lies with me a moment

and I pretend that she might stay. 

Sunday Breakfast

Homemade Bialys. Coffee. New York Times.

New Flask, Old Wine Avoiding the Danger of Experience

Pirkei Avot  4:27

רַבִּי אוֹמֵר אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בַּקַנְקַן אֶלָא בְּמַה שֶׁיֵשׁ בּוֹ.

 יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאַפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּוֹ

Rabbi taught:

Do not look at the flask but at its contents.

You can find a new flask with old wine and an old flask which does not hold even new wine.

Part of what has made human beings the most successful species in the history of our planet is our ability to learn from experience. When faced with a new situation, a new problem, even a new person, our brains instantly compare what is presented with what we have known or seen in the past. Experience is a tremendous tool. It helps us avoid danger and see opportunities. But using experience requires us to make assumptions and when we apply these assumptions to other people based only on first impressions, we often make grave mistakes.

Appearances are deceiving. You cannot understand a person’s abilities by looking at his clothes, you cannot know a person’s heart by seeing what sort of car she drives, nor assess the content of a character by the color of the skin.

It’s easy to make assumptions. How simple life would be if we could tell everything about the inside by looking at the outside! Jewish tradition and teaching requires more. We must look past the elegance of the label and remove the thin foil around the bottle’s neck. We must pull the cork, inhale deeply and taste a full measure.

When we focus on the contents instead of the package, when we approach others with an open heart and mind and without prejudice, we begin to understand that the other, both stranger and friend, were created, b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God. And when we go beneath the exterior of dusty glass or shiny polished silver, who knows what inner zeeskeit, sweetness, we may find?  

Commuting with Collins

What I love about weekday mornings,

especially one of those spring days

when a few clouds float with hidden purpose

behind the brown sign with sans serif letters that proclaims, “Shady Grove,”

is the way one, wrapped inside the air-conditioned cocoon of the subway,

can disappear into a volume for forty-two perfect minutes.

And if that volume is, say,

A slim new book of poetry by Billy Collins,

(Random House trade paper $13.95),

a tiny museum whose canvases are pages and brushstrokes words,

then the world does not so much recede as transform.

Onto this world, I look from behind the vibrating plexy window

at the silent, blinking horses standing in the yard

and sit with a cup of coffee, a cigarette,

a little something going in the noisy old typewriter.

Then the chimes, an indication that the doors are closing,

a cold blue snap into autumn and the car, an expanse of white ink

disappears into the dark tunnel coiling away and down.

The Whole Point

…after a while it started to dawn on me: the whole point and moral of kabbalist religious teaching was that you were supposed to become a religious Jew! Before you could get to all the higher realms enumerated, you had to become religious here on earth according to sixty volumes of Jewish Law, and follow every jot and tittle of the 613 commandments.  So that was a fairly heavy asterisk attached to all these goodies. That was a fairly big hook to swallow….There were all the holidays, there were big and little fasts, there were a thousand rules you had to live by, not to mention praying, morning, noon, and night. And whereas the religion was so beautiful in its visions, to practice it was like digesting the entire telephone book!

Allegra Goodman
Paradise Park, p. 217

Alpine Flowers, Wright Peak, Adirondack Mountains, New York