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VIII. What If That Ram

THE VIEW FROM THE THICKET

Stubborn I am, the hill too steep,
the woods too thick, and I climb,
leave behind my comely ewe of
curly hair, ewe of bleat I hear
as song.

She lags behind, a beauty from a
bordering flock that sees my splendid
horns as fear-some, daring, sees me
foolish when I flash them. I’m not
prone to battle. I just like climbing.

I climb to breathe, to cleave with twin
god-given horns the weeds and furze,
to see from heights meadows where I
graze. I do not seek to butt my pride
against her brothers.

Ah, here I am, higher than I’ve
ever been. I should see wider, but
thickets block my view. I’ll slice
right through the gorse, the unformed
leaves and sickly yellow flowers.

Much better but still the thorns
claw at my eyes. Something stirring
past this prickly hedge draws me on;
I fear my long-haired coat and split-
hooved feet may hinder.

A murmuring of humans, not too clear.
I’ll push ahead, near as I can get. Damn,
my horns are snared, these treacherous
brambles have me ambushed here.
I can’t get free.

The more I shake my head and stamp
my feet, the more the branches twist
and lock me in. They coil around
my fetlocks, entwine themselves and
hobble me.

My jiggling’s cut a tiny clearing
inadvertently. I see two men. One
seems older than the century. One
lies prone, bound to tinder. The elder
holds a knife.

If he can hear my cries, his knife
might cut me free. I bleat my
crisis song, loud as can be, the way
a desperate human blows through
a hollow horn to warn of plight.

I bellow once again. There’s a
white-winged being hovering just
above my neck. The lad lying on the
wood looks terrified, the old man’s
knife high enough to catch the light.

He stops and turns his head; he sees
me! I am saved. He brings down
his arm, turns to the young man and
hacks right through the rope. He
weeps, as some men do.

The youth shrugs off the rope,
the old man’s arm, and rises off
the altar. Glares at the man he calls
father, turns his back and walks away.
The old man with the knife comes for me.

—Florence Weinberger

***

HANNAH RACHEL OF LUDOMIR

Once upon a time there was or was not a woman. They say: she was a righteous woman. They say: she was a very clever woman. And she gave blessing and Torah and counsel to her followers, men and women. A lady Rebbe. They say: when she refused marriage she was shunned and went to the land of Israel. And some say: She put on tefillin and prayed at the Western Wall wrapped in a tallit.
Now they say: we have found her grave, and it is listed in the records of the kolel founded by immigrants from Volhynia on the Mount of Olives: ”— The righteous Rabbanit Hannah Rachel, daughter of Manesh” and the date of her death — the 22nd of Tammuz 5648.
We have placed a gravestone on all those things they said.
On the legends whose existence wanders between worlds rests the reality of a stone tablet.
Between her bones, rotted or not, and her spirit which perhaps hovers, and the gravestone which the women of my generation unveiled on her grave — there am I.
At night my soul wants to rise on the breezes of the prayers whispered by the lady rebbe who is outcast and disembodied, from her nowhere place on the Mount of Olives towards the place opposite her which is the foundation of the world.
At night I will whirl in the silhouette of a woman dressed in black, whose moans are doves.

— Lift up your eyes round about, and see, Hannah Rachel,
they all gather together, they come to you.
Enlarge your house of study,
And they will stretch forth the curtains of your habitation.
And you will say in your heart:
Who has begotten me these,
For I am a maid, solitary and desolate and driven away,
I am afflicted and tossed with tempest and bitter,
And who brought up these?

— Sing, O barren one, who did not bear
For many are the daughters of the desolate who hearken to your bitter weeping,
To the lamentation of your soul.
Your lips, O sleeping one, we will cause to murmur in Ramah,
For you are our delegate, here is your prayer shawl,
In the streets of Jerusalem let us hear your voice
O bride
We are your bridesmaids, the daughters of Jerusalem,
We will renew your youth, return your captivity,
The hope for your future,
We will enclose you in vessels and vestments, O bride,
With jewels and a crown we will adorn you on the day of the gladness of your heart,
This is the day when you are spoken for. A tablet of stone we will make for you
And engrave your letters on it.
Your countenance we have not seen, we will make you a face
Out of the silver studs of our longing,
Out of the yearning of our orphanhood toward you.
We shall make you a face of many faces, O our parent, our daughter.
From the deep of our Torah, small stones — the primordial stones from which the waters proceed — we shall place on your grave.
We have covered you with a soft stone and a lullaby
So you won’t catch cold.
”Tarry here this night
And it shall be in the morning that if He will redeem you — He will redeem you
But if He will not redeem you — We will redeem you.
Stay this night,
For your daughters are your makers, your daughters are your mothers.”

—Sara Friedland Ben-Arza
tr.: Esther Cameron
***

SALTED

All that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in his world He created male and female.
Likewise, Leviathan the flying serpent and Leviathan the crooked serpent He created male and female; and had they mated with one another they would have destroyed the whole world.
What [then] did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He castrated the male and killed the female preserving it in salt for the righteous in the world to come.
Bava Batra 74a

Their voice goes from one end of the world to the other, and in between are creatures who do not notice.
Bereishit Rabba 6:7

Below me are palms
Far below them, water
And deep beneath the water, salt
That preserves the she-leviathan.
There is none more moderate than she,
None more patient.

On the fifth day
in the first hour the queen was teemed from the weeping waters
abandoned to the lap of their sobbing:
Alas for us that we did not merit the nearness of our Creator.
In the second hour the she-leviathan of the deep called up a surge,
Insolently lifting herself, drawing near.
In the third hour
from above
a foot came down on her,
rained down salt,
burned brimstone
into her skin, her flesh, her hair.
There is none more moderate than she,
none more patient.

In the primordial salted depth she rests —
a plain and its cities and their insides became her maw,
the Jordan gushes into her mouth
and the hollow of her mouth is never filled
for the salt dissolves all that is sown into her kingdom
to produce its voices that do not come to an end.

From the nether end of her abyss
her silence roars
to the end of my head in the top floor of the hotel
and in between the strenuous racket of an Israeli spa with exercise machines
and in between squalls shimmy to benefit many creatures without end
and in between the voices of my body, and the leaps of thoughts that cannot be contained
and they do not notice.

— Sara Friedland Ben-Arza
tr. Esther Cameron

***

TO SEE HIM

I went to see G-d at the foot of the mountain with all the elders
I wrapped myself in Joseph’s prayer shawl which is sheep’s wool and all stripes
I approached behind Moses’ back and in my hands two clay bowls the earth of the desert and they were full to the brim with the milk of my children. And when the words came back from the mountains
With an echo of shshshshshshshshsh mehhhhmehhhhh and all the goats bleated and the sheep cried and the cows mooed
And the whole herd of my people and my family called out and from the mountains came shshshshshsh mehhhh mehhhh
And a bright sun ignited the blood in the basins and gave back a lightning of knives from the altar
And Moses read out the book of the covenant in my mother tongue, I seized my children and brought them
under my prayer shawl, I threw the milk of my breasts over them and the shawl that covered my head and shoulders
was dyed with the cows’ blood which Moses sprinkled on me and my people and the sweet smell of the milk
dyed and will dye my children with its taste all the way to the Jordan
and then I saw G-d
and He was not reflected in the basins of blood but in the blue that was over the altar and in the sea
which rose up on me in the blue that is inseparable from the green and in the song that we sang beyond the sea
for in the color G-d was revealed to us in the desert in the blue and the pavement and the sapphire in the fire and in the cloud
and in the gray that is between them in the voice of Moses and in the milk that He gave me for my children and the smell of the milk
There is none like Him to open the sea to dry land and to place in the hands of Moses the power to write the book which he read

And they did eat and drink the flesh of the cow and drank her blood and I baked the bread
And I pounded the mallow and the nettle and the thistle and everything I found growing close at hand
And I added some goat’s milk and some partridge egg so they would drink and eat
The bittersweet taste of the G-d they had beheld.

— Hava Pinhas-Cohen
tr. Esther Cameron

***

COME UP TO ME ON THE MOUNTAIN AND BE THERE

I knew that he wanted to be there more than anything
To be there with Him, to be with Him to be there
With Him on the top of the mountain in the place they call the heavens
And to flatten the words into stone as they are born
To be there alone, but to be with Him
With the One who cannot be seen and perhaps he will feel
The breath of His mouth on the nape of his neck

And he will forget the touch of my palm on his neck
Come up to me and be there, his Lord said to him
As if I were not there at the foot of the mountain
Waiting for his lips scorched by the letters

It’s me down here waiting to feed him
From the pot of squash and eggplant
And the meat will fill his belly and make him forget

The Name and the breath of His mouth
And the spirit’s breath on the back of his neck

— Hava Pinhas-Cohen
tr. Esther Cameron

***

WHAT IF THAT RAM

That day began as most days do:
Gathering at the well,
gossiping with other women,
thinking about dinner.
Even though my old bones ache,
I carry on.

But I was out of sorts, uneasy.
Abraham had acted strange all week.
Headaches, visions, I don’t know.
Something on his mind.

That day, Abraham asked Isaac, our late-born child,
to help him gather wood.
We had enough wood.
But I thought they needed some father-son time.
A walk in the woods would do Abraham good.

Isaac adored his father.
Our son is the joy of our lives,
born when I was old and childless,
in despair.

Before Abraham left
he mumbled something about the sun? son?
I paid no mind.

Birds were flying low.
There seemed a trembling in the air,
as if a storm was coming.

It grew late, I was worried.
Had they come upon a beast, or hostile tribe,
or slipped among the rocks ?
I even thought to track them,
but the clouds were black, the sky was darkening.
and I did not know where to search.

When they returned, they brought no wood.
Only a ram’s horn.
At dinner both were too quiet.

At bedtime, I asked Isaac:
Why are you so pale and shaken, my beloved son?
He told me a tale hard to believe:

”As we walked,
I asked father the names of birds,
I showed him the veins of a leaf.…
but his thoughts were elsewhere.

We came to the place called Moriah,
an old place of sacrifice.

Father had this look, pained and scared.
He touched my head, tenderly,
mumbling a prayer.

He laid the branches we had gathered,
bound me to the altar . . . .
Was this a game? I didn’t like it.
He raised his knife . . . .
I screamed . . . .

Just then, a ram appeared.
Father dropped the knife,
hugged me, he was joyous,
then he sacrificed that ram.
So much blood!

Father said that God had stayed his hand,
testing his obedience.
But I threw up.”

I kissed my son and tucked him in.
Abraham was at his prayers again.
”Mad! Mad!” I cried to him.
”You may have scarred our son for life!
I followed you from place to place,
from Ur to Haran, into Canaan,
wherever God commanded you to go,
I followed.
Even though it pained me,
I accepted Ishmael as yours,
and did not wish him harm.

But this is where it ends. Enough!
What kind of God would ask a man
to sacrifice his son?”

But Abraham was adamant.
”Remember:
You were much too old to bear a child
and yet God heard your prayers.
Surely that is proof that he’s a just and loving God.”

I had no words to contradict his faith.
”Promise me that if God speaks to you again ,
you’ll share his words with me.”
Abraham agreed,
but I did not believe him.

He thinks women are not meant to ponder God’s will.
But I think about the world, just like a man.
I see suffering and pain that I cannot explain.
I do not understand the mind of God.

Torn between my husband and my son
I wept, and nightmares still trouble my sleep.
Stay or leave? But we had nowhere else to go.
Now Isaac argues with Abraham,
says he no longer believes in God.

I cannot put my mind at ease.
What if that ram had not appeared?

— Miriam Aroner

***

CHAOS

And the world was chaos, with darkness on the surface of the abyss ….
Genesis 1:2

in the eleventh dimension,

countless multitudes of matter and mass

converge

to oscillate

on violin strings infinitely long

and infinitesimally thin;

strings merge into strings

to emerge

as confluent membranes

vibrating

in dissonant frequencies of noise,

reverberating

in harsh crescendos of cacophony;

twisted, distorted membranes,

stretched beyond the abyss,

strain to survive,

strain to be transcribed

into the language of mathematics

until numbers burst,
until equations
collapse.

in the eleventh dimension,

innumerable parallel universes

collide

and convulse;

frenzied rogue waves

crash

and slam

rippled membrane into rippled membrane;

turbulent singularities

of matter-time-energy-space

explode
until quarks stop pulsating,
until equations
collapse.

in the eleventh dimension,

gravity

dilates and dilutes,

undulates and leaks

through porous membranes shaped as loops;

unnumbered multiple universes, convex and concave,

piled upon one another,

first totter,

then topple,

then suffocate each other,

still-breathing corpses buried inside a mass-grave;

thrashing sheets of rabid white energy

rip

string after string,

membrane after membrane,

as violent black waves gang-rape

big bangs that now whimper,

crippled and abused;

spirals of density,

condensed inside the tail-end of voids,

shudder;

time is swallowed by

time,

until electrons freeze in the ice,
until equations

collapse.

from every corner of the eleventh dimension,

parallel universes

crawl
in the darkness

on their hands and knees,

scraping and scratching their skin

on the sandpaper

of science.

is there a twelfth dimension

where we can rise from the ashes

and learn to make sand-pies again?

why don’t we hear the words,

”Let

There

Light”

?
— Yakov Azriel