One Of The Stars

Mazal Tov! Yesterday a dear friend, whom I've mentioned here several times, got married. There's a picture of him here. He is a chavruta/true friend. How it great it was to spend time with him that eternal summer. "Someone once told me that Yerushalayim is called 'Ir shechubrah lah yachdav' because you tend to meet so many people that you know there." That's what Jon said to at the Kotel one day, from behind me, catching me off guard. He was quoting an idea I once told him, as we met - by surprise - in Yerushalayim. (I originally heard the idea from my friend Rabbi Avraham Newman).

I also mention Jon here, citing Torah that he told me. One of the people he quoted was his mesader kidushin and MC yesterday, Rabbi Dan Friedman. He called me up (to my surprise) to read the tana'im, and when I finally made it through the crowd Rabbi Friedman commented, "Jon tells me you're funny, so I expect you to be funny now" (or something to that effect. I chose to play it straight. As I stepped down from reading the tana'im, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt asked me, "What, no jokes?" Sometimes I think this Funniest Rabbi title is more trouble than it's worth (and, pretty obviously from the name of my blog and more, there are other times when I don't think that).

Jon once asked me about the poem called Tourists by Amichai and I re-posted it in his honor. (I'm still shook up by a recent presentation I heard from a well known speaker/scholar. He cited this Amichai poem and mocked it in terms of form as not being a poem, and misrepresented it in terms of content as proposing that the past of Jerusalem does not matter at all.)

Three years ago, standing at the Kotel I gave Jon a copy of Aaron Bulman (Z"L)'s book and inscribed it with these words:

Dear Jon,

p

I spread his books

around my worlds

as a non believer

would spread his ashes

o

These books are pieces

of Aaron and thus pieces of me,

friends of distinction

like you

b

Perhaps one day there will be

a physical book of my poems

In my mind it is written

with you one of the stars

n

We were blessed this summer

in the city that unites souls

to talk Torah in our way

Torah that restores spirit:

u

Holiness of friends

like the Western Wall itself
hovers and protects

On the Amtrak train to the Baltimore wedding I wrote this:

h

I think of the leaves

on this beautiful flower

also beautiful

l

During chazarat hashatz of Minchah this came to me:

g

G-d is present tense

Building Jerusalem and

Returning to Zion

i

The Chupah was outside and it was drizzling. Remarkably (though no-one mentioned it), the rain came to a halt as the Chupah started.

l

The rain trickles down

A guy I married says hi

Soon, soon - the Chupah

l

During the meal I caught up briefly with a woman who used to live in my neighborhood. She asked if I still write haiku. I don't remember why she knows that I do. I told her that I'd just written one (the one about waiting for the Chupah to start) and shared it. She didn't seem crazy about it.

l

A short while later I bumped into someone who graduated about ten years ago from the high school I teach in. She's involved in a poetry organization that is interested in creating a poetry league for yeshiva high schools. I think they envision it as a poetry slam kind of thing and they want it to be edgy, just as they wish to be. And they want to oversee it themselves.

h

It was so great to see my friend, to see him getting married, to see him filled with light.

h

He wrote a poem

to read in the yichud room

showed it just to me

l

The mesader kiddushin cited a vort from Toldot Yaakov Yoseif : Why do we say Mah Tovu in Shul, as it refers to the home? That blessing depicts positively Jewish ohalot and mishkenot. Toldot Yaakov Yoseif suggests what is straightforward, but not usually broken down and focused upon. An ohel is a home, a mishkan is a sanctuary, and the two have a symbiotic relationship. (That's my take, actually, that each one feeds into the holiness of the other. His take was specifically that the public temples are only as holy as the private homes.)

h

The fellow sitting next to me at the Chupah told me a nice thought. Here's my riff on what he heard on Shabbos at a Shul his acapella group performed at. He said that jealousy is a normal human emotion. The extreme contrast between Korach and Moshe was the degree to which they tamed or were overtaken by their emotions. Korach was probably not the only Jew at that time to be jealous of Moshe, but boy did he let it get the better of him. And Moshe was not the only human at the time to have have potential for greatness, but boy did he ever achieve greatness. May we each be so blessed.