Shanah Tovah

Wishing Everyone A Wonderful Year

Photo and Baking by Ellie Levie

What would you like G-d to make sweet for you this year?

What can you do to make your year sweet?

Why do we focus on a sweet year?

Plank Pattern - Spotted on the Side of a Building

What patterns have you taken on in life

as you've weathered your years?

- Photo and Question

By Carla Kimball

Ta-dah! - A Poem

By Neil Fleischmann

Every second is a gift

Every second is a word

Every word builds a poem

To be written, read, and heard.

Every breath is a dream,

Every dream fills my heart,

And my heart won't be trampled

You can't tear it apart

G-d's Children

Sometimes You Have To Stop and Smell The Melon

At lunch today, a three year old boy - unfamiliar with honeydew - smelled his melon, trying to make sense of it. "Smells like watermelon," he said happily. We checked. He was right. They smell the same and we hadn't known because we'd never stopped to smell the melon.

On Beginning Shemot

I don't feel I have the luxury of not working all the time, it's the nature of my vocation. I need to focus on my teaching. At this time of the year I am learning names and essences, laying down foundations of content and form, of material and class. I am working constantly on the beginning of the beginning with six classes, one department, twelve counselled students, hundreds of Torah Guidance customers, two and a half clubs, and and and. Yet, I have a need to write and release. Compromise: I will gather teaching related thoughts while typing them here:

We started off Shemot with an overview/introduction to the book. Leaving Egypt, Getting the Torah, Building the Mishkan - these three topics relate to the two demands of G-d through Moshe - "Let My people go that they may serve me." The Ramban says that it's the book of galut and geulah. The Ramban redefines, or at least re-frames, geulah, because if he didn't he's stuck with the fact that the book ends with the Jews in the desert, while he states it ends with redemption. The Ramban and we discussed how Shemot starts off (lehavdil) as TV episodes often do - "Previously in The Torah." It goes back to recap the Jews going down to Egypt, We discussed the length of the sojourn in Egypt and what the issues surround the question of this number. We looked at the first chapter and divided into three sections. Here's a bit more detail:

At the start of Shmot, Paroh (that spelling makes sense to me, though it hasn't caught on) says that the Jews are many and that if there's a war they will join Egypt's enemies to fight Egypt and then leave the land. Many students said that it made sense that Paroh didn't want the Jews to leave because they'd be losing their slaves. This sounds sensible, other than the fact that the Torah (Shmot 1:9-14) reports that slavery was a later development based on this fear of leaving. Daniel K. suggested that it's embarrassing to have a large group of people leave your country. This idea resonated for me. When I was being deported from Ethiopia, the chief of police told us that Ethiopia was a proud but poor country. After tapping our phones and following us for two weeks they decided we (me and my fellow teachers of the Ferris Mora community) were missionaries. And so they rang our bell, interrupted our dinner, confiscated our passports, and pushed us on a plane (details available upon request). The police chief explained to us in a holding room in the air port (flanked by his girlfriend and his men and their girlfriends) that if this group of people that we were teaching were to leave, soon the whole country would want to say they were Jewish and then get out of Ethiopia. He was uncomfortable with the prospect of the exodus of many of the inhabitants of his country...

Nitzavim - Vayeilech

Nitzavim

Vayeilech

Another Book To Write: A Picture and a Haiku

Day, night, life and death

Separated by a thread

Invisible thread

Deuex Grande Marguerites

By Séraphine de Senlis

Just Right - A Poem

Long or short day,
Thank You either way
Days aren't short or long
Gifts from G-d can't be wrong

Some of G-d's Greatest Gifts Are Unanswered Prayers

Today in my public speaking class a student gave an outstanding speech. She shared the gist of this song and described how it changed her life. Amazing.

Happiness, As Explained By A Google Image

Late Night Haiku

One and one is one

The originals remain

New whole created

Mid-day Haiku

Always try to breathe

There's something about breathing

Makes me feel so alive

All This and Haiku Too

I really like blogging. Why do I blog? Let me count the reasons. (Couldn't resist.) (When I make a weak literary reference/pun I just fall back on the fact that not many people who will bothered by the strength of a phrase turn read this anyway. I started blogging after reading a piece in the Jewish Week by Esther Kustanowitz that ended with a bio that mentioned her blog. I was reminded of an email from my friend Moshe Radinsky, in which he wrote that I should start a blog. He said that blogs fit with my writing style; he might as well have suggested I fly to the moon. But when I was impressed by Ms. Kustanowitz' personal, serious, funny, real way of writing I paused. Then I posted. Seven years later, here I am. Still.

Photo by Carla Kimbal, who matched it with the question,

"What is just a glimmer on the horizon?"

My mother (of blessed memory) once returned from a talk at Shul about relaxation. She said that the speaker went around the circle and asked everyone to think of a relaxing place in their life. Everyone, or nearly everyone, said somewhere relating to water. Maybe it relates to the womb. Maybe it relates to G-d's spirit hovering over the first water, or the fact that that original water is never said to have been created. Somehow water hits me hard every time as a relaxing and spiritual place.

No vision and you perish, no ideal and you're lost; Your heart must ever cherish some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, Some rainbow in the sky, some melody to sing to, some service that is high. ~ Harriet Du Autermont

I just chanced upon the above cited quote. It is of note to me that it doesn't mention G-d, but to me it's talking about G-d. I recently had an interesting social encounter in which someone spoke very strongly about how we control nothing and everything is from G-d. I'm not sure how or why it started, but it got intense. I think that we play a role in our fate and that it doesn't detract from our faith to believe that. Just the opposite - healthy faith includes a healthy dose of self awareness, reflection, responsibility, and accountability.

The following is from a soon to be released book:

A spider lives inside my head

Who weaves a strange and wondrous web

Of silken threads and silver strings

To catch all sorts of flying things,

Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles

And specks of dried-up tears,

And dust of dreams that catch and cling

For years and years and years .

- Shel Silverstein (published posthumously)

On Wednesday I wrote this before my last class of the day from 4:30-5:10:

all days are equal

even though some are longer

funny (not ha-ha)

Ferfallen

This time can never be duplicated; this moment of me writing right before Shabbos - one of my many just one more things. Time is short so most of my thoughts will be kept between me and G-d, perhaps the only place they should ever see the light of day. The day is fading away and Shabbos is coming along.

A girl told me this week that mine is her favorite class, and not in a kiss up kind of way but in a shy - this is the right, mature thing to go up to someone and say honestly kind of way. Another student said that Public Speaking is the only bearable, break part of a difficult Junior day. There were so many things - much teaching and Torah Guidance. Probably what stand out most from the week since last Shabbos are various remembrances September 11, 2001. And regarding school that was the starkest moment of a rich week.

On Monday we at Frisch heard an exceptional talk about 9/11/2001. What made it so touching, for me, was that the speaker was not a polished professional orator. He was soft spoken and unaccustomed to presenting before an audience of 700 people. And the genuine gentleman who works in the business office captivated our crowd. Quietly, humbly, gratefully - he told his story about being in the second tower at the time of the attack.

I'll call our speaker Yosef. Yosef opened by saying that his best friend since kindergarten had said to him after the first attack on the World Trade Center that Yosef shouldn't work there because it would for sure be hit again. "He was right," Yosef said, (also acknowledging that most of the people in the room were not born in 1993 when the North Tower was bombed). Yosef also apologized for speaking softly - which we all soon got used to - saying that the only group he accustumed to speaking to was his wife and children.

He told his story of surviving the hit of the second tower. He read an email exchange he just recently had with the man who voluntarily went floor to floor telling people to walk down (before their building had been hit). He spoke of Yosef HaTzadik and how what kept him on the right path was the image of his father. He said he has 9/11 as a reminder of the miracle which is his life. And he said everyone has something that can be their beacon of inspiration in their lives.

Shabbos is fast approaching. My foot hurts. I'm tired. I'm grateful - to be a teacher, to be a son, to be brother and brother in law, to be an uncle, to be a friend. I'm grateful to be alive. May Shabbos be great for all of us.

It is all from G-d

Everything is from G-d:

The bottom line

Haiku of the Night

Light of our light
Till it shines like the morning
Brighten our darkness.

Beyond the Desert Generation (Click For Link To This Week's Jewish Week)

“You have seen all that God did in Egypt… Your own eyes saw the great miracles, signs and wonders. But until this day, God did not give you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear” [Deuteronomy 29:1-3].

In stating that the Jewish people did not possess understanding prior to this day, Moses is saying that they needed 40 years of growth before they were emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually mature enough to enter the land and live there as a nation. The generation that entered Israel needed to age, to outgrow their youth, before they could live and lead in the Promised Land. This is a profound lesson, one that flies in the face of today’s youth culture mentality.

Often the 40-year story of the desert sojourn is recalled as a time when all that happened was that the old generation died out. There was an element of death that pervaded the desert air. Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik suggested that this is why the portion of the Red Heifer, dealing with death, appears in the middle of the tale of the desert years. Additionally, the Talmud presents a picture of Israelites annually digging their own graves and waiting to die on the anniversary of the sin of the spies — one Tisha b’Av or another.

But while one generation was dying another generation was being incubated. The story of the preparing of this new crop to enter the land is a story that Moses tells us is not to be missed. Moshe declares that this story has reached its zenith and that every second up to the moment of his pronouncement was needed to prepare the Jewish nation to properly see, hear, and understand.

It is reasonable to wonder if there is any textual indication that the people were ready to be a nation at this moment. What prompted Moses to decisively say now that they finally got it right? The evidence of the Jews’ readiness comes in a cryptic line that follows the lines cited above. Moses states that Jewish people have accepted that two and a half of the tribes are the rightful recipients of land on one side of the Jordan — Eiver HaYarden — before the land on the other side is conquered. This seemingly unnecessary statement of detail is a covert song of high praise for the Jews’ level at this time. The fact that they were willing to acquiesce some of the land to their brothers before all of the land was conquered showed unwavering faith in God that the rest of the land would surely become theirs as planned. This reflects a spiritual maturity that was lacking in the nation's attitude until now.

Rashi comments that on this day Moshe presented a Torah to the tribe of Levi. The people protested, saying that one day the Levites could claim that only they had a share in Torah when it is a basic tenet of Judaism that Torah belongs equally to every individual. On the heels of this protest Moshe joyfully declares that they are ready. The appealing element of their words, to Moshe’s ear, was that they were thinking about the future. Their concerns indicated that they were looking forward to a full and strong Jewish people in Israel. They were ready.

There is an important paradoxical detail in Moses’ words. He gathers the Jewish People and tells them, “You have seen all that God did in Egypt before your very eyes,” while the fact is that we know that this is not true. The people that stood before him did not leave Egypt. That generation died out. Moses is now addressing the children of that generation. It is the new generation that survived the 40 years in the desert that will enter the land of Israel. So why does he say that they saw what they didn’t see?

The answer to this question rests within the following fundamental Jewish philosophical concept. The Jewish People is timeless, called in Hebrew “Knesset Yisrael.” At any given time since Sinai there has been a physical living group who are the Jewish people and yet there is something larger than any particular group of Jews and that is the eternal Jewish nation. Early in the Book of Devarim [Deut. 5:2- 3] Moshe makes this clear: “The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.” He is here informing us unambiguously that the target audience of his parting words is every generation of the Jewish people.

In Moses’ entreaty at the end of this week’s parshah, he urges the Jews to hold on to their true wisdom, the kind gained only through age and experience. His words are relevant for us today because Moses was speaking to us all those years ago. May we be blessed to listen to what our beloved teacher Moses begged of us in the final words of Ki Tavo, to “keep the words of this covenant, so that you will succeed in all that you do” [Deut. 29:8].

Rabbi Neil Fleischmann, director of Torah guidance at The Frisch School, is the author of “In the Field: A Collection of Haiku.”

A Pause and a Post

I have just a few minutes till my next meetings with students begin and I need a pause and also to gather my thoughts, so I'll combine the two. I breathe through blogging, as I love to do and at the same time think a bit and metaphorically punch the lockers as I gear up for one guidance period followed by four straight periods of teaching taking us to 5:10.

So far in the first days of Chumash we've discussed introductory issues. How many sections are there to the book? We knocked it down to three super big topics, two general themes, and one theme that connects them all (Yetziat Mitzrayim, Matan Torah, and The Mishkan/Shlach et Ami VeYa'avduni? Connecting to G-d). The Ramban seems to say that the theme of Shmot is Galut and Ge'ulah (which one could argue translates into connecting to G-d). There is an implied question which the Ramban confronts; if the theme is ge'ulah then why is it that the sefer concludes with the Jews still in exile. He redefines redemption as reaching the high spiritual level of the Avot, even if the Jews are not on their own land, so this book does end with redemption as when the Mishkan was constructed the Jews achieved a high spiritual level. (There is what to consider here because the Ramban is so into the holiness of Israel, in other places making extreme statements against the level of those who practice Judaism outside of Israel. Here, however he says that one can be living in a realm of redemption outside of Israel. I didn't raise this in class, and don't think I will.) We also discussed the various numbers given for how long the Jews were in Egypt and how to reconcile the discrepancies. There's a bit more introduction to do - perhaps, and yet I'm itching to enter the book itself...

The Art of Life

In the winter I visited the exhibit of The Gates shortly before the close of the exhibit in Central Park. It reminded me of childhood. I loved that adults could be possessed of such playfulness to make one entryway after another after another.

This art piece came to mind after viewing Carla Kimball's most recent post. Her question today is, "How can you create art using the natural world?" For the first time her question sat uncomfortably with me. I get her point, but I worry that this phrasing may sound to some like the natural world itself is not already art. The world is G-d's masterpiece. In retrospect, The Gates seems inspired by this phenomenon of nature, which provides Kimball's photo of the day.

Mei Afeilah Le'Orah - From Darkness to Light

Lately I've been taken by the photos and questions of Carla Kimball. I am grateful that a educator with whom I have been corresponding about spiritual and emotional teaching mentioned this site. Carla posted this one without a question, so I will use it to associate freely (though I believe that associations are about as free as lunch). As I type, Keep Mediocrity at Bay is playing on my computer. Coincidence? As Descartes said, "I think not" (right before he disappeared).

I like the contrasts in this photo between dark and light and up and down. It reminds me how life and people are filled with opposing forces.

Two pieces I read recently, from which I will share excerpts, also got me thinking about disparities and distinctions, befores and afters:

"If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation." - Haruki Murakami -Town of Cats, New Yorker 9/5/11, pg. 70

"Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable." - Meghan O'Rourke, The Long Goodbye, pg. 10

It's 9/11 and that's a big one in terms of befores and afters. I remember saying on the morning after that the world was coming to an end, not saying it as a simile or a meaning it as a metaphor.

What is it about even numbers that we make them matter more? Is the tenth "anniversary" of 9/11/01 more worthy of memorials than the ninth?

Speaking of befores and afters, I just started my sixteenth year of work in my school. Fifteen years feels like a milestone. I'm grateful to G-d for the opportunity to teach so many souls. On the first day of school I told a younger sister of a former student that I remembered fondly a comment that her older sister made in class 5 years ago. After class she approached me and asked me to share what that comment was, and she was appropriately impressed by her sister's wisdom. It was a nice moment of nachas. Another student was comfortable enough to tell me that she was uncomfortable being called upon (for now) in class when she hadn't volunteered on her own. I was glad she took me seriously in my offer to the class for any individual to tell me privately if they were shy about participating in class. I got the idea from a student that I am guidance counselor for. I met with him on the first day of school and he told me that in some of his classes speaking up was pressed by the teachers and he was very introverted in class and preferred for now to not be called upon when he hadn't volunteered. I asked if he'd like or not like my speaking to his teachers about this. He said he'd actually very much appreciate it and so I spoke to my colleagues who were understanding. So much has already taken place in three days of teaching, such a rich realm. Thank G-d.

Ten years ago today felt like a normal day of life as it began. I was sitting in my classroom before first period started as I trained myself to do - be there to greet the students as they walk in (that way they believe that you live and exist only for their class, in their classroom). One of my students was there early too. He was listening to the radio on headphones, to Howard Stern. The student, J.K, has since explained to me that Howard Stern has access to myriad news-sources, generally for his own purposes - but sometimes, his audiences hear a news story first. I believe that J.K. and I were the first ones in our building to hear that a plane had exploded when it slammed into the World Trade Center...

I'm writing in stints throughout the day, switching from topic to topic, keeping in mind the picture above and the topic of contrasts. I just put on the radio and an Irish version of Let It Be is playing on WFUV. The other day a colleague made my day (thank G-d my day often gets made many times a day) by telling me that he gave FUV a chance and it's now his station (when we were in his car together and I suggested it, he was turned off by it and turned it off, another switch).

Here's a Poem Billy Collins wrote a year after the attacks. He has only read it publicly twice and refuses to make a penny off it, so he's never put it in any of his books and will never do so. He was asked to write it and read it to Congress, at first he resisted, but as Poet Laureate at the time he eventually agreed:

The Names

By Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

I was struck by this performance by Paul Simon.

A new interview with George W. Bush about 9/11 has just been released. It's taking very long to download and yet the ten minutes I've been able to download and watch so far - over about an hour - have been very moving. He speaks in a personal, vivid, confident articulate manner as the story of where he was and what he did around these attacks is told from the start.

I could keep on writing but it feels like time to post what I have here so far and then look forward. May we all be blessed with healing and peace. Perhaps the most moving line I saw or heard all day came from Marv Kaminsky, "We have a world to fix."

H.O.T.D.

My ugly tenant

You must leave my head space now

The grudge hurts just me

True Insides Vs. Reflections

How much of your inner world do you reveal?

How often do you simply reflect back what’s around you?

Question and Photo

By Carla Kimball

2 H.O.T.D.

Modern similes

Feel to me like forgeries

Cool as a moondog

Bad Prayer Day

Mumbles that clutter

Prayers that fall from empty hearts

Fall flat on the ground

More or Less Travelled

Where are you on your path?

Photo/Question by Carla Kimball

Life Lessons In A Stack of Chairs

What’s been piling up waiting for attention?

Q and P by Carla Kimball

Question of the day…

Compassion and Kindness are Not To Be Confused With Weakness

QOTD: Hisbodedus

Question of the day…

Where do you go when you need to clear your mind?

Question and Photo © Carla Kimball

Believer Magazine On Five Thousand Dollar Sheitels, Etc.

I found this article fascinating. It gets into why hair covering is a mitzvah, what the reason to keep mitzvot is in general, the reason behind women's hair covering, different women's and rabbis' perspectives, the role blogging has played in this discussion, and more.

Covered Bridge at Quechee, Post Hurricane Irene

Question of the day…

What are you rebuilding?

Question and Photo By Carla Kimball

Things I'm Grateful For, Streamed

G-d

Torah

The ability to access Torah

The ability to digest Torah

Being human

Mussar

My father is alive

I had a mother for 71 years

I had three grandparents in my life, one briefly but lovingly and two lovingly and for a long time

My parents got me the yeshiva education they did not have

A compassionate older brother with his lovely wife and three great children

Extended family

Poetry

Reading

Writing

Managing without much 'rithmatic

A job which is more than a job; my school community

Teachers

Students

Colleagues

Supervisors

Friends

Acquaintances

The home I grew up in

The neighborhood I grew up in

The Shul of my youth

My apartment

My neighborhood

All that I learn from teachers students and friends

Music

Chotchkies

Mementos

Memories

Love

Friendship

Mentors

Heros

Books

Films

Rabbis

Authors

Poets

Author friends

Poet friends

People who set me up

What comes from people setting me up

New experiences

New People

Self Appreciation

External Appreciation

Love

Respect

Strength

Tenacity

Compassion

Flexibility

Humor (funny i didn't mention that earlier)

Breath

Meditation

Exercise

Walking

Listening

Talking

Creativity

Self expression

Having survived 9/11 (wasn't there - but wasn't so far)

Having a safe American Life

Aspirations, still

Hope

Pain I grow from

My Blog

Facebook (only because many people don't read blogs)

My Jewish Week essays

Every day

My birthday (not yet)

Cherished (and painful) letters and emails

Photographs

The ability to end this list for now, though it goes on...

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident. 2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries. 3. An instance of making such a discovery.

Question of the day…

When have you recently experienced serendipity?

Question and Photo By Carla Kimball

My Oil Painting - Version 1 and Version 2

These are not two different paintings. A dear friend complimented the first version saying, "You're growing in your art skill. Cool" I responded by expressing appreciation for the compliment. Then I added. " I feel like I don't know what I'm doing with that painting - the oil is all over me and my apartment and sink and I can't get it out of the brushes or to dry on the canvas. It feels very early, but it's hard to build on because it's wet-ish. I want to add a white foam - not sure it makes sense, I think it may. It was inspired by a photo but is entirely different."

Passion took over and I worked and worked using brushes, Q Tips, toilet paper and my fingers. If it's not done it probably should be, but I can't help feeling it's almost done. And I keep second guessing that what my friend who's an art maven saw as an improvement has been undone and that I've regressed to my more simplistic style. Why did I invest so much into building black rocks and then cover them up? It made sense in the many moments of enthusiastic painting, which I immensely enjoyed. And as my dad - he should live and be blessed with health, happiness, and nachas - says regarding the fact that my blog garners scant feedback (I believe that today brought the only comment of all the posts now showing), if I enjoy it then it's a good thing. I believe that creating art

Good Question (And Nice Photo Too)

What's fallen between the cracks?

Question and Photo © Carla Kimball

"Ready-Set" By Eric Bandiero

The picture in my previous post reminded me of this photo. The photographer, Eric Bandiero, was very kind and accommodating when I purchased a copy of it from him. You can find his work here.

Do you find that even the ordinary in life is extraordinary?

Ordinary Or Unordinary?

In a dialogue with a prominent educator with an interest in spirituality and self awareness in education I recently recommended Sharon Marson's wonderful The Wisdom of A Starry Night. This work combines open ended questions about oneself and one's feelings in order to help students "become better at allowing a newfound vision to emerge and at gaining access to their personal awareness." The combination of the paintings and the words, facing each other on parallel pages "creates opportunities for both halves of the brain to be activated and to communicate.

In his response, this kind hearted pedagogue mentioned the works of Carla Kimball. On her website Ms. Kimball presents photos she took and a question under each photo. I'm thinking of posting her photos and questions. I like it better without an intro, so in the future it will just be a question and a photo and a hat tip to Carla Kimball.

When have you paid attention to the most ordinary of things

and seen them in a different light?

Question and photo © Carla Kimball

The Red Wheelbarrow

By William Carlos Willams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Shabbat Shalom

On Thursday, Sept. 1 at our first general meeting of the new school year the principal used this mishnah as the cornerstone of his opening words to the faculty.

Rabbi Jacob said: If a man is walking by the way and is studying and then interrupts his study and says: "How fine is this tree?" or "How fine is this ploughed field?" Scripture regards him as though he was liable for his life. - Pirkei Avot 3:9

He cited Rav S.R. Hirsch as explaining that the issue being addressed here is one of disconnecting Torah and the beauty of the world. It's a bit of an apologetic approach to a difficult mishnah but it's the pshat that I've always gone with, since I first read it in Ethics from Sinai (volume one, page 267). Irving Bunim says, on this mishnah, "Too many of us appreciate nature merely as nature, as something separate and apart, out of any larger context."

I've gone home again, Thomas Wolf is wrong. I'm with my dad for Shabbos - looking forward. May everyone be blessed with health, happiness, and peace this Shabbos and always.

CSN

I'm surprised that there don't seem to be any reviews of the CSN concert in NYC at the Beacon on Wednesday night. It was a good show, about two and a half hours long. Part of me wouldn't have minded if it was just Crosby and Nash, they seem to have a profound friendship and connection.

Look Well to This Day

Look Well to This Day
Anonymous

Look well to this day,
For it and it alone is life.
In its brief course
Lie all the essence of your existence:

The Glory of Growth
The Satisfaction of Achievement
The Splendor of Beauty

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is but a vision.
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Our Deepest Fear

By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us;
It's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Samuel Menashe - OBM

Inklings sans ink

Cling to the dry

Point of the pen

Whose stem I mouth

Not knowing when

The truth will out

- Samuel Menashe

I met Samuel Menashe, a brilliant, out of the box, unheralded, and under-published poet at a joint reading he did with acclaimed and super-famous poet, Dana Gioia on May 9, 2002. The reading was amazing. I knew I was in the presence of transcendence. Despite being a politician as well as a poet Gioia struck me as a good man. He had included Menashe in an anthology he edited and he was responsible for Menashe being known enough to be invited to that reading, part of a series of pairs of connected older and younger poets. Though he often writes long poems himself, Gioia appreciated Menashe's consistently short (under ten terse lines) works. Here's a nice concise poem by Dana Gioia, from Interrogations at Noon:

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

Gioia wrote a beautiful introduction to Menashe's book, The Niche Narrows. "Menashe is essentially a religious poet, though one without an orthodox creed. Nearly every poem he has ever published radiates a heightened religious awareness. His central themes are the unavoidable concerns of religious poetry - the tension between the soul and the body, past and present, time and eternity."

I am grateful to Gioia for the his inscription in his book Interrogations at Noon, which expressed "best wishes, said and unsaid."

Menashe blew me away. I asked him to be my poetry mentor. He said he was too old to do that, and that I could learn from reading his poems. I wanted to buy his book but had no cash on me. I told him I'd get money at an ATM and be back. He was surprised and quite appreciative when I returned with cash in hand.

I have mixed feeling about the phenomenon of "acharei mot - kedoshim - emor," the fact that the best career move people often make is to happen to die. On the one hand it's good that people are finally appreciated. On the other hand is there any sadder commentary on human nature?

The world's not going to win with me on this one. If Menashe, who passed away on August 22 at age 85, is now heralded I'll feel that it's a shame that it didn't happen while he was alive and wanting it. On the other hand, if he continues to go unnoticed it'll just be more of the same tragic neglect of a master (he was actually granted the Neglected Master Award). In a way he's

already gotten more attention ten days after he's gone away than he did in his lifetime. Major publications carried articles about him when he left the world. Perhaps the best one I've seen, and the newest one, is in the Economist. They say that Menashe was "the unresting representative of thousands of other dogged and neglected poets, scribbling and dreaming at their windows in all the cities of the world."

Now

By Samuel Menashe

There is never an end to loss, or hope

I give up the ghost for which I grope

Over and over again saying Amen

To all that does or does not happen--

The eternal event is now, not when