All This And Haiku Too

I am teaching in twenty minutes and am allowing myself ten to breathe out and blog.

On Monday night a student texted me to ask if we could learn on Tuesday in memory of his grandfather, Rabbi Phillip S. Krohn. We learned two consecutive, related miishnayot: one tells us that this world is a preparation place for the next world, the following mishnah tells us that in different ways each world is better than the other.

A few minutes ago a stressed student told me that following our talk on Monday her teacher agreed to make an accommodation for her as long as I email the teacher that I feel it's the right move. Good news. Another student proudly told me that following our talk yesterday he has started to wear tzitzit. The bad news is that he finds them itchy.

Someone came in a moment or two ago to vent about not being able to find her wallet. I know first hand the pain of having lost something. She's looked in all the obvious places and is understandably upset.

One of the maintenance men, a lovely fellow named Jocelyn, just peeked into my new office and we had a nice chat. His soldier son is presently in Colorado and he seems a bit less worried about his son than at other points of these past years when he was on the front lines in dangerous war zones.

Don't tell the others

I'm happy to go to work

Keep it between us

Vayeitzei - Theme of Stones

Shprintza Herskovits (from whose sefer Rays of the Sun, the following piece is adapted) says there's a theme of stones. She introduces her essay with the idea of asking people what association they come up with when you mention stones. She suggests that there are two camps: Some people will thinks of the stones that break your bones, slung since the beginning of mankind. Others will think of rock solid structures, words written in stone, diamonds that are forever.

Yaakov sleeps on stones, then has a dream. When he wakes up he declares that he is in a place where G-d is. He makes the stone he slept on an altar and declares that if G-d stays with him the stone will become a pillar in the House of G-d. A scene that follows features a well covered with a stone so heavy that a crowd of shepherds must gather and together remove it. Yaakov, after seeing Rochel, removes the stone himself. Upon leaving Lavan's house Yaakov suggests that he and Lavan make a brit/covenant; the sign of the pact that he chooses is a stone.

You may remember the midrash that says that Yaakov takes many stones to sleep on and that they fought over who should have the prestige of having Yaakov rest on them. G-d's solution was to turn the many stones into one. This story is about fragmentation turning into unity. Perhaps Yaakov doesn’t comment on the merging of the rocks because he took it as a something that fit with the dream that he had just awakened from. Or, he doesn’t much notice that the change of the stones because this place was now equated with a place of G-d and oneness. This fits with the fact that Yaakov builds a matzeivah type of altar, which is from one stone, in contrast to the more common mizbeach, of several stones.

The Rashbam suggests that the reason why the shepherds had the well covered with one giant stone was because they mistrusted each other. This set up meant that they could only remove the rock all together. The stone thus represents the disunity that existed between them and also the unity that they needed to compromise upon as the only was for any of them to get water from the well. On the other hand Yaakov was overwhelmed by a sense of connection upon seeing Rachel. This feeling that he'd met his soul mate gave him the strength to lift the stone alone, and urge to remove something that was in place only due to disunity.

When Yaakov sees Rachel he cries. He has just been moved by a sense of oneness with his wife to be. And yet he cries out of the angst ridden existential realization that they would be together in life, separated by death.

The pact between Yaakov and Lavan over a stone represents that whether or not they could stay together depended on whether they could connect or not. If disparity between them was inevitable then perhaps it was best they go their separate ways.

Like so many things in life, stones can be positive or negative. They are not intrinsically bad or good, they can be used constructively or destructively by people. A lesson to be learned from the theme of stones in Parshat Vayeitzei.

Solved

By Neil Fleischmann

The problem with a Spanish soap opera

- I realize while glimpsing an American soap opera -

is not that it's in Spanish, but that it's a soap opera

The problem with people from other countries

who barely know English and often come across as off

is not that they don't know English, but that they're off

My problem of understanding you

as you dismiss me with

"It's not you it's me," is you.

At The End of the First Quarter

Busy day. I said to myself, and to others, that any non-teaching periods could not be use to meet with people, this one day, because I had to focus on finishing grades. And yet. A student was having an issue and her guidance counselor was out and she asked to please speak to me. Of course.

In classes we did the Netziv about how screaming without words can be prayer as we see from the end of Perek Bet of Shmot. We also did different opinions (did I blog this already?) about why the Jews cried out when the evil king died. Rashi - He had tzara'at, which is compared to death, and he bathed in blood of Jewish babies. Ramban - The new king was worse than the previous one. Sarna - It was normal for a new king to grand amnesty to slaves/prisoners, but this did not happen.

Miles to go before I go home.

...Everyone

Dear Blog,

How are you? I hope you are well. Please forgive my lateness in wishing you (us) a happy anniversary. I am sorry that I'm writing this late. The funny (not ha-ha) thing is that I was anticipating the day. And yet. When it arrived I was caught up in other things. And then the day departed. And I didn't re-remember until now.

Can you believe it's been seven years? I just reread our first post. I once shared here that I sometimes wrote divrei Torah, not revealing personal stuff. Mirty commented that divrei Torah can be revelatory too. It's true; I see in reading that piece that it's more personal than I realized. That essay preceded the blog, back when email was big I used to send out a weekly parsha piece. It was a mixture; there's a lot of me and my blogging style in that first post.

I am writing you this letter in pieces, because I don't know what to say. I keep thinking that if I come back to it I'll find the right words and the perfect time. Instead I find some time and some words. G-d is perfect, all others need just try try again.

As I write this paragraph it is 2:27 PM on Sunday November 27, 2011. I just walked through my threshold, into my home. I had door to door to door service from a loving (I meant to write lovely, but let's let the Freudian slip reign) couple I just met. Shabbos was nice. Beach-house that I've been writing about here since almost the start. I wrote the poem, "Could I Go On and On?" included in this post very early in the morning while watching a far away sailboat. I forgot that I cited it in my post for our fourth anniversary.

I am tempted to cite posts from the past. I've put a lot in here. There are books in here. There is me in here. If anyone can afford to, and is inclined to back me up financially for future books with pleasure (parsha, poetry, memoir, humor in Judaism, and many more) I'm not ashamed to ask; I'm asking. I've asked before and been asked back, "Doesn't that cost a lot of money?" (I know it wasn't a yes.) My first book was financed by me. It cost a few thousand dollars, but was truly invaluable. I dreamed I'd have a book in the world. I can now point to the moment in February 2011 when my dream came true. I have enough haiku for a second volume of a haiku book. I also have enough in long form and that will cost more as it will need to be bigger. I didn't expect to start talking about practical plans and the money involved in putting out more books. Dear blog, as much as you mean to me, I think we can take this writing relationship to a higher level. Just today I had the thrill of gifting someone with my book. She flipped through it and showed me one that really touched her. Lots of people do that. And their favorites vary widely. What a joy! I'm selling the book now for five dollars and giving it to anyone that considers it something that they'd like to have and to read. It's available on the main strip in Teaneck at The Teaneck General Store. Also, it's available for a high price at lulu.com (profits go to lulu).

The poems keep flowing. I wrote some today.

I feel like there's so much to say. And yet. I have so many memories connected to here.

I think I want to close this letter. I may still reminisce more in another post. Or I may just try to spend more time with you in the future.

I hope people read and visit here and at Cousin Parshapost.

I am a writer

The ocean is my witness

The rocks are my reeds

Only the ocean

gives a piece of the answers

flowing in the waves

Happy seven year anniversary dear blog. And happy anniversary dear blog readers. May G-d bless us all...

Be Well (as one of mom's "sisters" told me she used to sign off),

Neil

Sitting On a Jetty As the Waves Crash Around Me and the Sun Crouches.

Only water flows into my kishkas this way. The water, oh the water.

Can anything compare to the explosion of a splash against a rock? I think not. I can't stop thinking. Sitting by the water. Oh the water.

Every drop a wave. Every wave a current. Every current an ocean crashing into me.

"And, and, and, and, and," the water says to me, moving in and out, uncatchable, unavoidable, unbelievable in her grace."

Now never feels as tangible as it does at water's edge.

Come redemption, wash over us. Don't ebb away; wash over us. Purify us "sooner than immediately" (as someone recently emailed me regarding the time frame for which he needed me to help him meet his perceived needs).

In this place I feel good.

There is no tension at the end of the ocean.

You should be here with me.

Pieces of Yesterday

As today is about to start I still hold pieces of yesterday. It was a teaching day that rated about 98, poo poo poo. 6 classes. 3 Torah Guidance sessions. A test that made kids know material while allowing them a good chance to succeed. A discussion about Moshe as an adopted person and opinions about a paper on an article (which I hope to share notes on soon) that was handed in and evoked passionate responses. A class inspired haiku. A good hour of improv club at the end of the day (5:30-6:30, and then catching bus number one of two just on time as he stopped at a red light and I knocked on his door).

One beautiful moment I wish to share before it fades away, or worse - gets overshadowed by toxic shtus:

The king of Egypt dies. The people cry out to G-d. Why do they cry now? One could argue that things would get better and there was no reason to cry. Before I shared Rashi's answer and other approaches, Daniel offered his own idea. He said that they cried now because while the Egyptians were crying for the death of Pharoh, they could cry over their suffering and it would go unnoticed. (This reminded me of how when I lost my mother I didn't want to cry all the time, so sometimes it worked out well when I was surrounded by people crying for an acceptable contextual reason and I could cry for mom, and not stand out).

Dafna challenged Daniel: Why couldn't they just cry because they were suffering slaves, why - according to Daniel - did they need to cover up their tears? Talia answered on Daniel's behalf, suggesting that if the Jews cried openly then the Egyptians would have beaten them more. This is the way of bullies. Elizabeth suggested that crying due to their oppression would give the Egyptians satisfaction and that's why they did not cry. My thought was that human dignity is something which we always wish to maintain. Even in an a situation, in which it is understandable that we cry, we are uncomfortable with having mascara running down our face - due to our basic need for human dignity.

Haiku

good, bad, or so-so

taste is bitter as our tongue;

in our fingertips

haiku

all but forgotten

poetry is an orphan

all but forgotten

haiku

even a servant

tries to hold her dignity

hides away her tears

Haiku

I hope to recall
This moment slipping away
This very sweet day

Haiku of the Morning

Time is always short
and yet there is always room
for one more haiku

Seven Years, Now

5:58 PM

Saturday Night: Eleven Forty-Five PM

Self absorbed Vin Scelsa keeps talking

I tread the net and stop at Mimaamakim

"Idiot’s Delight" almost done I’ll need

distraction other than WFUV, because

"Group Harmony Review" isn’t my thing

So I visit this old friend of a poetry site

While Elton sings he hopes I don’t mind

And I write like a Billy Collins wannabe

Filled from contentment of Shabbos rest

I am disappointed my latest isn’t posted

And Alejandro Escovedo sings of hands

As I notice eight mortgage ads posted in

spaces that should have held my poetry

and Vin riffs of TV and a random FCC

as I prepare to post these unsaved words

my way of calling G-d out of my depths

Don't be confused by the title of the poem. I am starting this post in the early evening; who knows when it will end? (Good chance we'll call it 11:59 PM, my code for "later than I care to admit"). That poem was written and posted 7 years ago on Saturday night, November 20, 2004, in the first post ever of this blog. Yes, it's seven years. A wow and a sigh.

I woke up Monday with a burning in my throat and phlegm that it would be wise not to describe or even mention here (oops). Tuesday I went to the doctor. I told him that my throat was feeling better and that that scared me because it was too quick and past experience had told me that that meant that the infection had moved to my ear. He disagreed and gave me a weaker end antibiotic...

9:04 PM

I just had a great visit from a dear friend. We sat and ate and talked on a deep level, nothing like it.

Over Shabbos I kept thinking of things to write about; the book I'm reading - Holy Beggars: A Journey From Haight Street to Jerusalem, how - even though it set records for heat - the summer felt cold to me - due mainly to my broken ankle that's still - hopefully - healing, the nice dvar Torah I heard from Rabbi Dovid Miller at Shalosh Seudos (about the deep connection between marriage and the acquisition of Israel and the reason why such a big deal is made about the acquisition of the land being because the connection to the land is so holy and deep), the dvar Torah that the rabbi sitting next to me at Shalosh Seudos told me (he's speaking right around now at an event about teen issues and will be telling a story from the Gemorah in Chulin about a man who visits a town and is accused of all kinds of things - eating treif, stealing, and more - and proves himself innocent of all charges, then right after his case a kid is found guilty of doing wrong things and he proves that they are incorrectly putting the kid up on charges even though the kid did wrong things - the way my friend explained this Gemorah, the man was telling the people that their children were suffering because rather than raising their kids properly the town people were too busy judging and accusing everyone), My Dyslexia, my Chumash term paper, an addition to the thread I started on Friday about the power of remembering good things about people and telling them so (I recently told a visiting graduate how highly I thought of her midot and how in particular I recall her poise and maturity when she, as a sophomore, made a shiva visit to me), so many things I could write about...

10:13 PM

I want to wind down here. My friend who visited, for some reason was struck by and remembers this post, particularly the lines, "In some ways the page remains blank, the writer isolated. And yet, the poem is written, is now outside, here for you to see." Those lines later became this haiku, which my friend was sure I'd put in my book, but I didn't. Maybe for the next one, which I hope to put out soon.

The page remains blank

The writer isolated

and yet you read

On Thursday I met with a very bright student for Torah Guidance (I wouldn't be surprised if she was valedictorian or salutatorian). She is a believer and yet she was wondering about free will. We made a deal that before we meet next we will each read an article new to us on the topic and then discuss it further.

Some big questions don't so much bother me

like are we or are we not completely free?

More than free will, I wonder about Free Willy

Much as that might come across as silly

Although it's a picture I never got to see

I know Ebert called it one of the best of '93

Don't ask me what I'm talking about

All I know is there's no reason to shout

Being loud doesn't make you more right

In my mind it puts me in the mode of fear and flight

I guess I should wonder if I have free will

I was angst filled once - now my soul sits more still

At least when it comes to broad philosophy

The things I'm more curious about have to do with me

In my gut I take responsibility for my life

Despite what I was recently told on a date by a potential wife

She said that being single was a total act of G-d

I found her conviction on the topic a bit odd

Especially considering it was a first date

An unusual context for discussing fate

The discussion turned high pitched and intense

She kept insisting my position made no sense

I still think we have to own our life

We can't blame G-d for all of our strife

I see it as a combination platter

G-d and me, in my life we both matter

Take now for example, time for bed

and yet I'm at the computer instead

Is G-d forcing me to write these lines?

Or is it a choice which I need to own as mine

This is getting a bit too deep

You're right if you guessed I'm heading toward sleep

Bye Bye Week

I was doing Torah Guidance the other day with two students, discussing identity. They gave one of their friends as an example of someone who has the strength to be honest, be her own person, do the right thing, and not be pressured by others. At lunch today I bumped into said friend and passed on that friends of hers had high praise for her. She shined like the sun and went to tell other friends how sweet and kind those friends were. I walked out of lunch and bumped into our computer specialist. I told him that I was recently talking with a student and she said that her family is so fond of him and so appreciative of the work he's done for them on their computers. He was thrilled to hear it.


This poem by Emily Dickinson comes to mind:


If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.


I was talking this afternoon Torah with 3 boys who had a free period and chose to use it for Torah Guidance. One of them was chock full of medrashim and wanted to understand some of them better. He asked what he was to make of the medrash, which says that Og hung on to the ark and lived many years beyond the flood. I told him that Chazal will often consolidate matters and say that an unnamed character is really someone we already heard of. The students all together chimed in that this is called the principle of the conservation of biblical characters. One of them said that an example of this is saying that Shifra and Puah were Yocheved and Miraiam. Another student - a super masmid and our resident Lubavitcher said that in the case of Shifra and Puah it is total pshat and not simply this principle at play. He says he can prove it. I look forward.


I look forward to Shabbos and I breathe out the week. Shabbos is approaching. I wish a wonderful Shabbos to the world. G-d knows we need it.

Chayei Sarah: Our Ma’arat HaMachpeilah

Following high school, while in Israel, I stayed in touch with one of my teachers and I recall the Aerogramme I received from him. He stressed the importance of visiting the holy sites of Israel as holy sites, not as tourist attractions. He encouraged me to glean from these places the holiness they offered. He mentioned the Kotel andMa'arat HaMachpeilah as examples of holy places with reservoirs of holiness to tap. It was timeless, sound advice and it came back to me as I turned to this week's pasha, which describes the acquisition of the Ma'arat HaMachpeilah. The following ideas are based on the work Wellsprings of Faith by Rabbi Moshe Wolfson.

Yerushalayim and Chevron are separate and distinct places of prayer that serve as spiritual centers of the Jewish People. They were each established as holy places by Avraham and are forever linked with theAvot: Yerushalayim was set as a holy place after Akeidat Yitzchak and Chevron was bought and established as the holy burial ground for theAvotand Imahot. Yerushalayim is open, situated on a mountain; all about seeing and being seen. Chevron, in contrast, is concealed and underground. Yerushalayim is about open revelation, Chevron is about hidden faith.

On the one hand, the hidden aspect of Chevron makes it seem inferior toYerushalayim, but Chevron actually claims a semblance of superiority. That which is hidden can not be destroyed. In fact, while the city of Yerushalayim and theBeit HaMikdash have been decimated, Chevron has never been destroyed.

Every individual is a microcosm of the world. Everything that exists in the world is mirrored inside us. Just as there is a Ma'arat HaMachpeilah in the world, there is a Ma'arat HaMachpeilah inside the heart of every Jew. Deep inside us is a place that contains the holiness of the Avot and connects us with them. When we mention their merit in our prayers we are not merely eliciting a vague, old memory, but we are connecting with an essence presently residing within us.

When one stands in Chevron he or she doesn't readily see the grave sites of our forefathers. Even at the entrance ofMa'arat HaMachpeilah no view of the graves is available. The Avot are buried deep within our physical world in an unusual way in which they are there but hard to find. Similarly, the spiritual essence of the Avot is buried so deeply inside of every Jew that it is sometimes almost undetectable. The essence of our forefathers, the pillars of our faith rests in our core. As Rabbi Wolfson puts it: "It is hidden far beneath the thoughts and feelings that flicker across the face of our being, shifting like the winds and changing like the weather. It is hidden beneath the persistent patterns of personality."

May the reading of this parsha serve to remind us of the faithful message of the Ma'arat HaMachpeilah. May we be blessed to tap into the deep faith of our fathers which lives inside our souls. And may we all be blessed to be in Israel soon and tap into the holiness of the land, in places like Yerushalayim and Chevron.

Rabbi Neil Fleischmann

"With every mistake we must surely be learning." - George Harrison

3:42

By Neil Fleischmann

I sit and stare at an empty page

looking for emotion, I'll settle for rage

There must be a reason I don't sleep through the night

Some wrong someplace that I want to make right

What is it about me that makes me me?

I have a feeling it's something you simply see

Whomever you are or were or will be

Some one of you sees me

What do I see when I look out ahead?

Books not read, words unsaid - people unwed

Through writing I dream of fixing it all

If only that last detail I could recall

The color of the toy, the sand in the hair

The punch-ball captain who was mean and then fair

Different fools do different things to feel free

"Poems are written by fools like me"

Is it true that only G-d can make a tree?

What is the blessing of a skinned knee?

What am I saying, what's this about -

as I tap out these letters and quietly shout?

Might my sleeplessness be a prayer to G-d?

When will I see the dehiscence of my pod?

Perhaps I will find some answers in sleep

I don't play the guitar, it's my poems that weep

Good Night Tune

When I rap out loud

I'm funny and proud

but when I write instead

it gets turned on it's head

I lose my sense of fun

turn solemn

like a Roman column

not a tune you can hum.

I could rhyme all day

it's my approach - my way

but do I really have what to say?

does that stop anyone anyway?

I am sick with a cold

feeling worn feeling old

getting ready for bed

thoughts swirling, being retread.

as I lay down I pray for peace

in the north, south, west, and east.

I pray for you and I pray for him

I pray for the bright and for the dim

I pray with and without words

I pray prayers I want and don't want heard.

As I lay me down to sleep

I pray with my mouth and with my feet

I pray for a heart and for a soul

for the broken and for the whole

for the world and for the village

for the touchdown and the scrimmage.

I'm not really a sports fan

but I appreciate that an athlete needs a plan.

Everyone needs to look ahead

and think before what you say's been said

plan for the future let go of the past

vacuum the dust of the dreams that didn't last.

Desmond Tutu said the vacuum line

I learned it today and it's been on my mind

now I really have to go

end this little imagined show.

May everyone I love

be blessed with grace from G-d above.

Writing A Résumé

By Wislawa Szymborska - Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

What needs to be done?
fill out the application
and enclose the résumé.

Regardless of the length of life,
a résumé is best kept short.

concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.
Landscapes are replaced by addresses,
shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;
of all your children, only those who were born.

Who knows you matters more than whom you know.
Trips only if taken abroad.
Memberships in what but without why.
Honors, but not how they were earned.

Write as if you'd never talked to yourself
and always kept yourself at arm's length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,
dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth,
and title, not what's inside.
His shoe size, not where he's off to,
that one you pass off as yourself.
In addition, a photograph with one ear showing.
What matters is its shape, not what it hears.
What is there to hear, anyway?
The clatter of paper shredders.

Yehuda Amichai Loved Jerusalem

Here's a review of Open Closed Open. It's well done and it cites one of the most striking pieces in the book:

And there are days here when everything is sails and more sails,
even though there's no sea in Jerusalem, not even a river.
Everything is sails: the flags, the prayer shawls, the black coats,
the monks' robes, the kaftans and kaffiyehs,
young women's dresses and headdresses,
Torah mantles and prayer rugs, feelings that swell in the wind
and hopes that set them sailing in other directions.
Even my father's hands, spread out in blessing,
my mother's broad face and Ruth's faraway death
are sails, all of them sails in the splendid regatta
on the two seas of Jerusalem:

the sea of memory and the sea of forgetting.

Dim Gold - In Memory of Aaron Bulman

So my words go

like the air blows

through the vents of

a cheap hotel

Barely warm

slight in form

hardly noticed

harnessed wind

I miss my dead friend

just now and then

but mostly now

if not now when?

His spirit moves me

to move creatively

from hand to pocket

pen to page

The sun is dim gold

my work day unfolds

This poem breathes

beneath my skin.

Natah

What's in

my name?

A shameful

game

Youth

misquoted

Self

outvoted

On First Meeting

How honest

should I be?

Can I trust

you with me?

Are you showing

me you?

What to do?

What to do?

Poem of the Day

What is the cost

of beauty

of wasted time?

What does always mean

constant or consistent?

Why do I ask questions

here or anywhere?

Open House

8:54 AM - I'm sitting in my office (from which furniture has been removed - since late Friday afternoon - to my surprise). Thirty-six minute countdown to the opening of Open House. Excitement is mounting. A board member is addressing volunteer parents of current students in the main entrance about how to comport themselves with visitors, which are estimated to be in the high hundreds.

I just assisted the associate principal in moving his podium and rearranging seats in the Beit Medrash till it felt just right. He tested out his Dvar Torah on me. It's about how saying "Shma Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad" wards off mazikin. There is a wide array of opinions as to what mazikin - often interpreted as evil spirits - are.

Taking a rational rather than mystical approach he's collected opinions that relate mazikin to some element of our inner thoughts: nightmares, heretical musings, etc. By accepting the yoke of heaven we embrace the truth and elevate and protect ourselves from the garden variety of negative reflections that threaten to take us down. Everyone has their personal pitfall and their own way up and out of it.

When Moshe tells G-d what he would like to see in his successor he says he wants someone who "gets" all kinds of people. As Torah teachers and guides our goal is to reach everyone in the way they need, to bring them far from what brings them down, and to move them as close to G-d as possible - for that is all that is good. That's how I hear what he wishes to convey.

Time to go and do holy public work.

A Good Week..

One day you were born More light came into the world
We all became blessed
(10/7/11)

In the midst of noise
I stop and write a haiku
Find my still small voice
(10/13/11)

I sorted through and through away some papers tonight, including two pages that had the above haiku on them. I've lost some good poems. Sigh. I've saved some good ones too. Yay.

A friend recently told me about his friend Aharon Applefeld. At lunch today I found out that he's a big famous writer in Israel. Who knew? My friend speaks of him with such affection and admiration. At lunch when I asked my table mate if she enjoys Applefeld I was told that you don't enjoy him, as he writes exclusively about the Holocaust. Said friend recommended I read the David Grossman's To the End of the Land. I had tried and couldn't get past the cryptic start. No-one at the meal had heard that Obama took the book on his summer vacation. It was one of several. The president is into books - reading and writing them.

A dear friend at the meal told me that he thought I might like a certain poem of his available online. I did like it. I liked the way he describes his touching the tactile marks in shul. I like the way he writes in small letters, like his father before him. And I like the way he tiptoes around his father's passing away:

old shul: pacing

as i pace the benches
i search out
the taped-over BB hole in the window
the constellation-like pattern of rug spots
the rusting fire extinguisher mount

these are the landmarks
that have kept me steady

i reach
out to touch
the small metal plates
identifying each bench by letter
A through Q
the back wall
bringing the alphabet to a sudden
end

sometimes i imagine
benches R through Z
all polished and plush
in some suburban synagogue
where so many moved
escaped

either that or
broken splintered dead
with all the others

when growing up
we used to sit on P
and i felt a certain
pride of ownership
P being my first initial

until my brother and
i were respectively banished
by my dad
to rows O and
Q
after a particularly noisy
argument

and i stayed on Q
long after
my brother fled
until the day my dad
stopped pacing
could not be counted

and i left Q
moved up to D
because there
was nowhere
further back
to go.

On Friday a colleague innocently mentioned having her students write Latin haiku. She didn't know I published a haiku book. Within minutes she was the owner of a copy. It has been a little while since I gave the book to anyone, the early flurry of sending it to dear friends having passed. I just remembered that I owe some copies to recent contest winners). It had been a while since I read the book myself and over Shabbos I read it straight through. It took a lot of my resources to get it done and I am so grateful to G-d that my book is out there.I almost went to a Carlebach memorial concert tonight. Instead I stayed in reading Holy Beggars. As I write the soundtrack of They're Playing Our Song is on via Rdio.com. It makes me think of my childhood friend Seth (whom I set up with his wife).

At lunch I asked for a minute on the clock to say a dvar Torah (it took 1:20, but that included the participation of a third grader intern rabbi). My thought was that Avimelech's name reflects that he had his job because his father had it first, while Avraham's name meant that kings would come from him. Avimelech was all about himself, when he prays that G-d should not kill a righteous man he is speaking of himself. When Avraham said the same prayer it was to save others, the people of Sedom. May we be blessed to be like Avraham, to look forward and reach outward.

My friend spoke about how the reading of Rosh HaShanah comes from this week's parsha, to his mind, because it's about the tough moral decisions of life.

There's more to say, but I can't stay, time to go count sheep till I fall asleep, all good things must end, even writing friends, I can't sit hear and yawn till dawn, soon I'll be getting up to pray and start my rich day, selling to a new crop, and acting as traffic cop, at the open house of my school (I hope the new kids think I'm cool), so I won't say more of what's new, for I must bid you adieu, bless your soul to reach great heights as G-d polishes it tonight.

The Week Is Ferfallen

12:04 PM - At work. We had meetings today. The main issues were preparation for Sunday's Open House and for this year's Midde States evaluation.

It's weird to be in school with no kids here - it seems ironic and kind of bizarre, school without students.

3:56 PM - Just got home. Stayed at work a while to help set up for open house. I worked on displaying trophies. Then on the way home I went shopping. Got some panko coated fish and other necessities - including three pairs of discount reading glasses.

I regret that I've fallen away from writing tanka.

writing means I'm here
will one day show i was here
longhand graffiti
much like the book known as life
written one word at a time

I love poetry. I recently told someone I was into poetry and they said they were too. Then when I started citing poets and poems I like they clarified that they meant that they like it theory, liked it once, don't hate it. This happens pretty often.

I've been flipping through Amichai's Open Closed Open and was taken by this line: "Even solitary prayer takes two."

Here's a nice one by Amichai, discovered and published after he'd passed away:

After the still small voice
a noise
And after the noise,
a still small voice.
And after it, a noise.
And after it, a still small voice
And after the still small voice,
a noise.
Discard the rest.

It's Shabbos in a few moments. May we all be blessed to be changed by Shabbos and to go on to live our week in the Shabbos way.

Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, Z"TL

This week the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir Yeshiva, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, passed away. He was known to be a brilliant Rosh Yeshiva in the traditional sense and he was particularly known for his compassion and sagacious advice.


One of his many students (is there such a thing as a former student of a Rebbe?) wrote, "He was the only Rosh Yeshiva I ever met who vocally expressed his intense love for his talmidim. I will cherish the moments that I spent with him and will never forget the hundreds of times I heard him say to the students in the yeshiva, "Ich chab dir leeb" - "love all of you." This is a trait he shared with his namesake, the Alter of Slbodka. (The Alter passed away in 1927. Different reports have called The Alter Rav Nosson Tzvi's grandfther or great-grandfather.) This fits with what a colleague of mine emailed the Gemorah staff, I once had the opportunity to ask the Rosh Yeshiva zt”l how to motivate my talmidim to learn better.


He responded without hesitation, “show them warmth and they will learn better.” Rav Nosson Tzvi grew up in Chicago and went to Ida Crown where he was on the student council. Soon after that he began a life of unusually intense learning and devotion to Torah.


The Mir Yeshiva, in Yerushalayim, according to HaAretz newspaper, has between 3000 and 5000 students. There is a welcoming and amorphous nature to the place. Several of the teachers in my school spent some amount of time there, something that I didn't know till a flurry of emails started going around after the Rosh Yeshiva passed away.


In my favorite of the personal stories shared, one colleague wrote, "I spent a summer zman in the Mir and after a Friday schmooze asked Rav Nosson Tzvi (zt''l) about a particular issue that I had very little clarity on for an eitzah. He told me 'Knei lecha chaver' - the word knei can also be translated as a quill (pen) ('your pen is your friend' ). He advised that I write down on paper all that I was thinking and said that I would discover that I had much more insight than I realized."

Photo of the Day

In my Torah Guidance office

I keep a steady supply of

Paskesz sour chews.

An artistically inclined student

took this photo today.

Between Classes

"Kirvat Elokim li tov - Closeness to G-d is what is good for me." That's what King David said - that the only good in life is closeness to G-d. I had a heated talk yesterday in one of my classes. We were learning through the six constant mitzvot, the second of which is "not to let it enter your mind that there is any god other than G-d." I said that when people make anything a value separate from G-d - it is like taking on another god. This got the discussion running. Really, rabbi? As fate would have it our principal addressed the school today and spoke about how having a relationship with G-d is the most important thing in life and that is what we are here to help students cultivate. Off to try again.

Haiku of the Day

Life is a haiku

So few words, so short a space

Simply beautiful

10:12 AM

Long ago I was introduced to the idea that there are negative (yetzer hara) and positive forces (yetzer hatov) inside us. I recall reading as a child (in a newspaper version of Jewish history called Chronicles that I got as a Bar Mitzvah present, in the name of the Ba'al Shem Tov) that just as the yetzer harah is always increasing ammunition and forces so too must we always be upping the effort on the side of good.

Someone once said to Rav Eliyahu Lopian that they noticed that his light was on late at night and they advised that as he was old, he should sleep more. He said that he would have plenty of time to sleep when he was dead. That's one of those stories that is in the extreme yet serves to teach us a level that exists regarding a value we should appreciate. It comes to mind, along with the thoughts in the first paragraph, as I'm tired - and part of me wants only to sleep. There's another part of me, thank G-d, that wants to increase the ammo and fight on. Go to this post from a year and a month ago and look at three paragraphs up from the bottom to see a relevant quote.

I wonder why I write here, have been both wondering and writing for seven years (not yet, but soon to be). Mom (OBM) used to say that I write things here that I shouldn't write here. Lately - I think - I've been (boringly) cautious. I've been writing elsewhere, including the tablet of my heart (sorry if you're not in the mood for corn). Every now and again - and now it's then - I feel like blogging old style, free form.

A student just told me that two teachers he/she has had for the same subject are similar in content, but one seems to love what he/she teaches and the other seems not into it. Said student explained that the latter would be the better teacher content wise but the former is far better due to her genuine affinity for the Torah he/she teaches. Wow. That statement is so pregnant I think it's going to have twins.

I just had the pleasure of chatting with two dear, experienced colleagues who have each been here at work for twenty plus years. One of these dear men shared two outstanding divrei Torah. When I liked the first - parshah related one, he told me another of his - general - favorites:

Rashi says that Avraham sat at his tent door watching for people passing by to take in and host. The phrase used to describe those crossing through Avraham's path are "oveir veshav." On a drash level these words could mean Avraham was looking for people who were oveir an aveirah and he would assist them in being shav - returning in teshuvah to G-d.

The second vort that Rabbi Shimon Murciano told me was on the pasuk "Hinei mah tov umanayim shevet achim gam yachad" - "How good and pleasant it is when brothers sit together." The word "gam," which means also, often goes untranslated. Why does Dovid Hamelech say, ""How good and pleasant it is when brothers also sit together." The explanation may be that it is easy to call someone your brother when he is far away but to be brotherly even when you're together is a big deal.

Time to make the donuts.

After Seven Years

Jennifer Natalia Fink, my writing teacher, used to say to move pen on paper - keep writing, and if you can't write then doodle and just keep moving the pen for X amount of time. It's more challenging to do that with the computer because it's so easy to correct as you go, to clean things up, and not even admit it to yourself (a metaphor?). So, I'm using a solution for that (which I found somewhere online); I am typing in white on white, so I can't see the words. Later - for your benefit I'll clean it up just a bit, but for now it's free flowing...

Some bloggers write less because they have nothing to say. Some write anything that comes to mind. I hold back.

Gene Siskel once asked Phil Jackson why Dennis Rodman always missed his first free throw. Instead of giving an answer Jackson asked Siskel what he thought. Gene said that Rodman must have, for some reason, felt that he had to miss the first one. I think the answer often to why we do something or are in a certain situation is because we feel we have to be there.

Yesterday in shul

I saw a man hoarding cake

and napkins as well

"I Was Born Inside The Movie of My Life" - Roger Ebert

I took each of these photos this week. One of these theatres, which is a few blocks away from my apartment, has no movie I want to see. The other (six miles away) is more my speed. There's a lot to say here, but I'll the pictures speak as you take in their two thousand words.

Reverse Drama

By Kay Ryan

Lightning, but not bright,
Thunder, but not loud.
Sometimes something
in the sky connects
to something in the ground
in ways we don't expect
and more or less miss except
through reverse drama:
things were heightened
and now they're calmer.

My Day Or On Teaching Shemot - Part III

Today I taught 5 periods. It was a mostly break-less and fulfilling day. In addition to the teaching I had an intense guidance meeting with one student and less intense yet also important meetings with three others. Also, I appeared in a colleague's classroom as Holden Caulfield reciting a monologue of his. After the acting with the script via the book, I took questions in character. Then I took questions as myself. The kids' questions were bright and there was an excitement in the air. Sometimes it all comes together and I love my job, my life. I also spent a period helping a student plan his informative speech assignment (for my class) on Jews in boxing. Cinderella Man did a disservice by making Max Baer seem evil. In real life he was not the ruthless killer they make him out to be in that film (see this artful article about the posthumous libel and how it eats his son alive.) I was going to bus it all the way home and was blessed instead with a ride to the second bus from a dear former student of eight years ago - who is now a dear colleague. As I hit the block perpendicular to mine after walking home from the GWB terminal I bumped into a dear friend who is in my neighborhood for TLN via YU. It was a rejuvenating treat to see him and to converse. He told me a beautiful idea: The Gemorah says that if you think you're watching someone's silver for them and it gets lost and it turns out that it was really gold you are only responsible for fines as if it were gold. The reasoning behind this ruling is that since you thought you were watching silver you did a lesser level of watching, and it's not your fault - had you known you were guarding gold you'd have used a higher level of supervision. Rabbi Berel Wein says that The Jewish People think that we're silver and fail to realize that we're gold. Only after experiencing great loss do we realize how valuable we are and are woken up to realize that we need to take better care of ourselves as a nation. This is a sad reality that often applied to us as individuals as well as in a communal way. Let's name it The Got Till It's Gome Syndrome. Speaking of naming things today I taught my students the principal of the conservation of biblical characters. It was in the syllabus and so I went for it. We were discussing Shifra and Puah and how some say they were Jews and some say they were Egyptians. The Abarbanel goes out of the box and says that Shifra and Puah were titles and that all of the midwives in Egypt worked in pairs - one worked with mother and one with child. Many of us were blessed as children to be told almost in our mother's milk that Shifra and Puah were Yocheved and Miriam. That's where the conservation theory came in; the idea is that it's better to accumulate a lot of facts about main characters rather than have a lot of mysterious minor players we know little about. No one complained about this theory (or questioned where it came from). One student did question the Abarbanel. She said she didn't like it because by making Shuifra and Pua into positions rather than people it takes away from the greatness of these two individuals, a greatness that the Torah stresses and that we have had stressed in our Torah learning since we were toddlers. I said that they are still individuals, that's not diminished - and yet I heard her point and hopefully let her know so. The midwives not only don't kill the babies but they also keep them alive. And once again, a word that appears repeatedly in this early part of the story in one form or another (vayirbu) is used to tell us that despite Paroh's best efforts to diminish them the Jews kept multiplying. I'm closing this post; no pauses, no paragraphs, old school blogging.

From The Room In Camp Nageela

What does this picture say to you?

Can You Guess Where This Parochet is From?

What new song would you like to sing?

We Are The Stories We Tell

"I staved off boredom as a child by telling my grandma stories as my mother listened from the dining room, where she counted coins from my father's vending machines. We'd sit on the tiny blue sofa in the living room, which she used as a bed, and my grandma would listen intently, smiling and nodding, as my dreamy stories took us far away from our unhappy house in Rochester's inner city.

I can still see them in their peasant dresses surrounded by the drabness of the furniture and peeling wallpaper, and myself in their eyes, where to them I was more than what my performance in school described, more than what my teachers believed I was capable of, more than what I knew and didn't know about the real world. They knew who I was from my stories. And from the love they felt for me. There are times, while giving a reading, when I will catch myself looking for their faces in the audience. I'm looking for the comfort and encouragement memory provides, and the nostalgia of reclamation. We are the stories we tell, the things we make up and invent, we are more than the answers we give to questions, more even than our limitations - we are the cantankerous, infinitely mysterious dreams we somehow find the courage to imagine and sometimes to tell others."

- My Dyslexia By Phylip Schultz (pages 113-114)