Every year when we reach this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, I use it as an opportunity to share a few poems. Ha’azinu is one of the oldest Biblical poems, attributed to Moses, it is a summation of all the Israelites have been through from the Exodus from Egypt, through 40-years of wandering through the wilderness. This year, I offer two poems, both reflections on this year of sadness we have gone through as a people and as a world. The first is by me and it is one I will offer at the one-year anniversary of October 7th this coming Monday at the JCC at 7. The second is by Israeli poet Avraham Sharon and is included in the collection called “Shiva: Poems of October 7th.” I read during services a few weeks back. Enjoy!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
“On the First Yahrzeit of October 7th”
A day can be a year
A month a week
A year a day
A moment an eternity
When you are missing someone
Time does not move in a straight line
I can still your face as young as you were
Twenty years have passed like a day
The air in the study hall is still musty
Through the open window a siren is blaring
Whether this is today or another day entirely
Who can be sure
Here I grasp your hand if that’s something I ever did
Holding you back as if tomorrow was still so very far away
“Don’t Grow Up”
Don’t grow up now
My little girl,
This is no time to grow up.
Stay little
Enveloped.
Please, we pray. God.
Now we need a little time
To be calm
To plant a flower
To invite a butterfly and a dove
To water and plow the world
And make it
Fit for living and full of potential
Don’t grow up yet.
We need time
To bring back goodness to the world
And beauty.
It’s not a good time to grow up now
You deserve a world.
We need a little more time
To create it for you.
And then, only then, grow up.