Give ear O heavens
And I will speak
Listen earth
To the words of my mouth

I stood on a rock
With You
You were wrapped in a tallit of light
And there I was given forgiveness
For all of us

When I came down the mountain
My face was fire
And on that fire
A mask

If we believe in justice
It is a double course justice
If we believe compassion
There is no stranger
Or we are all strangers
Not just then
But always

If we believe in good
There is good
And only good

If we choose life
We take each day
With the intention of joy

You are endlessly forgiving
Compassionate
When will You abandon us?

Never

jsg

From Tisha B’Av to Days of Awe

From the narrows
I call G*d
Who answers me with
Expansiveness – Ps. 118:5

We were learning during the three weeks, between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av, leaning into the deep sadness of that period. Felt through the arc this time drawing us out of the depth and into the arc of the days of Awe, not after the descent but during the descent, felt the draw of the ascending arc this year.
From the depths I call out to You
De profundis [see Oscar Wilde and Lorca]
Me’ma’amikim karaticha Hashem
Out of the depths I cry to you, O G*d
hear my voice
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in prayer
The 9th of Av we drop deep into Exile, the secret of Exile the secret of contraction and expansion, to constrict in order to release, to withhold in order to expand, between the narrows (Lamentations 1:3) we are.
We are the shofar, Blessed are we who know the shofar sound, because, O G*d, they shall walk in the light of your face (Psalm 89:15).
On that day,” says Isaiah, “the great shofar will be sounded. And they will come, those lost in the land of Assyria and those forsaken in the land of Egypt, and bow before G*d on the Holy mountain, Jerusalem.” — Isaiah 27:13
We make the sound of our freedom the same way. We purse our lips and contract our breath.
Between the narrows
The straits –
The 17th of Tammuz
And the 9th of Av

Constriction
Opening onto –
What?

Pinch
Squeeze
And from the squeeze –
Surge

You open to me
With expansiveness

Contract and expand
Constrict and open

Breath pursed
Narrows to
Release

From constraint
To expanse

From Exile to
Redemption.

From the ruins of the 9th of Av is contained the promise of redemption, this the secret of Exile, for every descent a hidden ascent.
There is a hilltop in Jerusalem where heaven and earth touch.
After the destruction the bride began to weep, the ground wept too.
The bride returned as a bird perched at the wall.

For three summer weeks, I sat low in sadness. I planned to bleed,
to wash myself clean.

This I have been taught: After a river of tears, expect the messiah.

jsg, usa

All Of It

And it shall come to pass
because [ekev] you listen to these ordinances [Ibn Ezra: if you listen]
and keep and do them
God will keep the covenant and the mercy
the mercy
sworn to your ancestors. [Deut. 7:12]

Ekev
Because
the mystery of the uncommon conjunction
something a preposition might admire
ekev also connotes heel
referring to those acts
we might not be attentive to [Midrash Tanhuma 1]
those that are thrown under our heels [so to speak]
Rashi calls them the light ones
the ones that might not attract our attention
the unglamorous deeds.

There are no unglamorous deeds.
Even the conjunctions of the mitzvah world –
their lovely low-li-ness.

Every generation is a heel generation
every person a heel person
everything previous rests on us
every act every word every gesture
contributes inscrutably
to now –
this day.

We are the heel on which everything rests –
everything counts in some ultimate way
as hidden as the heel that supports
the weight of our bodies.

Everything turns on the lowly conjunction ekev
be a conjunction for a while
be a preposition
an article.

What you did and what you didn’t do
what you remembered and what you forgot
what you honored and what you desecrated
it all rests on the heel of your generation
maybe on you yourself
and one day it may be clear that everything
every single thing
preceding
was necessary
everything contributes
the big the small the good the bad
the beautiful the lowly the lofty
the intentions
the mistakes

all of it.

jsg

O holy Shabbes Inspiration Ekev
Maqam Sigah trichord: E half-flat F G

Every Shabbat is associated with a musical figure, a maqam,
Arabic cognate to the Hebrew for “place.”

O holy

Listen up Israel

God is one
God alone
God the one and only
God integrated and unified
the seamless embrace of Existence
O holy God –

Know it and know it
Eid – can I be a witness
I climb up that large ayin
slide down the big dalet
I’ll be a witness to the seamlessness –
I turn it around in dyslexia
plow the language like a palindrome
Da’ – know!

I climb up the Hebrew running right to left
jump it back left to right
let all directions fold into the ascent of the letters
into knowing
Da’ – let me know
God is one
God alone
only God
lonely God.

O lonely God
I am recovering from the sadness too
three weeks I sat in sadness
seven weeks I am taking to recover.

God recovering too –
listen O Israel
everything is going to be better now.
Everything.
Slowly slowly
we are into the ascent.

I ask God in my prayers to lose that loneliness
we are witnessing
at least along for the ride
trying to know something
when knowing is not
everything.

O holy God –
we are trying to do something
right
after all.

jsg, usa

Maqam Hoseini
D E-flat F G
Maqam is a musical figure, cognate to Hebrew Maqom signifying Place. Each Shabbat is associated with a maqam.

Deutero-Nomos
Worlds

These are the words
I gobble them up like candy
They have grown legs now
Scampering around the manuscript
Now they have wings
Thirty two hidden paths
Twenty two letters
And ten elements
Principes –

All the passages pass through
Beauty
THESE ARE THE WORDS
The things
Items
The Deal

The deal
Deall.

Root word davar
In three
Ha-de-var-im words
Dibber spoke
Wilderness Midbar –

Sit yourself down on the desert floor
Spend quiet spend
Figure.

Wilderness of the word
Absence of word
Word
Sensitivity to word
Word itself
Thing itself the thing itself
Essence of the thing –

Which words?
All words –
With language
Everything.

Midbar
We are with words –
These are the words.

Is that what we are doing
just giving language to what we know?
Take the just out of the sentence –
We are giving language to what we know.

Know the world
Use your words
Unpack your tools
Power up blessing,
In-te-grate
Seams and Seems
First –
Language.

The Holy One engraved the world
through thirty two hidden paths of wisdom [Sefer Yetzirah 1:1]
– ten principles and twenty two letters
This from the Book of Formation
What God wrote into the world.

These are the words,
Speaks the Midbar –
Enter me.

jsg, usa

O holy Shabbes Inspiration Devarim

Shabbat Chazon the necessity to read the vision of Isaiah
on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av
God gives us the remedy before the malady
Built in — this curative wisdom is built in before it’s prescribed
the vision before the fall
the hope before the destruction,

I can’t find the blessing in it
he said to me over a cup of Joe
this always the problem in suffering
or in waiting even or in frustration
I can’t find the blessing in it.

On this the Shabbes before the 9th of Av
we recall the destruction of the Temples
even on Tisha B’Av there is a buried holiness and seed for hope.

Shabbat Chazon
Chazon: read the vision of Isaiah
The future Jerusalem — rebuilt, strong,
Built on resolution of the mistakes of the past.

From R. Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev –
The Shabbes of vision –
Third Temple
you can see it.

Feel this: always on the Shabbes just before Tisha B’Av
Black fast
Preceded by Chazon
The holy Temple rebuilt
The redemption we pray for daily.

Feel this: the proximity of what saves and what corrupts
Feel this: the vision of an ascendant future and the losses of the past
Feel this: the proximity of ascent and descent
Feel this: what purifies what defiles
Feel this: for every descent
A hidden ascent –

Something purifying out of exile
Something pure emerging out of suffering
Shabbat Chazon: a vision of ascent out of descent.

I found the blessing in it
Do you feel it?

R. Gamaliel, R. Eliezer b. Azariah, R. Yehoshua, and R. Akiva
came to the Temple Mount
they saw a fox coming out of the Holy of Holies,
they all burst into tears, except Akiva
Akiva laughed. [Makkot 24b]

Akiva said, old men and old women shall dwell again
In the streets of Jerusalem
And the streets of the city shall be full of children
— I know the prophecy.
Akiva saw something his friends did not
He saw the future –
How dark the night, he said, how bright the day to come. [the Maharal]

The harder the fall, the higher the return
Akiva laughing.

In the future
When it is time for the Messiah to come
On what day do you suppose the Messiah will be born?

On the ninth of Av.

jsg, usa

Maqam Hijaz
According to one source, all other instances of maqam hijaz, it is mixed with maqam bayat.

Only Shabbat Devarim, Shabbat Chazon [Shabbat of Vision] does hijaz appear in its pure form.

A maqam is a musical figure. Each Shabbat is associated with a particular maqam.

Maqam Hijaz D E-flat F# G

O holy Shabbes Chukkat
Maqam Hoseini
D E flat F G

Every portion has a musical figure,
A maqam
Arabic cognate to maqom
Place.

We were discussing the mystery rule of Torah
the mystery mitzvah as it were if it were understood
we might understand
it all

the chok of the little red cow –
how what purifies can corrupt
what corrupts might purify.

We came to rest in a place none of us imagined before
we began with a sense of redemption through learning
through guidebook Torah I suppose in a way suggested by
the Sefas Emes that applied to us more
than to the text itself.

Every soul has a portion
in the Torah
a dot
or a point
that is
incorruptable.

At that moment we had become a letter of the guidebook
a dot a vowel even a period a mark on the page
we became a letter of the text
we arrived at a-symmetry.

We came to the death of Miryam
how she died –
by the kiss of God
God sucked up her soul so to speak
Moses and Miryam both
with a kiss.

In God’s world they died sensually
they got inhaled into God’s breath through the Divine kiss
n’shikat Hashem
from God’s perspective they were taken into the heart like
a sweetheart.

What can we make now of the frustrations of their lives
or our lives for that matter?
How frustrating at the end to have been
loved into death this way –

God breathed life into Adam [Gen.2:7]
God inhaled Miryam’s soul.

What’s not integrated, what’s left undone in the story now
from God’s perspective
how could they have passed with more intimacy and gentleness
than with this holy kiss
through which they returned to one being with God?

With the death of Miryam following on the heels
of the mystery rule of the guidebook
the mystery paradox of the ritual of purification
the very preparation defiles
followed by the death of Miryam
the removal of the well that followed us
forty years Wilderness wandering
with the death of Miryam as she was inhaled into the mouth of God
do we mourn the absence of sustenance now?
The water that followed us the well that accompanied us
And the Wilderness the Wilderness?

The well gone
we are moving over the threshold without sustenance
the a-symmetry of the various stories that settled
not into harmony, not logical these stories
not entirely mysteries either
a-symmetrical, they do not converge
we will not figure them
they will not unlock the secrets of the guidebook for us.

They are the category of recoverable wisdom
gone for a moment
undeciphered for now
but known in night vision
a future
at night you understand them you do
at night you know what it is
not to penetrate this secret
it will not unravel
it is not entirely mysterious either.

We are always waiting
for that recoverable wisdom
the elders all of them
may return to us someday
to carry that sacred load throughout our lives
so we remember them
the bearers of recoverable wisdom –

Sustaining like Miryam’s well of water
Like the water
Like Miryam herself.

jsg, usa

Ellis Rivkin z”l

Education

When he was a boy,
He snuck off on Shabbes Afternoons –
“Ball Hawk” his teammates called him
so began his independence
and break from

expectations.

Intellectual Formation

He plotted the hidden ascent of the
British from his office
In the Klau Library
Wrestling his newsletters into light
Pouring over the secret
Sources,

The English are everywhere,

Predicting the fall of the Iron Curtain
Long before it collapsed –
“a society that cannot
produce
a decent razor
is no threat,”
he said in falsetto,
“it will collapse like a house of cards.”

The Classroom

His voice ascending
His eyes following ideas heaven-ward
Lifted
His voice
Into extra-sensory
Registers –
“tapping the mind of
God.”

Then there was the last session
Of the semester
When he kissed each of us as we left
As if we were second graders.

Then there were the nights he invited us
For hot chocolate

And the days he brought fine
European chocolates to the classroom,

And then there were the classes
Rarely history
He was planted in the future
And parsing the secret present –

To which he drove to and from
In his galleon Cadillac.

And then there was the time
He pushed the
Clouds

Away.

Ellis Rivkin,
sweetest teacher –

Good night
Dr. Ball Hawk.

james stone goodman
Cincinnati ‘81

Your Double Coursed Sister

I am your double coursed
Sister

My modal figure –
My yearning for voice.

I am a single line
I am the melodic serpent
Advancing by half-flats.

I am the hands of Ziryab
The blackbird
The one born in Baghdad.

I am oud player to the Umayyad court
Cordoba
8th century,
Ziryab
The dark one.

I am your hands
I am the reeshi in your hands
The eagle feather
As you pluck the strings.

I am the fifth course of strings
The ones introduced by Ziryab –

The soul –
Added to the four courses
The four humors of Aristotle.
I am the soul –
The fifth course.

I am the hands of the old man
Sitting by the Seventh Well

I am the sixth course
A single string
I am resolute
The absolute
The sixth course.

I am your hands
Rescuing you.