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"Heads or Tails"

Larry Gerstenhaber

Fortunately he was not the kind of Jew
Who once away from synagogue
Says never again, and so,
One day he stepped inside
A synagogue in his neighborhood,
And heard the ancient melodies,
Ancient to him as well, because
He could barely remember the last time,
And anyway his Grandfather
Had been with him, and his
Grandfather had been dead a long time.

It was Rosh Hashanah, and he
Liked to joke about the head of the year,
As if years had heads like fishes
Or sheep, and the bracha his father
Used to say, asking God to make him
The head, and not the tail, God
had certainly answered in the affirmative,
Making his father the certain head of his family.

He was lucky that they did not ask
Him for his ticket, for he did not
Have one, his attendance at the service
An impulse at best, and besides,
He would have had to tell them
That he had little money, and that
Would be a tough thing from
One Jew to another, a shame he thought,
And he was full of enough shames.

He brought those shames to the service,
Along with his anger, and loneliness,
And grief at the recent death of his love,
And he hoped in some way,
That the synagogue could heal that.
He wrapped the shawl about him,
Stopping to draw it over his head,
So that he could feel his breath on his face.
As a child he had seen the old men do this.

He knew he would have to come out
Some time, to see the others praying,
Or talking, feeling part of what was going on,
Which he did not feel, and was not
Sure what that would feel like,
His whole energy was focused,
On himself, on feeling better, and
The hunger he felt for the touch
Of God was so great that he
Remembered feeling it as a child.

So when the first tear fell, he again
Withdrew into the shawl, begging
and pleading with God, as he
Swayed back and forth, remembering
Something he did not know how he knew,
And when he felt a hand on his shoulder,
And another, and another, and he felt
Himself borne up by those angelic hands,
He opened up his heart and returned.

[ From the latest issue of Or HaDor ] [ Translation of Psalm 19 ] [ Meditative teachings ] [ Hallel ] [ Heads or Tails ] [ From Psalm 22 ] [ Parades ] [ In a Plain Brown Paper Wrapper ] [ A Song for Raising Consciousness ] [ Elat Chayyim poem ] [ Shelach ] [ An Introduction to Schmelvic Aphorisms ] [ Passover Transformations ] [ Insights from our Rabbis ]