Jewish
Frontier

Jewish Wedding

The rabbi was in ecstasy,
Delivering a rhapsody
On love and marriage and spirituality,
Of bottomless banality
And vapid generality,
Intoned with rhythmic gravity,
Certified on his authority
As the wisdom of the Jews.
He told us the Ketubah
Was a pledge of mutuality.
You'd never know it signified
Halachic inequality,
The man's superiority:
Only he could end the marriage
And his wife could claim indemnity.
Then the rabbi fixed the couple with a
     gaze of deep solemnity,
For he had a special message about
     marital morality.
"I charge you to promote each other's
     individuality,"
Which he said was countercultural
But an ancient Jewish standard of
     propriety.
Was ever tawdry twaddle
Recited with such piety?
Oh God of vengeance and implacability
Much foolishness is your responsibility,
But you are not to blame for this
     barbarity.
I almost can forgive your fearful clarity.

Henry Glickman
March 1998

Rachel Weeping

I left my Babylon
to
liberate
our
dead.

But they who loved me
flew from
chimneys
thrust
into
a
carbon
sky.

There smoke of passage
slipped through
my ancient
fingers
frozen
with
prayer.

In their patient
rising
through
the
galaxies
do they not grow weary?
The dead must have a place
somewhere
to rest?

O, Bubbe Sura
I see you
in the raven clouds.

Zeide Asher
you are the vapor
that surrounds me.

I weep for
forty nights
and forty days
I weep

Till the dove's lips
drink
deeply
from the fountain
of my eyes.

George L. Bernstein     
Windsor, Ontario     

Ner Tamid

"A lamp from the Lord is the soul of man."
                 —Proverbs, 20:27

Neshama, the soul's
eternal light, the divine
spark of the Shekhina
that flames our holiness
Neshama, the body's borrowed Kiddusha

Even as the Celestial Gates
of Ne'ela slowly close
Neshama sends a messenger
to plead for us
before the Heavenly Tribunal

Neshama is planted at
birth as the seed
blossoming into our
first cry

And with
the
sigh
of a
spent leaf

Spirals
down
with our
last
breath

And ascends
through
the galaxies
to
Him

Returning
as the
Ma-shiakh's
fingers
touch
the
Olive Mount
stones

Neshama
is as
eternal
as
the
universe.

George L. Bernstein     
Windsor, Ontario