The Breaking of the Vessels

 

 

I like to think you were contemplating God
in one form or another
when the first plane hit
At your desk on the 103rd floor
a smile on your lips

 

You were strolling the orchard
we wandered together
The land of KabbalahThe tradition of Jewish mystical interpretation of sacred texts. The foundational kabbalistic text is the Zohar. and Zohar and wonder
seeing the light
so bright
that next to it
what we know as light
is darkness

 

I watched as you splashed science
on that class of Christians and agnostics and Buddhists and Jews
(we chuckled often at the odd combinations)
The “breaking of the vessels” that created the universe
was the Big Bang, you said
before you got lost in the dreams of angels
in a world created
not with thunderbolts or fire
or with jealousy or rage
but with words
with God just
“saying”
You listened harder than all of us
Even science could not save you

 

In the ruins of the towers
we walked through daily
you would have found letters
and added them up to find meaning
the GematriaThe equation of Hebrew letters to numbers and the derivation of meaning from these equations. For instance, Jacob, in Genesis 28, dreams of a ladder on which angels ascend and descend from heaven to earth. A ladder, in Hebrew sulam, has the numerical value of 130 – samech 60, lamed 30, mem 40 – which is equivalent to Sinai – samech 60, yud 10, nun 50, yud 10. This means, according to gematria, that the ladder in Jacob’s dream was in fact Sinai or that this revelation was a precursor to God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai. of the mystics
revealed on Church Street
Reason in ashes
Your body became a Hebrew letter
in the burning village of our day

 

All of it no less unreal than your wife seeing on TV
the tower you worked in dissolve into dust
To hope you died quickly, did not fall
Alone and unhurt
Down 103 stories into smoke and debris
Watched
In the silence of terror
In the terror of hate
In the helplessness of love

 

At your memorial service
a cell phone rang
as your daughter gave a eulogy
A woman, astonished to discover that the phone was hers
stood, and scrambled, and dug it from her purse
as dozens stared, amused, relieved it wasn’t theirs
A stranger’s humiliation always safer
to witness than a daughter’s grief

 

But afterward, stuck in traffic, in the chaos of my city
in the madness of change
I braked to pay the toll
and I, who rarely weep, or follow anyone deep into the mysteries of faith
felt tears brimming
when I slid beyond the TalmudThe rabbinic compendium of lore and legend composed between 200 and 500 CE. Study of the Talmud is the focus of rabbinic scholarship. The Talmud has two versions, the main Babylonian version (Bavli) and the smaller Jerusalem version (Yerushalmi). It is written in Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic. and TorahThe Five Books of Moses, and the foundation of all of Jewish life and lore. The Torah is considered the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and study of the Torah is a high mitzvah. The Torah itself a scroll that is hand lettered on parchment, elaborately dressed and decorated, and stored in a decorative ark. It is chanted aloud on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat, according to a yearly cycle. Sometimes "Torah" is used as a colloquial term for Jewish learning and narrative in general.
the endless search for endless meaning
to land on this simple, brutal fact:

 

You will never
brake for a toll
on the Jersey Turnpike
again