And make for the tent a covering of tanned ram skins, and a covering of dolphin skins above. —Exodus 26:14Â
Dolphin skins? What?
Where would the Israelites
find dolphins in the desert?
We sit at a table and debate,
thick books with footnotes open.
Is the Hebrew translation off?
Was it some other animal?
The woman on my right
offers a theory from the Talmud
suggesting a unicorn, a miraculous
multi-colored creature appearing
for a single Divine purpose
only to disappear thereafter.
Perhaps it’s just semantics,
the man across the table posits.
Cheesecloth isn’t made of cheese.
Dolphin skin could be a color,
goat leather dyed purple or blue.
Speculation continues in our cozy synagogue room
where we study with bagels, Shabbat mornings
9 a.m., returning week after week to puzzle over
an ancient document revered for centuries
as a doorway to the Divine.
Gripped by the desire to decode
what we cannot know, we examine each word,
turning it over and over like a precious gem
gleaming with finely cut facets.
originally published in Amethyst Review.
