Monthly quotes

Nisan 5784

In the Bible, the central focus [of the Passover celebration] is the paschal lamb, its slaughter and consumption in a sacred, precisely regulated meal. In the Haggadah, the central act is text study–the fluid, creative, transformative text study known as midrash, which freely juxtaposes and rearranges biblical verses to disclose and provoke new layers of meaning. Engagement in this midrashic process links the generations even as it beckons for new voices to emerge. At the first Passover, Moses told the children of Israel, “You shall not go out of the entrance to your house until morning.” By contrast, the Haggadah tells us, “Go out and learn”– that is, “go out” from conventional ways of seeing the sacred text. Aspire to new ways of seeing, of learning, of teaching. You will thereby be freed to see your life in new ways as well. This freedom will invite your children to ask, to answer, to join the endless chain of voices. Welcome to the Seder.
Nehemia Polen

Adar II 5784

The military might of the Jewish state exists not only to win and deter wars, but also to underwrite a search for peace. The settlers’ point of view must once and for all be distinguished from the state’s point of view; but such a correction of perspective will involve a postwar reconstruction of Israeli politics and — here is where the spirit always sinks — political courage. Israel is right to insist that Palestinian behavior matters as much for a resolution of the conflict as Israeli behavior, but the time is past when pointing the finger at Ramallah counts as a serious policy.
Leon Wieseltier, “Savagery and Solidarity”

Adar I 5784

A child I know, when asked whether she would answer the call of her elementary school principal to wear red, white, and blue clothes to school on Thursday, was in a quandary. She put down the crayon with which she was painstakingly trying to squeeze the words peace is possible onto the white bars between the red bars on the small American flag she had made, and said, “Well, it is a pretty good country… so it’s hard to know what to wear.”

This is a pretty good country. It is one of hundreds and hundreds of pretty good countries, layered relatively recently onto the skim of topsoil or desert sand or water that covers our globe. It is one of hundreds of pretty good countries filled with millions of pretty good and proud and worthy people, these other lands with sunlight, too, and clover. It’s a pretty good but pretty complicated country, where lately I, who am a lifelong citizen, feel even more than usual like an alien, afraid that if I speak, my voice might betray not some foreign place of origin but the uneven geography of my heart. It is hard to know what to wear. And what to say. These days everywhere I go, with anyone I meet, I’m wondering, where are you coming from, friend, with your black armband, with your flag, with your red, white, and blue clothing, with your peace sign, with your tears? What roads have you traveled to reach the place where you are? In our pretty good country it is an honor and a privilege to answer and in turn to ask, what really are we loyal to? What usefulness can nationalism serve now, as the old world yields to a new century? What is America’s right relation and right role, and my right role as a citizen? And what are you going to wear?

The child found her own remarkable response. When asked what she thought she’d like to do, she did say, “It’s a pretty good country,” and she looked up then for confirmation of that claim, for some assurance that this guess might in fact be true—and this I gladly gave her. (She knows I have my doubts but needs to be reminded, just as I do, that they go hand in hand with hopes and dreams so passionate, so powerful.) And then she said, deeply serious, without seeking my collaboration or permission, “I think I’m gonna wear turquoise, pink, and beige for now.” And so she did, and I don’t know if she knows what risk might be entailed there, what wrath she may incur among her playground comrades or her teachers or her principal, or how her own chosen symbols of ambivalence might be misunderstood. I don’t know what confidence she may inspire, in this country to which she has not yet even learned, at her young age, to pledge allegiance. For now she is a turquoise patriot; she’s proud and scared and questioning; her allegiance is to her own conscience; and her trust is, for now, with the adults, in whose clumsy hands her entire future is contained.
Reverend Victoria Safford, Walking Toward Morning

Shevat 5784

There was now no real need to annex the West Bank and its half million settlers. The settlers had annexed the State of Israel.
David Remnick, “The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition”

Tevet 5784

You have probably come across
those scales in planetariums
that tell you how much you
would weigh on other planets.

You have noticed the fat ones
lingering on the Mars scale
and the emaciated slowing up
the line for Neptune.

As a creature of average weight,
I fail to see the attraction.

Imagine squatting in the wasteland
of Pluto, all five tons of you,
or wandering around Mercury
wondering what to do next with your ounce.

How much better to step onto
the simple bathroom scale,
a happy earthling feeling
the familiar ropes of gravity,

157 pounds standing soaking wet
a respectful distance from the sun.
Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room

Kislev 5784

The world is a raging sea
whose depth and width are vast,
and Time is rickety bridge extending across it.
Yedaya Hapenini

Heshvan 5784

If they show me a stone and I say stone they will say stone
And if they show me a tree and I say tree they will say tree.
But if they show me blood and I say blood they will say color.
If they show me blood and I say blood they will say color.
Amir Gilboa

Tishrei 5784

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. Attention is the beginning of devotion. 
Mary Oliver, Upstream

Elul 5783

Prayer, as in:
my silence approaches
God’s silence.
The distance to be covered
is so immense
that there is time
to live my life
peacefully.
Harvey Shapiro