May 16, 2021
Behar-Behukkotai
if only you follow these laws, my am segulah, my kingdom of priests my holy nation, I will dwell amongst you-- the land will sing growth and the food will sit full in your soft & swelling stomachs, will I love you? I will not loathe you.
vehechezakta bo, it is so much easier to prevent disaster than to reverse it.
until you rid this land of vicious beasts, I cannot promise that you may lie down.
this land is yours when you are holy, holy nation.
hashiva shofteinu k’varishonah, there is no perfect past to which I can restore you, just this, the sacred future you shape.
#poetry#poem#torah#jumblr#parsha#Behar#Behukkotai#Parshat haShavuah#Poem HaShavuah#a complicated jumble of thoughts from a complicated jumble of feelings#definitely a different poem than I would have written had this been on time#thinking about Shavuot and torah and conditional promises#thinking about our holiness being premised upon acting as G-d's arm of justice in the world#mamlekhet kohanim v'goy kadosh is not a reward but a model#and thinking about the midrash of relieving your fellow's burden improving their situation because it is easier to support someone before#they arrive at disaster than to pull them out of it#thinking about how so much of the work here feels like palliative care for a broken and corrupt system#what it looks like to support and build rather than just do our best to address destruction#and thinking about that bracha in the amidah#what do we visualize when we say it?#is there a time when our judges were righteous?#or is more of a mythical karishona#is it only a mythic past meant to serve as a prompt for how we build our future