Shekhinah: The Presence

From Torah Reading

An excerpt from Shekhinah: The Presence by Joseph Zitt.

These ancient walls
These silent speaking stones
These wooden seatbacks
  worn smooth
  by the books and hands
  of generations.

In the haze of words and tones
of our leader's repetition
we float our souls
in search of others 
similarly focused

  to Brooklyn
  to Vilna
  to Yemen
  to Jerusalem

  to the chambers by the Western Wall
  to the place that,
    when all places become one,
    will be the one place
    those places will become

  to the place where the dreamworld
    the world to come
    the world from which

      we were called here
        summoned to take on
        temporary flesh

    brushes closest to
    this world in which we breathe.

Step up to the Western Wall,
facing east
(we pray at what was
  the outside of the temple,
  the inside having drawn the faithful 

    of other faiths
    of other tastes of God

      to establish their own
        solemn sacred domains within),
kiss the stones,
slide a bit of paper in
  within the cracks
  between the massive bricks
  where so many others

    have inserted their own prayers
      in hopes that God will read

        these small requests
        with greater interest,

step back one step,
turn left, and face

another wall
of arches,
  doorways,
  gates,
  and somewhat less ancient stone.

Walk through the nearer arch.

Here: a small chamber 
  dressed in stone on stone.
  Wooden bookshelves line its walls,
  filled with well-worn volumes:

    books of prayer,
    books of law,
        psalms,
        mysteries, and
        commentaries.

Lift one book down.
Open it: the pages are yellow, brittle,
  brought from a town that no longer lives

    a town whose ashes
    and the ashes of its citizens
    still drift in the air over
      Poland, Hungary, Austria
    still sting the eyes,
    still trigger sudden tears
      for those (now older, now scattered)
        who survived the war

  (and few recall the gentle storms
    whose raindrops caught the ashes
      souls
      letters
    and carried them back to earth
    grounding the microscopic angels
      who were guiding them to Jerusalem.

  Listen: in the dim silence
    of dawn-lit desert roads
    you can hear them
    walking back eastward

      to ascend again to heaven
      from the welcoming shadow 
      of the Temple Mount.)

Walk on, walk forward
a few steps more, another archway
then a cavelike hall extending to the left
from which echo remnants
  of the voices of students
  present, past, and yet to come
  who sit within cavern-rooms
    by the light of candles
    by the light of the sun
  and argue fine points
    of the laws and mysteries
    again and again.

  (The walls have heard
  these arguments so frequently
  that the stones themselves have memorized
    the cases, counterpoints, and deductions.

  Look closely: the veins of rhetoric and logic
    are embedded deep within
    the porous rock.)

Do not turn there;
walk forward, walk on.
To your right: grate-covered shafts
  expose more of the Western Wall
  down to where the ground had been
  when Solomon built it there.
To your left: another bookcase
  more volumes
  some different
  but mostly the same
and small signs urging that you treat
  the books and volumes
  with due proper respect for
    their sanctity and antiquity.

Ahead again, again to the left:
another arch, another gate.
Iron bars run floor to ceiling,
  to the smoothly curved arch
  set in time-cooled stone.
  The gates are open,
    swung back into corners,
  welcoming us within.

We have arrived.