This study… This study is empty Only the books line its wall now standing like soldiers Just like Sarah likes them Neat and tidy, Like the rare book section of a library Many are leather-‐bound Representing those with special meaning Chosen carefully for bookbinding Representing the special choices Their dark burgundy (with gold leaf) color contrasts with the light oak wood The round table with flowers in the center Uncluttered. A potted green plant survives the ending of his life Slowly awakening to this spring Growing in the large framed window Facing the sun approvingly with its leaves. But I feel uncomfortable sitting here With his large picture portrait Looking down benignly Eliyahu’s brilliant portrait Classical posture and ever so present It fills the room As if he had never left As if this room remains His… The room is too tidy It lacks my clutter Having evacuated it a year or so ago Willingly and with love As he moved in, Silent and suffering in silence Until the last breath. So we covered the books And removed all the clutter That represents my stuff The trinkets and little man toys (That give us pleasure more for their familiarity Signposts of where we have been in the past Places and people) The ink pens, old passports, worry balls Pictures of the past,
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Bags and briefcases, The electronic bric a brac accompanying I-‐phones I-‐pads Chargers, receipts, all the insignificant stuff I hold dear And drives her crazy. Now uncomfortably neat, bare of all but seforim All the apikorsus missing This library is sanitized Merely the canon of rabbinic literature, commentaries and superglosses. And before this idealized burgundy library As if at its helm, this large and singular picture His presence, Bearing down, As in life, A presence too transparent, Overpowering to those who venerated him However benign looking now, For me he remains a judging of self And exposure of my failures Of demanding self praxis Goals yet to be met Textual volumes Marginalia upon marginalia The hair-‐splitting subtleties of tort law Exposing my continuing ignorance And Discomfort. Self-‐acceptance is clearly not present now The portrait and the burgundy leather bound volumes Have conspired to press upon my soul To become this alien space Once so intimate A place of meeting friends colleagues and meshulachim A space that mirrored my real self My space. Now, only foreign. I’m not sure the clutter returned would change this… Ever since he inhabited this space In his utter suffering silence His holiness filled the small study And the reshimu-‐the residue remains Long after the body gave up the ghost.
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In this space Seemingly sterile now No longer holding the shot glasses comfortably Where secrets over scotch are shared Where people bare their souls to me Where marriages are clarified And incurable diagnoses confirmed Where young men make critical decisions Where my thoughts fill the space on quiet Shabbat nights As the dawn approaches And self-‐understanding slowly bubbles up In this unique sacred time Pouring over obscure Hassidic texts Or a Yeats poem. His presence here is enigmatic As his presence in my life As I come to frame his influence in my life His lasting reshimu The light as well as the darker spaces Overwhelming presences My decades of resistance yet influence The sheer power of his personality And quiet unsaid judgments Reflecting my wounds And focusing on my transference Surely this is not a place of comfort And quiet Not after him Not after his quiet suffering in this space Not after the divine visitation and kiss of death here In this space Now sanctified No, this study has become a sort of shrine The large unframed portrait His face against a black background His bright pleasant but serious expression His pale skin color against the irrational darkness of space Reflecting his intuition that the rational mind can somehow grasp Everything If only sufficient effort is applied So different from my gnostic pessimism My suspicion that in this quantum world Only irrational numbers And irrational forces in the psyche
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Have ruled the last century And my soul. In the end his rational mind Overcame his Hassidic mystical background And my non-‐rational mysticism Overcame my father’s middle European enlightened rationalism My nihilism and pessimism suffuses my heart And my tragic sense (so Greek!) Makes more sense of the world Supporting further my discomfort here. I am not sure I can return here To this shrine To this sacred space Too sacred for my soul That needs freedom to think And observe, Freedom to explore the heretical In order to frame the orthodox Freedom to write the unacceptable In order to move the conversation deeper. So I take my leave now I leave this study Albeit with reverence His presence His overwhelming influence Like chains I must get free Free to think once more. And make sense of him, with time.
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