POMEGRANATES AND CHEERIOS

SIEGEL, DANNY

POMEGRANATES AND CHEEMOS DANNY SIEGEL We misinterpret, for whatever reason. Not every Psalm is filled with rousing, endless cheers for God, concerts filled to overflow with Hallelujahs, days of...

...Well, that is still no comparison, because this Judge, the One Who asks the questions, is the King of all Kings, even of those who have said they are the Supreme King...
...It helps us work our way through the tense and crucial phrases...
...More, in that He is the Kadosh Baruch Hu...
...Oh, you have...
...and "The world stands on three things...
...It is almost glib, inadequate in relation to the thought-at-hand...
...We wanted pomegranates and Cheerios for All Eternity as our just reward, and we get dust from Akaviah...
...It is a mis-stressing of our tradition to consider the Gread Rabbis as advocates of sloganized Yiddishkeit...
...No, Akaviah teaches that we do not speak of birth and death and questions and answers so flippantly, and this is the reason for his meticulously chosen answers in the second set of three: From when you came—from a stinking drop...
...And not only dust, but worms...
...Some of David's songs were brokenhearted pieces, poems of terror and death, and occasionally declarations of dis-faith and condemnation of God's ways...
...If we expected a rabbinic statement of the threeway partnership of Father, Mother, and God, we have been jolted into other senses...
...How, how long, and with what display of spectacular courtroom procedures is all parenthetical...
...Each of the three must be examined slowly, carefully...
...How can we think...
...He is saying, "My child, have you ever seen a king...
...Not every line of Shulchan Aruch is stifling bone-dry self-imprisonment in a four-cubit cell...
...2. Where you are going—to a place of dust, worms, and maggots...
...A student of the genre of Concise Profundity must strain his utmost powers of insight to understand the subtleties and overtones of the words, and sometimes what is taken for deep and mysterious is really nothing but a trite and worthless package of letters...
...Well, have you ever seen Alexander the Great or Pharoah, who ruled the earth...
...Danny Siegel, poet and freelance writer, lives in Boston...
...And more: He is in and of Himself blessed, and will be blessed by us, whether the verdict is fig trees and vines or a long, scorching summer in Gehennom...
...He is all that a king is for grandeur and majesty, for power and authority...
...And that is only two-thirds of the story...
...Does not the Law Code say we must drink ourselves merrily blurry-eyed on Purim just as clearly as it says to tie our Lulav just so, and to wash our fleishig dishes just so...
...To say "dust to dust" and "God is the Judge" make no striking disclosure...
...Akaviah, having punched hard with the drop, kicks his theologic knee in our face as we go down, with "dust, worms, and maggots...
...We sense that "from dust to dust" and "God is the Judge" is Akaviah's meaning, and yet such answers are weak, lacking vital force, leaving the student unsurprised, unclutched to Life and Death as much as he was before encountering the words...
...They are imaginative concepts to be taken up in some other Talmudic tales...
...Says the rebbe, "That's you when it's all over...
...The Sayings of the Fathers is not all aphoristic wisdom, not entirely homespun moderate profundity...
...We misconstrue our Holy Texts, by cursory examination and over-generalization...
...Almost as if to say, "Read it and weep...
...The style is critical...
...This is not the Tiberias-Jerusalem camel route of Talmudic times, and the before-Whom is not the rebbe to whose Yeshiva we came late because we missed the Wednesday caravan from the Galilee...
...often heard in sermons and sex-seminars in synagogues and locker rooms...
...We wanted to be born in love, and we were given a chemical analysis, disgusting and humbling...
...There are two threes, two sets of rhythmic passages set against each other...
...True, much of the six chapters of Pir-kei Avot is pithy, some apple-a-day statements, some quandaries and paradoxes ("God foresees, but Man has free will," says Akiva), some proverbs to live by...
...But as with our own Book of Proverbs, and Old Sumerian and Egyptian proverbs, and proverbs in general, there is always the danger that short-truth might be half-truth, and half-truth, at times, is no truth at all...
...This is neither a stork-answer nor the "Love engenders higher thoughts of the World and Humanity, continuity of the Jewish People, God's Plan, the importance of the Home, etc...
...Oh, you have...
...Its "secret wisdom" becomes an axiom for living because we have overloaded it with artificial meanings...
...First: Akaviah ben Mahalalel says: Look to three things, and you will not come to sin— KNOW From whence you came Where you are going and Before Whom you have to give a final accounting...
...3. Before Whom you have to give a final accounting—before the KING of Kings of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He...
...This answer is a punch in the spiritual guts to those who loved the nice Victorian God's-in-His-Heaven-and-the-World-is-Alright-with-Judaism sweet song...
...Where you are going—to a place of dust, worms, and maggots...
...We had thought the Other Side was so nice, and that the Angel of Death would be suavely dressed, driving a steelblue Caddie to take us on the Royal Road Up in air conditioned comfort...
...Akaviah ben Mahalalel says, "Histakel—Look...
...By this point we have some sense of Akaviah ben Mahalalel's meaning, though there are no indications as to his specific intent...
...The wherefrom, whereto, and before Whom are left purposely undefined, though we know that the first two, the wherefrom and whereto, are not Phoenix and Philadelphia...
...And not only dust and worms, but dust, worms, and maggots...
...And we, in the face of these, how can we think of specifics and subtle shades of meaning...
...We had thought of harps and grapes or the Great Yeshiva in the Sky with Talmud now and forevermore—and an ersatz yar-mulka of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, of course...
...And we will stand and wait as the mysterious combinations of Justice and Mercy are called into interplay, punctuated and actuated by God's own decisive manner...
...That is this King, and more...
...We must sweat a moment with the words of the rebbe: 1. From whence you came—a stinking drop...
...What is important for Akaviah is the drop, the dust, worms, and maggots, and in the next breath the KING of Kings of kings, the Holy One Blessed be He...
...He will ask questions, meticulously and concealing nothing...
...Because certain statements in the Sayings of the Fathers are neglected, and because proverb-style is deceptive, I choose to discuss the first saying of Chapter III...
...Akaviah is saying: down below the fairytales and childrenstory myths, and beyond the soaring sublimities of theological propositions, in passing moments of Life, we must consider the stinking drop, the unaesthetic, repugnant sperm, which is where it all really begins...
...Again, the style and rhythms add meanings...
...Akaviah could have said God, or even God Almighty, or Your Father who is in Heaven, or the King, or the Final Judge, but he did not...
...We abuse the best words, for whatever reasons...
...It is terse, but it is essentially understood not by its brevity, but rather by its bare, raw, shaking power...
...Kadosh—Holy and Unique, a different Being...
...Not every Psalm is filled with rousing, endless cheers for God, concerts filled to overflow with Hallelujahs, days of Kiddush-wine and roses, and Levite Temple dancers reaping only goodness from the Lord...
...Akaviah, whom we thought of as a Zeyde, speaks in solemn tones, proclaiming, "You all-powerful, proud, self-made Man, let me whisper a thing or two to you...
...and Before Whom you have to give a final accounting— before the KING of King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He...
...Though the entire sentence is brief, it does not have the same sound as, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me...

Vol. 2 • September 1981 • No. 4


 
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