Climbing Mount Sinai
SIEGEL, DANNY
CLIMBING MOUNT SINAI There are four kinds of Jews who climb Mt. Sinai: The religious, though they suspect that the true meeting place of God and Man is on some other peak. Those who go because...
...How does a human being live with silence...
...With horror I considered the possibility that, through the sum-acts of my life, the opportunities for answering a voice I had missed, that here, even here, I would feel no intimacy...
...And there was the other issue— the final one...
...The more I tried to understand the whispers, the more angry I became at myself, realizing I was no longer worthy of the meaning...
...Surely, I thought, surely here I would be graced with a minute's prophecy...
...How long will it take to feel at peace with it, if ever...
...The words "a reminder of Creation" and "a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt" did not seem any more powerful than the week before in New York...
...These are recollections of my thoughts: Once at the top, I wondered whether or not I should remove my shoes, and whether there might be a unique blessing for the moment...
...They go in groups and enjoy the desolate view, and speak of the vigors of the ascent...
...Word was out that we would soon give it back to Egypt, and we could never be certain when and how we would return...
...I was afraid the silence would urge me to new decisions, which I did not want...
...I had even admitted to myself, with a crushing cynicism, how, even if I see no great metamorphosis, at least I will work out a half-dozen good poems from the climb...
...But I don't think I will ever understand that because...
...As I review my thoughts on the climb, I can no longer see what category applied to me, though I sense now that the plague of so many Jews of my generation—ambivalence— has dulled the grandeur that could have been mine...
...Moses had been up here with God, and I was afraid to be alone...
...I felt washed empty of faith—here at the place where it should have burst out into warmth, comfort...
...The fasts ended, and I pinched my arm to see if it was the same me...
...It is like the last few Yom Kippurs: going to shul with a hope that I, like Rosenzweig, would find a thundering chance at a new life...
...Others come down unaware of any change, though, as they tell their friends of it in Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Chicago, they notice a certain shift of emphasis in their voice, a new vocabulary...
...My friend and I had packed food, but I was hesitant to eat on what might be sacred ground...
...1 could no longer differentiate between the still small voice Elijah heard and the shriek of banshees I had imagined in my childhood...
...I had been to Auschwitz seven years before...
...Because I was hungry...
...The Lovers of the Land, who find this to be one more piece of earth not yet explored, and therefore in no sense real, until they themselves have explored it...
...Then I turned angry...
...I had told myself that it was necessary to go to Sinai, because...
...And those who have no particular reason...
...You would have thought—I would have thought—after the flight down from Beer Sheva when I had surveyed the great, empty distances of the wilderness, that some change would have happened...
...At that moment, perhaps because the wind was so strong and my feet shaky, I sensed how close life and death were to one another...
...I sunk, for a moment, into brooding contemplation about nothing in particular, though the texture of that mood still hurts, so heavy it was weighing on my thoughts...
...I felt no exuberance, no mantic visions in the offing...
...But I ate...
...The wind was beating against my ears, but I could not make sense of the sounds...
...Suribachi, but, somehow, in their descent, they will wonder why mountains in general do nothing for them anymore...
...I feared that it would come to haunt and terrify me, tearing at my complacencies, the comfortable feeling of noise and chatter...
...Up there, quiet became the topic of conversation...
...At the base, before dawn, I had thought like a mere geologist how the earth itself forms mountains, when I should have considered the wonders of God, the Master Creator...
...I would mutter in disappointment, "Yes, so it is...
...So, too, now descending the steps of the plane back in Tel Aviv—nothing has changed, except that I have a new quantity of words at my disposal with which to speak of failure and frustration...
...I know now they are not years apart, but juxtaposed, touching...
...Preparing for Shabbat down at the base, I felt no great need to sing Kiddush any louder than usual...
...Of these, some are caught by surprise, and find themselves weeping in the presence of new silences...
...They may journey to Fuji and Nepal and even Mt...
...How do we adjust to it when it thrusts itself so forcefully into our lives...
...I should have known at the beginning of the climb...
...How their legs ache and lungs heave...
...Those who go because everyone is doing it...
...A year ago I joined the surge of Jews to the wilderness...
...Who am I, pintele yid that I am, one small Jew, to dare to make connections...
Vol. 5 • December 1979 • No. 1
