THOUGHTS ON PARASHAT EKEV
Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem!
Behold on [My] hands have I engraved you; your walls are before Me always.
(Isaiah 49:16 - the Hebrew messed up the format, here is a link)
This might become more of a missive than an actual davar – but it’s been a while since I last wrote a post here, and Parashat Ekev - the word is often translated as “because” - has, somewhat inadvertently, become a time-period with a certain significance for me, so I don’t want to let it pass without sharing some thoughts.
When I moved to Los Angeles two years ago to start Rabbinical School, my first Shabbat was Shabbat Ekev, which is also the title of the first poem I wrote there after my arrival, in August 2020. In it, I am tracing a walk I took that afternoon through the streets and parks of Pico-Robertson and Carthay Circle, as well as the hopes and sentiments associated with my departure from New York, which had been my home for almost 11 years.
I was happy to be in Los Angeles, the land of figs, wine, and dates, of almond, olive, and pomegranate trees. I had chosen AJU over JTS largely because I had wanted to move west and study surrounded by the Santa Monica Hills – but I also missed Brooklyn, my friends, the person I was there, the younger woman I had been when I first had walked “off the boat.”
In those 11 years, many of my aspirations and projects had not led to sustaining outcomes, and my decision to go “back to school” in my late forties was motivated by a personal calling and a desire to study Jewish texts and wisdom in depth -- but also by the pragmatic decision to get an American degree. It was a well-grounded and long-reflected decision, but it was also terrifying and dizzying. This country likes the narratives of those who change their lives and take a leap of faith, but it only validates those narratives when they lead to success as defined by measurable societal norms. Would – will - mine? And if not, how would, how will I make it count?
My decision to go to Rabbinical School had also been motivated by the experience of an unrequited love and the realization that I needed to give my life a new purpose. By the time I applied, I was getting too old to have biological children, something I had always wanted. Instead of offering the solitude of a convent, Judaism invites one to become a teacher and as such, at least theoretically, a wheel in the larger workings that have kept Jewish culture and religion alive for many generations: I would pass on the tradition as a rabbi, very likely without children and maybe without a partner, but in and for the community — and also for myself.
Here’s the poem I wrote after that Shabbat Ekev of 5780:
SHABBAT EKEV
The air feels like spring or fall, the yards like fairy tales
of Spanish bungalows, sleeping beauties under plantain plants.
Next to a pomegranate tree, three cypresses tower into the sky.
I miss Prospect Park, the meadow opening toward the ocean.
I used to stride straight through it, like an explorer, or gusts of wind.
Here, the parks are pretty lawns, not a drop of sweat runs down my back.
Past the empty intersection, the hills remind me of another East,
ahead the west is a backlit orange blur.
It’s been one year since I walked in this dress, these sandals.
What’s unplanned can seem prophetic, meaningful in arbitrariness
like my walking now where you once lived,
in the clothes I wore when I knew I had to change.
These are weeks of consolation.
Though my hair is flat and my skin dry, I will be happy here.
Intentions can cause outcomes, an ever-lasting bond.
I came to turn unlived love into something new, maybe even holy.
I will, but it is difficult, to live a broader love when the empty world
is beautiful and self-sufficient, meaningful in arbitrariness.
“What’s unplanned can seem prophetic” – that line has been going through my head a lot over the past weeks. For example, when I noticed that my first Shabbat in Jerusalem would be: Shabbat Ekev!
I am in Israel now, in a landscape not too different from Southern California, in a “good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey” (Devarim 8:7-8) for my third year in Rabbinical School.
Since I arrived here on Monday, I have been roaming the city somewhat aimlessly, basically in an effort to keep myself awake during the afternoons. I have walked far and beyond to the point of exhaustion just so that I could fall asleep at an acceptable hour. (It didn’t always work.) I have come by places I had meant to avoid, because I didn’t feel ready to see them, as they reminded me of the unrequited love mentioned further above, which eventually also led to a failed friendship. And yet I ended up right in front of them. Maybe this is just the uneventful way in which circles finally close.
I don’t know what new circles will begin, what new chapters I will write. I have a few poems inside me about this time of Ekev, but with my jet-lag induced brain-fog I haven’t gotten into the lyrical mindset yet. I found the house where I had spent my hitherto last night in Jerusalem abandoned and boarded up. And this is a bit how I feel right now, despite my overall joy and contentment to be here, and despite my trust and confidence that as these weeks of transition and time-adjustment – and consolation – pass, Jerusalem will return to be the fountain of inspiration I know it can be. Already yesterday, Sacher Park stretched out in front of me like Prospect Park’s meadows in the poem, and next week I will immerse myself into one of the famous waterholes I read so much about in poems and songs.
These days it might feel that עקב means more “despite of” than “because,” but ultimately there is a semantic connection between these two terms: Both express an affirmation, a consequence, and a goal: I’m on this path despite the drawbacks, despite the challenges, despite the fear – because I believe in its value, in my worth, in my courage, fortune, and serenity. I believe in the preciousness of life. I believe in better days to come, during or on the heels of this personal Yovel year of release that בעזרת השם may shape my narrative in ways that can lead to “new, maybe even holy” loves, in whatever form they might materialize.
For the Lord shall console Zion, He shall console all its ruins, and He shall make its desert like a paradise and its wasteland like the garden of the Lord; joy and happiness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and a voice of song.