Alex Grinshpun, “Rosh Hashanah”
Spiritual Sunday
I was surfing the internet looking for a good poem commemorating Rosh Hashanah (which begins this evening) and came across the following poem by Enid Shomer, a contemporary Jewish poet. It appears in a blog by one Rabbi Fabricant, and I can’t do better than his commentary, most of which I’ve appended. I recommend that you go here to read his entire post.
“Tishri,” he informs us (also spelled Tishrei), is the first month of the creation of the world, and today is the “First of Tishri.” Rosh Hashanah also celebrates the day when the Hebrews escaped their Egyptian bondage. It is therefore a time when Jews reflect upon their lives and their relationship to God and to their community. Fabricant notes the aptness of the swimming metaphors—how worshippers begin by floating on the surface but, as the rituals take hold, subsequently sink deep within their meaning:
Freestyle, on the First of Tishri
By Enid Shomer
The metaphor here is the pool, regular
and deep as the tradition itself. First I float,
still and buoyant in what I don’t
accept. Then I shatter the surface, a scholar
dissecting text not to destroy but to enrich,
a farmer plowing and disking the earth
before planting. On land, I forget breath’s
noisy ball bearings, the flutter kick’s
fringes blazing like tangible will. I imagine
that faith is nothing but a grudging promise
of repetition, like these laps, until this
continual splash in the mind begins—
not with grievance or prayer
but as gasp, a momentary bargain struck with the air.
Rabbi Frabricant writes,
The progression Shomer describes is familiar to us. Jewish tradition is vast and unfamiliar, and it seems as if we “float” on the surface, unable to truly enter. But eventually we can “dive in.” Through study, prayer, and communal participation, we start to swim; our kicking and splashing is our struggle with tradition, and we make our own unique “waves” in Jewish life.
The true impact of Shomer’s sonnet, though, comes with the closing couplet. Judaism is not “grievance or prayer,” the formal—sometimes impersonal—religious language. Judaism is like the swimmer’s gasp for breath—desperate, intimate, life-giving. Though repeated countless times, it is not routine, but dramatic and purposeful.
As we approach the month of Tishrei, we have many opportunities to refine our strokes, to plumb new depths, to gasp for breath, and even to breathe deeply. We have many holidays and services and plenty of time to reflect in between. Let us do this hard work and build better Jewish lives for ourselves, our families, and our community.
A note on the artist: Alex Grinshpun’s “Rosh Hashanah” can be found at www.ivoryandart.com/servlet/the-1018/Oil-Painting-By-Alex/Detail
