Simchat Torah - Poem

Judaism, Summer, 2002 by Stefi Weisburd

Simchat Torah

STEFI WEISBURD

Rabbi shoulders the Torah
this one rescued from the Nazis'
warehouse in Czechoslovakia
A pied piper, he threads
ribbons of children
through aisles,
dancing and shouting like weather sprung
from a box

My father sits still as a prayer
in the shule of his mind
he is a boy marching, payot dangling
in the curls of light that twist from candles
His Orthodox grandfather watches him spin
a sanctioned cyclone of breath
before Rabbi starts
to read the Torah from beginning to end
again
Another year to let there be light

In the halo of the Holocaust
my father burned
his prayer shawl
smoked himself out of the synagogue
pulled down the blinds when we ate bread on Passover

Now I invite him
to this temple where
I am a nomad drawn to small incandescences
My father watches my son spin
my daughter sneak cookies with hands like wind
I am flooded by possession
For one brief breath before my father
and I start to recite
our gypsy pages of unbelief from
beginning to end
again
we belong to the radiant

STEFI WEISBURD won a 2002 The Nation/Discovery prize. Her poetry appears
in Blue Mesa Review, Cafe Solo, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review,
Quarterly West, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She lives in Albuquerque.