By Joanna Wright, JTNews Correspondent
The synagogue doors stand tall and foreign
tucked away between two back alleys of Berlin
a city I love but do not quite understand
it’s a pity, this poem
will not capture the raw, ringing power
of high holy days
but there are ways to try, I suppose
because God only knows
we answer questions with more questions
doing our best to wrestle with this beautiful life and
the meaning of the word Mensch
I slip through those doors and into a bench in
the back row
an observer and a participant, I’m a stranger here
in search of a Yom Kippur home
far away from my own
and as the music starts and the voices rise
I realize
I found it
These are my people
it’s not a thought I’ve composed, just grasping at comfort
it’s an ancient sensation, emanating
from the walls of this temple that has known brutal history
and from the faces of those around me
glowing with a fervent desire to be bruised by God
wrestlers, we are
we find wholeness in bruised places
and traces of the sacred in each other’s faces
tonight
we wear white
become nothing but soul
yearning to return to the light, to an
authentic poet in an imperfect world
beginning to forgive
each other and
ourselves
entered
by that energy, divine and indefinable
we remember what it means to
belong to a community
fill a room with broken symphonies
and fill our bodies with those half-built melodies
a mix of soil and mysticism
Hebrew words we understand by blood
but cannot translate
the veil between worlds is
tissue paper right now
tickling our skin with tender, windless breath
it rustles, between dying and living
which are separate only in our imagination
ancestors nestle themselves beside us
cloaked
but so close to the touch
when that microscopic distance hurts too much
when we learn that we are not invincible
we are fully alive
I cried for my Zayde today
he died eight months ago
and my eyes know he’s gone
but the well inside me
is still full of tears and his matzoh ball soup
today, though
is not just about grief or regrets or missing or forgetting
it’s about letting go, letting out, letting in
to be entered and picked clean
by the moon that knows no ideology
today, we’ve created the hope
that there’s a communal safe-keeping deeper
than well-kept secrets
no parking meter in spirit’s sanctuary
they call it a day of atonement
but really
it’s atunement
today we are
millions of prayers
simultaneously trying to summarize
one-ness.