by Elya Braden
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| “Bereshit” print from Nireh Or |
The beginning is the promise of the end.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Every Fall we rock the house,
dance & sing & lift the scroll.
Roll back to B’reishit. In the beginning—
chaos cleaved into light & dark
a man a woman a garden a fall.
Roll back l’dor v’dor—generation
to generation.
Roll back Deuteronomy’s gifts—
Ten Commandments, Moses peering
into the Promised Land.
Roll back Numbers’ sufferings—
rod, stone, bland manna,
a wilderness of complaint.
Roll back Leviticus’ hundreds of tiny edicts
the cost of forgiveness—
denial & purification.
Roll back Exodus’ hungry waters,
locusts, frogs, endless night,
lambs’ blood to guardian our sons.
Roll back to Genesis—father/mother/
multiply two sons & divide
by one patch of desert.
So, who’s to blame for blood feud?
Isaac & Ishmael? Or their mothers—
Sarah & Hagar? Sarah’s laughter
withering on her lips as her handmaid
suckles Abraham’s eldest—
a legacy of lack & opportunity.
Or blame God—God’s two-faced
promise: I will make of your son
a great nation.
Well, one thing we know about land
is God ain’t making any more.
Yet we multiply like frogs, spill
from lakes & puddles & faucets & mouths,
our hunger rises like the papery wings
of a thousand moths splitting their cocoons,
stripping the trees of green.
So why not drone a war on this day
we dance & sing, raise Torah scrolls
above our heads to celebrate return?
B’reishit bara Elohim,
“In the beginning, God created…”
Air raid sirens the only psalms now sung
in this land of too many Gods.