Got this off the Chabad Website. Sarah Kranz. Love her work. Sometimes it says it all.

Happy Chanukah!


Menorah - Michoel Muchnik

An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.
Our two voices met above
The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
To get caught in the wheels
Of the "Had Gadya" machine.

Afterward we found them among the bushes,
And our voices came back inside us
Laughing and crying.

Searching for a goat or for a child has always been
The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

- Yehuda Amichai

Beautiful cover art by Ivan Schwebel. Get this book.

God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children

God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.

He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach the dressing station,
Streaming with blood.

But perhaps
He will have pity on those who love truly
And take care of them
And shade them
Like a tree over the sleeper on the public bench.

Perhaps even we will spend on them
Our last pennies of kindness
Inherited from mother,

So that their own happiness will protect us
Now and on other days.

-- Yehuda Amichai

Perhaps the best poetry i've read in some time. He captures something about being human, just being, in a world where God is so intrinsic. It’s as though he’s God-In-All-His-Glory’s annoyed roommate, who can’t get past the dishes piling up in the sink and doesn’t get the worshipping masses at their door and is just trying to get through the day and find his very own reason for living.

Here's a piece i modeled off of some young Amiri Baraka stuff (Back when he was Leroi Jones):

Golden Circles

Quiet night & I’m biking home
up a long, wet hill.
Cars pass me by in the sweet leaf fog
and another biker.
it’s dark & we ride, synchronized
without realizing it.
The street lights spread golden
circles hazy across the night, through
the sound of breath like heavy mist
tired shoulders, shifting gears, golden
rules.

Love your fellow as you love
your self says the Bible/Koran/Gospels
The Vargas & The Analects.
you/we can/can’t.
Love your fellow.
Love you’re self.

Rabbi With Torah, Hyman Bloom. (Hat tip to Mentalblog's postings on Hyman Bloom for the inspiration.)