Next Year In Jerusalem | Psalm 113:5-9

 

Photo Credit - Chatham Van Wingerden

"Who is like the Lord our God
Who is seated on High?"

Father, even as beggars we come, crawling like worms towards Your feet. Tonight, I ask You this. Tomorrow, I will ask You that. I raise my tearful voice to Heaven and always ask for answers – why, oh Lord, do You let evil walk the Earth as it does? Why does it consume, ever-hungry but never satisfied, like an open mouth that no number of bodies, dust, debris can fill? Why does it lay waste to the creation, even if it is chained to entropy? 

"Who looks far down on the heavens
And the earth."

Father, we cannot get to You. We claw at Heaven, trying to bring it down in the manner of chaos that we are so accustomed to, or we build staircases. But staircases are circular – even as we ascend, we only find ourselves falling into a pit from which we cannot escape. We have built chimneys, as if we might smoke You out of the sky, but You are not in the sky, that we might see Your outline in a haze. 

We cannot get to You, so we are in need of You to come down. Only, in what manner might we clean up our existence for Your arrival? Should we sweep the genocide under the carpet over there? Shall we hide the starvation and war in the cupboards? Is there a place between the books that I can stuff my own unfaithfulness and immorality? (It doesn’t seem to fit.)

Father, You came down as a secret. As a promise kept. You lived in a little town – You were friends with fishermen. (That’s why I always say You have a sense of humor.) You slipped into the house when we were yet unaware, for even with premonitions we have always been completely blind – a blinding star in the East could not even shake us awake. And there You found humanity, on a normal afternoon with everything in the open. 

I hope the girl who thinks she "solved the problem of evil" is sleeping well. I hope she doesn’t dwell on it as I do – it keeps me awake like a nightlight. My room is creaking with the noise of gas chambers. I imagine her room is painted pink. She is dreaming of the new Earth. I have nightmares of the old one, like a straight-jacket that’s hard to get out of; like a pair of old, beloved shoes that are full of nails. I am blessed beyond belief. I am selfish. I grow fat and stupid like the rest of them, and the girl in the pink room laughs at me. 

Father, I don’t know how to spend a single minute not littered with thoughts of this precious body. Precious self. How I love you, feed you, care for you, keep you safe. I guard your interests jealously while others starve for need of everything good. Precious self, I am sick of you. You stink of rot and decay – you live in excess and quiet.

He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the needy from the ash heap
To make them sit with princes,
With the princes of his people. 

The throne-room is going to be full. I just know it. Full in the sense that you know it was made to fit all of us, that we will be close together yet not crowded. Nobody will be looking in through the windows – there will be a spot next to me. You can stand closer. I don’t bite, I promise. We won’t think about next year in Jerusalem. We won’t ever think about next year again. We will be together.

It’s funny, isn’t it, the way they say talk about dying these days. “They passed on.” Passed on into what? Do you, in your laminated suit and dry-cleaned sports-car, even believe that there’s another room, another place we go to the moment we close our eyes for the last time? Look me in the face and tell me that you’re not scared. That you don’t feel a shivering sensation in your stomach. This is all you’ve lived for – are you really ready to bet it all on that dark room?

(Tell me you want to get out of this body as much as I do, this tent, and into the one that they say feels like home.) 

"He gives the barren women a home
Making her the joyous mother of children."

I have seen a child running to her mother on the streets of Jerusalem. She is picked up and kissed, her tiny cheeks warm from the sunlight. I have watched two brothers building their sukkah together, one of them handing up a hammer to the other. My sister used to hand me the hammer like that – on her tiptoes. 

When You come down, Lord, don’t leave. Build a new house. Stay. 

"Praise the Lord." 

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