So I was on the
So I was on the train and there was a young Hassidic fellow there
all in black and scraggle-beard with sacred loops of hair
and I thought:
You look the way you do because the Romans smashed a synagogue
--admittedly a very nice one, but a Temple to G-d nonetheless--
nearly two thousand years ago
You are dressed in black to mourn the tumbling of stone from stone
the smashing of the gilt facade
the crucifixion of thousands on the hills of Jerusalem
You wrap your scroll around your arm and head
read from a language that was old when Yeshua was young
You rock in ecstasy at the Wall while the Jerusalem postmaster
stuffs letters to G-d into the cracks between the stones
You talk to G-d in the language of the Chosen Tribes
Everyone around you talks to G-d
The hardy virus of your faith transcends the mutant sects
that have infected the world
A clear unbroken line from Brooklyn to Jerusalem
from Jerusalem to Egypt
from Egypt to times of blood sacrifice
golden calves and prostitutes of a sacred nature
The wandering in the desert...
wandering...
There he stood on the subway
a living artifact of faith thirty-five hundred years old
Thirty-five hundred years of idea mutation and alteration
had left him with poor skin
the ears and teeth of English royalty
eyes myopic behind thick-lensed glasses
reminding me somewhat of the Amish features
not in the similarity but in the commonality
A faith in a god that is in the DNA
reflected outwardly
intertwined with a resurrected language
A nation brought back from the dead
A fierce defiance in the face of a world
that tried to kill them all
And where does such a faith lead?
What kind of questions does a chosen people
ask of a god that seems to want them dead?
"We'll build more houses here
and sooner or later
we'll build the Third Temple."
