Holy silence, to be holy, must be held that way. It can't be a silence of indifference. Or a silence of capitulation. It can't be a silence that is simply an absence.
Read moreHymn of Glory (Imagining the Divine in Old Ashkenaz)
I had wanted to carry something with me, something talismanic, on this vist to Old Ashkenaz, the recent land of my ancestors, and the distant land of many of our ancestors. Then one of my teachers pointed me to this poem, and that was it. It was these words that I brought, back to their place of origin.
Read moreShechinah, at the Art Institute
I ran into the Shechinah in an art museum. It was the Art Institute of Chicago. Maybe not the way it is now, but the way it was when I was a kid. She was in one of the Impressionist rooms. In front of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of la Grande Jatte.
Read moreOn Crossing Great Waters
Maybe I come from a long line of non-swimming, land-locked Keller men, flagrantly violating this rabbinic injunction, generation after generation, or generation before generation, all the way back to the Exodus from Egypt, where some proto-Keller would have stood gaping at the Sea in abject terror.
Read moreKi Tisa: The Scent of Shechinah
But this was another time.
When scents were devised with sensibility.
Mortar and pestle. Delights olfactory
Made with industry but no factory.
A time when the word "natural"
Was not needed before the word "fragrance"
Because what else would it be?