Some Thoughts And Reflections During The Jewish New Year

September 25, 2014 7 Comments

“God gave us the gift of life.  We don’t need any more.”–Allan Sherman from The Rape of APE

Another year has passed.  To the Jews, the coming of the harvest during the closest new moon marks the beginning of another year.  It is not surprising that the festival, Rosh Hashanah(literally, the head of the year) is one of the most sacred to the Jews, and, indeed, has implications for all.  The Jewish New Year is more than the turning of the calendar, it is a time to reflect on what has been and to recognize one’s actions.  For me the previous year was truly “laden with happiness and tears”.  I lost my Mom on June 21, one week after her 90th birthday.  But, in the loss, my Dad and I formed a stronger bond.  “We will get through this together”.  Nevertheless, I was forced to face a new emptiness:   For the first time, I went to Oregon without either of my parents, surrounded by family portraits.  It wasn’t easy.  Towards the end of summer, I lost my dear friend, Don Donegan, who had been Chair of the Board of Directors of Medford Education International and had taught me much of what I know about business.  His home was Black Oaks, located on a beautiful stretch of the Rogue River.  I made many a trip to visit him on Pine Gate Way amid a crowd of llamas.  Those visits are over.  However, there were also joys.   I made new friends through the Eagle Point Writer’s Critique Group.  I saw Warm Springs Falls for the first time and walked down the re-named T’lomikh Falls on the Rogue River.  Another year.

What follows are some miscellaneous and scattered thoughts that come from a troubled mind:

The term “religious” fanaticism is a strange one.  When we think about a Lewis Carroll fanatic, do we mean someone that takes joy in ripping up editions of Alice in Wonderland?  Hardly.  Does a Beethoven fanatic spend time recklessly destroying CDs of Beethoven’s symphonies?  Absolutely not.  Yet, the people we often call “religious” fanatics, go about gleefully destroying God’s creations.  Does that make any sense?  Wouldn’t a religious fanatic weep when a new child was born,  kiss the trees,  or bless the stars, rejoicing in God’s creations, not destroying them?  I think so.  My belief is that there is a fanatically-oriented personality that grasps “religion”, which is often a dark mask for the groping hands of power.  By calling such charlatans “religious'” fanatics, we are often elevating criminals to a higher level.  We are, in some sense, giving validation to their nefarious deeds.  We know the power of words.  Human history has choked on them.  “Words are no shoddier than what they peddle.”  Beckett.  But when I witness the current atrocities in the Middle East, I am reminded of lines from Waiting from Godot:

Pozzo:  I am Pozzo!  Pozzo!  Does that name mean nothing to you?  I said does that name mean nothing to you?

Estragon:  I once knew a family called Gozzo.  The mother had “the clap”.

I will finish this post with lines from my dear friend, Sarah Seff Rolfe, taken from her poem, Quasars at Dacca:  “Earth, a tiny bead spinning in space, and still learning.”

May all of you enjoy a year of discovery, peace, understanding, and joy.

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Remembering Sarah Seff Rolfe

July 25, 2013 4 Comments

“It is so easy to forget that the essential you… might be lost, and that the you might forget to remember from whom or what it came.” –Ronald Rolfe, geneticist.

These lines were written during aphasia when Ronald was dying from a brain tumor

 

It was my pleasure to have met Mrs. Rolfe at a time when my ideas were just beginning to develop.  When I was a child of six, I used to come over to her home to play piano and spoke of my conceptions of music.  She then moved away and I never thought I would see her.  However, during a troubled period in my life in my late teens, she returned to the very same house she had lived in earlier!  I met her at a march of candles for Soviet Jews and discussed some of the novels I had been reading.  I was most gratified to have found an informed literary companion.

Sarah Seff Rolfe or Rose Rolfe(her preferred name) became my poetry mentor and good friend.  She had come from Minnesota, where she had studied with Robert Penwarren.  She had a long correspondence with Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, and adapted his Hasidic Sayings in her collection, Songs of Legacy.  In North Hollywood, California, she took active part in poetry readings and took classes in Everywoman’s Village.  However, she did not publish a book of poetry(Terebinth Press) until one year before her death in 1984.  She titled her book, Heart And Mouth Are One.  The book was encouraged by her teacher, Carol Lem.

Mrs. Rolfe inspired me with a sense of the mystical and profound elements in nature.  She was a master at revealing human nature in its contemplative, reflective, troubled moods.  Her poems are quite musical.  In fact, some of her longer pieces resemble musical compositions;  starting with a melody, developing it through skillful rhythmic and word changes, transitioning into new harmonies, but still staying with the one original pattern.

I can still hear her musical voice, absorbing every nuance of every syllable.  Her voice was very similar to Barbara Luddy’s “Lady” in the Disney film Lady and the Tramp.  

She often invited fellow poets over for an evening of poetry and and analysis.  She was patient and kind with my early endeavors and always supportive and encouraging.  To remember her, I am including Blue Pawn, one of the best poems that she wrote.

 Blue Pawn

1

Very old, the dealer said, Navajo.

Small white prayer-beads near the clasp…

Touching the unpolished, turquoise stones,

I find underground springs,

Ghosts of my Hebrew ancestors

in fringed prayer-shawls

sway at my shoulders–quiver.

But something else here… evokes

the craftsman who shaped the necklace.

Crouched under canvas eaves, he plies

his art, sun-baked hands holy with care.

His axe rings.. where thick blue veins

of turquoise… tear from the matrix.

And what has the blue necklace to say

of such distant visions?

Pawned and redeemed at trading posts…

caught in a chain of sorrows and celebrations

and coming here to my alien hand,

my Native questions?

2

Beginnings…

My pulse holds tembrilsJewish theology, Native Americans

where the Hebrew God of Place and the

Indian Gods of many Weathers–touch.

Though sea and sky belie their blue,

I say what I see–say sapphire, cerulean,

lapis lazuli–circle of faiths.

Their laughter carves the iron wind

where turquoise winks in the rock

and earth’s blue bead, quarried in space,

trembles in the rite of stars… plays.

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