Shabbat in shul:
Bar mitzvah
A
youngman's
search for meaning
Prayers beckon through the sunlit minutes.
Baruch David ben Yehudit Devorah, Bar Mitzvah;
Child of the. Commandment:
Son of Israel.
I wrap myself in the sound of his voice.
JIis words fill my breasts
Like the milk that suckled him.
He stands assured.
He sips the wine.
He embraces Torah.
, WAYNE FIRESTONE
I
as·l:
HAD an unsettling feeling
shaved the beard that had previously acted as a public tribute to :'.
my rise to adulthood. Friends who had recently visited or studied'
in Eastern Bloc countries cautioned me that "only Jews wear
beards over there" and that "it would have to go",if I did not w~~, ~
to be overly conspicuous. And so, aided by the precision of~
Norelco triple header, I stroked away part of my physical identity?
naively expecting my personal search to be disguised, naively
expecting that someone might care.
'
As I prepared to tour Poland and visit a concentration camp~ I,
considered the possibility that perhaps I might find there I some ,
answers to the complexities and paradoxes that "enlightened"
man has created. I could not find these answers in New ,York,
Paris, or London, so now I wou!d try Auschwi~, Maidenek, an4,::,.y ,
T r e b l i n k a . ' ,,
I left for Poland, a beardless young man searching for meaniQg' :':
in a world with the Holocaust as a legacy and the nuclear debacle,
as a threat. As part of a delegation of eighty Jewish studeiltsaged. '
16-24 from around the world, I contemplated my pC\st i~ order.to ,.·.,·',',··"','i'·:.,;,."
confront my flfture. I went to study the Holocaust but retUrned:
with a better understanding of myself, too.
My first night's sleep in Poland was much lesstha;nthat. ,',c.'",::,',',.'"."}•.:::,.",.<:,,,,
Aggravated by a case of jet lag, it was most "disturping .."'··."'..,".'''.i,',',': .\'..,,·:·:.'',:,
awakened at four A.M. by a woman speaking Engli'sh IL'U:":.,'L':~'~~~Jl"'i:i?.'
h,
I have linked arms with the seas;
I amfioating with the gulls;
I am riding a sunbeam across a ravine:
I am sitting with the ancients
Stargazing in the desert night.
, I hear his voice:
A violin's song-his first cry at birth.
JULIE DEE SEGAL