Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

If we are created, man and woman alike, in G-d’s image,

and our faces mirror His holy presence in the world,

and our eyes reflect the godly spark of our souls,

and it is true, as the Kotzker Rebbe once said, that

“Whoever does not see G-d everywhere,

does not see Him anywhere,”

where does that leave us,

when half of us are erased

and silenced

and denied a seat at the table,

shushed, told to run along,

back into the tent,

dragging the length of our hemlines with us,

to tell our stories there, quietly around the fire

where only we can hear them,

out of sight, though out of mind is more the point?

What happens then?

A crack forms, a chasm, really,

into which tumbles the essence of who we are –

as a people, as a tribe,

and dare I say, as humanity.

Suffocating like a pernicious vine,

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it pulls down the shades on

our Living Book,

blowing away its holy presence,

breath by breath.

And while we try,

pray, shout, write, and advocate

to stop it,

it proceeds with a great forgetting –

of who created us all,

molded us,

placed us here on earth,

of Torah,

and of one another.

Before we know it,

before we feel the chill,

notice the emptiness,

lose our place in time,

we’ll discover

they have entirely extinguished our light.

Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash