Saw you at Sinai …
by reuven goldfarb
…then you disappeared,
for 30 centuries! I remember
your eyes, up-curved at their corners;
your lashes, bashful curtains,
opening readily at my glance;
your sleek body, inside your robes;
your incredible disappearing act
between the time I turned away
and looked back.
Now you’re at this wedding in Jerusalem,
your hair corkscrew curls,
your smile elfin, gleeful,
while chatting with your friends,
other single girls like you,
beautiful, young,
in love with life.
If I look away this time,
will you disappear again?
If I lost you for another 30 centuries,
could I bear the separation?
Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?
Come home with me — no, better,
let’s build a home — a bayit ne’eman
b’Yisrael — a faithful home
among our own people.
A former ritual leader with the Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley, Reuven Goldfarb co-founded and edited AGADA, the illustrated Jewish literary magazine, and taught Jewish Studies in local Hebrew schools and English at Merritt College while writing poems, stories, divrei Torah, and essays that have been published in Israel and the U.S. He and his wife, Yehudit, live in Oakland and Tsfat, Israel.