When He Planted in the Earth When He planted in the earth a tree of life, a tree of death (the latter with a curse of woe) did God say that this was good? And when He placed upon the grass the serpent Satan and his crew, did He ever stop to think why the Devil envied God? When Adam spied inside the bower that Eve was naked and alone, Was it Satan, was it God Who put the worm in Adam’s blood? And when God wept and cried some more inside a cloud of smoke and gas, was it then he

Yehudah, I Make You Mine From out of the banks of the muddy Jordan River, I make you Mine. Into shape I press the grit, into shape I knead the clay And your body clings to my fingers. I knead and a verb puts you in motion. I cut and I layer and an adjective fleshes out your shape. I slap and I roll and a rhyme gives you weight. I model and I sculpt and a noun marks you as a thing. With a name, I form you in my image (Your name is on my tongue). With a name, I firm you

Lifting Up of the Hands By lamp and by oil, we hunger the hours as the dusk's frost sets in. There is time: The trucks to Treblinka are not ready yet and there's bread to be had. But the water and bowl are for the washing of hands. (It's what tradition commands.) Fingers make moves in the silence of thought like chess players at their difficult tables. A mouth is turned open and another is shut, and dusk in due course is steadily swallowed, with every crumb of affliction

A Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice And so the gods of lead and brass, The idols and their thrones, The teraphim made of fibreglass The mummified skulls and bones, Are tossed inside a whirl of wind And shattered into shells. But deep inside the kellipot The light of Yahweh dwells. And from the pieces Something new arises in the land, A temple of the sabbath king Built by Ezekiel's hand. With cherubim and fan-leaved palms Carved in the walls of paradise, And the air perfumed with

Shaddai A plant grows from the Nile, the שׁ, primordial cause, rooted in the water, breathing in the air, the commencement of births, becomings, and of all flows.

A Beginning I will proclaim the name of Elah Yisrael: It is Yahuweh Tzavaot the impassioned one who speaks the yod & the heh, who brings it all into being, into shape, first with words & then forming substance with his hands. Far above the newly hammered earth, the unseen Yahu (O He!) sits at his wheel, creates & curates each little pot, all the animals, trees & men, delighting in the lettered forms he finds inscribed in his personal sefer ha’mitzvot. Now it’s Yom HaShevi’i

Seven Worlds God turns -- and the fishes dance blue gold silver beneath a yellow sky. Another turn, the boughs of thick trees become as air: invisibly light. The third turn, nothing but pea-green lizard eyes and cochineal blood. The fourth, an angel with four faces tolls the caked air with a dead bell. At the fifth there is only a fagged-out planet and the light of dead stars. The sixth, and it is said, “the former worlds shall not be remembered.” The seventh, and the land r

Tree, 1943 My roots are split & my bone-bare branches brittle. I degenerate in a cruciformed landscape. There are many like me. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Woodcutter says we’ve been marked out for timber or burning. The genus, it seems, is being hewn.

Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950-51) by Barnett Newman 'It Is a Place, Makom, Where Each Man May Be Called up': Being and Time in Barnett Newman's Art 'Even if you don’t know Newman’s place in art history, walking into a space full of his paintings can inspire contemplation. They give you nothing and everything to look at, these huge canvases whose only subject is themselves, enveloping you in the moment, confronting you with seemingly pure fields of color and contrast.’ (Molly Gl

The Messianic Imperative: Reason, Law, and the Ethics of Hermann Cohen This is a collated version of parts one, two and three of my mini-series on the Jewish neo-Kantian ethicist Hermann Cohen. The Messianic Imperative: Reason, Law, and the Ethics of Hermann Cohen Hermann Cohen (1842 – 1918) was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and an intellectual precursor to the 20th century Jewish existentialist humanism of Martin Bu

Hermann Cohen and the Redemptive Potentiality of Sin Do I desire the death of the wicked? says the Lord God. Is it not rather in his repenting of his ways that he may live? […] Therefore, every man according to his ways I will judge you […] Cast away from yourselves all your transgressions whereby you have transgressed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, and why should you die […] For I do not desire the death of him who dies, says the Lord God: so turn away an

The Correlation of Science and Ethics in Hermann Cohen's Philosophy Hermann Cohen (1842 – 1918) was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and the intellectual precursor to the Jewish existentialist humanism of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas. Starting from the proposition that ethics had to be universal, Cohen outlined a Kantian (and non-Marxist) ethical socialism rooted in the prophetic vision of the He

The Ethical Idealism and Prophetic Messianism of Hermann Cohen Hermann Cohen (1842 – 1918) was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and intellectual precursor to the 20th century Jewish existentialist humanism of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas. Starting from the proposition that ethics had to be universal, Cohen outlined a Kantian (and non-Marxist) ethical socialism rooted in the prophetic vision of the

Adam (1951-52) by Barnett Newman Barnett Newman and the Art of Not Making Graven Images Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and a supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew school, Barnett and his brothers and sisters were educated at home by Jewish scholars from Europe. He went on to

Prayer hall inside the Grand Choral Synagogue Makom It is It is a place, It is a place, Makom, It is a place, Makom, where animal and man, may be called to ascend, ascend the mount, ascend the stair, ascend to a space where the Name has enholied some stony ground, a place where one can say in the presence of time, 'Here I am, Here I am, I am a being-there.'

All Things Are Possible: A Brief Biography of Lev Shestov In 1936, two years before his death, the Jewish‑Russian philosopher Lev Shestov was invited by the Histadrut to deliver a series of lectures in Eretz Israel. He was warmly received by audiences in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem — the city that, in his late thought, came to symbolise the liberation of the individual from the tyranny of rational necessity. And yet, despite the intensity of that reception, Shestov and his

Judaism, Panentheism and Spinoza’s Intellectual Love of God It is a popular misconception that Spinoza was a pantheist or even an atheist. He was not. Like the medieval Kabbalists, Spinoza was a panentheist. Judaism, Panentheism and Spinoza’s Intellectual Love of God Panentheism, meaning “all-in-God,” is situated somewhere between pantheism and classical theism. For pantheists, the world is identical to God, while for classical theists, the world is completely external to G

The Heterodox Judaism of Baruch Spinoza There is only one and unique substance in existence, a substance that is infinite, self-caused, and eternal. This substance is the spatio-temporal world. But it is also God, says Baruch Spinoza, the Sephardi Jew from Amsterdam excommunicated by the Talmud Torah congregation. The Heterodox Judaism of Baruch Spinoza Baruch Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a Sephardi Jewish family who had fled Portugal because of persecution by th

Onement, 1 (1948) by Barnett Newman The Sublime Art of Barnett Newman The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical – Barnett Newman Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew schoo

Baal Tqiah (One Who Blows the Shofar) Baal Tqiah (One Who Blows the Shofar) A storm wind comes from the hidden north filling my mouth, my lungs, with dust and sand from Sinai. Then a great cloud of black, a no-thingness that deprives me of sense, of touch and taste, of sight, smell and hearing. Then a winding of burning. No, not wind, but f