The Hebrew words I understand as love

Mystery solved. Again.

Photo by shraga kopstein on Unsplash

MY LOVE FOR THE HEBREW LANGUAGE—learning it, rolling its sounds around deep in my throat, speaking it, decoding it—is not logical. It’s not tied to a love of Israel as a country (my feelings there are way more mixed) or to religion (I don’t believe in God). I’ve always known there was something much deeper going on, but never quite articulated it to myself.

Then I came across a poem I published 32 years ago, three years after my grandmother died, first in Prairie Schooner literary magazine and later in a chapbook of poems published by Parallel Press called The Promised Land. And there was my answer, buried or forgotten. I knew it 32 years ago and I know it now too. And now so do you.

CHALLAH

for Esther Evantash Brown

Dusk is falling in the kitchen

where the chicken’s soul rises

in steam, shimmers through

the slipped lid like perfume.

Flour and eggs, oil and sugar,

yeast to make it rise.

So many times we ate this meal

together, on Friday nights

I waited for all week.

Work in the flour with bare hands.

Now it’s been three years

since I’ve known where

I could find you, and the same

since I have written anything.

I can still hear the chop

the metal half-moon made

slicing through bloody livers

in a bowl, smell the fresh-

killed chicken baking

and the line of suds just

underneath your elbows,

your two hands plunged

into hot water, scouring.

Oil the dough, and give it time to rise.

You coaxed me up through

the long darkness where

I might have stayed.

Knead the raw dough

until its stickiness turns smooth.

I see you through a veil of smoke

and pale chiffon, your scarf

over my eyes while you light

the candles, gather the new flames

three times, hide your eyes,

and say the Hebrew words

I understand as love.

Punish the bread because it isn’t you.

In the language of fire

And smoke, the prayer

for grief is only for a son

or daughter, standing with others

in late afternoon, chanting the bell-

like syllables together.

There are no words

for granddaughters to mourn.

Divide the dough in threes

and make from each a line.

Squeeze them together

at one end and braid. This meal

I make and eat alone,

calling up sweetness

with each bite of bitterness,

shaping raw grief into

what it becomes—

something bloody and hot

and good, brief in the mouth,

a long time in the belly,

full of all the words I’ll ever need.