from SIGNALS FROM CREATION'S WOMB

              poems translated from the Hebrew by Esther Cameron

Born in 1960 in Petach Tikvah to a non-religious family, Oded Mizrachi studied cinema and literature at Tel Aviv University before becoming a ba'al teshuva (returnee) in 1984.  He is a student of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.  He has published three collections of poetry in Hebrew, as well as criticism and fiction.  He is currently working on a book of true stories of returnees.

The title Signals from Creation’s Womb was suggested by Rabbi Ginsburgh.  According to Kabbalah, the world came into being in the space that resulted from the contraction of Divinity.   This space (only apparently empty, because all the universe is filled with the Creator in a hidden way) is called the "womb of creation." 

Signals from Creation's Womb is published by Bitsaron Books.  Copies may be ordered from Oded Mizrachi (odedmizr@netvision.net.il).

A PERSONAL ANTHEM

To be a free religious person in our land!

I hum a personal anthem to myself,

Standing at attention in the Tel Aviv mall,

Dizzy with the movement of the crowd.

Continually sipping

Huge quantities of malignant freedom

In the Holy Land, in the city of lights.

How is it possible to connect

This illusory happiness

With Torah and mitzvot?

I torment myself as usual.

Riding up on the escalator,

Rehearsing for the days of the Messiah

Within my convulsed soul,

And muttering brief songs of ascent.

Catching in the corner of my eye

Magnificent storefronts,

Palaces of chocolate,

Show windows of women's perfumes,

Exhibits of ticking clocks.

Sweet vision of enchanting death.

Someday I will arise

In the resurrection of the dead

So free and happy

I'll even be dying to become religious!

____________________________________

THE LABORATORY OF THE EMPTY SPACE

In short lines I will bow my head

To my two souls

And kiss them with a furrowed brow.

With my powerful internal motor

I will escape the force of gravity

Of the small mind.

With great love I will tear

The mask of a crumbling faith,

And shatter the views of the sun

With infinite joy.

My soul that lolls

On the beaches of Tel Aviv –

I will immerse it

in a drop of the waters of the abyss.

My soul that wends its way

between the walls of Meah Shearim –

I will turn it

for one moment to the heights.

And as on Passover night

I will burst through the walls of the sea,

And in the laboratory of that empty space

I will fuse them completely.

__________________

THE STRICTLY KOSHER SUPERCONSCIOUS

You need to keep a close watch

On the poem,

Strictly supervising the words

As they write themselves.

Keeping an eye on the ox

Unhitched from the heavenly chariot

As he bellows through the worlds

Toward the slaughterhouse.

Toward the abysmal arrangement

Of limbs and organs.

You need to sort strictly

The words that drift down

From out there in space

Into the grooves of the lines.

To affix on the superconscious

The stamp of the holy tongue

And be infinitely immortalized

In the prayer of pain

And to vigilantly permit

the delights of love

only with the Abstract

that hides in the chambers of the heart.

____________________

SARAH, MY DAUGHTER, LOOKS AT ME

Sarah, my daughter, looks at me

From a framed picture

From a frozen past.

The graceful ears of wheat beside her,

The balcony in Jerusalem

And its spectacular mountain landscape,

And especially that restrained joy

That looks out of her brown eyes,

Are not figments of my imagination.

Nor her wise smile

Cooperating with the photographer,

Nor cloven skies.

Sarah my daughter is basically

A simple, innocent child,

And only this lightning that gaped to the depths

Exposed something wondrous in her

That shines in the sunset

Of our daily illusion.

_________________

RECUMBENT ON THE PROMISED LAND

In occasional moments of devastation

I yield with all my heart

To exhaustion.

Recumbent on the promised land

Without any inner complaint,

Completely idle,

Filling my brain with only You,

Who fills all worlds!

From minute to minute my body perishes,

But more and more believes.

_________________________

DISCARDED LOVE

The open channels of love

In this world

Are thin and sharp

Like a row of syringes

In the operating room.

Almost everything is dangerous.

Even one superfluous glance

Is apt to complicate the situation.

Even when happiness is permitted

It pierces the heart.

There is nowhere to flee to.

Only to close your eyes

And illumine from within.

And then to thrust oneself out

Like a space laboratory

Into the loving light.

_____________________

ETERNAL LOVE

There are words of love in me,

A burden heavy like no other,

An outpouring of molten rock.

Underground love

That murmurs in the lava of the core,

Holy mountains on fire.

Toward the street, nothing --

The obscure movement of souls

On express sidewalks.

But toward the blue sky

On my street the combinations

Of the hidden eruption will take form.

On the marble rock that rests

On the root of my soul, will be engraved

Stone letters telling

Of my love affair --

Modestly concealed in public --

With the soul of the world.

Born in 1960 in Petach Tikvah to a non-religious family, Oded Mizrachi grew up in Eilat until the end of high-school. He served in the intelligence corps of the Israeli army and then began studying cinema and literature at Tel Aviv University. His secular studies were interrupted in 1984 when he began studying at a yeshiva for ba’alei teshuva (returnees) in Jerusalem.   He is a student of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.  He has published three collections of poetry in Hebrew, as well as criticism and fiction.

The title Signals from Creation’s Womb was suggested by Rabbi Ginsburgh. According to Kabbalah, the world came into being in the apparently empty space that resulted from the contraction of Divinity.  (However, in truth the Creator fills the whole universe in a concealed way.) In Kabbalah, this "empty space" is also called the "womb of creation." 

Signals from Creation's Womb is published by Bitsaron Books.  Copies may be ordered from Oded Mizrachi (odedmizr@netvision.net.il).