Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Crown of Rachel
From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt
while we discussing something else
A dream about our teacher Akiva
of Yavna
When the Romans took a
respite from murdering us:
In our youth we approached a
little house
Though we were tired from
following the goats all day
Akiva was tired from tending
his beans
And from Jacob-wrestling with
great ideas
But he smiled and asked what
he could do
Do for us little children bubbling
with questions
“I am inventing the
synagogue,” he might have said
“What is a synagogue? A new
kind of Temple?”
“It is a machine for
learning, a temple of the mind
A school, an altar upon we sacrifice
our ignorance”
“But the Romans won’t let us
sacrifice anything”
“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly,
“they sacrifice us
But in the synagogue we will
have a little light
Light and Torah and learning,
always learning”
“We want to learn.”
“Oh? And what do you want to
learn?” he asked of us
“We want to learn.”
He smiled and sat us at a
table under his vines
“I learned to read when I was
forty,” he said
As he took out a tablet and a
stylus
One of us said, “I can’t imagine
being that old!”
Our teacher smiled, smoothed the
day from the wax
And instructed us to attend
to the Word
“The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom”
That is what he said, not
what he wrote in the wax
Akiva prayed, he prayed for
us, and wrote
And in the wax the letters
formed as fire
As gold and fire:
“Bereshit Bara Elohim…”
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