Showing posts with label Jewish mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish mythology. Show all posts

18 February 2021

#18 – A Black Box

Even a brief examination of Jewish eschatology reveals many mysteries. “Black box” is how software testing theory describes an unknowable, untestable element of a system.

As we examine endings and beginnings
And how those thoughts have shifted over years
When we strip down the details and the trimmings
You’ll see our history’s what shapes our fears

So where the Norse meet Fate in icy darkness
And others know we’ll fry in fearful heat
We also long for when all this will hurt less
And where our present stress will find defeat

For after all-too clearly pictured strife
And all the scattered children gathered home
Those who’ve suffered earn a pleasant life
Where no-one ever has to be alone.

And if this comfort helps you to be strong
But harms nobody, I can see no wrong.

-FR

The image search for “Jewish black box sunset” brought me many interesting images, especially around use of tefillin, or phylacteries, but this one seemed the most fitting, after all, from an Adobe stock image used on this site about Jewish ideas and ideals in a blog article about women donning tefillin.

14 February 2020

#14 – Met Josef, Ben Davar

The Prague golem is considered (by Wikipedia, at least) the classic version of the golem myth, which word is only mentioned in the Bible once. The tale is said to be apocryphal at best, and yet lives on in thousands of reproductions (including statues, comics, cartoons, horror films, novels  – Frankenstein, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Terminator? – wrestlers, restaurants, and poetry). I tried a technique to reflect the nature of hidden words and layered meanings – let me know how you thought I got on…

And at the very start, you rose in truth,
Light form wet-raw, and rough as recompense;
Effective ward against those lacking ruth,
Pauldron on the arms of innocence.

Healing isn’t what he made you for –
Likely you’re a goad to push back hate,
Aping what you witness in the law,
Made to make your maker curse his fate.

Emptiness consumes the hours you toil,
Darkness casts you into strong relief,
Hubris dogs you both in ash-damped moil,
Tantamount to beggaring belief.

As he withdraws his love you fade and fall,
Vain witness to how cruel loss makes us all.

– FR

Even altering one letter of the golem’s shem can render it lifeless