‘ It has been nice knowing you,’ said J-M H
‘good luck with your other courses,’ written
across my first Hebrew assessment and so
the end of a very brief relationship
Amused was I, but regretting not being able
for that wonderful language, wishing to be
Rabbinic, wanting to read the original Torah
text with its twists and turns and subtelties,
The lecturer telling us sometimes flies would
drink the ink in the heat quick as the scribe
could scribe, sabotaging the grammar; later I
read Sacks on ‘Shalshelet,’ that tiny musical
Lightening-slash over a word, indicating
hesitation, caught in two minds, only used
twice in the Torah, with Lot lingering leaving
Sodom, and Joseph before Potiphar’s wife,
Both getting off-side just in time; and Sacks
on the Jewish story, definitively, ‘The last
chapter is not yet written, Messiah has not
yet come’, no ‘shalshelet’ hovering there!
lifeintheshortstaycarpark 