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• Genesis

  Genesis

  (pp. 5-12)

  For many years my father – may he dwell in a bright Eden! – refused to permit in his presence even the mention of that person′s name. The mere imminence of an allusion to my uncle soon brought my father to an oblique deliberative ominous knuckle-combing of his beard, a sombre knitting of his brow, and froze at last his face to the stony stare Semitic. The tabu was recognized, and the subject was dropped.

  Not that my father was by nature a furious man; he was, as a matter of fact, kind and gentle and of a very forgiving...

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• Exodus

  Exodus

  (pp. 13-21)

  When as a young boy, the consolations and prophecies of Isaiah before me, I dreamed in the dingy Hebrew school the apocalyptic dream of a renewed Zion, always I imagined it as coming to pass thus: First I heard the roar and thunder of the battle of Gog and Magog; then, as silence fell, I saw through my mind′s eye a great black aftermath cloud filling the heavens across the whole length of the humped horizon. The cloud then began to scatter, to be diminished, to subside, until revealed there shone the glory of a burnished dome – Hierosolyma the...

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• Leviticus

  Leviticus

  (pp. 22-34)

  As the plane roared over the Atlantic, and I read and re-read my uncle′s letter, his enthusiasm took hold of me and I saw myself, too, as part of the great reenactment, knew myself borne to my destination, if only for a spying out of the land, ′on the wings of eagles.′ My very levitation seemed a miracle in harmony with the wonder of my time; through my mind there ran the High Holiday praise of God for that He did ′suspend worlds on withoutwhat,′ even as my plane was suspended, even as over the abyss of recent history there...

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• Numbers

  Numbers

  (pp. 35-44)

  Whatever the motives were that impelled Uncle Melech toward Casablanca, his instincts were sound. I, too, that first day, fell in love with this beautiful city of the Moghreb el Aksa which, arrayed in all the colours of Islam, stands mirroring itself in the mirror of Atlantic. As upon some Circean strand magical with voices, I could have halted my travels there; indeed, it was music, a singing that issued like silken coloured thread from the door of a café hard by the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, where I had just registered for my initial Arabian night, that first snared me,...

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• Deuteronomy

  Deuteronomy

  (pp. 45-62)

  The flight to Israel, from the moment when we rose over the Mediterranean to the moment when the plane banked and the land lay before us like an open slanted Bible, was a smooth going through space above calm dozing leviathans of water and over clouds, herds of white horses, maned, rounded, rampant.

  Warmed by the sun beating through the porthole, my mind was dreamily in communion with the murmur of the motors humming through aluminum. They made me whatever music my mind willed, ululative, messianic, annunciatory. It was as if I was part of an ascension, a going forward...

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• GLOSS ALEPH

  GLOSS ALEPH

  (pp. 63-65)

  Out of the ghetto streets where a Jewboy

  Dreamed pavement into pleasant Bible-land,

  Out of the Yiddish slums where childhood met

  The friendly beard, the loutish Sabbath-goy,

  Or followed, proud, the Torah-escorting band,

  Out of the jargoning city I regret,

  Rise memories, like sparrows rising from

  The gutter-scattered oats,

  Like sadness sweet of synagogal hum,

  Like Hebrew violins

  Sobbing delight upon their Eastern notes.

  Again they ring their little bells, those doors

  Deemed by the tender-year′d, magnificent:

  Old Ashkenazi′s cellar, sharp with spice;

  The widows′ double-parloured candy-stores

  And nuggets sweet bought for one sweaty cent;

  The warm fresh-smelling bakery, its...

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• GLOSS BETH

  GLOSS BETH

  (pp. 66-70)

  Named for my father′s father, cousin, whose cry

  Might have been my cry lost in that dark land –

  Where shall I seek you? On what wind shall I

  Reach out to touch the ash that was your hand?

  The Atlantic gale and the turning of the sky

  Unto the cubits of my ambience

  Scatter the martyr-motes. Flotsam-of-flame!

  God′s image made the iotas of God′s name!

  Oh, through a powder of ghosts I walk; through dust

  Seraphical upon the dark winds borne;

  Daily I pass among the sieved white hosts,

  Through clouds of cousinry transgress,

  Maculate with the ashes that...

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• GLOSS GIMEL

  GLOSS GIMEL

  (pp. 71-78)

  ... to the Sistine Chapel; and so to me the long passage through the marble corridors leading to the beatific door was no more than a flotation upon a channel of foam, a transit between walls of wind forgotten as soon as blown. The white statuary of that ghostly gantlet I recall as but a series of pale shadows, a spectral escort. I do not even remember my walking; like something dreamed in a dream of walking on water, such and such feebly the recollection of that calm wan floor. The ceiling – was there really a ceiling above these...

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• GLOSS DALID

  GLOSS DALID

  (pp. 79-99)

  BAGHDAD. The Gates of Justice. A raised, canopied dais, as yet unoccupied, guarded by four soldiers with scimitars. Before it, a concourse of litigants, chained criminals, merchants, beggars.

  Allah be praised! the hungry week has passed

  And the Gates of Justice thronged again – we thrive!

  And high time! Ah, this poor purse, it has had

  A lean and constricted week,

  Its strings, folded and fallow, like a gut at Ramadan ...

  But today it will gorge. This sweet congregation of guilt

  Palsied with fear and philanthropy, it will pay

  The long fast of our adjournment. And they are many...

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• GLOSS HAI

  GLOSS HAI

  (pp. 100-105)

  Blessed art thou, O Lord,

  Who in Thy wisdom hast fashioned man as Thou hast fashioned him: hollowed and antrious, grottoed and gutted, channelled; for mercy′s sake gifted with orifice, exit, and vent!

  Did one of these only suffer obstruction, survives not the hour that man!

  Thy will according, there drops the baneful excess: the scruff falls; from the pores surreptitious the sweat; and the nails of the fingers are cut; the demons are houseless.

  Be blessed for the judgment of the eight great gates who dost diminish us to make us whole; for the piecemeal deaths that save; for...

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• FOR THE DAY

  FOR THE DAY

  (pp. 106-106)

  I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.

  O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.

  O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.

  Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

  For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in...

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