Put Out a Little Nosh – a poem for Torah Portion Terumah

And you shall place on the table showbread
before Me at all times.

Always put out a little nosh
except on Yom Kippur of course.
But even that begins and ends
with a little nosh.

We’re building a holy place
a portable holy place, so the Holy One
can have a place to tell us the things
h/she wants to tell us

and the Holy One wants a spread
a spread of bread, a show bread,
a best-in-show bread. Do you
know what a cubit is?

You don’t want to find out on an
empty stomach, and neither does God
who occasionally loses patience with us
and threatens to turn the whole thing

right around. So you’ll need tools
and gold and acacia wood and someone
who’s good with angel wings as
they’re going to be a big part of this.

But everyone’s going to be hungry
so put out a little nosh, and don’t forget
the showbread as that’s what the
Holy One picked off the menu.

It may have been the only thing
on the menu. I’m not sure we can eat it
or if it’s just for show. But put out a little
nosh, please. Our hunger goes back to

the beginning of everything.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 23 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Hunka Hunka Howdee!” (Poems written in Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2019) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.