The Rashi Button – a poem for Torah Portion Nasso

All the numbers…who are fit to perform
the service for the service

I found a musical secret in the Torah
thanks to clicking the Rashi button.
The service for the service
was revealed to be the music –
the cymbals and harps used
in service to the service.

And to think it took generations
before they agreed to allow guitar
in the service, when the oldest text
was telling us to do so all along.
I wish there was a Rashi button
I could click whenever I encountered
a long list of numbers.

Rashi, do my taxes.
Rashi, what’s for dinner?
Rashi, can you read the kid a story?
Rashi, that trash isn’t going to take itself out.

Rashi was the Alexa of his day.
Or the Siri, or the Bixby, or the Cortana
or the Hello Google, what does the
Torah mean today?
(I’m willing to shorten this poem if
one of you wants to sponsor.)

I found a musical secret in the Torah.
I’m packing up my guitar to bring it
to anyone who wants to get religious.

This is the service I’m fit to perform.

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.