Smile although your heart is aching,
forget about the fact you’re faking.
You’re making too much of life’s tsimmes
every time you make a grimace
instead of seizing each day’s tsorres
diurnally with grace, as Horace
suggested. Every time you govern
your feelings and say, when you daven,
“Thank you God for never making
me a goy,” smile. Forsaking
the vast majority of men
and women, like the early hen
responding to the wise old rooster,
you give yourself a major booster,
your head raised over all your tsorres,
as if you’re shlogging your kappores;
for though your heart is aching, you
are smiling since you are a Jew,
and those who smile once they have prayed
have very truly got it made.
However much the heart may ache,
you’ve gotta smile, for heaven’s sake;
your shot on candid camera taken
by God, if I am not mistaken.
Inspired partly by my young granddaughter who once said what she called “the boy’s brakhah” by mistake, thanking God for not having made her a man, instead of thanking Him for “making me according to His will.” Even after her mother reassured her, she said that she was worried, in case God thought she was mocking him. Also inspired by Deborah Voigt who sang “Smile As Though Your Heart Is Aching” in a recital which Anthony Tommasini praised highly (NYT, 8/1/11). The opinions expressed here are waiting for counter arguments, though please continue to smile!
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
