Walking the Walk

With Jews with whom they daven very many cannot talk,

and with those whom they like to talk they often cannot daven,

and though those who don’t follow halakhah don’t walk their walk,

they love the food for thought that’s coked in their unkosher oven.

Rabbi David Weiss-Halivni said that when the chips

are down he feels inclined to take the side of people whom

he davens with, depending more on what comes from his lips

to God than words with people with whom he can talk and zoom.

Our minds are flowers, frequently by total strangers pollened,

The benefit of strangeness not outweighed by all its dangers,

generating for the smartest ones a mental cholent,

no longer money changers, checking in as mental changers.

Inspired on 6/30/22 by a talk by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, who began his brilliant weekly Zoomed discussion of a Shai Agnon story by recalling Rabbi David Weiss-Halivni on the day of the professorial rabbi’s burial in Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Rabbi Bouskila quoted Rabbi Weiss-Halivni:

“It is my personal tragedy that the people I daven (pray) with I cannot talk to and the people I talk to I cannot daven with. However, when the chips are down I will always side with the people I daven with. For I can live without talking, I cannot live without davening.”