Letters of Thought: Yud Kislev and Zelda

In the ohel of the Mittler Rebbe -Nezhin, Ukraine. More in the Ukrainian Trek post.

Today is the Tenth of Kislev, the day of deliverance for the Mittler Rebbe, the second Lubavitcher Rebbe (Though the first to live in the town of Lubavitch), from the Czarist jails.

May we all experience a personal deliverance in our own lives!

 Sabbath and Weekday 
by Zelda Schneersohn-Mishkovsky
To light candles in all the worlds
  this is Sabbath.
  To light Sabbath candles
  is the leap of a soul pregnant with secrets,
  mysterious with the fire of sunset,
  to a magnificent sea.
  As I light the candles, my room
  turns to a River of Fire,
  my heart sinks in emerald waterfalls.

  But on the first day of the week
  my soul is thrown
  from the ocean's heart to a land's shore
  long, narrow, and desolate.
  When I come to the store the grocer immediately senses
  that I've come from another planet, and with dismay
  surveys my looks, foreign to him, the remnant of the abyss--
  and in his cold pupils, as if in a black mirror,
  I see my crumpled scarf, my embarrassed smile.
  And in the store stands another woman, a round lady,
  slowly selecting golden fruit,
  a creature of a distant world.
  I wake up from a daydream
  when the tone of the air, the rhythm of
  voices, change for the short one discovered
  that her money was gone ... Woe to me!
  The dark grocer pours dung of suspicion
  on my disheveled, neglected looks. Before his gaze
  my future wilts like a flower, my past withers.
  My dreams are dying.
  Woe to me for I'm alone in the thick of the forest,
  in the darkness, a roaring lion answers my weeping, and mute trees
  set on me from all sides ...
  The door is open, but I cannot get out
  from the store's trap.
  Now I see with cruel clarity
  how little a person knows about one's fellows--
  even your household members, even your dear ones, may
  in a moment of eclipse
  find in you any wicked fault.
  I drown in the darkness ...

  Suddenly, in the very heart of blindness,
  I heard a voice:
  Truth will not die with the grocer,
  Truth will not die with the short lady,
  Truth will not die with your death.
  My soul awakened, and trembling
  sensed that the King of Glory was with her
  in the foul store.

  I always said:
  The voice of God is over the mighty waters,
  The voice of God is in the song of the morning stars,
  The voice of God is in the whirlwind.
  And here
  in the heart of the tumult, the Lord of Winds gathered me,
  on the waves of hatred as on a viscous stone
  I came in dance before Him,
  I raised my voice in song
  to truth, whose footstool are sun, moon, and stars.
  I almost kissed the grocer,
  for behind his worried back was revealed to me
  the view of shining freedom,
  the freedom of the lands of the Sabbath
  which burns in the songs of the palace dwellers.

  I did not lose favor with the butterfly
  in paradise and with the winds
  that roar above the sea.
  I did not bow before the glance that sees
  in my cheeks the wrinkles of defeat
  but doesn't see my soul that roams
  in the fullness of the universe, doesn't know
  that my soul is a ray of the sun
  and will not be caught in the palm.