Wholly Present - Rabbi Diane Elliot
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Rabbi Diane
    • Privacy Policy
  • Offerings
  • Writings
    • The Embodied Soul Blog
    • Torah Teachings
    • Publications
  • Media
  • Connect

The Embodied Soul

Categories

All

Archives

May 2022
March 2022
December 2021
August 2021
February 2021
October 2020
June 2020
May 2020
March 2020
November 2019
October 2019
January 2019
September 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
October 2017
June 2017
November 2016
April 2016
September 2015
July 2015
June 2015
March 2015
January 2015
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
June 2014
April 2014
March 2014
September 2013
April 2013
January 2013

The Last Glass

8/8/2021

10 Comments

 
Picture
This has been a time of much loss on many levels: personal losses as beloved ones become ill and pass away, as our work and roles shift unpredictably in response to the pandemic and changing conditions; communal loss, as members of our communities with black and brown skin continue to be singled out, hunted down, suppressed, and our most cherished stories about who we are as people and nations shatter over and over; and global loss, as the oceans warm, the ice caps melt, rainforests turn to ash as skies darken with the smoke of out-of-control fires, whole species disappear, and masses of people, seeking food and water and basic safety make arduous journeys across impossible terrain, only to be turned away at human-made borders. How to be with our heart-brokenness, even as we direct our energies toward what we can still do to repair, renew, comfort, and hold? To continue to love as we grieve? This poem speaks to the potency of remembering, of fully receiving the legacies of our personal and human histories, the pain and the strength, if we're to keep our hearts open and available in the face of this Great Undoing.

​The Last Glass
 
I loved that last glass,
the only one remaining 
from its set.
Thick, dependable, sturdy,
just the right height
for catching the pressed juice 
of carrots and apples, 
incised on its underside:
“made in Russia,”
 
like my grandfather,
Sam, Sam Asher,
the silent one
who grinned his
broken-toothed smile,
who rarely spoke,
and called all of his grandchildren
“Bobby,” even us girls.
 
Perhaps he meant to say
“Baby,” but “Bobby” was how
it sounded, in his sparse Russian-Yiddish
flavored English. There were other
Ashers in Chicago, cousins,
an older sister—Tante Sarah Levin--
but by the time I was born
most were gone--
 
disappeared, the family broken,
the many we never knew. 
Had they been sturdy, dependable,
strong? How had they disappeared--
one by one, or all at once,
from their shtetl outside Vitebsk, 
where they’d been living 
in uneasy peace in the first decade
of the twentieth century, 
at the time when young Sam 
ran away, boarded a ship,
made it to Baltimore, then headed west?
 
Was he the last remaining one,
all the others, siblings, parents, in-laws
broken or disappeared
long, long before his
heart cracked one day in a hospital bed,
long, long before that last glass
slipped from my hand
and shattered in the sink?
 
                    --Diane Elliot, July 15 2021
 


10 Comments
    Picture
    Rabbi Diane Elliot resides in the hills of El Sobrante, California, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco. She enjoys the peace of its softly contoured hills, the sunlight filtered through the small grove of redwoods on the hillside next to her home, and the dazzling, ever-changing beauty of the sky. 

    RSS Feed

    Blog Home

​Home

Bio

Offerings

Writings

Contact

Photography Gratitude to  Susan Freundlich, Eli Zaturansky, Lea Delson, and Wilderness Torah.
Copyright © 2021 Wholly Present • Rabbi Diane Elliot
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Rabbi Diane
    • Privacy Policy
  • Offerings
  • Writings
    • The Embodied Soul Blog
    • Torah Teachings
    • Publications
  • Media
  • Connect