Song of Sahara

Written for Sergei on November 13, 2011

Maybe it would have gone from social services, Medicaid, courts, affidavits, testimony, credentials and civil obligations to an easier time to prove someone's allegiance and love.

Today was the day of your conversion. It is a wonderful ceremony but G_D expects your mother to almost do the impossible. To take you into a mikvah and dunk you and leave you in the water without touching you three times. The thought is that the almighty won't let anything happen to you, and that your mother can prove she can let go and let G_D.

This is how I see it may have went thousands of years ago in the dessert. I may have spotted you on the side of the desert, alone or taking cover, simply thrown you into a burlap sack sling and just thought "another one to pick figs for." And continued to walk the desert. Later that night as scripture says, she will take her new child to the water and call him or her, her own. In the company of those in the tribe.

Just like that. Where the secular world and the old world display its obvious differences. Where legitimacy of love and faith is truly recognized as a personal matter, under stars.Because of someone else's temper, caused this potentially dangerous antic.

Maybe it has gone this way thousands of times. Parenthood, motherhood and childhood. I am sure in the Ashkenazi world, there were many mothers saw the challenge of a small child left alone to perish, maybe before a nazi imprisonment or during, where a small child wants a mother to hold her or him. Is there a judge, a lawyer? No. a mother with open arms waiting to share her allotment of food with someone that isn't genetically hers. Maybe post war, plenty of children scooped up by someone else and just moved along, eating a piece of bread, made smaller by their new mother from her mouth.

Welcome to the tribe. Eat your food with pride and joy. Know that you are of something larger than yourself. You are not only my son, but a son of Abraham.

JW