by Joelle Novey

Corrections

Three decades after my bat mitzvah
All of my Hebrew school teachers, youth group counselors, rabbis, and
that lady with the guitar from camp
They got us all back together
to issue some corrections

“We didn’t really mean that,” they said
Which part? I asked.
Everyone was quiet. Even Zach, who always goofed around.
And Erica, who passed notes and popped her gum.

When we planted the little parsley seeds and tended them as they grew?
When we put the coins in the tzedakah box, and discussed how we most
wanted to repair the world?
When we took three steps back and three more forward, coming into the
presence of God?
“All of it,” they said. “Just forget it all.”

And we made sandwiches for the people who were hungry at the soup
kitchen, remember?
And delivered mishloach manot for the bubbes at the Hebrew Home?
We practiced opening the door during the seder for all who are hungry
to enter and eat?
We went down to the stream before Rosh Hashanah and put those crumbs
in the water, and told our “sorries” to God and tried and tried to be
good

“No no no” they said. “You misunderstood. When people are hungry, it’s
a lie. Also, it’s someone else’s fault. Killing people every day for
hundreds of days in a row is okay, actually. 10 is okay. 10,000 is
okay. 100,000 is okay. With bombs from the sky. With gunshots to the
head. Or just taking away their food, and destroying the hospitals.
Being Jewish means never having to say you’re sorry. We yet live!
Other people do worse things.”

That doesn’t make any sense. Do not kill, I’m sure that was one of the
ten. And you were always so gentle with us children. Starving,
dismembering, and killing children, now? How could that be?

We braided the challah so carefully remember, we blessed the One who
brought forth bread from the earth,
We leave the corners of the field for those who need it, remember?
Remember? I was there, and so were you.

What about the songs and stories, we asked, carefully. “We will be
re-collecting them before you leave,” they said. Aren’t they two
thousand years old, we ask, aren’t they very special? Some of them
have been in our hearts so long now, I don’t think we can give them
back. “Well, hand them in. Sorry if there was any confusion.”

What about those prayers we wrote with pencil on looseleaf and folded
up into tiny little pieces to press into the cracks in the holy wall,
our heart’s deepest wishes at age 5 and 8 and 11, that someone took on
an airplane all the way to a holy place where God would read them all?

It was quiet for a long time. They looked nervous.

“We worship that wall now, and the flag that flies over the wall. We
kill because the wall and the place where it stands is ours. No one
cares about your prayers. No one read them. But we needed to make you
love that wall, and you had to want to stand there.”

What about God, someone whispered.

“Who?”

Joelle Novey lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.