Dance Lessons for Jews

Baruch November

The Pop-Up Rave of Jerusalem

August burns white hot.
The street—whose name
means the son of Judah—slopes
downward to Yaffo Street,
but the dancers don’t mind.

They dance till inseparable,
till they don’t feel the heat
and become the heat,
till their skin turns
a greater shade of tan,
till they believe they’re not
of this lower world.

Israelis and tourists
in taut clothing
spin—their shekels
flying out of pockets
to the black tiles of the street.

“What the hell is this?”
many who pass the gate ask
the bouncers in envy,

but it is too late—no room
behind the high fence
where sweat is exchanged
like a sweet commodity,

and bodies grind away
at their G-dly souls. 

An Education

Sometimes you still have to
remind yourself you won’t be

that teenager again,
in a Hebrew day school,

who painfully shied from the eye doctor’s daughter
and was too serious

about reading Hawthorne and listening to Leonard Cohen
sing from the other side of sorrow and despair,

who became furious playing basketball
on the school’s makeshift court:

sometimes when you shot, the ball did not
complete its arc, hitting the too-low

ceiling of possibilities
with the rasping sound

of a crude machine rejecting
everything it’s fed.

You began to know then
what life is like—

exactly what
it should
not be. 

Dance Lessons for Jews

Something about Chassidim
dancing makes Jews
feel more like Jews—

or like rejecting everything
mystical out of old fears
and leaving though
it’s growing cold
out for Jews now.

Return is always possible
to the circles of deep believers
who may not relate dance
to the delicate art of dark swans.

One Talmudic master
was so renowned for wildly
dancing at weddings—swinging
twigs of myrtle above his head—
that others said he’d degraded
the reputation of scholars.

They’d missed the point:
his life had been elevated
with the joy of belief
beyond explanation.

An Event for Jewish Singles

Other people know how
to enjoy themselves.
I am a miserable guest,
especially at these parties
where spinning asteroids
collide or veer off
on their own: You know, lonely

Strangers attempting to meet
over terrible music,
but it turns into a couple hours
where I stare at my phone,
the cedar wood ceiling,
or pray against my self-
destruction.

Or I rewind the night
because I can in a poem
and stay home, listen
to the glowing horn
of Miles Davis, read
a mystical tract
about how much soul
actually needs body
and body needs soul.

I learn how G-d needs
even me, for nothing
could’ve been created
for the sake of nothing.

Baruch November’s full-length book of poems is entitled Bar Mitzvah Dreams. His collection of poems, Dry Nectars of Plenty, co-won BigCityLit’s chapbook contest. His works feature in Tiferet Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Lumina, NewMyths.com, and The Forward. His poem “After Esav” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Baruch hosts and organizes The Jewish Poetry Reading Series for the JCC of Buffalo. He teaches literature and writing at Touro University.