Subscribe to RSSBoroughing: Shapes of My Heart
By Stephanie Goldstein
Our names sound different.
Speaking the God-gurgling syllables
In our baby-fat calves
And tender, roasting ears.
Committed to orthodoxy
Down to the split grains of sugar
Heaps of damp flour in
Our digested Hebrew-lettered childhood
I always hear the sweetness churning.
I am bent over you
Head bobbing back and forth
Whispering Hashem, Hash—
Curve, curve dash.
You only hear me
In the language God spoke
When he told us we were sisters
Bound to each other through tales
Of oppression, revenge, and miracles
Where the Jews came out on top over and again
On top of my back.
Shaping me into a pretty, obedient black letter of heaven
I bend over you
I curve under your bend
We are the tradition before
Abbreviation
The Hebrew before English
The sisterhood before religion
Ingrained in our Jewish-star hearts
Sometimes straight beliefs are not so straight.
Dot my Hebrew-Godletter-Hey
And I am in New York City.
Where lights are always on
My eyes are still adjusting.
I start talking to boys,
Real boys—men—not fake baby-filled futures
But I can hear the baby needs
In their modern man-screams,
In their masculine way of saying
“Hello baby.”
Water soaks the flesh of your exposed white ankle
A puddle of bones beneath your Calvin Klein skirt
Before we came here
Your skin was an off-white color
Sweating the steam off heaven’s throat
Almost like the bubbling light in my old white synagogue
Walls streaked with more than paint
But I see the color in religion in
My new N.Y.C. temple
The diversity of our sisterhood
In wool turtlenecks, slutty spaghetti straps,
Sex and synagogue.
But I am still Sarah Chanah
My Hebrew name still has meaning
In all interpretations
Sounding in my ears like love
I still see the tradition in modernity
And I still say no.
We are the sisters
With curves in our ink-blotted spines
With black streaks over our peek-a-boo sexuality
And I am not willing to compromise my curves
For your dash
I want up-to-interpretation Judaism
The cracked Torah parchment
Oiling my hands with butter
Until they can feel nothing but the hot grease
And I say yes.
Knowing we are more than sisters
Judaism is more than religion
More than God
More than me and you.
I want it all.
The curves and the dash.
You are not just an abbreviation
A letter
But our name
That bears no language
To be spoken.
The cursive Hebrew letter “Hey” is often paired with a dash as an abbreviation for G-d’s name.
\\STEPHANIE GOLDSTEIN is a first year in Barnard College. She can be reached at shg2111@barnard.edu. Photo by Flickr user Katie Cowden.
