11 Comments
User's avatar
malka neustadter's avatar

Jewish life as I understand it involves both kinds of change. The quantum kind - becoming bar / bat mitzva, married or the other examples you gave. A lifetime of preparation may precede it but the change happens in a moment and is forever.

There's the other kind, too. Building character, or scholarship. That's many moments that add up only over a lifetime.

We couldn't have Jewish life as we know it with only one of those kinds.

Expand full comment
Peter Himmelman's avatar

You are so right. Perhaps it’s also the moment to moment change that comes each time we turn toward the performance of a good deed, instead of its opposite.

Expand full comment
Andrew Lukac, Jr.'s avatar

Wonderful. Every word and each space between those words. In those moments when you pick that guitar and simply cradle the instrument in your arms .....that texture comes across to me as a sonic boom. Thank You, Peter.

Expand full comment
Ms. Billie M. Spaight's avatar

Each moment we are becoming something else. We are shedding what we once were. Our light of understanding illuminates the way. Yet, we must choose to take each step. Beautiful poem, Peter.

Expand full comment
Shelah Horvitz's avatar

Beautiful. Beatific.

Didn't we all change forever on 10/7/23? We change with our worldviews. We change with our responsibilities. We change with our truths and our illusions, what we want and what we can't live without.

Crises show us who we are and what we care about, who our friends are and who our friends are not.

Expand full comment
George Shay's avatar

Brilliant!

Expand full comment
Greg D's avatar

Thank you for your words

Going through some hard times myself

I am a wordsmith also and couldn't of said it better myself

Expand full comment
alexander.helphand's avatar

That was rather scary. There are people who have turned their lives around in a minute, and there are people who go step by step. But even the people who have turned themselves around in a minute, that would just be a building block. Your illustration of the tuned guitar is something to ponder. So thank you. And as one observant Jew to another, you know what it says who is he who is wise one who learns from all.

Expand full comment
Allan Rosenberg  (Captain Al)'s avatar

Sometimes it just happens and we realize it means everything and also means nothing in our life. As Brian Wilson said (in one of the few songs he wrote that he created the lyrics for) "I'm a Cork in the Ocean". Or as George Harrison said "Life Goes On Within & Without You".

I'm feeling very humble today.

Expand full comment
Lynne Robinson's avatar

gives me pause.

Expand full comment
Chaya's avatar

So very true. Thank you, Peter!

Expand full comment