After Ezra

After Ezra, the Jews who lived in Palestine
visited the Temple on each
of the three festivals.
And those unable to do this—
for the Jewish people was now
spreading more and more throughout the world—
spent half a shekel for the maintenance
of the Temple, and tried
to visit it as pilgrims at least
once during their lifetime. (Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism.)

…

So there would be thousands of stories to tell
of men and women in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
traveling to Jerusalem once in their lifetimes
and dying having fulfilled this duty.
Probably the journey was difficult,
with hunger, thirst, sickness, highwaymen.
Certainly many died while making the journey.
Probably they bought souvenirs
that rattled around in their houses, to be
inherited by children—
a ruby glass pitcher inscribed:
Maggie from Blarney Castle—1893.
One imagines thousands of ordinary Jews
with this journey as the climax of their lives.
One imagines an individual among the thousands,
in 300 BCE, say, and after her another,
almost indistinguishable—
a procession of lives
most not differing remarkably one from another
(from our perspective anyhow)
until 70 CE when the Temple fell.

…

From our perspective, why say
that these were separate lives? —

any more than a worker bee last year
is a separate being from this year’s specimen
in the same or in a different hive;
the significant structure of one life
is the same as another.
Isn’t the sole fact now for each of them
that they were pilgrims to the Temple in Jerusalem,
traveling there to pay homage
to Moses and the deliverance out of Egypt?
That’s all we know of them in history.

…

Before the world began, an almost
infinite host of souls
drifted, each one suspended
in an almost endless torpor,
waiting to be born.
For thirteen billion years at least they waited
(some are waiting to this day).
Or perhaps they slept, waking only
to squawk at the light
for a moment almost infinitely brief
beside those eons of waiting.
And now that the soul finds itself
alive in the world, it must
get to work; now is its time
to do or not do,
to do good or evil;
it will never have this opportunity again.
God, of course, disposed each soul’s moment;
and, of course, God would not waste even
one soul, so all are born in His
good time; and God foreknew
the infinitely improbable train of events
that would lead to each individual birth;
and each soul is born into
the special body that God intended
it to have—
everything provided for,
nothing left to chance.

Would it be comforting
to believe in this determined world?
 

…

Each May in St. Paul, Minnesota,
the Central High School orchestra presents a final concert.
Graduating seniors are recognized.
One or two popular members
subject the director to a gift-presentation roast.
The students play in
the hierarchy of their attainments.
Then the soloists receive flowers.
One year my daughter leads
the second flutes;
one year my second daughter
is principal oboist.
A year or ten years later,
another student leads
the second flutes,
another sits in the principal’s chair.
My brown-haired flutist is reincarnated
as a carrot-topped, freckled boy,
my red-haired oboist
as a wispy African American girl.
The structure, the roles, are the same.
Those who inhabit them —
are they different,
or are they the same?

…

My brown-haired daughter
would never have been born if I had
followed my first plan
and attended graduate school in Tucson, Arizona
instead of the University of Minnesota.
But Tucson lost my transcripts,
so I was able to meet my wife.
If I had gone to Arizona,
would I have had a child with another woman,
the child perhaps neither brown-haired nor female,
but possessing the same soul?—
None of this child’s thoughts or experiences
would have been the same; or, in another view,
they all would have been the same—
that is, human.

…

Seventy years ago, more than
six million descendants of the people of Ezra
were forced by terrorized bureaucrats
to depart on another journey.
All of the progeny they would have passed down
are absent today. None of them are here
to meet and chat with,
to marry and have children with.
Yet we don’t miss them.
We don’t miss them because they never were.
They only might have been.
And, though this doesn’t make up for their loss,
many descendants of the people of Ezra are here
to meet and chat with.
After all the happenstance,
all the sudden, unexpected arrivals and departures,
all the seed spilled upon the ground,
all the unforeseeable decisions
to go out or to stay home—
what is the probability of any soul
getting a chance on this hazardous field?

…

What's missing, then? What am I leaving out?
What’s missing is only
the pilgrims' self-awareness,
which the pilgrims share with me
and all other human beings.
They were proud, envious, and lustful.
They rejoiced in
union and increase. They begot
children who they hoped would surpass
other people's children. They acquired
things in the world around them. They tasted
wine and meat. They felt
the pull of the earth,
the grave force
that finally pulled them under,
as it will me.
What is not captured
in this vision of homeward travelers
is only what is deprecated by
the Law they abided—
sin: the attachment to self,
the exclusive self-regard
that cares for nothing but its own.
It doesn't matter if their progeny
extend to the present day,
or if they vanished like the unborn heirs
pf pogrom victims
(whom we do not miss).
Distance, time, and number
avail not.
After the extinction
of all that false consciousness,
their journey to the Temple remains
the pilgrims' sole blazon,
making the pilgrims in fact interchangeable—
a firmament of virtually
identical stars,
or one single star multitudinously shining
in different times and places.