Found Poetry

Pirke Avot teaches us that in order to know where we are going, we need to know from where we came.


Today concluded a very special week with artist-in-residence Betty McIntire. Our 9th and 12th grade students re-read their Bar and Bat mitzvah Torah readings in order to see how they connect NOW to their portions. Betty led several workshops in which she instructed them on how to make found poetry collages. Using the words of their Torah portions, each student made a collage. They turned out amazing and to be poignant reminders and arrows pointing to the people they have become.

My Torah portion was and still is Lech Lecha. Abraham has always been somewhat of a mentor to me. He speaks to me, as a visionary, as living in the present with a dream of the future; as someone who had a dream of the future and held on to it despite the many obstacles that seemed to make the dream impossible.

Here is my found poetry:

Be A Blessing
And you shall receive a great reward - An exceedingly heavy burden
Exceedingly
Exceedingly
Many
In peace
At a ripe old age

May we be granted the vision of Abraham to always see beyond the reality of the present, seeing the blessings of future multitudes in each and every Jew.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Stuart Seltzer
Dean of Judaics