The Woman Of Valor
Introducing The Poetry Of Maya Bernstein
Editor’s note: The poems of Maya Bernstein seamlessly weave the holy and irreverent, the ancient and immediate, the ephemeral and domestic, Talmudic inquiry and workaday complaint. Here we meet so many different members of the Jewish family — most recurringly the Woman of Valor, in all her glorious incarnations — and none of them fail to both charm and instruct. — Elissa Wald
The Woman of Valor Sings of Herself
I am a melody, a song in a man’s mouth.
My grandfather sang of me to my grandmother,
who gave up a career in law to set the table
with white linen, to light the candles, spread the cloth
over the loaves of bread. (Can’t you see them
through the window blessing the children? Before
he shakes the salad dressing and it sprays on her dress,
and the children run upstairs as they yell and yell.)
Rabbi Moshe Alshich said, “This is about the soul.
The issue of the woman is a metaphor.”
What do I smell like? Soap, sweat, yeast.
The air after it snows. Hay, cooking-oil-smoke,
rain on wool clothes.
Rabbi Yosi ben Zimra said, “The tongue is imprisoned
in the mouth, surrounded by the cheeks,
and there are many muscles attached to it that no one can stand against.”
Singing of what I was, what I am, what
I might have been, what I might become –
(Rabbi Aha said, “In the merit of the righteous women
the people were redeemed; in the time to come,
in the merit of the women, redemption shall come again”) –
I am a melody, a song in my own mouth.
At The Breakfast Table
While eating pancakes, my son said,
“I had a nightmare. We were a pod
of dolphins and they came and captured us.”
Then, “Was Moses real? A stick can’t turn into a snake.
I think it’s a myth.” It sounded like “miff,”
heavy of lips and heavy of tongue. I told him,
“The stick is not what matters. The stick is the distraction.
It’s the words that matter. The words can split the sea. The words
can bring forth water from a rock.” Later I thought
about the Midrash where Abraham tries to prove
that idols don’t have power. Am I the woman
bringing an offering for the idols? Or the idol
who took a stick in hand to topple all the other idols?
Is the stick meant to distract the fishermen
in the dream when they cast their nets?
And if we dare to believe a stick can turn into a snake,
does that determine whether the dolphins get caught
or escape, flashing above the indigo sea?
The Woman of Valor Goes Out with a Friend for Coffee on Friday Morning for Marty Linsky Before I went home to cook chicken soup and knead challah dough with my small fists and roast cauliflower and broil potatoes, the smell of charred crucifers and crisp nightshade peels and simmering root vegetables like a kind of fascia, holding the home together, while standing on the cold northwest corner of 95th and Broadway, my friend said, Did I ever tell you what my mother told me the day before she died, when we were discussing her funeral? She said, “I don’t care what you say about me at my funeral. Just make sure it isn’t any of that Woman of Valor shit.” Later, when measuring out vanilla to combine it with safflower oil, organic sugar, and free range eggs, my right arm rotated like Mother Earth herself rotates, majestic, unthinking, the blue mixing bowl the sun, the cake batter the soupy stuff of life, its memory and meaning, my children’s childhood in that blue mixing bowl. And I recalled a lunch with another friend, some years before, how, just as we were leaving the cafe, my friend said, The day before my grandmother died she summoned us to her bedside and told us what she wanted written on her gravestone. Let it say, “I cooked dinner every night.”
This Saturday, The ER Is My Synagogue Like angels, the doctors floating by in their sneakers and scrubs, and we, praying we will be remembered. In their innermost chamber the doctors speak like men, Where did you get that sandwich? The Talmud says, A synagogue must have a window, but this synagogue has only fluorescent overhead lights and monitors. The Talmud says, The window should be open, but here, no birds but beeping screens. Still, this IV is a window into my bloodstream. This MRI is a window into my doubting brain, which contrasts with the brains of believers. The Torah says, Choose the path that is straight and good, and the neurologist asks me to walk a straight line, heel to toe, toe to heel. This synagogue – its lamps are always lit. The curtains that should be closed are open and those that should be open are closed. Am I here to study faith? Soon they will release me. Their tests cannot determine what makes me tilt and waver. Soon they will discharge me into the humid night and the darkness, as if through the side door of a sanctuary, into the rain.
The Woman of Valor Wonders: Why Does Analysis Take So Long? “Why,” the Kotzker Rebbe asks, “does the Torah say: ‘keep these words on your hearts’ – can words be on a heart? Shouldn’t it have said: in your hearts?” I think of the Garden of Eden, guarded by the archangel Jophiel, swirling his flaming sword, protecting truth. I think of the locked door to the office suite, through which I am buzzed in, at the appointed times. “If God’s words are on the heart,” says the Kotzker, “they are more likely to be absorbed in the heart if it opens.” Is this why I keep coming back, hour after hour, accumulating words, waiting for that elusive shift in preposition, hoping the one crucial letter will be the pin that re-attaches me to my axle?
✡️
Maya Bernstein’s writing has appeared in Allium, the Amethyst Review, On the Seawall, the Ekphrastic Review, Gashmius Magazine, The Lehrhaus, Niv Magazine, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, SWIMM Every Day, Vita Poetica, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, has an M.Ed from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and a B.A in Russian Language and Literature from Columbia. Her first collection is There Is No Place Without You (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). These poems come from a manuscript-in-process called The Woman of Valor Sings of Herself. She’s also working on a collection of poems inspired by the life and art of Charlotte Salomon. Maya served as co-director of Georgetown University’s Executive Certificate in Facilitation for the past decade, and is the Director of Leadership Education at Yeshivat Maharat. She’s on the board of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. Learn more about her at mayabernstein.com.
✡️
What are five tiny delights that lift your spirits and make you happy?
1. Swimming under the clouds across a cold pond on a hot day;
2. Earl gray tea with milk and honey on my porch, watching the cardinals;
3. Baking peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies for my children;
4. Struggling to play piano pieces I played fluently as a girl;
5. Remembering my dreams, when I do.
What are five tiny JEWISH delights that lift your spirits and make you happy?
1. Learning an ancient Hassidic text each Friday with an old friend;
2. Weekly Parsha meditation with women from around the world over zoom;
3. The hand-motion over the candles to welcome Shabbat, the somatic attempt to bring that external light and peace and hope inside the home, the family, the body, the spirit;
4. The smell of the challah in the oven permeating the air, and the children coming home on Friday afternoon saying, it smells so good;
5. Singing songs we all know by heart with people I don’t know, anywhere in the world.
✡️
Totally delightful poetry evocative of deep layers of spirituality in our 2-dimensional world.