Zeek | The Chasidim

The Hasidim
Hila Ratzabi

The essence of spiritual solitude and the conversation between a person and his Creator... is that one should deliberate with God so much that his soul almost leaves him... until his soul is no longer connected to his body except by a strand of hair: the strength of his true pain and longing for God.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslav

I used to read about the Hasidim,
How they cling to God, they call it

              D’vekut, like glue.

I liked the sound of it, so
Iambic.

And then came the reflexive verbs

              hitbonenut and hitbodedut

Which mean God-contemplation and spiritual solitude

If I say them
Over and over
The syllable stress would circle around itself:

                                    BA-ba-ba-BA
                                                        BA-
                                                              ba-ba-BA

                                    Hit-bo-ne-nut
                                                        Hit-
                                                              bo-de-dut

                                    (God
                                             is complete-
                                                                  ly alone)

Sometimes this
                                    actually
                                                worked

and I had this vision:

A miniature mountain in jagged neon lines against black, on top a little man with a pointy beard, head tilted and eyeless. I saw the name Ya’akov, not really saw or heard but sensed it like a word without letters or the moment before someone knocks at the door.

Have you ever tried to move and couldn’t? Told yourself: Move your arm, move your head? Do you know what it’s like to be paralyzed for a good fifteen minutes thinking this could only

Be God, shit.

Shit.

It kind of makes you want to stop meditating and reading Aryeh Kaplan. It’s not fun to hallucinate off nothing but air and Hebrew letters.

Did I really want to go down that road? Self-abnegation, absolute union with God? I left that mystic hanging out alone on Shabbat while I made friends with the half-Jews and spent Friday night at a bar.

It’s easier this way.

                           The world
                                            doesn’t do much anymore
                           it kind of just
                                                           sits there.

I am so empty I swear I’d die just to see God once.