A Reflection on Avraham Halfy's Poem - Tefilah (Prayer)

In honor of the new moon of Tamuz

This is a dark essay.

It is written within the darkness of this time.

But also in honor of the new moon of Tamuz, so there is practice and possibility in here as well.

Avraham Ḥalfy – Tefilah

I do not know the words

That give birth to prayer.

Words are all lost to my voice

And only a dark silence is left.

But my eyes can still see

The sparkle in a child’s eye

And my eyes can also see

A star of incomparable brightness

And mother’s faces etched with worry

Directing their children towards the light.

What will become of them? What will be?

Listen to the breath of their joy

Like a Spring we imagine will never end…

I will go down on my knees before the vision of God

Though I see nothing -

“Please, do not harm the innocent,

Who do not know why

Lightning strikes a tree

Simply bearing its fruit.

Please, do not harm the innocent,

Who do not know

Why people desecrate their [divine] image…”

I do not know the words

That give birth to prayer.

Words are all lost to my voice

And only a dark silence is left.

A practitioner’s reflections on Avraham Ḥalfy’s “Tefilah”

Ḥalfy’s poem is one I listen to more than I read it.

I grew up listening to Shlomo Bar and it was actually this song that sent me looking for a book of Ḥalfy’s poems for the first time.

Ḥalfy taught me, that by comparison, a prayer searching for words is a pretty good problem to have.

Like water, prayer will usually find a channel to flow through if you give it enough time, though if you wait for a really long time, the accumulated power can be destructive in both positive and negative ways.

My acting (theater) teachers taught me to appreciate and work with the power of words to bring forth movements of spirit, to follow spoken words as they moved through my body, lungs and mouth, and wrought transformation within me.

R Naḥman of Breslav says that when the soul falls into dark places, “the memories of the body from previous interactions it had with the soul, allow the soul to remember, to return and ascend to what it can be. The verse “through my flesh I see divinity” (Job 19:26) is actually talking about the body – the flesh of the body enables spiritual attainments; through your body you can see and experience divinity”. (Likutei Moharan 1:22:5)

It was only when my acting teachers taught me to trace the words’ journey through my body that I realized that this power of transformation was what the best of my siddur teachers had been trying to teach me, even if they could not have articulated it, even for themselves. In the dark night of the soul, when prayer is lost, the soul can follow the breadcrumb trail of words through the body and give birth to prayer, again.

But Ḥalfy (who was an actor) goes darker than that. Ḥalfy is writing from the place where the life-giving flow of prayer is lost, but the raging fires have burnt the little word-crumbs as well… He is writing from the pain in which the words ring hollow and false, and have lost their regenerative power. All that is left is a dark abyss of silence, unimaginably distant from the light-filled silence of which the psalmist says “silence is praise to You… You hear prayer, all flesh comes to You”. (Psalms 65:2-3)

From that darkness the sparks of light still visible sharpen the despair rather than bring comfort. It is like the sadness evoked by seeing young American Chestnut shoots coming up when walking through a New England forest. The American Chestnut was wiped out by a fungus, commonly known as Chestnut Blight. The tree’s roots and ground level are immune to the fungus, but the rest of the tree is not. The roots continue to put out shoots which continue to die as soon as they get 2-3 feet above the ground. One might see the persistence of the roots as cause for hope (Job 14:7-9), but as far as we can see, this cycle of birth and young death will continue. (Currently, hopes for the revival of the American Chestnut are focused on cultivating new fungi-resistant strands)

Having attempted to soften the vision a bit by applying it to trees, I must now acknowledge that Ḥalfy sees that dynamic in children being raised for a world of war, to kill or to be killed (the “desecration of the image” from later in the poem). The “star of incomparable brightness” continues to tempt mothers to bring children into the world and raise them – for what?

“What will become of them? What will be?” is the scream of anguish of this poem, given a voice in Shlomo Bar’s song.

R Naḥman teaches that despite and alongside the theological truth that God is present in everything, there is also an aspect of life and existence from which God is totally absent, and that there are no words, no explanations that can take you out of that place. His example for such a moment is our teacher Moshe witnessing R Akiva’s skin being flayed by the romans (Bavli, Menaḥot 29b). The scream he hears in Moshe’s words – “this is Torah, and this is its reward!?!” is the same scream articulated by Ḥalfy. (Likutei Moharan, 1:64:3)

In that situation, R Naḥman falls back on Emunah – trust, a possibility not as readily available for Ḥalfy. There is bitter defeat and despair in his falling to his knees to beg for the innocent before the image of a God he cannot see.

How could he see? The Midrash teaches –

How were the ten statements delivered?

Five on one tablet and five on the other.

On the first it said “I am Y-HVH” and parallel to it “You shall not kill”.

To teach you, that whoever sheds blood, diminishes the divine image, as it were,

For it says “humanity was created in God’s image” (Genesis 9:6)

(Midrash Lekakh Tov, Exodus 20:13)

In a world and culture where violence and bloodshed are a given, the divine image is no longer diminished, it is desecrated, and what is left to see?

All we are left with is the heart-wrenching “why?” and the dark silence.

Is there anywhere to go from here?

At a personal level, I do my best to try to hear the voice of R Naḥman who once said to a person in despair – “if you believe in the power to destroy, you can also believe in the power to fix”. (Likutei Halakhot, Orah Hayyim, Laws of Business 4:17. Also included as a general teaching in Likutei Moharan 2:112) Sometimes it works better than other times.

But I truly and wholly believe that no healing or fixing is possible without facing the full extent of the hurt and damage and coming to terms with all the difficult emotions that rise from that.

And I believe that this is one of the important lessons of the Jewish calendar. In exactly two months we will celebrate the new moon of Elul. Elul and the month of Tishrei that follows it is the time in the calendar dedicated to forgiveness and healing and new beginnings. But the two months (or more precisely – month and a half) prior to that are the darkest stretch in the Jewish calendar, dedicated opening ourselves to the experience of destruction and devastation in our times and throughout all of history. Be there, says the calendar, gather in community to sit with the loss, and pain, and anger, and betrayal, and despair. Then you can begin the work of Elul.

So is there anywhere to go from here?

Sometimes, for some people, getting out of that dark place as fast as possible and by any means available is the only responsible response. Survival may often take precedence over the work of Tikkun. But for people who can give themselves to the work of tikkun, the new moon of Tamuz says: Yes, we can work on tikkun but stay with me in this dark place for a while. There is foundation work that can only be done here.

And on the 9^th of Av, the darkest day of the Jewish calendar a redeemer is born.

If you are willing to go there.