The Ten Commandments / Yehuda Amichai

My father was God and did not know it.
He gave me the Ten Commandments
not in thunder and not in anger,
not in fire and not in cloud,
but gently and with love.
He added caresses and added kind words,
and added “please” and added “if you will.”
He sang Remember and Observe
to the same tune,
and pleaded and cried softly
between one commandment and the next:
Do not take the name of your God in vain,
do not take, not in vain—
please, do not bear false witness against your neighbor.
And he hugged me tightly and whispered in my ear:
Do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not kill.
And he placed his open hands
upon my head in the Yom Kippur blessing:
Honor, love, so that your days may be long
upon the face of the earth.
And my father’s voice was white like the hair on his head.

Afterward he turned his face to me
for the last time,
as on the day he died in my arms, and said:
I want to add two to the Ten Commandments:
the eleventh commandment — “Do not change,”
and the twelfth — “Change, change.”
Thus said my father,
and turned away from me
and disappeared into his strange distances.

 

A week of learning, prayer, song, and heartfelt conversations,
together with dear partners and friends,
in the unique light of our beloved Felix Posen (of blessed memory).