Lee Meyerhoff Hendler
The Year Mom Got Religion

In this memoir, the author tells of her awakening to Judaism as an adult.

Learning Hebrew

Dumb and six at once
I at am forty-one.
Wrapping awkward tongue
around new sounds.
Setting strained eyes
on alien shapes.
Solid, sturdy, stern on the page,
they silently reproach me for decades
of studied ignorance, proud denial.
I am humbled. Intellect brought low
as I stoop to scurry under the words,
to know them without the painful
sounding out and putting together
of eye and voice.
I curse my stubborn brain –
too slow for
nimble desire.
Young work for an old learner.
Dumb and six at once.
I rail at my clumsiness,
Delight in my ambition.
Knowing delight will prevail.
Mastery will come.
Meaning will follow.
I will begin to learn
How to be dumb and six at once…
and leave stiff frustration behind.

Native Language

In language I am coming home now.
I did not know when I began
That shaping my lips around
These sounds would also shape my heart.
That soon, sooner than I knew for I did not
Know at all…
The sounds would come from my heart before
They left my lips.

“And these words which I command you this day…”
I am not like the immigrant
Desperate for the new language
That will guarantee survival
In an alien culture.

“shall be upon your heart…”
I have a permanent address
Where almost every need is met
And yet I am a traveler still
In the country of my own blood.

“and you shall teach them diligently to your children…”
A visitor in my native land
I pay my gentle guides in a currency of trust and work
To teach me the language that will let
Me take the oath of citizenship.

“when you lie down and when you rise up...”
And so this morning when I read
Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, she’asani yisrae’el
and understood it without thinking,

“in order that your days may be prolonged…”
I cried for knowing
That soon, sooner than I know
I will be in the place I want to be;

“and you will remember and fulfill all my commandments…”
Speaking the native language of my soul,
Crossing the border without a visa –

“and be holy unto your God.”
A one-time tourist come home.