(For Rabbi Walter Boninger of Butler, PA., who used to take a small Torah
from his synagogue to a rural asylum, ministering to Jews committed there.)
Here in this hospital, placid as acid, forgotten children with wrinkles
lived, or simply stayed. The main stairwell, banisters wide as seawalls,
set sail from floor to floor, yet never tacked beyond the bricks. Deep in
these hollows and hills, few would ever leave.
There the rabbi came. Ushered up the stairwell to a sunlit room, he’d
draw a scroll from a dark duffle bag – small, swaddled in velvet gray,
Hebrew letters dripping honey tears – and happily await his worshippers,
fewer and fewer year after year, to appear.
They did appear, as he knew they would. Gathering as one in suits
and jeans, smiling, mumbling – one touching a friends’ forehead to his –
they’d reach and reach for the baby Torah. The rabbi, dancing it from
soul to soul, bidding all to touch the child’s cheek:
“TO-rah Torah Torah, TO-rah Torah Torah,” he would sing, as fingers kissed
the faded velvet, shooing away hints of who they were. It was a little less than
praying, though one old woman clutched her picture book, muttering “Moses,”
rapt in recognition, as if a hidden hope within her head at last had something to say.
