The Ancient World
“To imagine the sounds and smells of the ancient world
is to bring that world to life.”
— Robert Koehl
The ancients believed that demons
haunted thresholds.
The bells sewed to the hem
of the High Priest’s knee-length ephod
announced his entrances and exits
into the Tabernacle.
He made his presence known
so he might not die.
Alternating with the bells
were pomegranate-shaped tassels
of blue, purple, and crimson yarn.
Outside the Tabernacle
was the altar anointed with the blood
of animals offered in sacrifice.
The fires, the meat smoke rising
from the altar pleased the Lord,
fat and flesh consumed in smoke.
Over his fine garments
of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarns
held by a woven waistband,
the High Priest wore the breastplate
of Urim and Thummin,
used to obtain God’s decision
on important questions
where human judgement
was found inadequate.
As the High Priest moved,
the bells tinkled softly,
and the smell of the meat smoke
and wheat cakes
mixed with frankincense
rose in the air.
In the Necropolis
In the cemetery of Beit She’arim
inside a tomb from the third century
paved with mosaic
and decorated with wildlife reliefs
is carved an inscription
commemorating a local resident.
The author, though Jewish, had a Greek style:
I lie, son of Leontius dead, son of Sappho,
who after having gathered of the fruit
of all wisdom left the light.
Woe is me, in my Beit She’arim.
After having gone to Hades,
I, Justus, lie here with many of my relatives
for that is what powerful fate has decreed.
Be consoled, Justus. No one is immortal.
Dark is the house without windows.
Dust is the only weather in the tomb.
Indifferent as a reflecting moon,
a green moth flitted over the stone,
then lay for a long moment on the ground.
From the Cairo Genizah
Documents and manuscripts
containing God’s name
couldn’t be destroyed in the usual way.
For a thousand years,
the Egyptian Jews of Fustat
put their old Bibles, prayer books,
and law codes in a hiding place
in Ben Ezra synagogue,
along with shopping lists, business records,
marriage contracts, divorce deeds,
fables and philosophy,
medical books and magical amulets,
and letters by the thousands.
But what was written
did not stay buried.
Eight hundred years later,
in a library in New York,
an old man touched a letter
written by Maimonides,
and he did not court disaster
as superstition predicted
but on the contrary was infused
with so much energy
it buoyed him up
and he practically floated
out the front door
of the library on 122nd Street,
walking as if propelled,
with the gait of a young man,
all the way downtown
to Times Square.
The Ancient World
“To imagine the sounds and smells of the ancient world
is to bring that world to life.”
— Robert Koehl
The ancients believed that demons
haunted thresholds.
The bells sewed to the hem
of the High Priest’s knee-length ephod
announced his entrances and exits
into the Tabernacle.
He made his presence known
so he might not die.
Alternating with the bells
were pomegranate-shaped tassels
of blue, purple, and crimson yarn.
Outside the Tabernacle
was the altar anointed with the blood
of animals offered in sacrifice.
The fires, the meat smoke rising
from the altar pleased the Lord,
fat and flesh consumed in smoke.
Over his fine garments
of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarns
held by a woven waistband,
the High Priest wore the breastplate
of Urim and Thummin,
used to obtain God’s decision
on important questions
where human judgement
was found inadequate.
As the High Priest moved,
the bells tinkled softly,
and the smell of the meat smoke
and wheat cakes
mixed with frankincense
rose in the air.
In the Necropolis
In the cemetery of Beit She’arim
inside a tomb from the third century
paved with mosaic
and decorated with wildlife reliefs
is carved an inscription
commemorating a local resident.
The author, though Jewish, had a Greek style:
I lie, son of Leontius dead, son of Sappho,
who after having gathered of the fruit
of all wisdom left the light.
Woe is me, in my Beit She’arim.
After having gone to Hades,
I, Justus, lie here with many of my relatives
for that is what powerful fate has decreed.
Be consoled, Justus. No one is immortal.
Dark is the house without windows.
Dust is the only weather in the tomb.
Indifferent as a reflecting moon,
a green moth flitted over the stone,
then lay for a long moment on the ground.
From the Cairo Genizah
Documents and manuscripts
containing God’s name
couldn’t be destroyed in the usual way.
For a thousand years,
the Egyptian Jews of Fustat
put their old Bibles, prayer books,
and law codes in a hiding place
in Ben Ezra synagogue,
along with shopping lists, business records,
marriage contracts, divorce deeds,
fables and philosophy,
medical books and magical amulets,
and letters by the thousands.
But what was written
did not stay buried.
Eight hundred years later,
in a library in New York,
an old man touched a letter
written by Maimonides,
and he did not court disaster
as superstition predicted
but on the contrary was infused
with so much energy
it buoyed him up
and he practically floated
out the front door
of the library on 122nd Street,
walking as if propelled,
with the gait of a young man,
all the way downtown
to Times Square.