Judah Levinson
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Judah (aka Jud and Yehuda) Levinson has been writing poems for 60 years.; teaching meditation for 50 years, and following the teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov for 40 years. He is a rabbi, appellate immigration lawyer and sailor. He is married with children and grandchildren
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
I am currently editing my manuscript of prose and poetry titled The Gong and the Knish – Searching for the Taste of Oneness. Need I say more?
Published Works
I have published two collections of poems, On the the Luff of a Sail and Leaves of a Brook Willow.
Links to Sample Works
Acoma Massacre – Auschwitz Birkenau Redux
In a museum of Native American art
are all the songs and signs –
The drum beat and violin
the axes used to scalp our traditions
ledger sheets of the annihilated
grotesque remnants,
a drawing of a man wearing a buffalo head and black stripe pajamas
a photo of a Native woman saucily stretched out on the hood of a car
flimsy genealogies written on paper flowers.
maps of tribal lands – Whose tribe?
There is a pie sculpture missing a slice,
the caption says,
in case of emergency use for healing.
At the exit a painting,
a family at a Freedom feast,
recalling and retelling, passing over and Passover –
This isn\’t a museum.
am i a poet?
i can write my mind
but am i a poet?
i don\’t want to think poetry
i want to swim in poems
and drink words,
be a poet who has no background
no future recognition
who disappears in the present
who climbs to heaven
and returns to say
here is the same
as there.
Our People Lives
To Yehuda Amichai
I am nestled in the streets
of Jerusalem
as I have always been.
They have taken care of me
since I arrived with King David
1000 years before the time of others,
the streets just sand and dust.
Later, pilgrims of all kinds
came from places so far we had never heard of them,
looking for the holiness
they knew had resided here before beginnings.
They heard of our unswerving allegiance
to oneness,
that we died for it,
rather than admit
to the falsity of twoness.
Unfortunately,
the salvation they sought,
that in their zeal
they literally shoved down
our throats
until we vomited the lie in their laps,
could only arise from
a oneness that was not the predecessor of twoness,
but only the infinity of not knowing.
Our legacy has been to be killed for this,
even though we do not truly understand it,
and have tried to ignore it.
The knowledge is imputed to us by our circumcision
that irrefutably shows
we are the direct descendants of Abraham and Sara
who called the oneness beyond beyond
and accepted infinite not knowing as their faith.
These streets of Jerusalem which have been destroyed and rebuilt,
and where my blood is splattered on the walls,
is still where I find comfort.
As the prophet said at the time of the destruction of our Temple
Be comforted, be comforted my children.
And you might ask,
how can I be comforted at the time of the destruction of The Place,
it is because The Place of Not Knowing is our hearts,
even if covered by a thousand rationalizations of its non existence.
It does not need our belief,
it does not need anything,
it is only us,
in our pain of twoness
sitting silently,
or crying out,
or flailing,
and wondering where it is,
who feel need,
when it is where we are that is the question.
Current Title
Education
Honors B.A. Religious Studies (Carleton University, Naropa University, University of Washington
Bachelor of Laws (Dalhousie University)
Rabbinical ordinations (Yeshiva Pirchei Shoshanim)