The Four Sons

I sit, the wicked son at the Passover table,

my teeth blunted by my father, not because

I am ignorant of the law like the simple son

or to be forgiven for an inability to understand

like he who is unable to ask,

but because I am neither;

years of study and serving at his right hand

giving me the wisdom to navigate the Torah

in both its written and oral form

only to reject it as the apostate I am.

‘God did so for me, when I went out of Egypt.

Me, and not for you. Had you been there,

you would not have been redeemed.’

And to a degree, I would have to agree

if I were still to consider the validity of the

entire premise of religion.

For some, the coupling of education and

 the wisdom of lived experience can make

even the wisest son,

wicked.

And so I sit, and do not lean, and bare the

shame of my rebellion until I can leave the

servitude of the seder, to return again

next year.

Atonement

It is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement,

when the faithful fast and pray in synagogue

with a secret conviction that God too should

beg them for forgiveness.

Darren Stein is a Jewish, Australian poet and educator who teaches children with Autism and who are deaf or hard of hearing. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Syneresis, Poetica, Quadrant and Metaphor. He has published three anthologies: Storage Space, The Nuthouse Poems and Stop all the clocks. Darren believes that poetry is about being human and sharing that humanity to that others can feel comfortable being human too.

Image: Mikael Häggström, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons