There Is A Season

Title: Lakol Z’man: A Time for Everything Author: Yossi Huttler

The Holidays are over (please, no applause). But if you find yourself already missing them, rejoice, rejoice. A pleasurable new compendium of poetry by newcomer Yossi Huttler will keep you warm until Chanukah, Purim and – dare we say it too soon – Pesach once again come into view.

In the collection, entitled Lakol Z’man, Huttler goes through the Jewish calendar, offering charming, one-page poems that help bring the seasons and their distinctive days into lyrical focus.

Thus, in Nissan (the sections are arranged by Hebrew months) Huttler includes poems called “Bedikas Chametz” and “Mah Nishtana,” and in Av, he has one called “Tears.”

The poems are easily accessible even for those without much experience reading poetry, but many contain a subtle and introspective beauty. Here’s one (called “Na’anuim”) whose transcendent imagery catches you by surprise:

hands shaking lulav rustling shuddering like a G-d fearing man now how do I turn my palm frond around shake me up likewise

Most of the poems are serious, which is to say Huttler is approaching the subject matter seriously, but he can also be lighthearted.

One Nissan entry – one of my favorites – called “Machzir Gerushato” (literally, “Returning to one’s divorcee”), and subtitled “Motzei Pesach,” goes like this:

re-acquainting myself with you I walk down the aisle then, another trying not to act overeager you haven’t changed (have I?) so why do you look so different tonight from all other nights in the florescent light of the supermarket it’s only been eight days