Avivah Zornberg notes וַיֵּ֣שֶׁב יַעֲקֹ֔ב Vayeshev Yaakov (And Jacob
settled)—the first words of this parshah—point to Jacob’s desire for
יִשּׁוּב הַדַּעַת yishuv ha-da’at (a settled mind), as opposed to הַדַּעַת
טֵירוּף tiruf ha-da’at (a torn mind).
A rabbit savaged in the field, my mind
is that torn, that scattered.
All dog-paddle day, all surface
and screens, I sink sometimes
but bob back up.
Someone, somewhere
needs an answer.
Not bold enough to run from destiny,
I let it seep from me instead.
So though he shivered in the briny dark,
krill wreathing his ankles, I find
I am jealous of Jonah.
Like Nineveh, I am a city in need of saving.
Like Jonah, I have words stuck
in the scrim of my ribs
and the whale seems
an ideal retreat—
three days, three nights
at a depth I can barely imagine.
The whale, both vessel and message:
to settle into time like it does
into water. To patient
beside the rumbling pump room
of the heart. The quiet there
like God—nowhere and everywhere
at once. The holiness of that
wholeness. Of what rises to meet it.
