The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away...
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
How'd you like to feed among them Lilies?
The Songs of Songs is about the sexiest thing I read in Hebrew School. Granted, there wasn't much competition...sure, there's all kinds of steamy stuff in the Old Testament, but my recollection is that things often went badly for those who succumbed to a celebration of unbridled physical love. I mean, David did get all interested in Bathsheba, sending her husband off to war so he could get a minute of her time. This kind of love could only really be admired by the perversity that mixes immediate satisfaction with the immature garnering of desires typical of the Sopranos.
But the Songs of Songs is something different. "the fig tree putteth forth her green figs." Wow. Ever look at a fig? It's a damn sexy piece of fruit, subtle as spring wind, just sweet enough and full of purple juice. It puts a banana to shame.
In the 1930's, a lovely man named Rabbi Haddas arrived as an eager and pioneering spiritual leader in Kansas City, Missouri, and managed to perform the marriage ceremony for about every adult I grew up with. The kinds of feelings he still evokes are remarkable. He was the essence of a good man.
When he arrived in Kansas City, the Great Depression weighed heavily on the nation. The Jewish community of Kansas City, like all communities, was frightened and isolative. There was little work and little hope. How could a spiritual leader steer his flock to love in such dire times?
With his gift for optimism and inspiration, he formed the YPL - the Young People's League - and invited the youth of his congregation to gather in the evening to study together. I imagine newly immigrated parents, thick with Yiddish accents, ushering their young adult children out the door and into the economically starved night to attend these study groups, lest the Rabbi should thing badly of his congregants and their desire for contemplation.
Staring at his bedraggled participants, carefully, I'd guess, mixing the men and the women throughout the room, he sang to them from the Song of Songs. Eye's lit up and imaginations wandered. Sadie couldn't help but to admire Mordechai's smile. Rebecca blushed at Sammy. The room was growing warm.
And this is how two of my very favorite relatives met. My great Uncle Morrie was a towering 5'3". He was smitten by my not-yet Great Aunt Mary, a brilliant woman who, remarkably, had graduated from college during those difficult times with a degree in comparative literature. A wealthier aunt had paid for her to leave Kansas City and to attend the University of Wisconsin, and she returned home the apple of every Jewish boy's eye. She was smart, after all, and smart was sexy. At least it was to Uncle Morrie.
Mary could recite the Song of Songs in French and Spanish, and her Hebrew was smooth as butter. She could sing the verses without looking at the text. (Later, I would enjoy quoting Shakespeare with Aunt Mary, the only one in my family content to read the Bard with me after Shabbas dinner, smiling without interpreting.) Uncle Morrie was not nearly as schooled as Mary, but he remains the most charming man I have ever known. He made up for his relative dearth of formal education with a keen sense of humor, an unbridled charisma, and a powerful conviction that living righteously was not incompatible with a love of laughter and chocolate.
Mary was working as the librarian at the Jewish Community Center, so Morrie went to visit her shortly after that first YPL meeting. He approached the desk confidently and asked her to find a book about a "red ship." She looked puzzled, eager to help her potential suitor, but unclear as to his request and perhaps troubled by her lack of recognition of something literary. Until then, there had been no work of literature with which Mary was not completely intimate.
"It's a poem," Morrie repeated, his eyes twinkling. "A love poem...about a red boat...or maybe a ship. I think you'd like it."
Mary blushed and turned away, thumbing through the old card catalogue for "ship" or "boat" and references to the color "red."
Here is where the family legend goes fuzzy. To this day we don't know with certainty whether Morrie was joking or truly got the words wrong.
"The Rubaiyat!" Mary exclaimed, the answer coming to her suddenly, an inspired and flirtatious realization.
"That's it!" agreed Morrie.
And Rabbi Haddas married them, and they had five children, and they were together for more than 50 years.
"Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away."
That Song of Songs is powerful stuff.
