Towards a Progressive neo-Hasidism
Beneath This Ache
is Prayer
&
Jonah in Analysis
Maya Bernstein
February 26, 2024

Joseph 2. /Jay Smith/
Beneath This Ache Is Prayer
A Duplex
​
My body pines for you. Or is the yearning
my soul’s? Is it my soul’s longing for God?
​
Now, the soul generates itself through the longing and the
yearning, Rebbe Nachman says. I wonder
if yearning streams through time, Rebbe Nachman’s soul momentarily
in my body, my body’s hunger for you
​
momentarily something holy, a hungry soul’s
restless search for a feasting ground. My soul cannot
​
find rest. It’s like Noah’s raven, sent from the dry ark into the wet sky
above the pine forest only to return,
​
pining for a ledge on which to land, circling, returning – now my feet
are running to escape this soul’s gurgling –
I’m running from this burbling soul that’s trying to escape – no, I’m running
from you, from my body’s yearning, its longing.
Jonah In Analysis
Chapter 1
​
No one said Get up and go
I didn’t pay the fare
I’m not the son of truth
I’m full of doubt
No one called me
There is no sea but the past
There is no ship but the night
There is no wind but my limbs
There is no storm but my flight
There is no great fish
​
​
Chapter 2
It is so dark
Who broke me?
Who flung me in to the deep?
Who are You?
Are You? Where?
Can I look in Your eyes?
Are You in the swell, the wave?
I want to move but stay
Please speak to me
I don’t know how to pray
Chapter 3
If I were to face my Fear
If I could get up and go
If I called the call call, If
I could talk, If I could
rise up and graze and drink
and turn and back and fast
and will I
do it or not do it?
​
​
Chapter 4
Though I say I want to
die still I try
to tie my-
self to some
thing that can grow
How else can I learn to tell
my right hand from my left?
​
​

Joseph 1. /Jay Smith/
Maya Bernstein
Maya Bernstein’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Adanna Literary Journal, Allium, By the Seawall, the Cider Press Review, the Eunoia Review, Lilith Magazine, Poetica Magazine, Rue Scribe, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. She is on faculty at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership and Yeshivat Maharat, and is pursuing an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her first collection is There Is No Place Without You (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). She serves on the board of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
