A Papirener Brik - A Paper Bridge

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Yizkor Yom Kippur 
September 27th, 2001

 

Five years ago Ron Friedman, a member of our congregation, shared with me an intriguing piece which I put away to use as the heart of a Yom Kippur Yizkor sermon. Long ago I decided to use it this year. Because of all the events and speaking engagements that I have fulfilled, I didn't sit down until two days ago to finally compose these words. All of the emotions of the past several months, not only weeks, flowed through me in finally writing this. The Yizkor of Yom Kippur, more so than the other Yizkors of Shemini Azeret, Pesach and Shavuot, is always the most difficult for me. I can not even imagine what my colleagues in New York are saying to their congregations this day. The immensity of their loss is beyond words.

Throughout our history our faith has been challenged to respond to evil events and evil times. The child in us wants God's hand from Egypt to destroy the evildoers and save us from ruination. It doesn't always happen that way, unfortunately. Philosophers have come up with many responses to our existential dilemma. Some even propose a "hidden God" who, having created the world, has left us to our own devices. We live by the consequences of our actions, good or bad. That doesn't necessarily help in days like these.

Another response is the belief in the Messiah . When the Messiah comes, for others, the Messianic era, all evil will be destroyed, the wicked will perish, and good and righteousness will abound. This belief acknowledges that while bad events can't necessarily be prevented in this world, ultimately, at the end of time, there will be a divine accounting, and all will be made square. Our task, our trial is to traverse the distance from now to then. How do we do that?

In the writing about the Messiah is found an almost most hidden legend. It is this material that Ron Friedman shared with me, developed by his cousin Janice Hamer, which won a national prize. Two famous Yiddish poets, who immigrated to America, Moishe Leib Halpern and Kadya Molodowsky, included references to this legend in their works. My attempts to find the sources of these legends in earlier writing have so far proved fruitless. I thought that finding the origins might help give depth to this sermon. I will make my own interpretation.

What is the mayse? When the Messiah finally comes, he will lead the Jewish people back to our ancestral land, Eretz Yisrael, reversing whatever evil conditions exist. In this legend it declares that the people would cross the ocean on miraculously reinforced bridges made of paper – papirener brik. The wicked, attempting to cross on iron bridges, would be thrown into the sea. The poem that I cite, with only little adaptation, could have been written since thatTuesday. It wants the bad to go away, leaving us peaceful and secure. It is called Tell Me by Moshe Leib Halpern, adapted from the Yiddish by Mary Azrael.

Kum, zei mir a Mamme, dertseylt hot mayn mamme

A mayseleh fun a papirener brik.

Come, be like a mother to me.

Come, tell me a story,

Tell, as she told me,

A magical tale of a paper bridge.

And tell me the birds will

Come back in summer:

Di feygl, di feygl

In zummertsayt, zummertsayt.  

Drive away from my bed

The desolate visions

That darken my sleep

Every night, every night.

Tell me of the angels whose radiant wisdom

Brought me the stars,

The golden stars. Tell me.

And if from the steeple the bell tolls

"our doom" "pogrom" "alarm"

cover my ears,

cover my ears,

And say,

"It is only the town clock chiming."

And say,

When the wind sighs and mourns in the chimney,

That father leans over his holy book, chanting.

(Es zitzt bei a sefer der Tate un zingt.)  

Imagine a warm summer evening outside,

As singing the peasants go home from the fields.

Tell me of this. It may quiet my sorrow

And lighten my world,

Lighten my world.

 

Kum, zei mir a Mamme,

Come tell, as she told me,

A magical tale of a paper bridge.

Come, tell me a story to quiet my sorrow

And lighten my world, lighten my world.

Un lihtiker, likhtiker mahn mayn velt.

Why did these poets use the metaphor of a paper bridge? Why did the legend say this? I have no sources to answer my question. So I propose the following: there are four special qualities about paper:

• It is a natural substance , coming from trees. In Jewish law, anything that grows from the ground can never become impure. Being natural, paper, paper bridges show us the world as it is.
• Paper is a created substance on which we write. We us it for our diaries and calendars. It holds the record of the past. On it we write our dreams for the future.
• In one sense, paper doesn't last forever. I will forever be struck by the paper floating out of the World Trade Center before and as they fell. Paper can easily be destroyed. We shred it. It burns. It disintegrates into ashes.
• And yet paper is also indestructible for on it we write THE WORDS, God's words. And even if that paper is ruined, we copy the words on another. In a very special way, the paper can never be truly destroyed.

Paper is a perfect metaphor and symbol of our existence. It is our world. It is our record. While it seemingly can bedestroyed, it also contains the seed of eternity.

Using the metaphor of bridge gives us the image of planks across which we walk. The metaphor of a paper bridgegives us the image of pages, which we read and upon which we write.

Who are the pages upon which we tread?

upon which we live?

Who lead us to our destiny?

Who, even if gone, can never be destroyed?

As I look at life each day, each week, each year is a page. While real bridges we ride over have a beginning on one side and an end on the other side, transferring the image, our lives have beginnings and ends, butwhere does a paper bridge begin? Could it have an end? I find this thought intriguing and elevating.

Our bridge of existence is continuous and unending.

The span of our bridge exceeds our vision backwards and forwards.

In any given moment we are some place on a never-ending span,

until the Messiah comes.

Who are the planks upon which we tread? What are the pages of the past which we read?

A page, a plank is Torah.

A page, a plank are the Prophets.

A page, a plank are our Sages.

A page, a plank are our heroes.

A page, a plank are our dear friends.

A page, a plank are the members of our families.

I have thought a lot about these planks and pages. When we have learned Torah together, Abraham to Moses, they are alive before us. Rolling a column of Torah is like taking a step with them. Listening to a child's chanting of the haftorah, words of the prophets, is like them standing with them in the square in Jerusalem. In Talmud class the Rabbis are having a conversation sitting around the table with us. Heroes. The faces from the newspaper. In preparing for this sermon I thought about dear friends in the congregation, Eddy Schwartz who gave me my siddur in the early morning hours of the daily minyan and Tillie Polon who gave me my tuna sandwich at bingo on Mondays, Izzy Ipson who was an image of courage, salvation and transformation, Jules Jacobson who was such a sweet gentle man and always cried when we showed him our love, amongst the panorama of my pages. And I recall different chapters of my life with my father, my uncle, my mother-in-law and all our grandmothers. I reread the pages. Mentally, I retrace my steps. The pages are a bit dog-eared; the planks are well tread. In time my pages will be added, hopefully to be read, my planks, hopefully to be walked over, onward into destiny. We all have these planks. We all have these pages. We all will take our turn. The paper bridge, the papirener brik, beginning for each of us personally with our birth stretches forth to the end of time. That is our in our faith. That gives meaning to the journey, purpose to our lives.

We all live on paper bridges, somewhere along its span, its towers shrouded in Divine clouds of glory, like those which hovered over the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness on their trek from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Each of us treads over different if not common planks, read similar even if different pages, of particular friends and individual families.

Yet each of us a set of common pages, from Torah, of Prophets, of Sages and heroes.

We are all, each one of us, a different place on the bridge, we just never know where.

But we affirm our lives and their purpose.

We learn from the planks and pages before us, and humbly add our own.

The essence, as the poem teaches us, is to never forget the innocence of our childhood, the purity of our youth, never to fear our destiny, have hope, have hope, and bravely and courageously, dauntlessly and fearlessly striding across the bridge of life, our paper bridges, with faith that the Messiah will come and remove all evil from existence, make all things square in the end, and meanwhile, God's love accompanies us.

Dus iz the mayseleh fun a papirener brik ,

This is the legend of the paper bridge,

Un likhtiker, likhtiker, makhn mayn velt,

May it lighten, may it lighten our world.

Amen.