Reading 18th ffentury Rabbi Correspondence

Reading 18th ffentury Rabbi Correspondence

Recently I acquired a manuscript titled Jewish Letters
published in their original 1742 Gaul dialect.
By my adept hand, despite not being related to

the man who raised Lazarus, I resuscitated the
leather binding with the finest restorative organic
ointments available. No otherworldly magic there.

Then I gave it the finishing sensual index and
middle finger- a sort of pontifical blessing you know-
application of cowboy leather boot pomade.

It felt appropriate to honor my muddied ancestry.
Nothing like a Cossack farm boy riding the
Steppes of California in search of his

Napoleonic roots and the wisdom of his goyish tribe.
Surprisingly, the clan was always there, hiding, having
survived the Stalinist purges and Siberia’s Gulags.

I regard this French period literature as significant
as are the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Judeo-Christians
because I might’ve been related to Bonaparte

according to the tales of my great-grandmother.
At long last my Greek Orthodox soul immersed in
centuries past. Gently fingering the pages by

their spine, careful not to tongue the tips of my
forefinger lest my macrobiotic oils and acids
might cause harm to the precious leaves

I steadily progressed, slowly adapting my unspoken
enunciation to the intermingled ess’s and eff’s
common to the sffpelling dictums of that period.

By the middle of Aaron’s ffirst letter to Jacob
I ffelt it was easier to lisp the words and
in that manner in a ffew evenings I ffinished

reading the tome having ffound zero refference to
Taras Bulba, my childhood unmythological hero.
By the end of the book my lisping aped Capote’s

but unffortunately my reading was ffar ffrom
his class. But then I never pretended to be anything
other than a closeted jester.

~~~
Alex Nodopaka Dec©2010
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