Ki Hiney Kachomer: We Are As Clay.

A beloved piyyut, Hebrew liturgical poem, from the Yom Kippur service.

A poem inviting us to sway through the ambiguities of life, responsibility, and divine presence.

Life

Poetry uses language in unfamiliar ways.

Poetic sentences invite us to enter an imaginative world, overflowing everyday reality.

Poetry echoes the mystery of the human experience of God: God is found in the intimate details of daily life, yet seems to flow beyond the ordinary.

Ki Hiney Kachomer creates a structure and then flows beyond it.

The poet introduces a regular poetic meter and then disrupts it, verse after verse, as multisyllabic words are bent to fit the meter. The lyrics follow a pattern: each verse names a craft, an artisan’s activity, a quality of God – but in a new variation every time.

Ki Hiney Kachomer is like life – a series of ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Each change can be surprising in its painful intensity. But underlying the ebb and flow is a constant pulse. The poet insists the pulse is the hand of God.

In the hands of God, we are as clay, thickened; as stone, broken; as iron, forged; as a rudder, held; as glass, melted; as cloth, twisted; as silver, alloyed.

Should we pray to be spared from these painful experiences?

Or should we pray to be shaped positively by them?

Should we pray for the strength to withstand them?

Or for the flexibility to yield to them?

Responsibility

At the end of each stanza the poet says, “Look towards the brit, the covenant, and do not turn towards the yetzer.” 

The brit refers, of course, to the agreement God made with the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai. “I will hold you precious and you will have no other Gods before me.” The word also suggests a brit milah, a physical reminder of God’s presence, and the social contract to support one another ethically.

In Biblical Hebrew, a yetzer is a creature. In rabbinic Hebrew, it is a psychological dimension of being; a person’s yetzer hara, evil impulse, leads to antisocial behavior. In medieval Hebrew, it is the accusing angel in the heavenly court. In Hasidic Hebrew, it is the nagging inner voice that tells us we are unworthy.

To whom does the poet speak? To God or to us?

Does the poet say, “Please, God, keep in mind our relationship. Do not overvalue the impulses that led me astray. I’m just a creature, and you put them in me. Remember, I’m a work in progress.”

Or does the poet say, “Pay attention, reader! You have affirmed the social contract. You have a relationship with God. You can uphold these. Do not allow the negative voice to convince you otherwise!”

Divine presence

Genesis chapter 2 depicts God as a miraculous master sculptor, capable of forming a being and breathing life into it.  “The LORD God formed the human from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

The prophet Jeremiah (c. 600 BCE) goads his listeners to change; as Babylon threatens invasion, their fate is in the hands of a harsh divine judge. “O House of Israel, can I not deal with you like this potter? – says the LORD. Just like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in My hands, O House of Israel! At one moment I may decree that a nation or a kingdom shall be uprooted, but if that nation turns back from its wickedness, I change my mind”  (Jeremiah 18: 6-7).

Sixty years later, the prophet Isaiah asks a loving God to comfort Jews returning from Babylonian exile: “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You are the Potter, We are all the work of Your hands. Be not implacably angry, look down to Your people” (Isaiah 64: 7-8).

God the potter appears in turn as creator, breaker, and restorer.

Which facet of God do you see this year?

Do you accept or reject this God?

Talmud connects the three images into a message of hope.

“The School of R. Ishmael taught: It can be deduced from glassware: if glassware, which, though made by the breath of human beings, can yet be repaired when broken; then how much more so man, created by the breath of the Holy One, blessed be He” (Sanhedrin 91a).

Do you have hope this year?

Image: blog.needssupply.com. Thanks to participants in the Or Shalom Shabbos study tisch.