The Lord's Fiddle
Monday, March 17, 2014
The Lord's Fiddle
Chayym Zeldis
 |
| Karen Gerbrecht |
Last night
I dreamed that God
decided He'd learn
to play the fiddle.
But there was none
to be found in heaven,
so He entered the
Great Vault behind the
cloud-bank,
in which reposed holy treasures,
such as the Tablets of the Law,
Aaron's rod,
Moses' wicker-basket,
Elijah's brand,
David's harp,
Yael's dagger
inter alia.
Taking a good sum of
cash (U.S. dollars are
always good) God departed
for earth.
But to His surprise,
He discovered that nowhere
was there a single fiddle
for sale.
The stores were empty:
it seemed that
everyone on the planet
was fiddling.
So He tried to borrow one.
But Paganini, Heifetz and
Menuhin were all dead,
and those alive - even the
jolly, good-natured Perlman -
refused to lend Him theirs.
"Never lend anyone your fiddle,
or your car, or your toothbrush,"
they told Him.
("Or your wife,"
murmured God.)
But then
an old Minskener
(who in 1907 emigrated
from Czar Nicolai's Russia
to NYC)
in a cubby-hole of a store
down on the Lower East
Side
of Manhattan,
called out that he had
one fit fiddle left,
and would sell it to God
if He promised to play
lively tunes.
Back in heaven, though,
God couldn't find anyone
to teach him.
A wizened, little Angel
who'd played
backgammon with Abraham,
chess with Solomon,
pick-up-sticks with Gideon,
solitaire with Job,
explained that all the
famous violinists and teachers
no longer had any connection
to fiddling.
"You see," said the Angel,
"the violin has nothing to do
with heaven -
only with the pain of earth."
That was it.
So God took his fiddle -
glowing like a ruby
in the navel of the sky,
silent as a mute who knows
the secrets of the universe
but cannot utter a word of them -
to the Great Vault behind the
cloud-blank,
blessed it
and kissed it
and locked it away
along with Miriam's timbrel,
Samson's jawbone,
Joseph's vari-colored coat,
Jacob's ladder,
and the single pebble
that - crooning like
a shepherd's psalm -
put Goliath
to sleep.
