Another Game, But Why?

Said Sandy Koufax: “I could pitch another game,”

significantly adding then, “But why?”

When you can see I’m writing just the same

as I have done before, please let me die.

To say the same thing twice is very bad,

and if you say it for a third time you

strike out, but repetition’s more than sad:

it is a deadly insult to the new.

Genesis provides two versions of creation,

and demonstrates how repetition can enhance

the meaning of a deed by using our imagination,

and echo that of God and with it dance.

In Exodus the Tabernacle echoes the creation story

built by Bezalel, echoing what God in Genesis had made,

the paradigm Bezalel used an echo of the glory

of Genesis’ two Adams, together living in God’s shade.

That’s how Bezalel managed, in a manner that was metaphoric

to be his master Moses’ architectural oracle,

following a paradigm that’s based on the imagination,

echoing the way God used this process for divine creation.

A midrash in Numbers Rabbah 15:10 tells us that after Bezalel helped Moses build the tabernacle, performing a task that Moses himself was unable to perform, Moses connected the name of בְּצַלְאֵל. Bezalel, to the words ְּצֵל אֵל , tsel el¸ shadow of God, implying that Bezalel’s architectural imagination was inspired by his living in God’s shadow. Moses was “emetaphorically” correct, I poetically suggest, bilingually punning on the word אמת, emet, meaning “truth.”