The Woman Who Rises Early
- The Woman Who Rises Early
Anyone who rises early in the morning is on his own.
He gets himself over to the altar, he is Abraham,
he is Isaac, he's the donkey, the fire,
the knife, the angel,
he's the ram, he is God.–Yehuda Amichai
The woman who rises early is on her own. She pours water, undrapes the bird cage, greets the thud of the Times. She has minutes to herself, before the world calls: the child who demands milk, the neighbor who borrows eggs, the lover who calls her back to bed. The hands of Shifra, the eyes of Puah are engraved on your palm, said the gypsy in halting English. You know the Bible, don't you? She laughed when he foretold of a child, shaking a satchel of coins over her head. The midwives feared God and let the boys live.
The woman who rises early is not alone. The kettle sings, the finches peck, the morning is open with possibility. Barefoot, she angles her body in half moon, one palm flat on the floor, the other reaching up, unclenched, a root and a wing. She is the life saved, the birthing woman, the defiant voice. A midwife, she is the one with open hands.
Amy Gottlieb's short stories and essays have been published in Forward, Lilith, Puerto del Sol, Other Voices, Country Living, Midstream, Conservative Judaism and elsewhere. She works as director of publications for the Rabbinical Assembly/Aviv Press and is 2007–2008 Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education.
