Our Covenant
A poem for Shavuot
By MATTHEW GOLDBERG
Contributing Writer
1 June 2025
Do you remember Sinai? Those millennia ago?
Your eyes say no —
But I saw you there,
I’m sure I saw you there.
The mountain loomed above our heads:
A plague worse
than any which befell in Egypt.
Had our enslavement been so bad?
Would Horus not have spared us such calamity?
But when I saw you there —
beneath the mountain those millennia ago —
I did not see the mountain,
but a chuppah,
pure as doves.
And when you looked at me then,
your eyes saw the same —
I know they saw the same.
For when I held you then,
you embraced me back —
Stirring as the shofar’s sound.
And when you spoke to me then,
I spoke the same,
though the words were still unwritten:
Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li. (אני לדודי ודודי לי)
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
Do you remember Sinai? Those millennia ago?
About the Writer
A writer from the Boston area, Matthew Goldberg is the author of an unpublished Sukkot-themed novella, as well as an unpublished poetry chapbook. His work has appeared in the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade Daily, The Federalist, and Hatikvah Magazine.More from Hatikvah
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