Yessir, She's No Angel Poem by gershon hepner

Yessir, she’s no angel, never was;
never saw that she had wings, because
she flew without their help into my mind,
and now has fallen, oh so far behind,
I don’t think she will catch me here on earth,
or down below, in hell, where there’s more mirth,
its chief attraction, making it far more
appealing than high heaven that’s a bore
for those who can’t stand angels. She was never
angelic, as I’ve said, and far too clever
to pretend she was. Another view.
She is a member of that band, it’s true,
and since because of me she’s fallen,
she’sjumped, as if assisted by tarpaulin,
so high in my regard, she is not lesser
than major angels who’ve not fallen, yessir.

My response to an e-mail from Linda, who, while appreciating a list of ten hiddushim for Parshat Balak that I sent her having been commissioned by her to write them up, including a major hiddush that was inspired by her question, “Who was the first goy in the Torah? ” (a question whose answer merits a book rather than a hiddush) nevertheless harbors a smoldering resentment that I may not have given her full credit for one. My offense was this. She drew my attention to the fact that the conflict between Balak and Moses may have been due to the fact that the two protagonists had a common, Midianite, background, and I minimized the importance of her suggestion for reasons because Absalom had previously drawn my attention to this fact and it had also occurred to me. Her somewhat incomprehensible e-mail reads:

know to whom you send this and wonder at my sitting in the tent cooking while you entertain the angels.
Yours
Sarah

7/13/08