Written by Joy E. Krinsky
שׁויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד
Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid
I have set YHVH (Adonai) before me at all times.
-Psalm 16:8
***
I tap my iPhone and on the screen it appears. A black and white photo of David and me. In
Riverside Park in New York City. It’s an early spring day. Likely 1999. Give or take. Every
time my phone is activated, there you are.
***
Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid
שׁויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד
These sacred words, whether on a plaque or an amulet or ornately calligraphed, ornamented
and abounding with symbols on parchment, the shiviti serves as a constant reminder. Like a
Jewish mother’s reminder to her children to wear a scarf, hat and mittens, and call when they
arrive. This reminder can be seen on the walls of dwellings and places of worship throughout the
Jewish world. Here in the United States, and presumably elsewhere in the western hemisphere,
that wall would be the one facing east.
Remember your people. Remember Adonai. Remember Yerushalayim. Remember. Look
eastward, and—in so doing—look back in time.
I ask you though: Do not prayers exist outside of the compass’s magnetic pulse? If I look to
the west, will my prayers not be heard? Silently or aloud? When I lay down and when I rise?
When I come and when I go?
***
Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid
שׁויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד
One day, soon after David died, I looked around the house and realized that it was time
for the many items hanging on the walls to come down. The crowded walls, laden with
mirrors from his mother’s home, and masks from his brother’s travels, and heavy, too heavy,
cords hanging his paintings. And now (and for four—soon to be five—years) I still look at
these full walls, certain that it is time, past time, to make these changes, to strip these walls, to
start afresh.
But what if you are no longer in front of me always? What memories will I continue to
cherish, to harbor, to dread, if I do not keep you in front of me always?
So they remain. On a westerly wall in the dining room hangs a landscape with a long yellow
barn. And on a northern wall, a still life—a pitcher, a glass, a pear. Another wall—the hull of a
big red rowboat. And in the vestibule, there is a painting of me. These brush strokes expressed
through David’s hands of what his eyes see, and saw.
I keep these images in front of my eyes, in every direction, always.
***
Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid
שׁויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד
I am sitting on the deck… a warm spring day, at the table. Before me, at the furthest distance
of the yard, where the memorial vessel I sculpted from wire and metal and a deep need, is set
into the earth, a procession of the past pays a visit. Small children on the play gym, long
dismantled and gone. Gardens of different shapes and compositions, now dead or fallow.
And there—a weeping cherry tree, a gift from David, surviving so many years, with
neither the attention it deserved nor the nourishment it required. Taken for granted. Never
provided enough light in the shadows of the maples and oaks. The pale pink blooms would
emerge during a brief moment, early in the season. But if I paid attention…
…if only I had paid attention, to plants and flowers and children and love and not love
and hard words and harsh words and fear on small children’s faces…if I paid attention at
that moment I could step through the garden, to that spot, to the place where now there is a
memorial vessel, filled with some ashes and bone, and broken ceramic shards, dried and
decaying leaves of the past four—almost five—autumns. If I paid close attention to the
season I could step to that tree and catch a whiff, a waft, the soft sensation in my nostrils of a
gentle ever so sweet and ever so bitter scent of those cherry blossoms. If I paid attention, if I
kept it in front of me always, I may have seen the tree dying, I may have seen the marriage
dying, I may have seen the trust withering away.
***
שׁויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד
Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid
I place before me always.
A shiviti is set on only one wall, only one direction. Because one cannot—should not—pray
continuously. We must eat, and prepare food, raise children, teach them to read, bandage their
skinned knees, shovel snow, curse the skies, plant sunflowers, pick apples, go to work and come
home again, sleep and dream.
Shiviti —all the many objects that I keep in front of me always, in all directions, because I
fear forgetting. I fear losing memories. And in so doing, losing myself.
.
Joy E. Krinsky began writing in the summer of 2019. Recent published essays include “Sacred Text” (HerStry, July 2023) and “Darkest Night” (HerStry, December 2023). “In One Box,” (Epistemic Literary, June 2024) was nominated for Best of the Net 2025.
Joy is currently working on a memoir, Every Little Thing, which describes her journey of self-exploration and discovery following the suicide of her spouse. Grief becomes a kaleidoscope through which she experiences the world. Room by room, season by season, family relations, the everyday items that make a life that has been abruptly shaken up and shifted. The memoir explores and observes her life in the day-to-day experience holding a family together following the dissolution of marriage and then death, through a lens of Jewish texts and rituals and through the meanings that memory and objects hold. Through this collection of essays, she invites us on this journey, recovering the past, creating the future, and discovering the richness of the present.
Joy E. Krinsky lives in Portland, Maine.