Poetica Magazine

now accepting submissions- February 2009

Guidelines

 Helen Bar-Lev

 

Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York City in 1942, has lived in Israel for 37 years.  She holds a degree in Anthropology from California State University, Northridge.  Since 1976 Helen has devoted herself to art: painting, teaching and poetry.  From 1989 -2001 she was a member of the Safad Artists’ Colony in the Upper Galilee where she had her own gallery.  She has lived in Jerusalem intermittently for many years.  In January 2007 she and Johnmichael Simon moved to Metulla, the northernmost town in Israel.

 

To date Bar-Lev has participated in 82 exhibitions, including 30 one-person shows, with another scheduled for the Artists House, Haifa, opening 21.3.09.  Her poems and paintings have appeared in many online journals such as The Other Voices International Project; The Coffee Press Journal; Boheme Magazine; The Poetry Bridge; Sketchbook; River Bones Press; The Hypertexts; Palabras-Press; Poetry Super Highway, Gostinaia, Poetica, etc., and also print anthologies including Meeting of the Minds Journal, Voices Israel Anthologies; Manifold Magazine of New Poetry (U.K.); Lucidity Poetry Journal, and Across The Long Bridge, and Sailing in the Mist of Time, both anthologies of Award-Winning Poetry; Harvest International; Poesy first international issue; For Loving Precious Beast, Ibbetson Street 21; The Rogue Scholars, June 2007, Magnapoets; Eden Waters Press, Windsor ReView, Ascent Aspirations, Deronda Review, among others. 

 

CYCLAMENS AND SWORDS with poems of Israel by Helen and Johnmichael Simon was published in 2007 by Ibbetson Press of Boston, Mass. and may be ordered from the authors hbarlev@netvision.net.il.  Her watercolour paintings and sketches are featured throughout the book. 

 

Helen is a member of Voices Israel English Poetry Society and The Israel Artists and Sculptors Association.  She is the global correspondent in Israel for the Sketchbook, an online Journal for Eastern and Western Short Forms.  She is Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel Annual Anthology and Senior Editor of Cyclamens and Swords Publishing www.cyclamenandswords.com

 

 

 

Gloria

 

It is four-thirty on a November afternoon

a sleepy sun has settled

beyond the border

behind its mountains

so that, as we walk the dog,

no shadow, no light exists

and the Land is covered

with dusk

 

A half moon beams its satisfaction

at the conclusion of a peaceful

Sabbath

 

As we turn the corner,

from the top of the mountain

where the sun has just set,

a cloud-stem,

from which branches diverge

in perfect Rorschach symmetry,

almost like a tree,

or a candelabra of clouds,

white-tipped,

rose-gold below

glowing on the blue background

of a sky fading to grey

and ending its day in glory;

otherwise the entire sky is cloudless

 

I rush back to the house,

retrieve the camera

to record these clouds,

but even the camera,

with its limited aperture,

cannot capture their expanse,

so high and wide are they,

until they spread out,

and their stem breaks free of the mountain

like a balloon released from its moorings

and they dissipate, grey now

against the backdrop of a sky

blackening to night

 

The half moon continues to smile

and Venus twinkles appreciatively

at our awe

 

The dog, nose to the ground,

knows nothing of the heavenly splendour

we have just witnessed,

but hungry now,

she leads the way home

and the radio receives us

with Vivaldi’s Gloria,

as though he composed it

four centuries ago, one November,

after strolling with his dog

just before sunset

and viewing a cloud formation,

as magnificent as the one

we have seen this evening

and in lieu of a camera,

rushed home and wrote the Gloria

 

 

 

I Am A Woman

 

I am a woman

whose soul strolls the alleys of Jerusalem

seeing its beauty

seeking harmony

capturing these

in a surprised brushstroke

on my greedy canvas

 

I am a woman

imploring the Universe for a morsel of wisdom

attempting to accept its reticence

to relieve me of my ignorance

 

I am a loner since memory

born with the obsession to create

at peace in the presence of furry creatures

and my solitude

 

I have persevered in the face of rejection

and conquered a world

where I live, alien

with my persistent passion

 

 

 

 

SPRING AGAIN

 

Too beautiful my country

in your green and golden spring costumes

with a dash of pinks and purples

thrown in to further delight

already intoxicated eyes

poppies peek red

blooming fruit trees disappear

into Heaven’s horizon

 

A field of cows

then of sheep, as yet unshorn,

mingle amongst the rocks, the green,

almost unseen camouflaged creatures,

each glistens different in the generous sun

 

I lose myself through all this beauty

disappear into the amazement of it

disintegrate into its exquisiteness

absorb myself into it

so that I am a colour in its palette

a speck in its loveliness

 

It is as though God thought of artists

when he created flowers

invented spring greens

I cannot conceive a reality without the existence

of a springfilled Israel

 

And strange how each year I forget,

caught up as I am

in the enjoyment of spring’s sister seasons,

that I have been this ravenous

to feast on spring again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Nitza Agam

 

Nitza Agam lived in Israel from 1969-1976. She recieved her B.A. in English Literature and Theatre from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was part of a children's theatre company and a woman's theatre company in Jerusalem immediately after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  In 1976 she came to San Francisco to attend San Francisco State University, where she received an MA in English Literature, and an M.A. in Comparative Literature. She has published poems, articles, and essays in various Jewish magazines such as Israel Horizons, a short story in Jewish Frontier, articles in The San Francisco Chronicle, and  an essay titled "Tuna Fish Sandwiches," in the San Jose State literary magazine, Reed.  Currently she is part of an MFA program at San Jose State. Nitza has an essay coming out in the feminist Jewish magazine, Bridges, in the spring. 

 

Prayer in a Bunker

 

 

Baruch Ata Adonai Elohim,

Blessed be thou, God, O, Lord,

 

A suburban Israeli neighborhood,

well paved streets,

lemon trees,

children’s happy shouts when

they are picked up from daycare centers in pink and orange

twilight hours,

their Hebrew voices lilting to their names of

Avigail, Tal, Ophir,

Sarit, Daniel, David,

Shachar, Tal, Ora.

 

In this affluent Israeli suburb,

My friends and I sit in a bunker,

underneath an apartment.

We are all foreigners.

 

They came from South Africa,

I from New Jersey.

We didn’t plan

on learning how to pray.

 

Two weeks ago,

the four of us shopped in the Bedouin market for

fruits and vegetables,

watched the red and orange sunset in the desert,

felt the wind on our faces,

as my friend’s pregnant belly protruded.

 

Another plea comes to mind;

Please let Michael live,

don’t let him be killed,

he can be wounded,

just not too badly.

 

Baruch Ata Adonai Elohenu Melech HaOlam,

but that is a blessing,

not a plea bargain.

 

Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad.

Hear O Israel, God is one.

 

That prayer,

cornerstone of devotion,

chanted

as they

marched us  to gas chambers.

 

Later,

I will be

so relieved.

 

But in two days,

I will enter my fiance’s apartment

to see his mother kneeling

on the living room floor,

after she discovered

he was killed.

 

I will walk into that room

and stare at

the closed door.

 

In thirty days

we will recite the traditional Mourning Prayer,

Kaddish comes from

Kadosh which means holy,

A holy place

of graves, and stones.

children being dropped off

and parents picking them up

saying their names in Hebrew

as they cling to them.

 

 

 

 

Blackout

 

 

He threw an apple and a toothbrush

into his worn, brown duffel bag

from the back of the closet

along with his rifle.

 

He kissed me quickly,

I asked him if I could

walk him to the road.

He said “No.”

 

I was left to board up our one room

cottage with black cloth

over the windows

Black cloth to hide behind

Black cloth to make believe

I was not there

I would not

I could not

be seen.

 

Later the soldiers

who had been with him in the tank

told me his lungs

like a thousand pieces of glass

Split.

 

His face and body

untouched

perfect

no sign of blood

clear blue eyes closed

just asleep.

 

His lungs

like the bombs that hit

that shatter glass

split into itself.

 

At the temporary military cemetery,

his former girlfriend

beat me to his grave,

I was still

jealous of her beauty.

 

She flung herself on the grave

and wailed in rhythmic

ancient Hebrew fashion.

 

Did she love him more?

If I loved him as much,

Could I, too, keen?

 

I just stood there

watching.

 

The sound of crying

rose up like the black curtain

over my window

like the sirens that sounded

when the war broke out.

 

I tried to grieve

but did not know how

or for what.

 Haya Pomrenze

 

Haya Pomrenze’s poetry collection, Hook, was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award.  Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Saints of Hysteria:  A Half Century of Collaborative American Poetry as well as Gulf Stream, Mima’amakim, Mipoesias, Pearl, and Zeek. Haya is coordinator of South Florida's Bathroom Poetry Project. She teaches creative writing at senior centers and substance abuse treatment programs.  An occupational therapist and black belt in karate, Haya lives in Dania Beach, Florida with her husband and three children.

 

 

 

Father-In-Law’s Yahrzeit

 

 

As I sift through the change compartment

In your old gold Cadillac, the lemon

scent dancing from the rear view mirror,

Your cufflinks rattle against the coins

much the same way you and I clashed.

 

I’ve kept those shirt fasteners in the car

since I cleaned the condo, papered with coupons

for salad dressings and sardines.

Graciela donated your clothes,

save for some paisley ties, a shoetree,

 

and two cases of Hilton hotel soaps.

I trace the engraved B

of the cufflinks with my pointer finger

while I’m stuck at a red light.

I discard the time you stayed

 

for three weeks.  I’m not a bother.

But you puddled the kitchen floor

when you came in from the pool,

oiled my favorite chair with your suntan lotion,

forgot to tell me the toilet broke.

 

I recall the time you shot hoops

with your grandson, asked him

to mimic your stance.  Once

you put down your plate

stacked with spare ribs

 

so your beefy hand could high-five

my son after his three-pointer.

Your granddaughter tributes you

in an English assignment.

She doesn’t remember slipping

 

on the tiles in front of the fridge.

Instead, writes about when you drove

to see her in Oliver after the stroke;

that she remembered.  We’ve forgotten

the yahrzeit candle so I drive

 

to Publix where I bought your Friendship

cottage cheese, and as there is no candle

for a regretful daughter-in-law,

I finger the cufflinks, as if they are rosaries

and I ask forgiveness.

 

 

 

 

Son’s First Dance

 

 

By the time Dov finger paints

pizza sauce and cheese onto dough,

squirts mustard into Sprite, and

blows bubbles with his super straw,

a one-word stopit, intended as a hiss,

emits as a near primal scream

through my clenched teeth.  My hands

lunge under mica tabletop at Sara’s Pizza,

claw his overall-covered chubby thighs.

 

Behind me I feel fidgeting

through the torn upholstered red booth.

An old woman faces backward,

like a doll’s head,

points to Gaby and says

Let’s dance little man.

Rescued from my grip,

Gaby stumbles to attention,

offers arms and half a grin.

Her gold charm bracelet sings off tune,

as her arms rotate like wheel axles

of a railroad car.

March, march: one two, three.

Reminds me of my son,

she says, slurring Yiddish.

Dov double skips to catch up   

with beige steps of SAS shoes.

My son squeals as he mashes

her toe; she pinches his nose.

 

Killed in Auschwitz, he was.

She dances to the sound of this,

but I react with a subtle quiver

of my mouth.  Where exactly

does one keep unshed tears?

I scoot to booth edge waiting

like the girl at the punch-bowl

of the high-school dance,

when I realize I am meant

to witness Dov’s first dance,

and tell him all later in life.

 

 

 

Passover Triptych

 

I.

 

The angst hits your stomach

like an overcooked brisket.  

Brace yourselves, women of Israel -

Passover is upon us.

 

You grab those pink boxes

from the Publix holiday display

and the pyramid topples.

Behind the matzos is Judy Dombrasky,

full-time lawyer who makes six sides

at every Shabbat and Yomtov meal.

You buy what she buys - matzo

meal, farfel, potato starch;

Judy buys, seltzer- 2 for $.99,

and Yahrzeit candles.  You

re-stack the candles three aisles down

on Cheese Whiz jars,

as your parents and siblings are still alive.

 

You can’t sift childhood memory

from painful reality the way

you separated yolks and egg whites

for Bubby’s sponge cakes.  Perhaps

Publix leg pains are not

Sciatica. While waiting for horseradish root,

your tendon recalls reaching

for Pesach dishes in Bubby’s basement

near mothballed hatboxes.

Fingers cramp as you cross

items off color-coded list,

a sense memory from first

rites at the meat grinder,

making chopped liver for forty,

catching fingers in cacophony

of onions and meat.

 

 

 

II.

 

Your Seder table fills with blood

relatives. Frog-shaped

hand-made place cards ignored, 

so skinny relations sit on ends.

Packed like Season’s sardines,

you drown in the slippery interaction of family.

Mother declares the turkey dry.

Aunt Selma repeats where am I?

Uncle Joe strums mandolin to Dayenu.

A first- born cousin preaches

the twelve steps and stock market tips.

There is no wine left for Elijah -

and your friend fresh from rehab is missing.

 

While all sing in quivering voice - 

Next Year In Jerusalem -

you cry because you are still

not Judy Dombrasky.

And, though the sages say

It is in the merit of woman

that the Exodus occurred,

you are still in bondage.

You shoo your Mom’s hand

away, then you realize she came close

only to inspect the label

of your Target sweater.

 

 

III.   

 

Year-round dishes resume

center stage in their cabinets,

as you turn over your kitchen

like the hypnotist who snapped you

back to normal that time in Vegas

during Christmas break.

You feel some relief from bondage

as you re-enter Publix

and view dismantled Passover

displays save for jars

of green Schav, and Mother’s

Borscht, both on sale.   

You think, maybe, you can

be as content as a hair-netted lady

peddling chocolate Easter eggs

atop frayed doilies.                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Galing

 

 

 

 

Ed Galing, aged 91, was born on New York’s lower east side of Jewish Orthodox parents. He attended Temple University for a short time before joining the Navy. In the Navy, he wrote stories for Our Navy magazine. After returning to civilian life, he continued to write poetry, essays, book, theater and movie reviews, and two columns for his local newspaper. Galing has been published in Rattle, Poesy, Ibbetson Journal, Home Planet News, Ilyahs Honey, Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Poetica, and Red Wheelbarrow, among others. He was recently called the "Poet of a Greater Generation," in an article, which appeared in Rattle. Along with fourteen of his poems, his interview with the editor appears in the latest issue of Quercus Review. He is the author of seventy chapbooks, and continues to write about Jewish lore. His blog can be found at www.edgaling.blog.spot.com.

 

 

Land and Honey 

 

the lower east side

of new york

was my playground:

i walked among

pushcarts on

orchard street

and delancy street,

i played ball with

my chaverim on the

early streets of

the east side, with

makeshift bat and

ball,

the summers were very

hot,

fire plugs gushed water

to cool us off,

as if the river jordan had

overflowed just for us,

my mother and father were

typical immigrants from

russia, simple people who

loved the Torah, and our

way of life, and instilled

into me the love for the

one and only God, who watches

over all of us,

the tenement houses rose high

and wash hung from the windows,

lines stretching across roof

tops,

drying in the sun,

we slept at night on the

roof,

the stars and the moon, like

the hanging gardens of babylon,

iriddense, magical,

"shema yisroel, adonai, echod,"

the first words i learned to

recite,

in hebrew.

 

 

Prayers

 

the high holy days

i am jewish

i am almost ninty

i have lost my wife

she died this year

i have nothing much

to live for,

when a man loses his

wife he loses it

all,

i take solace in prayer,

i hold the prayer book

in my hand, while the

cantor sings the mournful

hebrew passages of the

kol nidre,

when it comes to the

mention of the dead, my

tears wet the pages before

me until i can't see anymore,

i sob my wife's name

over and over again,

I say kaddish, while

the entire synagogue fills

up with the sounds of redemption.

 

 

Tantzen

 

my mother, when

she was alive,

God bless her

soul,

loved to dance;

she would say,

for instance,

when someone asked

her where she was

going,

she would reply,

"ich gay tantzen,"

i am going dancing,

what a wonderful

jewish word is

"tantzen,"

so clear, so exuberant,

so whimsical,

tantzen,

tantzen,

she would dance to

russian melodies,

polish one too;

for she came from

poland,

she danced at weddings,

bar mitzvahs, (bat

mitzvahs also,)

"ich gay tatzen,

ich gat tatzen,"

oh, she loved the

waltz,

in the arms of

my dear departed

father, i can see

her still,

swirling around a

ballroom, smiling,

so graceful,

throwing a wink

at me, standing nearby,

"ich gay tantzen."

 

 

Ricky Rapoport Friesem

 

Ricky Rapoport Friesem is a poet and documentary filmmaker. For twenty-five years she worked as a journalist at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science whose Communication Department she headed for a decade. She has also written two cook books: Fruits of the Earth (Adama Books, 1985) and Joy of Israel (Steimatzky, 1976). Her poetry has appeared in Moment, Ariga, Lucidity, Poetica, Voices Israel Anthology and Poetry Canada. She recieved Honorable Mention in both the 2005 and 2006 Poetica Magazine Annual Poetry Contest, in Lilith Magazine's 2007 Charlotte Newberger Poetry Competition and in the 2007 Reuben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. A collection of her poetry, My Intifada, was published in the Pudding House Publications Chapbook Series in 2006, and she was recently awarded First Prize in Writer's Digest 2007 International Self-Published Book Awards for her collection of poetry, Parentheses. She has lived in Israel since 1973. In 2008, Ricky joined Poetica Magazine as the Book Review Editor.

 

 

A Life in Our Time

 

At fourteen she offloaded corpses in Auschwitz

A slight girl, with dark hair, white teeth, and dainty feet.

 

She survived the hunger, the forced marches, the selections.

She survived, alone in the world.

A slight girl, now eighteen, with dark hair, white teeth, and dainty feet.

,

He came to search for his family and found her instead.

He brought her to the promised land and promised her.

that ‘all for one and one for all’ would make the world a better place

 

She harvested bananas in the blazing sun, washed dishes

in the communal kitchen, shared showers,

shared clothes, shared her children.

 

She caught malaria, lost a son in childbirth, another to pneumonia,

a daughter to the polio epidemic of 1950.She survived.

A slight woman, with dark hair, white teeth, and dainty feet.

 

Their surviving son moved abroad. The kibbutz began to disintegrate,

members left, the lawns succumbed to weeds. She survived.

A slight woman, with graying hair, white teeth, and dainty feet.

 

He turned inward, his life’s dream shattered. He refused to speak.

Her health failed. She too stopped speaking. A Filipino nurse came

to care for them both. .They never answered the phone. What was there left to say?

 

At eighty, she died.

The corpse was the corpse of a slight woman, with snow-white hair, and the white teeth and dainty feet of a fourteen year old.

 

 

In the Waiting Room

 

We sit, knee to knee, in the narrow room,

waiting for the ophthamologist to call

our names. Two grandmotherly types

are conversing loudly, oblivious to our

stares. It seems they haven't seen one

another in sixty years. Not since they

served in the same fighting unit in the

War of Independence. And now, this

chance encounter. They've already

dispensed with the present and are

absorbed in fishing up names from their

briefly shared past Each in turn dangles a

name, waiting for a whoop of recognition.

Sometimes the proffered name elicits

only a deep sigh. I have no trouble

following their shorthand dialogue.

The names are familiar. Heroes of

my childhood. Giants who shaped this

country's destiny. And two of them

are right there, sitting across from me.

Two pleasant old ladies with failing

eyesight, exchanging memories

from the time of my rebirth.

I listen, and await my turn.

 

Janet R. Kirchheimer

Janet R. Kirchheimer is a poet whose work has appeared in a variety of publications both in the U.S. and abroad. Her moving collection of poems about the Holocaust, How To Spot One Of Us (CLAL, Nov. 2007) has received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Rabbis Harold Kushner and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg (Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), as well as renowned poets Mary Stewart Hammond, Yerra Sugarman, and Jeanne Marie Beaumont.  Her work has appeared in journals, including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Kalliope, Lilith, Natural Bridge, PoetryNZ, Main Street Rag, Alimentum, on beliefnet.com and babelfruit.com, in addition to a variety of Jewish publications. In 2007, she was nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize.

A recipient of a Drisha Institute for Jewish Education Arts Fellowship for 2006-2007, Janet received Honorable Mention in the 2008 Poetica Poetry contest, was a semi-finalist in the “Discovery”/The Nation contest, a finalist in the Portlandia Chapbook contest, and first runner up in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook contest (2006). A finalist in the Small Poetry Press 2004 Select Poets Series chapbook contest, her essay, “Make Your Selection, Please,” was a Jewish Telegraphic Agency feature article for Yom HaShoah in 2001. In 1999, she was awarded Honorable Mention in the Judah Magnes Museum Poems on the Jewish Experience contest.  

 

Janet has given several readings and spoken at a variety of locales including the ADL/Hidden Child Foundation, YMCA Men’s Club, Association of Jewish Family & Children’s Agencies, The Westover School, Poet’s House, Cornelia Street Cafe, Teachers and Writers, Makor, and various synagogues. As part of a 2008 Days of Remembrance memorial service, a selection of her poems was read by Multi National Forces at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq

 

Janet is also a member of Chevrah Kadishah (the ritual preparation for Jewish burial), as are her parents.  Through this experience, as with her poems, she has been able to transform her family’s pain into a moving tribute. “So many members of my family never had a burial and, as the daughter of survivors, the opportunity to give someone a proper Jewish burial is a great honor for me.”

 

A Teaching Fellow at CLAL–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Janet conducts writing workshops including, “Changing the World with Words,” which teaches adults and teens about Judaism using creative writing exercises and poetry.  She also leads a “Poetry Shmooze” where participants read and discuss Jewish-themed poems. To bring Janet to your community, you may reach her at 212-779-3300 x111 or jkirchheimer@clal.org.

 

 

 

 

Breaking Laws

Kristallnacht
broken glass
Nazis arrest him
a boy sixteen years old


Dachau
November 1938
a striped cotton uniform
it's almost winter


he shares a bunk
with a man in his fifties
who freezes to death one night


the next morning a kapo tells him
take off the man's long underwear
do it quickly
before the SS come for the body
you will freeze at night too
if you don't


it is the custom of some Jews
not to wear clothes from a dead body
and to save one's life the rabbis teach
one must break custom

he washes the underwear that night
places it over a chair
next to the wood stove to dry
sleeps on it
still damp
to make sure
no one will steal it

Learning a New Language

My father is teaching me German.
He still speaks fluently, even though he
escaped from Nazi Germany almost
seventy years ago when he was seventeen.

We study nouns and verbs.
We study when to use the formal pronoun, Sie, you
and when to use the more familiar, Du.
One must be offered permission to use the familiar.

We study dialects.
The word Ich, I.
The Berliners pronounce it Ick.
Those from Frankfurt am Main, Isch.
Those from Schwaben, Ich or I.

He told me when he was a kid he and
his friends used to say in a Berliner dialect,
"Berlin jeweesen Oranje jejessen und sie so suss jeweesen."
I was in Berlin and ate an orange, and it was very sweet.
"And then we added, dass mir die bruh die gosh runterglaufe is."
with the juices running down my mouth.
He explains: "It is in our Schwabisch dialect.
I should say, it was our dialect.




How I knew and When


Age 8 - My father hangs upside down on a pipe that was part of a fence
that separated our street from the next. All of his change
falls from his pockets. He looks so young.

Age 15 - "There were one hundred and four girls
in the Israelitisch Meisjes Weeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam.
Four survived, "my mother says.
"I remember Juffrouw Frank, the headmistress. She made us
drink cod-liver oil each morning. She said it was healthy for us."

Age 17 - My father tells me his father and sister, Ruth, got out
of Germany and went to Rotterdam. They were supposed to
leave on May 11, 1940, for America. The Nazis invaded on May 10.

Age 21 - My mother tells me Tante Amalia told her
that on the Queen Elizabeth to America in 1947, after she
and Onkel David were released from an interment camp
on the Isle of Man, she was so hungry she ate twelve rolls
every day at breakfast. She said it was the best time she ever had.

Age 24 - My father tells me, "Otto Reis got out of Germany
in 1941. He took a train to Moscow, the Trans-Siberian railroad to
Vladivostok, a boat to Shanghai, a boat to Yokohama, a boat to
San Francisco, and a bus to Philadelphia, his wife and three sons
staying behind. Carola Stein signed affidavits for them, but
the government said she didn't make enough money."

Age 31 - My mother's cousin refuses to accept money a rich
woman left him. He says the money has too much blood on it.
My mother tells me that in 1939 her cousin had asked this woman
to sign affidavits for his wife and two daughters. She said no.

Age 33 - My father asks me to dial the number. His hands shake.
He asks my cousin Judy if she wants to send her three children out
of Israel during the Gulf War. She says she can't let them go.

Age 42 - A waiter in a Jerusalem hotel tells my father
he should come to live in Israel, because it's home.
My father tells him, "Home is anywhere they let you in."

 Andrew Tertes

 

Andrew Tertes writes literature and poetry. He has been published in Milvia Street Journal and Enlighten Journal. You may find his most recent work in the current print issue of Hawk and Handsaw: A Journal of Creative Sustainability, published by Unity College in Maine.

 

A graduate of Tufts University, Andrew studied writing in California with Mary Webb and in New York with Mary Gordon and Marilynne Robinson. These last 3 years Andrew has been writing in Israel—now on Moshav Aviezer in Haelah Valley, where he makes his home with his wife, artist Shoshana Gugenheim. 

 

He is looking to publish his first novel, Jacob's Return, which explores themes of indigenous Native American and Jewish culture, and the marine environment. Living in Israel has given Andrew numerous opportunities to confront issues of fundamentalism and righteousness, mysticism and ecological living, core topics of his second novel, Quarry, a tale about a retired tailor, who lives in Connecticut and receives prophecy.

 

Andrew – a founding member of the eco art village, "Kfar Omanut Ecologi" – takes part in permaculture and contact dance improvisation. He will be teaching a course in writing to college students as part of a dance, art and earth-building intensive.  For more information on the Eco-Art Village, visit: http://www.eco-artvillage.org/index_eng.html

 

 

 

Fruit

 

As I brought it closer

the flesh looked familiar.

I didn't remember tasting it before,

but the garden's always bursting

with something new.

 

Either my blessing came out too quickly

or thoughts of my walk

through the big ferns

distracted me

from respecting

my lack of hunger.

 

Under the all-senses delight,

a heavy, brilliant flash of death

stung my lips.

My jaws and glands drew from the pulp

juicy, tart, sweet,

the fire branded my tongue.

 

The thoughts of spitting out flesh,

rind and seed

didn't enter my mind

until I saw my surviving children

and grandchildren

huddled around my withering form,

bafflement burning their eyes

an anguish tortured hers

when I ate and died.

 

How had I overlooked this vision

when I stood earth to firmament

seeing all time?

 

A quick end

might have shocked me,

trapped me inside the fruit,

but the slowed-and-sped up

pace to time

raked the dust of oblivion

onto me,

defined limits of body and life.

 

They say I'll watch every man's death,

account for my sin.

But, without my death, I insist,

you'd never have lived once.

 

 

 

Anointed

 

A secret task, to Betlechem he went

Father prepared to receive the prophet

with party, with feast

"bring me your eldest," he said,

awaited my oldest half-brother in a private room.

 

The perfect-looking young man

inspired his arm to raise,

itching to bestow upon the eldest

"You see with your eyes," said his God

"I see my heart. It is not him."

 

He instructed Father to bring the next son,

then next, on through all offered seven.

"Not him," Hashem's refrain, echoed in his mind,

so clearly, to clearly to doubt.

 

"Don't you have another?" he asked.

"None," Father answered.

But why would he remember me, the gingey-mamzer of the lot?

"Are you sure?" How could a mistake be possible?

 

"Don't embarrass me." Father said of my questionable roots and abilities.

"Bring him."

"He's tending sheep."

"Bring him to me."

 

In the field with the herd,

hands strong and firm,

acquainted with crooked staff,

before my affair with the quill,

I didn't want to leave the sheep.

I don't let anyone understand me, it's best to stay away.

 

"Shmuel haNavi awaits you."

The sound unlocked my faith and trust.

Residing in the prophet's name

was the key to why my journey had been so.

Dogs at my side, braying and wind my teachers

a mind to distill vision, away from the competition

at the mansion.

 

When he lifted the bottle

and anointed my head

I had only moments to grieve

leaving the field

where the boy I was lay buried

and the king I must be

was born.

 

 

 

 

Adventures of the Newly Sighted

     (turning canes into fishing poles)

            for Chana and Richie

 

What did you see in your dream?

Ten years ago I dreamed I

was the king from my fledgling novel.

I was naked, nearing the battle I didn’t know I’d survive.

A serpent grew inside me and emerged as scales

upon my skin. I woke with blisters.

Three days later, as shingles,

they commanded me: shed martyrdom!

As would 5 digits of the hand open, offering bread

the eyes opened, received the offering.

Was one sefirah waiting for a kiss?

A simple unclenching of chochmah?
Or, was the dance a choreography,

gears and timing and chance?

We were entering Bereishit

where the Winged One flutters over the waters

before, even, water is created.

The first to see creation.

Why don’t we call the timing

The Festival of Sight?

You received an Aliyah

during Avraham’s ascent of the mount—

You lifted your eyes and saw

The company you keep:

Yitzchok looked up and saw Rivkah;

she lifted her eyes and fell from the camel;

Yaacov, Moshe and Ezekiel all lifted their eyes and saw.

It started with Avraham who, some say,

looked through God’s eyes when he saw the ram

and spared his son

Without his vision,

and without his son

where would we be?

You know me as a father would. Did you know

my first father-in-law was blind over 60 years?

We were eating in his yard

upon the bottom of an ancient wine barrel

the centuries' old eau d'vie on the table

moonshine only he and the eldest daughter could stomach.

After I savored a bite of anchovy butter and fresh baguette,

I asked him, “Do you want to touch my face?”

“What would I want to do that for?”

He said he pictured me.

Seven years you’ve pictured me

soon I will come into view

when the fingers of your vision

touch my face

I know a man given a pistol by a Bedouin

for having ridden the wild camel.

The man, he lost his sight at ten

hit by a drunk. I wonder what he thought

cascading through the air and skidding,

only the retinas shooting ahead as the wall stopped him

We call dreams vision

the place where you first saw, again

Many raise their voices: “He deserved it.”

The one who asks questions says,

Who deserves blindness? Who deserves sight?

What do you say to the explainers?

Grapple with miracle, she prods.

She, giving-giving, pushing others to admit

what they see. She,

who said she’d help you get your life back.

How is it to become a cartographer again?

Mapping boundaries formed

by sound and touch

smell and taste?

Seeing that day, and the next, all of it:

the carrots in her chicken soup,

how the kügle browns and crisps,

the pinball of images bumping and popping toward you

as you hang out of the cable car,

a grin consuming your almost transparent face.

I’ve returned, again

to Asher Lev

The oil colors,

the lines and forms and planes

Potok’s instructions on how to see—

Are fruits vessels for colors you’ve heard?

Tomato, pumpkin, spinach

pomegranate, Clementina, lime

palettes for the new canvasses that stretch you?

Are corners of buildings,

edges of sidewalks

pen-and-ink drawings?

I warn myself, “Beware corniness! Cliché!”

But what is miracle other than a coup to the brain?

It’s raintime. And isn’t rain—

as is the opening of the womb

and resurrection—

another gift from heaven?

Now that I see, voices of midrash squeeze between cracks

Sara dying as if her son’s life was snuffed,

and his sight dimming

by the salt of an angel’s tears

What grays must be seen now?

How do the smears and smudges on windows color you?

The junk of life at the curb?

People’s attempts to mask truth under tight smiles?

The man on the corner of Shattuck and Ashby

who asks if he can wipe the windshield for a dollar

his colitis visible in the ropes of his cheeks?

I am an animal emerging from water

narrowly escaping the serpent

I shake myself. I don’t want to become numb

and forget. Each minute

I need to pass my fingers through flames of havdallah

lift my eyes to the entwined wicks

snuff the candles in wine, the smoke rising

the smoke in my eyes

You lifted your eyes and saw

On that day, and after that dream,

having worked with the mystic

with the pipe, bolo and vest

the worker of the original deck.

Forget the probable and any gamble.

There are those skilled in riding currents.

When my eyes stop raining

I’ll open them and hope to see the invisible:

when Jared next tells you a story

looking at you, his boredom

or wonder

becoming the stars revealed in a night sky

I picture your 8th

night of the festival of lights

and the dozens of chanukiyot, ablaze

and it hits me:

whoever thought she’d collected candelabrum

as a hobby, or for decoration,

might step back. It’s one thing

to light candles, and another to place vessels

for a miracle to pool.

What if creation is a harmony

between The Winged One fluttering,

the before-creation waters

and us?

The three of you:

One to believe, one

to receive, and one to serve the mystery

We’ll illuminate your chanukiah this year

with different eyes

 

 

 Joan Gelfand

 

An award winning poet, Joan was the recipient of the Chaffin Fiction Award for 2005. Her letters, articles, reviews, and poetry have appeared in national magazines including The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair and Poets & Writers. Widely anthologized, Joan’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including: Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual and “If Women Ruled the World,” an international anthology.  “Seeking Center – A Collection of Poetry” was published by Two Bridges Press in 2006.

 

Currently serving as Vice President of the Women’s National Book Association, Joan founded Salon CIEL, an interdisciplinary group of artists.  Her weblog may be found at: http://jg.typepad.com/ciel/

 

Joan received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Mills College.

 

 

 

 

Meditation on the Seventh

 

 

The wrorld chips souls like bone chine --

A chill wind, a painful shove on a crowded bus,

A brutal heat, the mystery of unbalanced

Checkbook, sleepless nights

Your child's innocent but mischievous lie.

The boss' rant, the evening train delayed,

The meeting missed, the missed bedtime.

The nightly news, you vow to never watch again,

And you, crumbling, under

The domino effect.

 

What insanity of hope we cling to

Unraveled by Homeric lists,

Wrongs wrongly committed

Mistakes mistakenly made,

Misguided turns taken.

 

Until the seventh day,

A reprieve, a moment of peace,

To escape the world's cacophonous symphony,

To quiet, to listen instead to the rustling trees,

To wonder who and what makes the trembling breeze.

 

On the seventh day, we take leave

To praise and prayer

In song, depart the linear, the familiar

As the veil of Shabbat is lifted we loose

Constraints, time.

 

On Shabbat the world and we are limitless once more,

As we tuck ourselves close to our loved ones,

And on that day, God issues a free pass, a mitzvah,

For performing the simplest act in the world --

Nothing.

 

To love your loved one, double.

To bridge the fissure that grows between self and other

Self and self.

Shabbat: our chance

To remember the body, recall

The tase, the curve and arc of a tongue,

The tenderness of hand on small of back,

A kiss to the forehead, patient love.

 

By Havdallah you won't remember

The missed train, the rant raved, the checkbook

Unbalanced. You will forgive the child, yourself,

The wind, your lover, and Ruach will fill your being

And your soul, with all the pieces back in place,

Your soul will soar.

 

 

 

 

Brave

 

 

The mother takes steps toward the bima, dressed in red suit red shoes.

The mother leyns "Hayei Sarah" precisely with clarity of voice.

The mother strands of gray, chiseled features is beautiful, wears a wan smile.

The mother reads "Hayei Sarah" to honor her daughter's Bat Mitzvah.

The mother faces each anniversary like a warrior.

     "Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places; none of us will withhold his

     burrial place from you for burying your dead." And Abraham buries Sarah.

     Sarah's lesson: We have not one, but two lives; one on this earth and one in the

     hereafter.

The daughter stepped off the curb, struck dead at twelve.

The daughter, on her way to a soccer match, wore red.

The daughter whose life was a blessing missed her bat nitzvah.

The daughter who sang a soulful El Norah Alilah had clarity of voice.

The daughter who was beaufitul always wore a smile.

 

 

*El Norah Alilah Prayer at the final (Neila) service on Yom Kippur

                         

                                                          Gail Kadison Golden

 

 

Gail Kadison Golden is a poet, psychotherapist and community activist who lives and works in New City, NY. She has studied with Honor Moore, Mary Stewart Hammond and Dan Masterson. She has published poems in numerous small press poetry journals and anthologies including Thirteen Moon, The Baltimore Review, Lumina, Fugue, Whisky Island Magazine, Visions, Hyperion, Footworks, Outerbridge, The Mickle Street Review, Embers.

 

 

In 1991 she won the Coordinator's Award in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Competition. She was one of ten finalists in the University of Arkansas Press 1996 manuscript competition, was a semi-finalist in the 1996 Aldrich Museum Emerging Poets Reading Series, won First Honorable Mention in the 1996 Womanspace Center Competition, was a semi-finalist in the 1997 and 1999 Discovery/The Nation Competition, and a semi-finalist in the 1997 New Issues Press Poetry Series. In 1999 she won an Honorable Mention in the annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for poems on the Jewish Experience. A collection of her poetry, Awaiting Creation, was published in the Fall of 2002 by Xlibris.

 

Her web site is www.gailgolden.com

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah's Response

     "So early next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and

      took with him two of his servants, and his son Isaac . . .     

                                                                Genesis 22;3

 

 

Small wonder that you set upon your way,

even before the sun explored my tent.

You knew I would have questioned

and quickly suspected the horror of your purpose.

 

What should it mean to me

that some voice in your head

urged you to slaughter my son,

binding him like an animal on the altar?

 

Every voice in my head

would have shouted madman! murderer!

Who is fit to judge

which of our voices is God?

 

Men will meet for centuries to come

waving swords in different names,

each tearing the flesh of the other,

with certainty.

 

I do not understand a God that needs this test.

My God bids me feed my child, shelter strangers,

gather in ripe fruits.

Is that not grand enough?

 

I raised a son with laughter in his eyes.

They are glassy now with terror.

For this I will forgive neither you

nor your God.

 

I am old, Abraham. Most days

my strength is small. But do not be deceived.

If ever again you raise a weapon to my child,

I will defend him with all the fury in my withered hands.

 

And who could be certain

which of us had truly heard

God's voice?

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for Jacob

     "And Jacob said: I will serve you seven

       years for your younger daughter Rachel"

                                        Genesis 29:18                                 

 

 

In the first year, I could not even pass his tent.

My body hurt, as with some illness,

breasts throbbed to feel the tips of his fingers.

Thin slivers of moon sliced the nights,

I felt its sharp edges tear my dreams with longing.

 

In the second year, with little rain, we worried for the crops.

I was glad, avoided his eyes when they sought my face,

lost myself, watched skies for clouds,

studied leaves intensely for a hint of wind, a suggestion of death.

Thoughts of moist dark fields filled me with terror.

 

In the third year, coldness settled on me,

there was little I could feel. No more did music of flutes

urge me towards his tent, watching for his shadow.

Once I joined the dancing, but my feet were leaden.

 

When rose petals fell to the ground, I first saw blood,

looked again, saw a girl's perfumed memory.

 

In the fourth year, his beard had hints of gray.

His shoulders bent with unseen weights.

At the well, young men smiled, their thick black hair became part

of dark tapestries I saw as I waited in bed, restless for sleep.

 

By the fifth year, few women of my years had lived without a man,

so I was often called to help with birth, sickness, death.

I came to know others as I had not before,

came to love them better, and myself.

 

Once at a kinsman's bedside, Jacob whispered that our time

was now in sight. His words were pleasant, his breath stale and sour.

In the sixth year, loneliness had melted in me, no longer a hard cold center,

just warm silence, to hear new sounds in new ways,

to see both sun and shadow on the underside of leaves.

 

At harvest's end, there was talk of my wedding in one year's time.

The golden round-bellied moon lay heavy on all my dreams.

At the end of the seventh year they came for me in my tent.

My sister wept the tears I only felt. A pale wedge of moon

urged that I recall how the rustle of his coat once burned

between my legs. But when they raised the veils

and placed my hand in his, I found

I could not remember his name.

 

 

 

 

Before the Gates of Heaven

 

 

On New Year's day the rabbi told this story:

 

A deeply pious woman came to the synagogue on Yom Kippur,

the holiest of Jewish days. Her soul longed for every prayer,

each perfect line calling to the next, building to the final glory of N'ila,

when the gates of heaven opened to receive the words of her heart.

 

But this year, during mincha, the prayer of late afternoon,

the shammus came and asked her to come into the hall

where a woman wept, consumed by grief, no longer wanting to live.

So the pious woman went out to give comfort,

while others watched the gates of heaven close.

It is right, she thought, that I do this, and she stayed

until the grieving woman took solace, and the sun was replaced by stars.

 

Days grew short, the earth spun toward winter.

The pious woman suffered from unspoken prayers.

"This year, I did not pray N'ila," she said to a rabbi.

"I left in mincha to comfort a grieving woman."

"Such an action is also a blessing," said the rabbi,

"do not trouble yourself."

 

She sought another rabbi. "This year I did not pray N'ila.

I left mincha to comfort a grieving woman,

and now it is winter, but feels like fall."

"What you did was right," said the rabbi.

"But I do not feel right, only lost."

The rabbi pondered, then said,

"Perhaps you must return to the place where you were lost.

Choose a day to fast. Fast and pray as if it is Yom Kippur.

Pray all the way to mincha, and then keep praying.

Do it over. Stop for nothing."

 

The woman chose an ordinary day,

empowered it with the value of the sacred,

allowed it to be a gateway.

She fasted, chanted every prayer, beginning with

the early morning song,

sang while the sun at day break

blossomed into a blaze of light,

sang while the afternoon shone autumn gold,

stopped for nothing, sang as the sun hovered at its apex,

through mincha, sunset, N'ila.

 

The gates of heaven opened, then closed,

as the night sky received her final song.

It was done.

And the door of the temple took her back into her life.

 

This is the story the rabbi told on New Year's day,

a story that came to rest at once in my memory,

where I have already known it,

where I have already lived it.

As the woman who interrupted the sacred order

when the cries outside the temple grew too loud,

as the woman outside the temple whose doubt

punctures the rituals of the faithful,

and now as one who tells the story

and tells the story, as if the telling

could be the way back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Gilda Kreuter

 

Gilda Kreuter was a journalism major at Brooklyn College. She has published four books of poetry, Closets, Craked Masks, The Nature of Things, and The Elusive Muse. Her latest work, Under The Soft Cover of Darkness, has just been published and is available for $15.00 by writing to gkreuter@huno.com. Her poems have been published in the Paterson Literary Review, Edison Literary Review, Sensations Magazine, Passager, and many anthologies. 

 

Gilda Kreuter teaches poetry/poetry workshops at Ocean County Community College and the Delray Beach Public Library. She is a member of the New Jersey Poetry Society, The Florida State Poets Association, The Poets of the Palm Beaches, where she has just won the 2007 Chapbook Contest, National League of American Pen Women, and the National Association for Poetry Therapy. 

 

Gilda'a poems range from the sensuous, to the love of America, events of social consciousness, poems about her roots, i.e. grandparents coming to America from Poland at the turn of the century and living on the Lower  East Side of  New York, to her life in Coney Island where she was raised as a child.  Gilda loves the yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows of her world.

 

She is married to Jack, who has illustrated her books for 57 years. She loves being a part of the Poetica family.

 

 

 

Buried Seeds

 

Lush tropical Old World fruit,

planted in deep rich earth;

 

the learn'd tell us to eat

pomegranates on Rosh hashonah

 

to remember six hundred and thirteen

good deeds, each seed a mitzvah.

 

I weep when I eat pomegranates and

remember six million and their seed.

 

I suck the juice of the fruit with rouged lips,

as life was sucked out, seeds dried, died;

 

My red-stained hands tear rough rind,

fingers, nails, tongue crimson,

 

oozing, dripping, bleeding

horrors of holocaust.

 

 

Burning Memories

 

When I saw the uncles

     in dark suits, felt hats,

the aunts in black dresses,

     single strands of pearls,

something important was going on,

 

they didn't laugh or play cards

     like they usually did,

they hugged each other,

     which they usually didn't do,

something important was going on;

 

my sister and I were not

     to come to the round table

where tea and honey cake was served;

     she played with her dolls,

my ears tight against the plaster wall;

 

they spoke in muffled voices,

     a letter was read in Yiddish,

I caught a few words:

     Berta and Malka toit (dead).

Auschwitz,

 

that bastard, Hitler;

     my father never cursed

so I knew it was serious;

     they sat in silence

the uncles in dark suits, the aunts in black dresses,

 

when they left the apartment

they cried; my mother reached into the pantry

took out a Yahrzeit glass,

     (we use them for tea);

Mama put a match to the wick,

 

the flame flickered,

     almost went out, fluttered,

faded, wisps of smoke rose,

     then in a blaze

burned, burned, burned.

  Nancy Larner

 

 

Nancy Larner lives in Evergreen, Colorado. She has been an early-childhood educator for most of her professional life, teaching young children in public and private schools, special ed, and later in her local religious school.

 

Throughout her teaching years, she designed jewelry, created a multitude of needlework crafts, and, to this day, paints on garage-sale furniture -- reviving a discard and elevating it to a piece of art. "I love making art out of junk," Nancy says.  She is presently producing a line of figures from metal (old clock and typewriter parts, hinges, doorknobs, porcelain electrical sockets, and bits of rusted iron) she calls Recontrivencies.  She has been fortunate enough to have her work shown in several galleries.

 

Less than ten years ago, she took her first writing class and realized that memories and experiences can be placed on paper in such a way as to be useful, entertaining, nostalgic, and poignant. Within a short time Nancy had several of her poems published. She is currently working on an historical memoir.

 

Most of her art work, prose and poetry is dedicated to keeping Jewish history alive, as is her children's book, A Mouse in the Rabbi's Study, published by Song Sparrow Press, 2008.

 

 

 

Feet

 

They had to be wide,

to support the rotund body,

to hold the family together,

to help sustain the shtetl.

 

Hard, calloused feet from

the early years when

there was no money for shoes.

They ran into the dark

forest to seek shelter like

a chipmunk disappearing

into the knot of a log.

 

A round, hard bunion formed,

at the base of each

large toe which pointed toward

its smaller neighbors.

Boots, too short, molded

these agates, pinching

their prisoners into submission.

 

The crack of rifles scattered

families like buckshot.

They ran on those feet quickly,

skillfully, hiding as they have done

for centuries, trodding

across Russia, across Poland,

Romania, across Spain, and

the sands of the Sinai.

 

 

 

Dancing Shoes

 

We once danced,

all of us,

a Lithuanian waltz,

a Polish mazurka,

a Romanian ardeleana.

 

But here, we remove

our dancing shoes,

the pretty red ones

criss-crossed at the ankle, ending

in a neat bow,

the black ones with

the jeweled toe,

the brown strappy ones with

the tapered heels.

 

Now, dance partners are

shovels and picks.

The tempo is slow, keeping

time to hammers, rhythmic,

splitting rocks.

The shattering, discordant

in our ears.

 

Heaped in a silent

warehouse, number 12, the last

omnious building on the right,

dancing shoes whisper

of happier memories.

Succeeded

by work boots,

"if we are lucky."

 

 

 

You Would If You Could

 

You try to keep the stove fire lit shielding

your family from puncturing cold, but

no stick of kindling remains,

or you would.

 

You try to make a delicious Sabbos dinner,

chicken, carrots, potato, soup, but

for the lack of all, save one onion,

you would.

 

You try to pay your respects at the local cemetary, but

tombstones have been toppled and destroyed,

or you would.

 

You try to bless your children as God commanded, but

they were sent into the forest to hide from conscription,

or you would.

 

You try to take the cart to the next shtetl for provisions, but

the tzar has outlawed the movement of Jews,

or you would.

 

You try to honor your husband, but

the silence between you grows in tandem with hopelessness.

If you could find joy,

you would.

 

You try to keep snow from swirling through your door that cossacks

broke down during a surprise pogrom, but

fear grips you fast,

or you would.

 

You try to stay warm wrapping a blanket over your rags, but

if it wasn't for the cold, the hunger and loss of spirit that killed you,

you would.

 

 

 David Rabeeya

 

 

Dr. David Rabeeya was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1938.  He received his elementary education in French schools and became tri-lingual in Hebrew, Arabic, and French at the age of fourteen.  Dr. Rabeeya received his BA in literature and history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, his MA in Semitic languages from Tel Aviv University, and his PhD in Arabic from Dropsie University in Pennsylvania. 

 

Dr. Rabeeya has been a teacher for the last 46 years.  He retired from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania where he taught Hebrew, Arabic, and the Bible.  He currently teaches Hebrew literature and the Bible at Akiba Hebrew Academy.  He received the Teacher of the Year award from Har-Zion Temple in 2006.

 

Dr. Rabeeya is the author of 36 books dealing with the lives of Jews in Arab and Muslim lands and the religious, historical and cultural connections between Islam and Judaism.  He has lectured extensively in synagogues, churches, and academic and social organizations.  An issue of Sephardic Heritage was dedicated entirely to his writings.  He issued three CD’s of original Arabic, Hebrew and English songs, poetry, and musical compositions.  He was ordained a rabbi in 1997, serving the unaffiliated members of the Jewish community.

 

 

 

Love: First and Last, But Always . . .

 

I have loved my Nana and Baba

Because they were my god and my goddess

I have loved Iraqi bagels

Because they were warm, cozy and with plenty of sumsum

Their round shape has been registered in my memory

I have loved with all my heart and all my soul my kindergarten teacher

Scent of an angel with flying wings

I was without any doubt totally in love with my first teenage girlfriend

She was the only and the last dream I desired

In the middle of my life's journey

I fell in love with her companionship and her bosom of intellect

I fell and stood with others like me

The divinity of the flesh has captured my bones

 

Now when my pace has entered the apex of my life

I am content with my flesh and blood looking for her supportive hands

In the real future of a promised land

 

 

Moments and Memories

 

I. In Iraq

My placenta has tasted the aroma of my mother's Mesopotamian cardamon

Its aroma has been planted in me in the Baghdadi Bedouim market

My nostrils still breathe its mist in my everyday coffee and tea

When she separated its shells from its grains

I have witnessed the splitting of my world

 

II. In Israel

The seeds have traveled in my pockets to the Promised Land

It has dried and withered in the sun

No more rivers to quench

My appetite for the yellow cardamon

Its black seed has turned brown and pale

 

III. In America

I saw it in a book of Iraqi recipes

Shinning in nearby supermarkets in glossy jars

It was idle, almost quiet to its grain

 

IV. Now

Only leaves of cardamon are lying now on my suburban shelf

And I can easily read traces of my records in my empty coffee

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Steven Shankman

 

Steven Shankman is UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon. He is also College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Classics and Director of the Oregon Humanities Center; and is a participating faculty member in the Comparative Literature program at Oregon. Before coming to Oregon, he taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard.

 

His work in the Western classical tradition includes Pope's Iliad: Homer in the Age of Passion (1983) and In Seach of the Classic: Reconsidering the Classical Tradition, Homer to Valery and Beyond (1994). His Penguin edition of Pope's Iliad appeared in 1996. Some of his recent work, including (co-authored by Stephen Durrant) The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (2000) and Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons (co-edited by Stephen Durrant, 2002), compares classical traditions. With Stephen Durrant and four others, he is the editor of The World of Literature (1999), an anthology of world literature from a global perspective, which contains some of his poetic translations from Chinese, Greek, and Latin.

 

He is the author of Kindred Verses (2000), a book of poems. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Sewanee Review, Literary Imagination, and Poetica Magazine. His book Other Others: Levinas/Literature/Transcultural Studies is forthcoming in SUNY's series in contemporary Jewish thought. He is Chair of the Committee on Intercultural Studies of the International Comparative Literature Association. As the host of a cable-access TV show ("UO Today") produced at the University of Oregon as an outreach effort of the Oregon Humanities Center, which he currently directs, he has interviewed more than three hundred guests.

 

 

 

"Cain Slays Abel"

     Rembrandt, c. 1650, drawing in pen, Kobberstiksamling, Copenhagen

 

Two brothers and two altars and blank space

And God, His feathery image lightly penned,

Wistfully pensive, worried. Abel's hands

Shield his averted, anxious face but leave

His skull exposed as it awaits the blow

Of bone on bone. Cain's face is passionless,

Determined, grim. The brothers' shapes repeat

Their altars' shapes, Cain's lofty, Abel's low.

The twisted, lifeless sheep on Abel's altar

Echoes its sacrificer's twisted body.

Are both brothers deceived? Does God command

Seared animal flesh and smoking leaves? Or am I

My brother's keeper, truth beyond deception?

 

 

 

"Abraham Sends Hagar and Ishmael Away"

     Rembrandt, pen and ink drawing, ca. 1650-53, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 

 

Five figures in a vertigo of whiteness,

Four faces. In the distance Sarah sits

Unbending and severe. Her will and God's

Are one. Hagar, distraught, is comforted

By Abraham, who raises his right hand

Gently above the head of his dear son.

Strange portrait of the back of a young head,

Faceless and gazing at a vacant future,

An Ishmael effaced by providence!

A dog's face mirrors Hagar's desperate grief.

Can Sarah's cruelty or Abraham's

Complicity be atoned for or excused?

Or did they righteously obey God's will,

Trusting the goodness of its harsh unfolding?

 

 

 

"Noah's Ark"

     Rembrandt, pen and ink drawing, c. 1660, Art institute, Chicago

 

A bent old man beside an open gate,

Noah, with folded hands, not looking up,

Huddled as if against a gathering blizzard,

Awaits his family as they ascend

A plank up to the ark, led by a dog.

His stooped son bears a heavy load. His wife,

Holding their grandson's hand, bends down. The ark

Is huge, forbidding. Ghosts of Hebrew letters -

Ragged, emaciated - seem to appear

Then vanish on the hull. Through the ark's gate

The chosen few will enter, two by two,

A darkened doorway, utterly opaque,

To what long journey, over what rough seas,

Nearly engulfed by the ocean's flooding waters,

On and on through endless storms until

A dove with its bitter olive branch will hint at

A respite from the agony at sea.

In blissful disregard of chosenness,

A distant figure in the foreground, left,

Back straight, dressed finely, in conversation, blithely

Gestures towards all that sadness taking flight.