When You Look at Me
By Tom Levy – When you look at me, You don’t know me. I survived school yard bullying. I was humiliated for knowing more than they did. I was accused of killing Christ. I was beaten for having a 5000-year-old last name. My people fled Europe and Russia, Burrowed into New York and San Francisco, […]
העגלה הריקה
By Dr Yaakov Mascetti – בצומת אחת בירושלים, עם עגלה ריקה, יושבת אישה מבוגרת משוחחת עם תמונה. ״אין מה לעשות חמודה שלי״ ״בטח. נדבר יותר מאוחר״ ״את תראי שהכל יהיה בסדר מתוקה שלי״ מילים חטופות שהיא לוחשת. התמונה ממוסגרת בפרחים, וחיוך עדין על פניה של קרינה, כי היא רואה בחמלה את החסד שאותה אישה עושה […]
My Truth
By Julie Zuckerman – A friend mentioned that October 7th has revealed everyone’s truths. My truth is this: I am a Jew. It’s not lost on me that these are the same words Daniel Pearl, z”l, was forced to say before he was brutally beheaded by ISIS. But also – in my core, if I […]
Words Are All That I Have: A Found Poem
By Erika Dreifus – Words are not enough, not even words like terrible horrific devastating killing suffering tragedy trauma hell. But words are all that I have. My own, and those of others. I mourn with words. I pray. And I share. Every day I use my voice, in every place and platform I can, […]
When the Dust Has Settled
By Inbal Singer – When the dust has settled The crackly graininess in our eyes Mixed with tears a kind of mud The world no longer recognizable nor hopeful or safe as it was days before. When the dust has cleared, Breath has found it’s way back in lungs no longer able to expand, gripped […]
Kaddish
By Abby Yucht – after Allen Ginsburg Do we mourn our own deaths when we sing this full-throated, from the burning furnaces of our bellies on Judgement Day? Yitbarach V’yistabach V’yitpaar V’yitromam V’yitnasei This year burned me down, it burned You down, burned down fences and whole towns. And burning, burning tongues cry out “Maker […]
Lemon Harvest in War
By Alden Solovy – Thin trails of blood Crisscross my arms. Lemon trees have thorns, But I do not wear a long sleeve shirt For the harvest, And my gloves do nothing Against the sudden Needle pricks On my fingers. So many lemons hide In the tangle of branches Which must be moved To see […]
Just in Case
By Jane Schapiro – Even my father, the optimist, harbored a just-in-case. He never let on, but after his death my sisters and I found gold coins in his drawer. We never knew he had a just-in-case, had inherited the dread of pogroms and camps from his parents, their parents, on down the line. We […]
The Gift
By Cynthia Barnard – Aunty Ann always wore lovely dresses with long sleeves, even on that sunny day in August when I sat next to her at the picnic table, soft yellow silk slid up her arm, and I glimpsed the numbers. What’s that, Aunty Ann? Oh, just something for grown-ups, Shayne meydele, she said, […]
How Mom’s Murder Ended the World That Had Been
By Miodrag Kojadinović – It is my fault. I should have found more time to care for my mother the way she and I together cared for my father as the light of mind was twinkling and going extinct in his Alzheimer’s ravaged brain. It is my fault. I should have known how despicably vain, […]
