Eli, Eli

by Judith R. Robinson (Pittsburgh, PA)

eleven tolling 

orchestral bells 

as Elgar tries 

with eloquence

to grieve like a Jew

but the cello cries out

O God not again

as I do each New Year

for Akiva for Masada 

for the executed 

piled deep in pits

at Belarus and Rawa Ruska

for Chelm, Lelow, for Telz,

for the hundreds of shtetls

for Sobibor for Belzec

for the dozens of camps

my people incinerated ghosts

ash in the soil of Europe

O God, now for Pittsburgh

my city in America

for friends I knew

the freshest blood

for the Rosenthal boys

for the other innocents 

the eleven souls praying 

in the synagogue

for the eleven new dead.

*dedicated to the victims of the Tree of Life massacre, October 27, 2018

Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website: www.judithrrobinson.com 

Author’s note: The poem (and the painting which inspired the poem) are part of the permanent collection of the Rauh Jewish Archives at The John J. Heinz History Center of Pittsburgh. PA. Regarding the reference to Elgar, he was Sir Edward Elgar, a British composer who wrote some very moving, very sad music, such as the Cello Concerto in A minor, which is considered a masterful expression of grief, hence my reference to him as “grieving like a Jew.” Here’s a link to the Center if you’d like to browse through its collection: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/research/rauh-jewish-history-program-archives/

The Calling, a Triptych

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I.

I can still see the cardboard box my father brought to me when he cleaned out his father’s house in late 1969 after my grandfather’s death at ninety-three. I can still see the curled edges of sepia photographs, fading penciled names and places in Yiddish or Cyrillic or German or Polish. I couldn’t read any of those languages then. I can now. I can still see myself on our playroom sofa rifling through the box. Saying to my father, I don’t know who any of these people are. He stashed the box in the basement boiler room.

II.

It has been thirty-five years since I visited his house looking for that box. He turned to me and said, The boiler burst and the room flooded. I felt sick, nauseated, that all that history was gone. My grandfather, being the last of his generation to pass, held onto these artifacts. Irreplaceable. 

I miss the way my father and I talked about his family’s history on the way home from monthly Jewish Genealogical Society meetings. How I could tease out his passive knowledge by offering a bit of what I knew. I am the only person in the family now who knows where our grandparents are buried. The only one who’d been there, placed stones on their graves in remembrance, honoring their memories.

III.

How lucky it was my father and I had that time together. How lucky it was his mother came to America in 1913, before the Great War that drove her family into safety’s diaspora. Before Soviet occupation drove her brother to a Siberian labor camp and Nazi occupation carried the others away, never to return. How lucky it is, dear ancestors, that I am the one you’ve tasked with remembering.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

At Sixteen

by Annette Friend

I tell my mother
my honest truth
edged with blades

from a teenage
tongue that knows
only a pinch of the life

my mother suffered.
I am blinded by
my good fortune,

sheltered behind the veil
of my birth here in America
not the streets of the shtetel

in Poland where she grew up,
facing famines and pogroms,
the horrors of World War I,

Russian soldiers pillaging
her small village, friends, family,
when they invaded.

I listen, but don’t hear
the sad stories she tells me,
surrounded by the glow of America

even if the streets she found
weren’t paved with gold.
I scream, I will date whom I choose,

a handsome Italian-Catholic boy
who looks like Paul McCartney
What does my mother know?

This is a new world.
I cut her to the quick
with my sharp knifed words,

standing here well-fed
and clothed in freedom,
instead of buried

in an unmarked green grave
of the Poland she left
now almost Judenfrei

free of Jews as Hitler wanted,
only because of her courage
to book passage in steerage

at sixteen.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, The San Diego Poetry Annual, The Jewish Writing Project, and the Paterson Literary Review. In August 2025, Annette along with artist Judy Langhoff published a book of ekphrastic poetry and paintings titled Pen and Brush: In Contemplation. She was honored to be chosen for third prize for her poem, “The Salvation of Books, Newark, N.J., 1959” in the 2026 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards.

Holding On

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Los Angeles, CA)

I pick up a dandelion

While missiles fly overhead

My 34th birthday may be next weekend

Though I try holding on to any semblance of innocence I can muster 

This life has become a complicated one 

Soldiers to protect and wars I don’t support 

Perhaps it was always this way

Though I may not have been privy to it

I have gotten better 

At placing down the weight of the world 

Reminding myself I am not the governing bodies

Nor people waging wars to sell their weaponry

I am but a person

Celebrating Persian new year 

Holding on to tradition while those in my motherland

Have been cut from the world for 3 weeks and counting 

Only a person

Running to the bomb shelter

Dog leash and water bottle in hand

Perhaps I dissociate daily from the reality of the situation

Perhaps this is how I survive the reality of the situation 

Holding onto joy where I can find it

Maintaining there is still good in people

Even the ones sending the bombs

I suppose anything is possible with empathy

If I could only stretch my mind enough

How I wish the tyrants would do the same

How I wish the simple people were treated as sacred 

Lillian Farzan-Kashani is an Iranian American and Jewish therapist, poet, and speaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Much of her work is rooted in being a child of immigrants and is reflective of her intersectionality. Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https:www.lillianfarzan.com/

My Sukkat Shalom

By Bob Canter (Monticello, FL)

A retiring teacher says goodbye to his long-time classroom

For years, I have had my personal “Sukkah.” It is a room in my synagogue. It is my Religious School classroom.

Not literally a “sukkah,” and certainly not a kosher one by the rules of how a real sukkah is to be constructed. My special sukkah is permanent, not temporary; no palm fronds or branches cover the ceiling, although I can see the stars by looking out the window. It has four walls, windows, and a door that I can shut and lock if I choose. It was there years before I arrived, and will remain years after I am gone.

Not exactly the kind of temporary structure our ancestors constructed in ancient days, and certainly not one with any kind of agricultural connection.

I do not “own” it, of course –- but then again – I do. I refer to it as “my” classroom, the same as a tenant might say “my apartment,” “my house,” or “my place.” You occupy it, you take care of it; you give it life, personality and purpose. It becomes “yours.”

It is my Sukkat Shalom, סכת שלום a shelter of peace.

Now, as I prepare to retire after 12 years of teaching in my current congregation and nearly 25 years as a Jewish Religious School teacher, I am savoring the last months in my Shelter of Peace. On Religious School days I arrive early – typically 45-60 minutes before class time. There is the obvious reason: To prepare for the day with photocopying and other routine duties. But I also use that time to sit and reflect. I recite the yotzer ohr יוצר אור blessing, which I teach my students, thanking God for a new day of life.

I am surrounded by, and immersed in, all things Jewish: Hebrew alef-bet charts and an Israeli flag adorn the walls. My classroom is packed with memories: photos, kids’ drawings, thank you notes and holiday cards my students made and proudly gave to me. Each one is a special memory and a humbling experience. I keep them all.

For me, my classroom is unique – there is literally no other place like it, nowhere else that can provide that level of comfort, peace, and serenity in a totally Jewish environment. It is my escape; my mental and physical sanctuary; a refuge of solitude.

***

On Yom Kippur we take a service break in the afternoon. During this time our synagogue arranges discussion groups. I have attended some in the past, but in recent years I have chosen to spend the service break time, typically 90 minutes, in my classroom, to sit, relax, and reflect on the meaning of the day. It renews me, physically as well as spiritually. I emerge stronger, ready for the afternoon, neilah, and concluding services, refreshed and renewed, perhaps, at least part, of what Yom Kippur represents.

***

No teacher literally “owns” his or her classroom. We are tenants. The “tenancy” may last one year or thirty, but inevitably it ends.

Now, after twelve years as a Religious School teacher, all in the same room, I have elected not to renew my “lease.” I’m moving on, and will clean out so the room will be ready for my successor, the next “tenant.” Some of the objects that provided me with so much warmth and reassurance, such as the Hebrew alef-bet charts, books, and maps of Israel, will remain, hopefully to provide my successor with the same sense of purpose and security that I found in that special room.

Of the many relics, the most valuable and meaningful to me is a simple handwritten sign, one that I made years ago when I first started as a synagogue Religious School teacher, a famous saying from the Pirkei Avot: “As you teach, you learn.” I took that statement to heart from the first day I read it, and I live by it every day. We never stop learning, and my students have been my best teachers.

I did not build it, but together with my students we infused that special classroom with an abundance of life and personality. My classroom is a center of Jewish learning, teaching, fun and connection with kids and their families; my “Laboratory of Jewish Learning,” where I worked to instill and reinforce a sense of pride in my students’ Jewish identity, will ensure in a small way, I hope, the emergence of the next Jewish generation.

The adornments are important, but it is the people – plural – all of us, together, בּיחד — that bring life and meaning to the Jewish classroom.

May every teacher find his or her classroom as a Sukkat Shalom, a true Shelter of Peace.

Bob Canter retired in May, 2026 after 25 years as a synagogue religious school teacher, first at Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek, CA, and the last 12 years at Temple Israel in Tallahassee, FL. Bob and his wife live in Monticello, FL, where he serves on the City Planning Commission and substitutes in the Jefferson County Schools. He remains an active member of Temple Israel, including serving as President of the Temple Brotherhood.

You can read more of his work here: Hebrew: The Metric System of Languages — Transparent Language.com ; For Once, I Didn’t Feel Like a Minority:; and on My Jewish Learning, where he’s written a variety of essays on Jewish life in the South and on lessons that he learned in his religious school classroom.