Monthly Archives: January 2021

January 18, 2021 · 10:02 am

Queen for a Day

by Herbert J. Levine (Sarasota, FL)

My grandmother loved to watch Queen for a Day, 

listening to each woman tell her sad story,

until they placed the crown on the winner’s head.

The American competitors needed washing machines.

My grandmother needed only her husband,

dead for more than twenty years.

How many separations she’d endured 

in the years when, with trumpet calls, he’d rallied the Czar’s troops 

against Japanese and Germans, 

the years he’d peddled door to door in New England towns,

while she ran a market-day saloon 

for the drunken farmers

and when he sent the money to buy tickets

having to separate from her mother, 

who would one day be killed by Hitler’s villains, 

also from her youngest brother and his wife, 

who left their baby girl with a Gentile family,

dying to save their comrades. 

If she could once have spoken of these things, 

she might have broken down at last and wept

not as queen for a day, but as mother of all our catastrophes.

“Queen for a Day” is from Herbert Levine’s second book of bi-lingual poems, An Added Soul: Poems for a New Old Religion (2020).  Many of the poems in his first book of poems, Words for Blessing the World (2017) are being used liturgically in a variety of congregations. He divides his time between Sarasota, FL and central Maine, where he and Ellen Frankel have three granddaughters.

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January 4, 2021 · 9:22 am

From Russia with Love

by Judith Rosner (Sarasota, FL)

“Take these candlesticks my child,

And when you light the Sabbath candles

In your own home with your own family,

Remember me and the family you came from.”

My grandmother, a girl of fifteen, heeded her mother

And carried these silver twins, wrapped in a pillowcase, 

Across the ocean from old world to new.

As her mother hoped, she faithfully

recited the Sabbath blessing over them

Each Friday evening, her family gathered at the table. 

Now two generations later, these candlesticks 

Still stand tall upon their three-pronged legs

In my home, handed down from my mother.

Grape vines etched upon their stems

Show off hanging clusters of ripened fruit

Amid the dings and dents of age and

Dark spots where tarnish resists polish.

Though weighty to the eye,

Hollow bodies give them little heft,

Light enough to be carried

Across the ocean years ago

By a girl of fifteen,

So that on this Friday evening,

I may light and pray over the candles they cradle,

As did my mother and grandmother before me,

To welcome the Sabbath and remember this story.

Judith Rosner, Ph.D., is a retired college professor, leadership trainer, and executive coach. She has published in the areas of leadership and management, stress and health, and women in the professions. Currently she writes poetry and personal essays. Two of her poems are published in the literary magazine Her Words  (The Black Mountain Press), her poem, “Forest Sanctuary,” appears in the Living Peace 2019 Art of Poetry Anthology and two of her essays appear on The Jewish Writing Project.  Judy and her husband split their time between Sarasota, Florida and New York City.

To read her stories on The Jewish Writing Project, visit:

Y’all Are Different: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/yall-are-different/

My First Aliyah: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/my-first-aliyah/

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