Shabbat

by Penny Perry (Fallbrook, CA)

My six-year-old granddaughter

comes home from school

and declares, “Jesus saved me.”

My four-year-old granddaughter

echoes, “Jesus.”

“I need to tell them who we are,”

my daughter says.

My daughter found Judaism on her own.

I’m a Jew with Buddhist tendencies.

I pray to God and escort live spiders

from the shower to the grass.

My daughter gathers flour, honey,

eggs, oil, sugar, and yeast,

pours them in a mixer. The mixer hums.

She hums, lets the dough rise,

rolls the dough out.

She’s beautiful in her pink dress

and shawl, her hair tied back,

one loose curl.

She shapes the dough into four braids

and weaves them into a loaf.

She brushes the loaf with an egg wash,

bakes the bread to a golden brown.

She tells her daughters that all over

the world at sundown on Shabbat Jewish women

light candles. The candles she picks

are small with tiny flames. She places

each candle in a glass and puts them

on the cupboard. Each girl will have a candle of her own.

My daughter shows her daughters her book

of prayers, her Hebrew name embossed

on the cover. She says a prayer

in a language her girls have never

heard before. She asks them to close

their eyes and picture God,

says God loves them and will keep them safe.

I don’t tell my daughter that a friend

carries her flour and honey,

eggs and oil to the synagogue, 

where police in uniforms holster

their Glocks, guard the temple,

so my friend can bake and worship

in peace.

My granddaughters stand in their dresses,

their eyes closed.

I picture them as grown up mothers praying

in their kitchens at sundown.

I wipe my eyes, breathe in the scent of baking bread.

Penny Perry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize six times, by six different publishers. Garden Oak Press has published two of her poetry books, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage and Woman with Newspaper Shoes. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Earth’s Daughters, Lilith, Poetry International, San Diego Poetry Annual, Paterson Literary Review, Mid-Atlantic Review, and Limestone Circle. Her novel Selling Pencils and Charlie was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards. She was the prose editor at Knot Literary Magazine for ten years. In the early 1970’s, she was one of the first female screenwriting fellows at the American Film Institute; a screenplay she wrote there became a film on PBS.