Category Archives: American Jewry

January 20, 2025 · 7:30 am

Self-Exile

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

To me, a synagogue should be 

an exclamation point, 

standing tall and straight, 

reflecting strength and confidence 

but, instead, it is a question mark, swirling 

and broadcasting insecurity. 

The confusion brought to me by

the Hebrew chanting and the davening 

saddens me, for I feel excluded amidst

the longing to belong, to share the unity

and the compelling desire to recognize 

our attachment and connection 

to our Greater Power. I am conflicted, 

ultimately lost. 

Even so, I feel an urge to walk inside,

to join the others who have worn 

the Magen David draped over their hearts, 

but I recognize that the ancient language 

spoken is a code, a kind of price 

of relevant admission, that excludes 

the likes of me. 

I find no Rosetta Stone handed down 

from Mount Sinai that will lead me 

to a satisfying translation of the wisdom 

which will assure me that I’ve found a home 

among those strangers. So I reluctantly eschew

entrance, step away from the well-constructed but

foreboding question mark, that of Chagall-like 

technicolor windows and impressive wooden doors 

and pews and platform, and stumble hesitatingly away 

on my solitary path, thinking of the lonely road 

through Jewishness that I have followed because 

He took my mother just one week before 

my 10th birthday many years ago. I dwell 

within an exile self-imposed. I try 

to fight it but I am left to wonder

just what might have been . . . .


Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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January 13, 2025 · 7:30 am

One of Job’s Daughters

by Nina Zolotow (Berkeley, CA)

I normally would have found him attractive—he was handsome and fit, and middle-aged like me—but I was walking alone down a quiet residential street, and he was following me on his bicycle saying,

“Look at you! Aren’t you sweet? You’re ethnic—look at that hair. Is that natural?”

So, instead, I felt an immediate surge of familiar fear, that same fear most women feel when a man on the street is coming on too strong. I didn’t reply to him and just kept on walking. 

The afternoon seemed absurdly beautiful, with a clear cerulean sky and golden sunlight pouring down on the Sycamore trees and the big old houses with their lush spring gardens. Then I noticed another man—he was sitting on a chair on his front porch watching the two of us—and I heard him call out,

“Hey!”

Hearing his voice partly reassured me because I no longer felt alone, but it also confirmed my fear that maybe there really was something unsafe about my situation. The man on the bicycle kept on following me, and now he said, 

“You’re either Mediterranean or Hebrew—am I right?”

Then my heart stopped cold because this was the first time in my life a stranger had approached me on the street wondering if I was Jewish. I wasn’t even sure what it meant that he was doing it, especially because the man asking me was Black. And then the other man, who was still sitting on his front porch, called out again,

“Hey!”

while I kept on walking and saying nothing. But even with the man on the porch yelling at him, the man on the bicycle pulled up alongside of me and looked into my face. Then, sounding pleased, he said,

“You’re ethnic, all right. You’re one of Job’s daughters, aren’t you?”

One of Job’s daughters? Was that his Biblical way of saying he was sure I was Jewish? Or did he mean something else by that? In the Old Testament, Job’s daughters were the beautiful ones—the most beautiful in all the land. 

Of course, I knew by then that there were some men who particularly favored Jewish women. “They’re sexy,” they would say, “spoiled little Jewish-American Princesses, but sexy and intelligent.” Or, as a Chinese-American man I used to know once said to me, “They’re all the fun of a woman of color but with the skin color of a white woman.” 

But whether calling me one of Job’s daughters was meant to be a compliment or not, it was extra scary having a man add this “you’re a Jew” thing to the typical harassment of a woman walking down the street thing.

Since the man on the porch—a white man, who looked on the younger side—had not bothered to get up from his chair despite his yelling, I quickly thought about how I might extricate myself from this situation. I said,

“I’m sorry, but I’m on way to see the doctor.”

The man on the bicycle then changed his tone, saying, with concern,

“Oh, are you sick?”

Even though I was just headed to an annual checkup, I said,

“Yes. Yes, I’m sick.”

After that he turned his bicycle around and cycled away from me, back in the direction we had both come from, leaving me alone.

When I entered the doctor’s office a few minutes later, I asked the receptionist if I could borrow a pen and paper because while I waited for my appointment I wanted to write down everything that had just happened. 

I never wanted to forget that if something like that—being harassed on the street because I looked “Hebrew”—could happen to me in my hometown, one of the most progressive communities in the United States, Berkeley, California, it could happen anywhere.

Nina Zolotow just loves to write, and she has been doing it for her entire adult life. Currently she is writing creative non-fiction and experimental fiction/poetry, which you can find on her blog Delusiastic!, which has both brand new and older works. She has also written or co-written four books on yoga (seeyogafortimesofchange.com) as well as being the Editor in Chief and writer for the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog for 12 years. Before that there was 20 years of writing instructional manuals for the software industry, including many books for programmers. And somewhere in there was an MFA from San Francisco State in Creative Writing. All of that taught her how to write simply and clearly when needed but also to go crazy with words when that seems right. 

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January 6, 2025 · 7:30 am

I Heard My Grandparents’ Voices

By Esther Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

My grandparents stared from the portrait

Hanging on the wall — dead eyes, expressionless

I used to fantasize that they were somewhere 

Still out in the world, lost, but rescued at the

End of the war, not murdered horrifically, lost in

The mingled ashes at the hell that was Auschwitz

I dreamt that they were survivors who would

Miraculously be found so we could be reunited

Leave it alone! My hope was the naivete of a child

And then the discovery more than half a century later,

My mother’s papers:

Letters from Vienna during the war from

My grandparents to their children and a brother and 

Two sisters caring for my mother’s 

Mother — a tragic figure old and lost

My great-grandmother, an invalid with no words

She couldn’t speak English and I am

Not sure she even knew where she was

From my mother’s closet, several letters from

Her parents, hidden from us in her lifetime

Being read at our behest

In the vocally halting translation by a woman who

Struggled to decode the high German no longer in use

I heard the voices of my grandparents trying to

Encourage the Jewish children they had sent to the safety

Of loving arms in America

They spoke, sending regards to other relatives and friends

I knew well

Having grown up with — making my family suddenly full

Our two central figures included

Finally, part of me in a way that I could keep them forever

They had saved me too by sending their children 

To America…

But they were hiding behind window shades

In their once comfortable Vienna apartment

In terror they were suppressing while making small

Talk about daily life revealing true devotion to 

Each other and their children — hoping to be saved

Knowing they would do what they could to survive

Even as the chessboard of history was countering

Their moves, it was too strong

They used parental injunctions to their boy and girl

To behave and study well and to thrive

And there I sat and met my grandparents who were

Calmly discussing their household management

One time as if at a séance with spiritual intervention

Their tones alive with love; it was in that fractured moment

As if my dream had come true if only for that one–time

Visit — as if they had been merely misplaced in the fog of war —

As if they had survived

Esther Munshine started teaching when she was 20. Her career spanned 50 years, with a generous interruption to raise her family. In 2019, she began writing poems in earnest.  During the pandemic, she met online regularly with other writers sharing their work, safely at a distance. She was an invited featured poet to the second annual National Baseball Poetry Festival in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2024, where she read “Take Me Out” and “First Baseball Game for First Grandson”. “I Heard My Grandparents Voices” is an experience that their grand-daughter is still processing and she appreciates having the chance to share that experience with the community in the Jewish Writing Project. If you’d like to read more of the Esther’s work, visit: https://www.baseballbard.com and Reflections in Poetry and Prose 2023 https://www.uft.org/chapters/retired-teachers-chapter/retiree-programs/reflections-poetry-and-prose

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December 30, 2024 · 7:30 am

R.I.P. Clifton Jewish Center

by Sue Macy (Englewood, NJ)

This is a different sort of obituary, not for a person, but a place. The synagogue I grew up in, the Clifton Jewish Center of Clifton, N.J., held its last Shabbat services on December 21, 2024. The building is being repurposed to become a cheder for Orthodox girls. With the original members gone and their descendants moving away, the Center—the last Conservative shul in town—closed its doors.

It was founded in the late 1940s by nine young men who had gone to Clifton High School together. My parents joined the Center in the early 1950s. I went to Sunday School and Hebrew School there, and had my bat mitzvah. It was not just a place of worship, but of community. My mom joined Hadassah through the Center. My dad was on the temple board.

We had the same rabbi, Dr. Eugene Markovitz, for 52 of the Center’s 75 years. He was an Orthodox rabbi in a Conservative shul, which meant women didn’t have aliyot while he was in charge. It forever irked my feminist soul, but the rabbi had more depth than my younger self gave him credit for. In 1988, Rabbi Markovitz intervened when four local boys painted anti-Semitic graffiti on the temple building. Instead of allowing them to be sent to juvenile detention, he convinced the judge to sentence them to 25 hours of education about Judaism, with him, and 30 hours of helping around the synagogue. CBS made a “Schoolbreak Special” about the incident. Hal Linden played the rabbi.

Although I moved out of Clifton decades ago, I continued to attend High Holiday services with my family. After my dad died, my mom and brother and I went. After my mom died, my brother and I just kept going. But as the congregation shrank, the signs of decline were unmistakable. We no longer had a cantor. Israel Bonds luminaries stopped coming to give High Holiday presentations, hoping for lucrative investments. Eventually, we had no more bond drives at all. There was a time when the temple had to put hundreds of chairs in the adjacent ballroom to fit all those coming for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Lately, the ballroom remained empty and unused.

I know that times change. I write books about history and intellectually I can place the geographic movements of the Jewish people in historical context. With affluence, many of the Jewish families in Clifton moved to wealthier suburbs. Still, it’s hard not to feel a personal loss with the closing of the Center. It makes accessing the feelings and experiences from my past that much harder. It also raises questions about my Jewish identity that until now, I haven’t had to answer. What kind of synagogue do I want to join? Where do I go from here? 

Ironically, the last services at the Center attracted the largest Shabbat crowd in years. People like me, whose parents lived their lives in the community, came from near and far to be there one more time. It was a fitting tribute to a place that truly had been the Center of our lives.

Sue Macy is the author of 18 books for children and young adults including The Book Rescuer: How a Mensch From Massachusetts Saved Yiddish Literature for Generations to Come, winner of the Sydney Taylor Picture Book Award. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey, and can be found on Instagram @suemacy1 or through her website, suemacy.com.

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December 23, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Thing About My Conversion

by Miles Whitney (Sacramento, CA)

The thing about my conversion was that it was in response to Karen telling me that if we got married, I would have to convert. I had never considered conversion before that and had only a vague awareness that it was even possible. Later Karen clarified that we could do some kind of civil ceremony even if I didn’t convert, but I chose to explore conversion anyway. Obviously I did end up choosing conversion for myself, with quite a bit of joy. But it wasn’t something I originally sought out — it was something that came out of left field but ended up being one of the best decisions I have made. And that was even before my daughter, Bel, died. 

Karen brought up conversion before I proposed. We barely knew each other. I tried to get my head around the idea of conversion. I had an acquaintance that had started the conversion process a few years earlier, but we had lost touch and I had forgotten about it. Of course, I knew about Ivanka Trump, and Karen, who had converted maybe eight years earlier, but the idea that this was something I could do, or anyone could do, was new. I worried about cultural appropriation. At the same time, I felt something like recognition, like I had failed to see something totally obvious that was right in front of me.

I immediately agreed to explore conversion. However, there wasn’t a readily available rabbi or conversion class. This all happened during early COVID. Karen was not affiliated with any congregation at the time, and I lived in a different city. Everything was shut down.

Karen found a rabbi for me. Karen’s father had died a few months into the pandemic (from unrelated causes), and Karen had struggled to find support. Karen had posted something online about their dilemma of how to say the Kaddish. A Bay Area rabbi had offered to help. I remember Karen telling me that the rabbi would be a great person to study with if he was available and willing. Karen insisted that if nothing else I should talk to him, because we would totally hit it off.

I called the rabbi and indeed we hit it off. I told him about my fears of cultural appropriation. He assured me that it was totally fine to convert. He told me a story about how converts are supposed to be treated. He asked me why I thought he opened with that, and I guessed it was because some people might not live up to that ideal. He said I was right. He also told me about a tradition whereby an applicant would ask a rabbi three times when seeking to convert, but he would not hold me to that. He was quite sure I would meet enough obstacles without him throwing up more.

I asked about my Buddhist practice, which I didn’t want to abandon. He assured me that there was no serious conflict, that he himself practiced Zen. We talked about my conversion being in response to Karen’s wishes. I told him I wasn’t sure I would convert. I just didn’t know enough yet. He told me that this was a good position, that no matter how the journey had been initiated, in the end I would have to decide for myself. We would figure out the answer as we went along. I agreed to proceed.    

In the beginning, the rabbi told me to find three things I would have a hard time discarding, and three things I looked forward to gaining. One thing I knew for certain was that I would happily embrace monotheism again, after spending many years following the Christian faith. I had quit that path after too many followers supported Proposition 8. I missed it.

I had not, however, expected to fall in love with Judaism’s magical world of stories, words, and ideas. That is all I had then. I had yet to attend a service or participate in any of the home-based rituals. It was more than enough. My experience was similar to how, in my early twenties, I stumbled into a job at a law firm and found out that the law was exactly how my mind worked. The stories, words, and ideas stole my mind.

I was asked to do writing assignments. I wrote about my relationship with the Divine. The rabbi told me I should polish it up and get it published, that it would be of benefit to the world and to the Jewish people. That sentence made no sense to me. Why would anything I do matter to the Jewish people? I didn’t understand anything yet.

I decided to convert. I sat for the (Zoom) Beit Din. I had sent in my writings earlier, including one about how I chose my Hebrew name, so the rabbis knew something about me. I expressed my fear of not knowing enough, not being Jewish enough. One of the rabbis told me not to belittle my fears, that the sentiment was “so Jewish.” I laughed, delighted. I passed.

I ended up doing the mikveh in the American River, witnessed by Karen and a mutual friend. Even though it was August, the water was so cold that stepping in it made my feet ache. Karen and our friend perched on a large boulder that was surrounded by the freezing water. There was a depression in front of the boulder, where I decided to submerge myself. I waded in, wondering whether the cold could stop my heart. Because I was so slow at learning Hebrew, Karen had to tell me the prayer a few words at a time, which I repeated. I bent my knees and was underwater. I popped back up, and the process was repeated. By the second dip I was numb to the cold. Once again and it was done.

Karen and I had our perfect Jewish wedding two months later. Seven months after that, my daughter Isabel (from a previous relationship) died in her sleep. She was 22. No cause was ever found. Now it was the rituals that saved me. Karen covered mirrors and I did nothing until the rules said I could. Saying Mourner’s Kaddish tethered me to the world when nothing made sense, when my very self was shattered.

I began to write. I wondered if everything was created in six days. If God said everything created was good, was death included? If so, why was death treated as less than, or not as good as, life? I looked for the origin of death in Genesis. I was astounded by what was and was not in the text. Unsure of what I was finding and writing, I shared the piece with a rabbinical student, who saw nothing wrong. I sent the essay out and it was immediately accepted for publication in a Jewish literary journal. I didn’t see that coming. It was the first thing I ever submitted.

I also sought answers to mundane problems in Torah and found them. Karen and I joined a conservative shul. I wrote more essays. I became a Shabbat enthusiast, declaring it a day of “aggressive rest.” I observed new holidays: donuts, fasting, rickety shacks, trees.  But on Bel’s second Yahrzeit, I fell into an awful depression. I felt useless, like everything I had been was dead and all that was left was to wait for my body to follow. Or, in fancy words, I am only here to remember the dead.

I was driving to an AA meeting in the midst of this funk when I was forced to stop because a young woman stepped in front of my car and refused to move. I asked her what she wanted, and she said she needed to call an ambulance. I offered her a ride to the ER instead. She got in the car and asked if we could just talk. She clutched a beer and cried as she told me she was suicidal. She had relapsed a few months prior. She told me about her breakup, and about her happiness during her sobriety. We talked a little more, then I mentioned that I was on my way to a meeting. She looked straight ahead out the windshield and said, “Let’s go!”

I took her to the meeting and although she didn’t stay, the effect on me was profound. It felt like God, through her, was blocking my (downward) path. Like God grabbed my face, looked me in the eye, and shook me. My depression stopped, in part because it felt forbidden. I was convinced there was a command in there, that it was time to do something else. The next week I dreamt that my local rabbi showed me a binder containing three questions about Torah, which I was supposed to answer. I couldn’t read the questions, perhaps because it was a dream, or I didn’t have my readers, or maybe it was in Hebrew.

I don’t know what this means, other than to be open to the new and be willing to say yes. Maybe it means my old life is indeed dead, but a new life lies ahead, which will be significantly Jewish. Maybe I will even do something of benefit to the world and the Jewish people. 

Miles Whitney is a queer, trans, Jewish attorney living in Sacramento, California. Miles started writing creatively after the unexpected death of his daughter, Isabel, in 2022.

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December 16, 2024 · 7:30 am

On That Day

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

It rained that day. The gray sky 

matched everybody’s mood

and as my face was pelted 

with large, heavy drops that hurt,

I reassured myself that I would never cry. 

I was almost 10.

I stood lost in the crowd. I didn’t 

have a need to be up front

but someone nudged me, 

pushed me closer to the grave

and I looked down and saw

the plain pale brown coffin 

decorated with a matching 

Jewish star, the place in which

my mother slept (that was the current 

euphemism), and I was numb. 

An old man speaking through 

his beard, dressed in a long black coat, 

a rabbi whom I’d seen in my rare visits 

to Temple Emanuel in Parkchester when 

certain holidays occurred, said words 

I didn’t understand, made noises 

that offered a young child no comfort, 

and sporadically others, most of which 

I didn’t recognize because my family had chosen 

isolation as a way of life. He mumbled what I guessed

were prayers, and all I felt was the heavy rain that

seemed determined to replace the tears that wouldn’t come.

I paid attention to my heavy breathing 

because, I guess, it took my mind away 

from that pine coffin that held what was left 

of the woman who used to comfort and care for me 

when I was sick, who used to cook for me in her 

Jewish-Latvian way, from scratch to tasty,

with the constantly secret sacred ingredient 

being love.

I had been her companion as she prepared the food,

the one who licked the bowl … but what exactly 

was my role now that she was gone? Who would be

my mother? A little child needed a mother, but she was gone.

These thoughts bombarded my defenselessness

while wise men said their Hebrew words and still 

the tears refused to visit me, and the rain kept falling 

and the shovels lifted senseless dirt and dropped it 

on my mother and I felt like screaming and running 

to her but she was no longer there for me. Instead, 

the sounds replaced her voice, those holy sounds 

that meant nothing to a ten-year-old, 

a boy who simply wanted to hear

his mother’s voice again.


Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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December 9, 2024 · 7:30 am

Our 35th Wedding Anniversary

by Julie Potiker (Sun Valley, ID)

Crammed onto a street corner in Ketchum, Idaho 

Across the street from the huge bronze moose

in front of Silver Creek boutique 

Draft horses pull covered wagons down Main Street 

Hands waving from wagons

Waving from horseback at the crowds 

Anticipating the arrival of the sheep

This annual event where they are the stars

Sprinting by the thousands through the streets

On this bright day–October 8th, 2023–

Eyes squinting under the brim 

of my cowboy hat

I feel disconnected

As if I might float away

Like a lost balloon

My hand in my beloved’s

keeps me tethered

to the land

Hundreds of families

Grandparents, parents, children 

Babies, fully engaged in the parade

Not noticing I’m weeping inside

How is it they are unaffected by 

The hundreds of Israeli families—grandparents, 

Parents, children, babies, butchered

burned tortured stolen raped, now at war?

On our 35th wedding anniversary 

I’m trying to hold it all — the joy and the sorrow–

Because this too is happening

This too.

Julie Potiker, a former attorney, is a friend of animals and the earth, a certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, and founder of the Balanced Mind Meditation Center in La Jolla, California. She is a member of the teaching team at UCSD Center for Mindfulness. Her published books are Life Falls Apart But You Don’t Have To: mindful methods for staying calm in the midst of chaos, and SNAP! From Chaos to Calm, both available on Amazon and Audible. Her upcoming book is a poetry collection of mindfulness poems. She lives in San Diego, California. Visit her website to learn more about her and her work: https://mindfulmethodsforlife.com

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December 2, 2024 · 7:30 am

Dogtag

by Harriet Wolpoff (San Diego, CA)

A moment of panic

What’s that guy saying?

Can’t understand him 

He’s getting closer

He’s pointing at my chest

Is he a hater?

Oh, says he’s Israeli

Whew

He’s offering to help

Put my groceries 

In the car

Because

He saw my dogtag

I love him!

Harriet Wolpoff is retired after several years in the New York City public school system and a forty year career in Jewish education in San Diego, winning many awards for ground-breaking programming.  She has been studying Israeli poetry with Rachel Korazim for over four years. Harriet is proudest of being a wife, mother, and Bubbe of three grandchildren who inspire many of her poems.

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November 25, 2024 · 7:30 am

Lighting the Sabbath Candles

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

I can still see my mother lighting

short white candles in a silver

candelabra every Friday night

to usher in the Sabbath, to welcome

the Sabbath bride. Later that night,

our kitchen would grow dark, 

save for those flickering lights.

Over the years, that tradition fell away 

with a whisper I hardly noticed. 

Still, there’s something cellular,

deep in my bones that connects me

to generations of women, 

hands waving three times, covering

their eyes as they say the prayer. 

I feel their hum and sway, and realize

the link to this tradition grows 

ever diluted with each new decade.

Though I no longer feel drawn

to light candles on Friday night,

this memory stays with me as sacred. 

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Between the Lines, PoetsWest Literary Journal, and 3 Elements Review. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129, a project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times beyond Covid.

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November 18, 2024 · 7:30 am

I Said the Words

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

I said the prayer for a very long year
to remember my mother
(as if I could forget)
to honor her
(as if I needed to)
to show my love for her
(as if that was the so official way
as if that could replace the feeling
fading just too quickly from my mind).

I journeyed to the synagogue
one vacant block from where my father worked
and sat with bearded ancient men
who shared a musty smell
with the hall which they inhabited,
who sought responsibility to guide the child
that I was and would forever be.

I listened to the words of the Kaddish
spoken quite precisely in a foreign tongue
a phrase at a time
and then I found myself repeating sounds
that had no meaning and no substance to me,
but it was my job, as I was told
(as if I had a choice).

And so I went, day by day, and I obeyed
and parroted the words
but never had the chance to say
the words that needed to be said,
about the ties we’d had, my mom and I,
about the caring that we knew
and love and strong security
now shattered — and the joy
of helping her whenever she put on
that apron and began to cook
from European scratch.

I said the words that were my duty,
words so alien to me
with men so distant from my needs
but with each word I mispronounced and mumbled
was the childhood-crafted
realization of what I no longer had
but needed very much.

I said the prayer
but wondered in my elemental way
why any God could be so cruel
to cleave a mother from a child
and substitute the words that had no meaning
to my soul.

Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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