Category Archives: history

June 10, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Scream of a Post-October 7th Jew

by Jessica Ursell (Campania, Italy)

in bed
cold beads 
of sweat 
catch me 
still in the snare
of my nightmare

back at the home
of my childhood
walking past 
the front door
realizing 
it wasn’t quite 
completely closed

I went to close it
on the other side
they were pushing 
screaming, shoving
with such force

struggling
I tried to push back 
but they were so many

coming for the Jew

spewing incoherent vitriol
their rhythmic battering
sounded the beat of
of an ancient hate

I tried to scream
for in my dream
my son was in the room
my brother used to have

but like my brother
my son‘s door was closed
with music playing
so he couldn’t hear
my strangled screams

dazed and in disbelief
inhuman strength surging
like those stories
of desperate mothers
lifting cars
off the helpless bodies 
of their children

I shoved the door closed
despite the heaving mob
pounding from outside
so hard to click 
that little lock closed

in suburban New York

Daughter of an immigrant Jewish mother from the foothills of the Himalayas and a South Bronx born Puerto Rican Jewish father, Jessica Ursell is a veteran JAG officer of the United States Air Force, poet, and public speaker against antisemitism and bigotry. The granddaughter of survivors of the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, and a descendant of a Taíno great-grandma, she understands in her bones what happens when intolerance, indifference, and ignorance take root in society. 

Raised by scientist parents, Jessica’s early environment was steeped in an atmosphere where questions were welcomed and asking “why not” was encouraged. Jessica lives with her husband in Southern Italy where she writes essays and poetry addressing the complex interplay between trauma, power, love, loss, and madness. 

Her essays, “At the Country Club with Superman,” “Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House,” and “What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam“ were published by The Jewish Writing Project in July 2022, October 2022, and January 2024 respectively. Jessica‘s poems, “Sedimented Rock” and “Climbing Vesuvius in Stilettos,” were published by Writing In A Woman’s Voice in November 2023 and May 2024. Jessica’s poem, “A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects,” appears in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine as well as online (v. 216 Scars Publications). Multiple military audiences, most recently the United States Navy, Sixth Fleet, have heard Jessica speak about the importance of never being a bystander to evil which she believes is the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust.

20 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 3, 2024 · 6:15 am

Something Lost, Something Gained 

by Miriam Aroner (El Cerrito, CA)

My bubbe never tasted hummus or shakshuka.

Gelfilte fish, pickled herring, matzo ball soup: 

these were her inheritance 

from the old country, the cold country,

the country unfriendly to Jews.

She did not know Jews who spoke Arabic or Spanish 

or were, chas v’ chalila, Black. 

If they did not speak Yiddish and disliked gefilte fish, 

Not Real Jews.

She had escaped the Tsar, 

the arranged marriage, the sheitel,

the orthodox rituals from birth to death.

But every Friday she lit candles and made matzo ball soup.

She kept a kosher home, but not glatt.

Her daughter, my mother, born in Chicago, 

had no interest in the old country.

She wanted to be a “real American.”

She disliked bubbe’s home-made yogurt, 

her heavy stews, her kugel concoctions.

A few times a year she made matzo ball soup

with Swanson’s chicken broth.

Borscht came from Maneshevitz,

gefilte fish from Rokeach.

No pork or shellfish, all the rest was commentary.

Uncomfortable in restaurants other than Jewish delis

she would never order  pizza

 and was suspicious of Chinese food.  

But she liked McDonald’s Fish Filets.

Now I live far from my roots, such as they are,

from Ukraine to Chicago to San Francisco.

Some of us are intermarried, 

some are Jews of color, 

We collect money for Ukraine, and admire its Jewish President.

We mix nature worship, a bissel of Buddhism,

our High Holidays a tsimmes of shehecheyanus and Leonard Cohen.

All gods are welcome at our feasts, 

although most of us are agnostics or atheists.

We eat pho, won ton soup, avgolemono, albondigas,

clam chowder.

We still eat matzo ball soup: with a felafel or samosa.   

A native of Chicago, Miriam Aroner has lived in the SF Bay Area most of her adult life. She has worked as a librarian in private and university libraries, including Tel Aviv University. She has published several children’s books, and poems in print, and enjoys traveling “because she always wants to see what’s  around the corner or over the hill.” She is a member of a humanistic Jewish congregation. 

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 27, 2024 · 7:30 am

First Snow

by Susan Michele Coronel (New York, NY)

It’s mid-January, nearly a month after Hanukkah 

ends, when I notice the first appearance 

of white flakes in 700 days. I celebrate 

the return of predictable winter joy, when ice 

slicks sidewalks, & fluffy blankets shroud 

windshields, press their weight into branches. 

I scrape my van after a spot of freezing rain, 

loosen snow & ice from door handles 

before temperatures plunge into the teens. 

On Facebook, I skim photos of my daughter’s 

campus, where kids haul cardboard rectangles 

up scenic slopes, clock tower behind, dots 

of city lights below. It’s the same campus where 

a professor said he found the Hamas attack 

in Israel “energizing” and “exhilarating.”

A British friend reports snow’s arrival with

photos on WhatsApp, streetlamps casting

a ghostly glow over parked cars & hedges.

He says he just checked on his sister,

who has poor balance due to cerebral palsy.

On my side of the world, darkness advances.

Trump wins the Iowa caucus without a sneeze.

The night before, I watch a documentary about

a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor visiting

Warsaw with her adult son. She recalls how

Jewish policemen beat ghetto Jews with clubs

to get them onto trains—if successful, they’d

spare their own lives. They wore the same

boots as Nazis, crisp black against the snow.

Outside my window, flake by flake, snow

tapers & stops. A few neighbors continue to

shovel or salt walkways. Maybe a few–

like me–look outside & gape in wonder

at a lavender sky that sheds white sparkles

over our ordinary lives. We are like candles, 

gazing through curtains at the ever present dark.

Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. She has received two Pushcart nominations and won the 2023 Massachusetts Poetry Festival First Poem Contest.  Her poems have appeared in publications including Spillway 29, Plainsongs, Redivider, and Fourteen Hills. In 2021 her full-length manuscript was a finalist for Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize, and in 2023 another version of the manuscript was longlisted for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award.

2 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 20, 2024 · 7:30 am

Ancestral Family Secrets 

by Ronit Widmann-Levy (Sunnyvale, California)

In the summer of 2013, my Swiss uncle, Albrecht, invited the extended German side of my family to visit Rostock for a family reunion and to hear from a historian who was commissioned by the city of Rostock to write the story of a prototypical Jewish family between the seventeen hundreds till today. 

Curious to learn about my family’s origins, and interested in filling in the many blanks, I accepted the invitation and flew to Germany to partake in this reunion, bringing my thirteen-year-old son and three-year-old daughter with me.

Holding my sleeping daughter in my arms, I stood at the arrivals terminal scanning the crowd for a driver who was supposed to pick us up. My eyes locked briefly with those of a short, blond-haired, middle-aged man who seemed to have recognized me upon sight and appeared, oddly, somewhat startled. Tired from our 12-hour flight, I didn’t think much of it. The man began walking directly towards me.  

“Frau Widmann-Levy”? 

“Yes, that’s me”  

“I’m Frank, your guide and the historian who wrote the thesis about your family, the Josephys” 

”I’m honored. Thank you for coming to meet us here.  I was expecting a driver,” I replied.

“I can drive too,” he quickly responded, and picked up my luggage and walked us to his car, an old, rickety Volkswagen station-wagon.

Later that day, Frank sat me down in the lobby of the hotel and showed me old photos of the Josephy family, including one of a young woman named Carla. Looking at the face gazing back at me from the faded old photo was like looking in a mirror. I felt an immediate connection to Carla.  And so began my acquaintance with a woman who had influenced my life in many profound ways long before I became familiar with her life story.  

In the following days, Frank walked us through the streets of Rostock and shared in great detail his research of our family’s history and origins. Walking the cobblestone streets of Rostock hand-in-hand with my two children that summer, the year of my son’s Bar Mitzvah, was surreal. As we were walking, Frank pointed at the still-standing homes of our ancestors. The well-restored or preserved original buildings and apartments were all inhabited by tenants who had taken over our family’s homes after they were forced out.

Frank unraveled the Josephys family’s history for us—where they had lived, whom they had married, where they had worked, and gone to school. At a certain moment, he pointed at a specific building with windows facing the street where we were standing. Leaning out the windows were tenants currently living in those apartments. Upon seeing our group, they all withdrew, clearly dismayed to see us and our animated guide. 

On the front lawn, children at play were pulled back into apartments in a flash while windows and shutters were slammed shut. Frank, who was explaining about the past while pointing at their building, was not whispering, to say the least. He shared his findings enthusiastically while sweating through his white linen shirt and smoking like a chimney.

Carla’s complete story — and the reality of how I ended up having both Christian and Jewish branches in my family — was revealed to me on my second day at Rostock when Frank, recounting more of our family’s history, mentioned an aunt, (tante) Carla Josephy, a famed Jewish opera singer in Germany before WWII. I had a  surreal image of the words coming out of his mouth and enveloping me, wrapping me in a blanket made of the sum total of my family’s journey. That was the summer of 2013.  

As our little group traversed the streets of Rostock, my great-uncle marched in front. He had been the child in the story and was now eighty years old. I couldn’t help but think again the one thought that had always popped into my head since I was a school-age girl living in Israel. Would I have survived? Would my blue eyes and blond hair have saved me? 

Carla’s story, the alias she created, saving her children by giving them to the nuns, marrying her gay colleague and traveling to Havana Cuba, made me rethink my long time assumption that my seemingly Aryan features would have been enough for me to survive the war. I understood that it was not Carla‘s Aryan features that saved her but rather her creativity and resilience. I stopped putting so much weight on external features as equating a better chance of survival. From that point on, surviving meant something completely different to me. It meant not just coming out of the experience with a pulse, alive, but rather having your soul intact and your spirit in a reparable condition. 

I knew that many people had physically survived the war. They were mere shadows of who they had been six years earlier, and they walked the earth for the remainder of their days agonizing over what they had lost, unable to move forward. After hearing Carla’s story, I understood that living meant more than coming out of the war alive. It meant not just presenting to the world the shell of who you were but truly engaging with life.

I looked at my uncle and saw the boy within, with a one-way ticket on the train to Basel the day his mother put him in charge and responsible for his five-year-old sister. Relinquishing her children may seem like an extreme and heartless choice on Carla’s part, but in fact, this was an act of tremendous bravery and infinite love. Both children would be fostered and saved by a Swiss Catholic family, and  Albrecht and Dorotea would grow up and dedicate their lives to leaving the world a better place than they found it.

My uncle’s wife, children, and grandchildren enveloped him with love and affection,  accompanying him on this self-afflicted journey that he was so determined to go through. 

The next few days would change my life forever. Every part of my being realized that in the face of an existential threat, it is the silence of our neighbors and friends that is deafening. It’s a silence that contains many shades of betrayal. 

—

Ronit Widmann-Levy, a luminary in the arts world, boasts a multifaceted career spanning curation, fundraising, branding, presenting, and strategic planning. Her remarkable expertise encompasses public arts administration and cultivating global partnerships. Renowned for her captivating performances, Ronit has sung in Carnegie Hall under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas and recorded for PBS Great Performances. Notably, she serves as the Director of the Israel Museum Bay Area Council, a role that reflects her commitment to promoting art and cultural exchange. Passionate about the synergy of arts and technology, Ronit co-chairs and produces TEDxPaloAlto.  She champions art’s transformative role in fostering inclusivity, celebrating diversity, and instigating impactful change. Her career is marked by unwavering dedication to innovation, social responsibility, and exceptional leadership that fuels brand longevity and sustainability in the arts sphere. Ronit resides in Sunnyvale California.

6 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, German Jewry, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

May 13, 2024 · 7:30 am

Sitting in the Land of Limbo

by Anna Stolley Persky (Fairfax, VA)

Today we are burying my friend, my Jewish light, and it is gray and cold and muddy, and we are in the middle of a graveyard, and we are in the middle of a war, and people all over the world are telling us that they hate us, and I believe them.

It is December 2023. We are in the Philadelphia suburbs, where my friend and I grew up together, and where she is now being lowered into a hole in the earth. I am with her brothers and sister and father and friends, along with her three children. Her husband, their father, died of cancer more than ten years ago. 

My friend’s children, the youngest still in high school, are orphans.

There is a war going on more than 5,700 miles from us here, under a tent that barely shields us from the wind and rain. 

Some of my friends who aren’t Jewish are marching, even yelling that Zionists have blood on their hands. 

I look down at my hands. They are cold and tinged pink. I put them in the pockets of my jacket.

We are saying the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, but in my head, I am hearing Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King,” a prayer that asks God for mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. My friend was a cantor. She led prayers in her lovely, lilting voice at synagogues in Florida before moving back to Philadelphia. She taught me what it means to be Jewish, and now she is dead, and I am standing among the lost and left behind, and I know better to ask why, and yet, still I ask. She was 54, the same age as me. 

My friend taught me that to be Jewish means to ask the questions that can’t be answered or, rather, can be answered in vastly different ways. She taught me that to be Jewish is to live in the land of limbo, the endless thirst in a desert. 

I don’t want her body trapped inside a coffin. I want to open it up and let her fly, but my friend isn’t in there; she is already away, in the somewhere else. Is she with her husband? Is she part of the wind? We debated death, my friend and I, and then we agreed that it probably meant returning to the universe in a squishy way we couldn’t fully explain. Then we laughed and tried again.

Here’s something I would like to ask my friend: Should we ask God for mercy? Why should we pray for redemption? What did she do but live in a way that was more good than bad, where she helped people find comfort in Jewish traditions? What have I done, what have any of us done but try to survive?

Do we need to ask God for forgiveness if we are fighting a war? Each life has value, so is there such a thing as a just war? What if you are attacked first? Does anything justify slaughter and rape? Does anything justify killing children?

These are the questions she would have debated with me – Jew against Jew, not against, not really, just trying to look at a problem from all the different angles. She appreciated nuance, something I fear is disappearing.

It’s time for each of us to take turns with the shovel.

We cover her coffin with bits of the earth, dirt, stones, each of us, three times. The first time we use the back of the shovel to demonstrate our reluctance to say goodbye. Then the other two times, we turn the shovel back over to symbolize our acceptance that she has gone from us.

One: Do you remember that when we first met? We were seven. You wrote poetry and ate Tastykakes in the library even though the rules said no eating in the library. You smirked while you opened the plastic wrapper. I want you to come back and debate with me why those rules, but not all rules, could be broken.

Two: Are we going to be all right? I mean, all of us, the Jews, and me without you? Your son called me on your phone to tell me that you had died, and I already knew because your sister texted me first, but when your son called on your phone, I thought it was you anyway. This shovel thing isn’t working. I see your children. They are looking down, stunned.

Three:  When we were in high school, you would let me lie next to you, and you would play for me “Fire and Rain,” and we ignored the Jesus in the song, but I am still on “I always thought I would see you again” repeat.

My friend was still living when the war started, although she was sick and knew she was dying. She was still living when she told me to turn off the television, that she couldn’t watch anymore because she was so angry, and she was worried that her anger would twist into a blood lust. She was so honest, sometimes, and unafraid of putting to words what the rest of us hold inside and allow to fester. She was also not honest sometimes, which is to say, human and mortal. 

Then she said, turn the television back on, and we talked about all the different emotions we were feeling and how they could exist at the same time, and all of them could be true to us. 

I look at my friend’s children again. They are Israeli American. Their father’s family had to flee Iraq, their home, to Israel or they would have been killed. My friend’s ancestors escaped pogroms. It is a miracle these children are alive, these three beautiful beings.

It is raining harder.

I want to sit with my friend in the land of limbo. I want to sit with my friend who reveled in the gray. 

It is perfect for her, this weather.

Anna Stolley Persky is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at George Mason University. Her essays have been published in Pithead Chapel, Two Hawks Quarterly, and The Washington Post. Her fiction has been published in Mystery Tribune, The Satirist, and Five on the Fifth. 

3 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

April 29, 2024 · 7:30 am

It’s relatively quiet here in Central Israel

Rina Lapidus (Petah Tikva, Israel)

The rocket shelling from Gaza usually takes place between early morning and early hours of night. After midnight there are usually no air-raid sirens, and you can snatch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep until 4 or sometimes even 5. And thank heaven even for this – “Alhamdulillah,” as the Arabs say: Praise be to God. Aside from rocket shelling, the Central District, where I live, is not really impacted by the ravages of war. No large centers for evacuees from border areas are located here, and neither do you see many wounded people walking about in the streets; no burned houses, except for a few high-rises here and there damaged by shelling, with walls partly destroyed and some debris and fragments of missiles scattered around on the roads and sidewalks below. Also, medical centers are bursting at the seams with all the wounded brought here from other areas, so it is impossible for anyone else to get treatment – like me, for example, a woman who is neither young nor healthy.

Still, I did not give up hope and ordered a taxi to take me to the hospital. The hospital is in the city center of Petah Tikva, north-east of Tel Aviv. The Arab taxi driver who showed up was pleasantly surprised when I agreed to ride in his car. But I thought to myself that it wasn’t really up to me to agree or disagree: the taxi company must have sent me an Arab driver because all their Jewish drivers had probably been called up to the front. However, seeing that the driver was happy that I was prepared to travel with him, I thought it unlikely that he would harm me along the way. Besides, I could stick my bag in the window to keep it open, so if worst came to worst, and the driver’s behavior seemed to me suspicious, I would be able to escape. 

The ride was uneventful, and I arrived safely at the Petach Tikva hospital. At the entrance lobby of the health fund to which I belong sat an elderly Mizrachi Jewish woman. By the look of her she was about 75 years old. Her skin color was brown, but her face was black to the point that it radiated blackness. She sat there mumbling, “My grandson is gone… they killed him in Gaza…” Her words struck me to the quick. I was so shaken that tears burst from my eyes. I went up to her, bent down, and reached out to give her a hug. She shrank away, and pushed me back. Then she shouted at me: “What do you think you are doing, putting your hands around me? They killed my grandson in Gaza! And you came here to hug me?! What’s got into you? My grandson is killed in Gaza! Do you understand?!” I sat down next to her and cried. A Russian-Jewish cleaning lady came up and offered us two cups half-filled with water. I took one and drank. The Mizrachi woman waved away the cup intended for her and shouted, “I’ll manage… but they killed my grandson in Gaza!!”

I went to the reception window and asked a female secretary sitting behind it to set an appointment with a doctor. In reply, she said: “Can’t you see that there are no appointments available? Can’t you see all these soldiers – wounded and sick?” But the other secretary told me: “Try private, not through medical insurance. Maybe you can get an appointment that way.” I said to myself, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of it myself?” I thanked the secretary and turned to go.

I headed back home, but as I was getting off the bus, the air-raid siren started, signaling that the shelling from Gaza had resumed. Around me, everyone was running, looking for bomb-shelters in the nearby buildings. I couldn’t have run even if I had wanted to. I lay down on the asphalt of the sidewalk, face down, and put my hands over my ears, to protect my eardrums from bursting in case of an explosion. It was a short barrage, lasting only about fifteen minutes. When the sirens stopped wailing, I tried to get up from the pavement but could not, because there was nothing around that I could grab for support to push myself up. My face was sore as well, because I had scratched it against the asphalt. There I was, lying down prone on the pavement. At that point, people started coming out of shelters. I saw a Bukharan boy, beckoned to him to come over, and asked him to help me get up on my feet. He did, and I went home.

At the entrance to the building where I live, I saw a crowd of people, all of them religious Mizrachi Jews, like my next-door neighbors. I turned to a woman and asked, “What’s going on?” “The Ohanas’ eldest son was killed in Gaza,” she replied. “When is the funeral?” I asked. “It’s finished. We’ve just come back from the funeral, and are starting shiv’a now.” I went up to my apartment, left my bag, and came downstairs again to take part in the neighbors’ shiv’a. The apartment and the landing were full of people, men and women sitting separately, as dictated by religious custom. On the tables outside, there were sweetmeats. A woman whom I had not met before brought me some cakes. I said to her: “Since the war started, I haven’t been able to eat. Every morsel sticks in my throat. I keep thinking of the young people who were killed in the war and they will never be able to eat again.” She said: “I feel the same way. When the war started, I also cried non-stop and was unable to speak for several days. But you must get over it.” I said: “I can’t.” She said: “You mustn’t stop eating completely. You see what the Arabs are doing to us… don’t do it to yourself.” I said: “I’ll try.” I sat there and cried. 

Sometime later I returned to my apartment. Then my cousin, Olivia, called from Australia, where she lives, and started lecturing me, in a patronizing and didactic tone, that Israel should end the warfare and stop punishing the Gaza Arabs collectively. I told her, “It’s not a collective punishment. Gazan leaders keep appearing in the English-language media and saying that, as soon as they are able to, they will invade Israel again and again, the second and third and fourth and millionth time. We need to make sure that they cannot do this, that they don’t have the ability to invade Israel and massacre us again and again.” She said: “The massacre they carried out on October 7 was justified, because Israelis hadn’t been treating the Gazan Arabs well enough – they had even cut off their electricity.” I said to her: “Why don’t they generate their own electricity? Do they really believe that they can burn our babies alive and we will supply them with electricity in return??” Then I told her: “Don’t call me ever again!” and slammed down the phone.

In the evening I called my daughter, who lives in the north of Israel, and told her: “Get out of there and come to live with me, in my apartment in Petah Tikva. It is quiet here, and in the North there is going to be a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.” She said: “My husband can’t leave his job.” I said: “I will come down and take your girls to me.” She said: “My youngest is only a few months old. How will you take care of her? It’s hard, you won’t be able to.” I said: “I’ll take the older girls, then. Actually, the girls should be taken abroad.” My daughter said: “Do you really believe that it’s safer abroad? With all the anti-Semitism there?” I said: “Which is better – to stay inside the Warsaw ghetto or to hide in the Polish part of the city?” She said: “Inside it’s safer because in the Polish quarter you can let out that you are a Jew even by the way you look at people.” I said: “When WWII ended, not one whole brick was left in the Warsaw ghetto. You have to hide in the Polish part. Yes, it’s true that you can easily let out that you are a Jew, so learn not to look people in the face. Just keep your eyes to the ground – don’t raise them.”

In the evening, I said to myself that I should hurry up and sleep while there is no shelling: “Who knows what the night will bring and whether the Arabs who are throwing missiles at us will let us sleep.” I took my blood pressure and cholesterol pills, and went to bed. I didn’t really sleep: it was a kind of drowsiness mixed with nightmares and hallucinations. In my mind’s eye, the Arabs from Gaza were bombarding us with shells and missiles. These were flying in the sky in every direction, and Israelis were intercepting them in midair. And among all the shells, missiles and interceptions, I and my two young granddaughters are on a plane headed abroad. I woke up in a panic and thought to myself, “I didn’t really dream this up. A few days ago, I actually saw how, at the Lod international airport near Tel Aviv, an Israeli plane was taking off into the night sky amid shells, missiles and interceptions swishing hither and thither all around it.” But then I made up my mind, “Right now, it doesn’t matter so much if it’s reality or a nightmare or a hallucination. I have to try and go back to sleep as soon as possible, before they start shelling us again.”

Rina Lapidus was born in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union. After graduating from a high school in Haifa, she obtained her BA, MA and PhD degrees in Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Since 1984, she has been working at the faculties of Jewish Studies and Humanities at Bat-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan. Rina Lapidus is divorced, with one daughter and three granddaughters. 

2 Comments

Filed under history, Israel Jewry, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, Russian Jewry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Gift

by Cynthia Bernard (Half Moon Bay, CA)

Aunty Anne 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,
gentle fingers kissing my cheeks.
Go and play.

And so she blessed me
with a few more years 
of childhood

Until that day in fourth grade,
somewhere on the cusp between 
only myself and the larger world,
when I learned about
the six million
and began my search for understanding—
which, of course, 
I have never found.

Cynthia Bernard is an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in her early seventies who is finding her voice as a poet after many years of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Heimat Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Journal of Radical Wonder, The Bluebird Word, Passager, Persimmon Tree, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere.

Note:  This poem was first published on December 11, 2023 in Ritualwell and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

Leave a comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 11, 2024 · 7:00 am

My Grandmother’s Hands

by Arlene Geller (East Petersburg, PA)

Her hands, swollen with arthritis, don’t fail her
as she plucks the chicken for the Sabbath meal
kneads the dough for her must-be-dunked poppy seed cookies

Her hands once supple worked her Singer machine
                          (prized possession)
sewed my clothes, homemade creations 
marked her status as a working-class immigrant

She and my grandfather
tailors from the old country
opened a store and plied their craft

The old Singer humming along
sustaining their livelihood
as they raised a family, three sons and a daughter 
                          (prized possessions)

Fulfilling their Russian dreams of an American life
now envisioned through the rolling fog
as they drew nearer to Ellis Island
the Statue of Liberty waving them in

Poet/lyricist Arlene Geller has been fascinated with words from a young age. Two poetry collections, The Earth Claims Her and Hear Her Voice, were published in 2023 by Plan B Press and Kelsay Books, respectively. Her poetry has also appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Tiferet Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, White Enso, and other literary journals and anthologies. Collaborations with composers include commissioned lyrics, such as River Song, featured in the world premiere of I Rise: Women in Song at Lehigh University and since performed in numerous national and international locations. Learn more at arlenegeller.com.

Leave a comment

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry, Russian Jewry

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 26, 2024 · 7:30 am

And Still

by Merri Ukraincik (Edison, NJ)

I see the beauty, though of late, only by half.

With one eye open,

the other shut,

I peer through the slats

of the window blinds,

my breath fogging up the glass.

Obscured, but there.

The beauty, I mean.

The Shabbos sky still shimmers.

Even the apples go on sweetening

in a bowl on the kitchen table. 

Then by mistake, I lift the lid on

the second eye and the ugly,

scene by scene, tears at my heart

until it’s tattered like an afghan

come unfurled, one thread at a time.

Yet my fraying Jewish soul still believes,   

G-d has not given up on us,

the smoke and ash notwithstanding.

Hope remains – for something more,

for the good that may still come

in this threadbare world, in our time.

Because unless you close both eyes

and seal the slats of the blinds,

the beauty is hard to miss.  

Merri Ukraincik is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications online and in print. She is the author of the book I Live. Send Help.: 100 Years of Jewish History in Images from the JDC Archives. Her memoir Wondrous Things: On Finding Joy and Faith in the Messy Business of Being Human is in search of a publisher. Follow her at https://merriukraincik.substack.com/ or on Facebook.

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 12, 2024 · 7:30 am

Waiting for the cracks to fill

By Molly Ritvo (Burlington, VT)

I’ve noticed so much pain in the past months since October 7–that terrible, terrible date.

It was a date when hope was shattered.

When my sense of safety in the world suddenly caved open.

When hate for Jews bubbled to the surface.

Recently, at Target, my mom said I shouldn’t buy a Hanukkah-themed dress for my daughter. 

I’ve read so many social media posts about pro-Palestinian rallies and cries for stopping aid to Israel. 

There is so much vitriol directed at Israel.

The recent city council meeting in Burlington after a Palestinian man was shot was so painful to witness. 

Many DEI emails I have subscribed to over the years have been sharing anti-Zionist messages.

So many writers who I admire are sharing messages that don’t mention the hostages. Just the blame on Israel.

They all sting. They all hurt. Like a gut punch.

My cousin (who I adore) is part of a progressive Jewish group that is actively anti-Zionist. 

The ADL said this group is antisemitic.

It feels as if these words are losing some meaning. 

I stopped going on Instagram because all I saw were anti-Israel sentiments. Some say that anti-Zionist isn’t antisemitic. But they still hurt just the same.

After visiting Yad Vashem for the first time after college, I remember seeing the window at the end of the museum looking out into Israel and thinking: It’s a hope. A blessing. A refuge.

Is it still?

I have heard from Israelis that they feel more connected to other Israelis now. Maybe that’s a trauma response. 

In America, it’s not the case. There are more sides and splits than ever.

Left. Right. Pro. Anti. Blue flags. Red flags. What are they all doing to us? Scarves. Stars.

So far my daughter doesn’t know there is a war or that being Jewish means knowing that antisemitism exists.

Someday I will have to tell her.

Someday I will have to tell her that being Jewish means carrying trauma in our bodies. 

Someday she will sit in a class and learn about the Holocaust and she will feel anguish and I won’t be able to stop it.

I wish I could say that I feel optimistic and hopeful about a two-state solution.

I don’t.

I wish I could say that Israel wasn’t harming innocent lives. 

It is.

I wish I could say that terrorists don’t exist. They do. They definitely do. They’ve left wounds and raw despair and death in their footsteps.

I wish I could say things will get better soon. 

I am afraid they can’t. 

Too many lives have been lost. 

Too many young people danced in nature at a concert that turned into a nightmare.

My synagogue hired additional security recently. They carry additional weapons now.

The Israelis I know are committed to peace work.

It feels that the American Jewish community is so torn apart.

We are all so tired and wary.

In these cold Vermont winter nights I wonder how we find that still, small light inside of us that doesn’t flicker out.

Where do we find that still, small part that somehow has hope despite the messages telling us over and over again that we’re wrong?

I had a thought one day that maybe we did something wrong, for just living.

And then I realized that is what the terrorists want. For us to not have the right to live.

We do have the right to live.

Diaspora Jews have a right to live. Israel has a right to live.

There’s a split at my home synagogue. There’s a split everywhere, with cracks growing wider and wider. 

I worry that my daughter will someday ask about the war that started when she was in kindergarten, when she liked chocolate ice cream and crispy wafers and playing in the snow and going to the library after school on Wednesdays.

I worry that I will need to tell her that it was just the beginning. I worry that I will need to tell her that the cracks kept widening until we found the courage to fill them with small ounces of hope. 

Molly Ritvo is a writer and author living in Burlington, VT. She has been writing for her whole life, beginning when she was selected as the class poet in the 1st grade. Her work has been published by Upstreet Literary Magazine, Tiny Buddha, Elephant Journal, Mother.ly, PJ Library, At the Well, and more.  She holds a BA from Tufts University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Molly has worked as a freelance writer, a communications specialist for many different organizations, and a journalist. She is currently writing her debut novel, a collection of poetry, and working as a communications’ consultant and grant writer. Her most important role is being a mom to her daughter, Jimi. Find out more about Molly and read more of her writing at mollyritvo.com.

5 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,