Category Archives: Jewish identity

August 26, 2024 · 7:00 am

Minnie Horowitz

by Anne Myles (Greensboro, NC)

At the Seder at my aunt’s house in New Jersey,

as my uncle-by-marriage blessed the matzo,

intoning hamotzi lechem min haaretz,

my mother and her four sisters and brothers 

would chime in not amen but Minnie Horowitz!

Cousin Dan told me that story on the phone—

at sixty I’ve learned the blessing, get the joke.

They’re all gone now, but alive again in this—

that fierce irreverence and joy in their own wit.

Once I was there too, gripping the Haggadah, 

my insides roiling with obscure hungers,

salty greens and charoset on my tongue.

What was I to make of it, that tale of plagues

and miracles, my inscrutable inheritance,

crumbled between jibes and family backtalk?

No one thought it worthwhile to explain.

How much did they grasp of it themselves,

children of Ray, the crown rabbi’s daughter,

transported from Kotelnich to Jersey City,

who when my mother’s friend showed up at dinner

hissed in the kitchen, Tell her it’s veal!

Oh America, what a marvel you seemed then—

land of freedom from law and memory both,

where we gloried in our big brains and mouths,

fanning history away like cooking smoke.

Oh Epsteins, I am formed of you, but wander

lonesome through states you never dreamt of

in a changed century. Oh Minnie, I imagine 

you dancing toward me like some long-lost ancestor

in your best dress, your pale knees plump as loaves,

your candles burning, and your small hands raised,

circling the light before covering your eyes.

Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle, winner of Sappho’s Prize in Poetry (Headmistress Press, 2023), and What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press, 2022) Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. Anne is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She now lives in Greensboro, where she co-hosts the new reading series Poetry on Tap and is belatedly exploring the religious dimensions of her Jewish identity at Temple Emanuel. If you’d like to learn more about Anne, visit her website: annemyles.com

3 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 19, 2024 · 7:30 am

Shiksa

by Cheryl Savageau (Boston, MA)

…for Aunt Molly

she said I was 

a shiksa but

she didn’t 

hold it 

against me 

once she knew 

I played poker

You have a cat?

I wouldn’t

eat in your kitchen

who asked you?

I said and threw 

a quarter into the kitty

she ordered the 

old beaver jacket

off my back

took apart the dry skins 

and brought them 

back to life

stitched a new

lining complete

with monogram

I listened to her 

stories of strikes

in the garment district

as she dealt another hand

we’re not supposed to play

poker on Passover

but we’re waiting for dessert

and cards are flying

like the stories she tells

of sisters who fled

the pogroms

walked to the Black Sea

and took a boat to America

I am the shiksa 

who learned to love 

her red horseradish 

and the crystal dish

that held it, the one

on my Pesach table 

the crystal dish

filled now

with red beets 

and bitter root

Cheryl Savageau is a convert and also Native (Abenaki), and her poems are about her first experience as part of a Jewish family, and how she became part of the Jewish people. She has three collections of poetry: Mother/Land (SALT 2006), Dirt Road Home (Curbstone Press 1995), and Home Country (Alice James, 1992).  Her memoir, Out of the Crazywoods, was published in 2020, and her children’s book, Muskrat Will Be Swimming, was first published by Northland in 1996, then in paperback in 2006. This poem is part of a new collection, New Love/Old Love, looking for a publisher. Visit her website to learn more about her life and work: https://cherylsavageaublog.wordpress.com/

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 12, 2024 · 7:30 am

With love, always

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

I picture my mother

white shmata cleaning rag

like an eternal light in her hand

seeking to brighten the furniture

in our little used dining room,

shining the up-right piano

I practiced on so badly,

I’ll be loving you, always,

Irving Berlin’s ode to enduring love

always on her lips.

I miss her voice, tremulous, soft,

but always on tune.

I miss her nut cake, her famous

desert that friends, loved ones,

neighbors adored and scarfed down

as soon as it emerged from the oven.

Seven sticks of butter and lord knows

how many cups of sugar

slithered down our grateful throats.

I take out her well-loved serving dishes

when my mahjong friends gather.

Red and white ceramic with pictures

of stately castles in Europe never visible

from the shtetl she came from.

They could even be worth something

but I’d never sell them, I still see her hands

scrubbing their delicate surfaces clean.

We always fought, she and I,

her frame of reference

always Europe and the devastation

of the Jews she left behind.

Mine, trying to dwell

and inhabit this brave new world

of America where she had come.

We always fought and I thought

maybe I didn’t love her enough,

maybe she loved me too much,

always wanting to protect me from

the alien world she found herself in.

I always loved her,

I know that now,

maybe as much as she loved me.

In my mind, she wears a red babushka,

slips it off her grey hair

to wave at the bus we wait for.

signals the bus driver to stop.

She yells, “Yoo Hoo, Yoo Hoo”.

Instead of cringing and looking where to hide,

today in my mind, my lips rush up

to graze her lined cheek, with love always.

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, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

3 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 5, 2024 · 7:30 am

An Unexpected Encounter

By Julie Brandon (Downers Grove, IL)

An unexpected encounter at a grocery store

In Downers Grove on a Sunday morning

Pushing my cart down an aisle

Stopping to grab something from a shelf

A young woman and her mother take my cart

Calling after them, I hear them laugh at their mistake

Time stops as they eye my Star of David necklace

And I their hijabs

For a brief terrible moment, we wonder

Threat or friendly strangers

This

This is how fears grows in a Midwestern grocery store

Longing to reassure them, I hurry away to buy a carton of eggs

Julie Brandon is a poet, playwright and liturgical lyricist. She began writing in earnest in her fifties. Her work has been published in Corner Bar Magazine, Awakenings Review, Bewildering Stories, Poetica Magazine, Mini Play Magazine, Fresh Words,  “Am Yisrael Chai Anthology” vol. 1 & 2 and “Writing of Love During War: Poems” among others. Julie’s short plays and monologues have been published and produced in the US and Great Britain. She has taken up the baritone ukulele because that’s what all the cool kids are doing. If you’d like to read more of Julie’s work, you can check out her new collection of poems that she’s written since 10/7: My Tears, Like Rain

2 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , ,

July 29, 2024 · 7:30 am

“Does God Have to Take Attendance?”  *

* Author’s note: This poem was inspired by Mayim Bialik, a Modern Orthodox Jew, star of “The Big Bang Theory,” whose character Amy said, “I don’t object to the concept of a deity, but I am baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.”

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

In my constant back-and-forth with God,

throwing questions up at the sky,

I do not expect answers,

but would be appeased by some sign

that my queries are at least received.

What if I obey 612 rules instead of 613?

What if I hold one Seder, not two?

What if I do not go to shul

each and every Saturday?

Does God have to take  attendance?

I have a lot more than Four Questions.

Do I need the decisions of rabbis

to tell me how to run my life?

Do I need the voices of the congregation

to emphasize the fact I am a Jew?

Does a faithful adherence to ritual

bring me closer to the presence of God?

Does He even care?

God, it’s me, Mel.

Are you even listening?

I am standing outside the synagogue

wondering if my attendance is required.

Is it mandatory I attend, or is it good

enough that I remain standing humbly,

asking my questions in Your sight?

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

2 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Brooklyn Jews, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , ,

July 22, 2024 · 7:30 am

A Home With Dignity

by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca (Calgary, Canada)

(A poem about belonging)

 I want six million Jews back to their homes

To their hat shops, their loved ones, and their bright mornings,

To awake in their beds with soft sheets and warm slippers

To put their feet into, and cross the threshold to kitchens 

Smelling warm with the baking of Challah bread.

I want sisters to whisper to each other from bunk beds

Scurrying up and down the ladder to exchange places

Laughing without fear of being muffled,

Like we did many nights with sleeping parents who

Unaware of our sibling shenanigans, dreamed in peace.

I want six million Jews to watch the butterflies 

Flitting across a kind sun that warmed their hearts

With promises of hope, of births, graduations, weddings 

Dressed in satin gowns with silver stars, the yellow ones 

Out of stock, discontinued, banned forever.

I want six million Jews to look out at the fields with cattle grazing

From train windows, with the fresh air blowing on their faces

Going on a family holiday to the beach with free minds

Surfing the waves, swimming with the dolphins,

Returning to their homes to wash off the sand from their happy feet

To wear shoes of the right size with no holes in them.

 In a career spanning over four decades, Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca has taught English in Indian colleges, AP English in an International School nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in India, and French and Spanish in private schools in Canada. Her poems are featured in various journals and anthologies, including the Sahitya Akademi Journal Of Indian Literature, the three issues of the Yearbooks of Indian Poetry in English, Verse-Virtual, The Madras Courier, and the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, among others. Kavita has authored two collections of poetry, Family Sunday and Other Poems and Light of The Sabbath. Her poem ‘How To Light Up a Poem,’ was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2020.  Her poems celebrate Bombay, the city of her birth, Nature, and her Bene Israel Indian Jewish heritage. She is the daughter of the late poet Nissim Ezekiel. 

Author’s note: Challah is a special bread in Jewish cuisine, usually braided and typically eaten on ceremonial occasions such as Shabbat and major Jewish holidays. Ritually-acceptable challah is made of dough from which a small portion has been set aside as an offering. The word is Biblical in origin. (Wikipedia)

(Editor’s Note: “A Home with Dignity was published in “Light of the Sabbath,” the author’s chapbook, as well as in the anthology “Heartstrings,” an anthology edited by Sanjula Sharma). It also appeared in the 25th Annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Poetry Issue of Poetry Super Highway, April 2023, and is reprinted here with permission of the author.)

1 Comment

Filed under Canadian Jewry, European Jewry, history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, poetry

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 15, 2024 · 7:16 am

At Pesach 2002

by Cheryl Savageau (Boston, MA)

….for Joseph

no bombs explode in our midst as we speak

but the tv tells stories of children in Paris

and Jerusalem who last night

dipped eggs in salt water

ate bitter herbs

they are dead now

How is this night

different from all others?

tonight we drink the four glasses of wine

schmear horseradish 

and charoset on the

bread of haste

we open the door to

Elijah and sip

from Miriam’s cup

we eat Bubbie’s 

matzoh balls

put an orange on the plate

there is nothing we eat

tonight that is not

a story

after the september bombing

my son and his wife

talked of the family they wanted

how dare we bring

a child into this

world?  but when

has it not been

this way?  how are

we any different?

and in love 

and defiance they 

conceived

tonight their unborn

child is the

stranger we welcome

among us

we will call him

Joseph he will be

loved he will ask

the questions open

the door drink

from the bottomless cup

Cheryl Savageau is a convert and also Native (Abenaki), and this poem is about her first experience as part of a Jewish family, and how she became part of the Jewish people. She has three collections of poetry: Mother/Land, (SALT 2006) Dirt Road Home (Curbstone Press 1995), and Home Country (Alice James, 1992).  Her memoir, Out of the Crazywoods, was published in 2020, and her children’s book, Muskrat Will Be Swimming, was first published by Northland in 1996, then in paperback in 2006. This poem is part of a new collection, New Love/Old Love, looking for a publisher. Visit her website to learn more about her life and work: https://cherylsavageaublog.wordpress.com/

Note: Previously published in the Cape Cod Poetry Review, Vol IV and V Summer 2018, and reprinted here with the generous permission of the author. 

Leave a comment

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

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

July 8, 2024 · 7:30 am

Safety for Jews

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

For the challah baking event at my synagogue,

a gathering to bring us together during these terrible times,

I carry in two extra bags of flour, four jars of honey,

sesame and poppy seeds we need at the last moment.

I am stopped at the gate of our building, a police cruiser

parked at the entrance, the two, armed guards,

glocks ready at their waists, know me, I am here often,

but still say, “We need to check your bags.”

They poke the grocery bags with a long stick,

find flour, honey, sesame and poppy seeds, scour

my purse for any hidden weapons, then wand me

in search of anything dangerous they might have missed.

I thank the two young guards, too young for such weapons,

tell them how grateful I am for their thoroughness

in protecting us, try not to think of the thugs

with AK-47’s that these innocents might have to face.

How did it come to this? Swastikas painted in the bathrooms

of my sons’ high school.  Friends tell me

they are removing mezuzahs from their front doors.

Do we need to hide all over again, here in America?

A parent tells me her daughter who wears a Jewish star

on her college campus was surrounded by a vicious group,

fellow students, yelling for her to leave, a dirty Jew, she no longer

belonged, shades of Nazi Germany.

We Jews are damned when we are weak, maligned as sheep

led to slaughter, but also damned when we fight back

and told we should take the high road, forgive and forget.

Just make peace.  What hostages?  What massacre of innocents?

As Jews, we thought if there comes a day when we need

to run, there is finally a safe place to take us in, the land of Israel,

our own Jewish state, our homeland.  Now Israel herself cries

for her captives, her dead.  

Safety for Jews is always an elusive dream.

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, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

July 1, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Valise

by Julie Standig (Doylestown, PA)

The valise was discovered directly next to two jars        

of home-made borscht, outside, on the terrace

that faced the aquarium, the Atlantic and Surf Avenue.

My mother grabbed the borscht.

I longingly looked at the luggage. Khaki camel

color with rusted brass metal latch closures,

that stuck but worked.

No surprise when I opened this time capsule—

an old Tunisian-stitched afghan made from acrylic

leftovers, which shrouded a fragile black leather,

pink ribboned photo album. The kind that held

photos in place with pasted paper corners.

I had searched every  album in my aunt’s home 

for a particular photo I had heard of, but never seen. 

The photo of her holding tight to her infant son.

In Auschwitz. The baby that didn’t make it to Brooklyn.

The photo was not there. And I had no clue 

who the people held by paper corners were. Notes

on the back were written in Hebrew and Polish. Draped

in the very familiar afghan. A blanket I knew well.

My aunt made it to keep her husband wrapped as he sat

in front of the TV on their sofa. He had lung cancer

and she aimed to stay the chill for as long as possible.

I took the afghan home, quite intent to return 

for the valise. But my mother got there first. 

She had no care for the aesthetic—saw it as garbage.

And maybe, maybe, my mother was right.

As for the afghan—it is put to good use whenever I catch

a fever, a chill, or feel forlorn. My Coney Island hug. 

Julie Standig’s poetry has appeared in Schuylkill Journal Review, US1 Poets/Del Val, Gyroscope Review and Crone editions, as well as online journals. She has a full collection of poems, The Forsaken Little Black Book and her chapbook, Memsahib Memoir. A lifelong New Yorker she now resides in Bucks County, Pa. with her husband and their Springer Spaniel. If you’d like to learn more about Julie and her work, visit: https://juliestandig.com

2 Comments

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

Tagged as , , ,

June 24, 2024 · 6:22 am

Things I need to hear right now (after nine days in Jerusalem)

by Evonne Marzouk (Maryland)

Tell me

I’ll feel better

when my body heals

when jet lag subsides

tell me I’ll sleep normally

when the war ends

when the hostages return home

when my son comes back

and (please G-d) goes to college

as planned.

Tell me 

I’ll rise from this 

confusion and fear

this time 

of antisemitic attacks 

and biased reporting

that slam against me

unexpected

(but now, more expected)

flinching

every time I turn on the news

or walk by graffiti

in my neighborhood and my city

or pass the police car

guarding 

in front of my shul.

Tell me

I won’t need to fear

what I say

or what I wear,

where I go

or what comes next

that a time will come

when I’ll feel safe again

to be who I am.

Tell me

I’ll again wake 

in the morning

with prayers of gratitude

(and not fear)

and my mind will be clear

for possibilities

empowering others

healing our planet

and living our biggest dreams.

After

the war ends

and my body heals

and jet lag fades

and the world moves on

(although some will never

be able to move on)

tell me, please, 

we’ll use all this

darkness

to find clarity, 

to be a shining light,

to heal the world.

Tell me, please

(though right now

it feels impossible)

we will find a way

together

to create lasting peace.

Evonne Marzouk’s writings have appeared in Newsweek, the Jewish News Syndicate, JTA, RitualWell, the Washington Post, and The Wisdom Daily, and her novel, “The Prophetess,” came out in paperback edition last fall. To learn more about Evonne and her work, visit her website: https://www.evonnemarzouk.com

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , ,