Category Archives: poetry

January 5, 2026 · 7:30 am

Tikkun Chatzot and Tikkun Olam

by Immanuel Suttner (Sydney, Australia)

Tikkun Chatzot (geulah ze’irah)

Once in Jerusalem
very late
I took the No. 9 bus home
and on the way
at a flashing light
saw a road gang
fixing a pot hole
that meant at least as much
as the rebuilding
of the Beyt haMikdash.
_____________________________

Tikkun (fixing) chatzot (midnight) is a custom where devout Jews rise at midnight to recite prayers, mourn the loss of the temple in Jerusalem, and pray for its restoration.
Beyt haMikdash – the temple that stood in Jerusalem. Beyt (house) Mikdash (that is holy, that is consecrated)
geulah zeirah – a little redemption
_________________________

Tikkun Olam

sometimes I get a crazy desire
to fix things

not the world
for which I don’t have a license

but something like a mobile phone
into which a zealous child has stuffed
the sim card the wrong way around

and then I wrestle with the phone
like Yaakov and the malach
for hours and hours
‘til both it and i
are broken
_________________________________

Tikkun olam – repairing the world
malach – angel
______________________

Immanuel Suttner grew up in South Africa. He moved to Israel shortly before his 18th birthday, chazar bitshuva, and studied in ultra orthodox yeshivot. After three years he re-embraced secularism, and served in the IDF.  Post the army he did a degree in English and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Suttner now resides in Sydney, Australia. Obviously the gestalt of all three countries he has lived in have found their way into his poetry. He has authored several books including Cutting Through the Mountain (1997, Viking), The African Animal Football Cup (2010), and four collections of poetry: Hidden and Revealed (2007), Ripening (2020), Becoming The Sea (2025) and Glimmers (2025).

Suttner’s work could be described as contemporary Zen with charoset, devotional poems disguised as kvetching at G-d, all mixed in with a smattering of confessional outpourings, ironic salvos at the excesses of modernity, and love poems to his late dog Ella, z”l. Several of his poems riff off Hebrew source texts, subverting them or reinterpreting them in fresh and surprising ways. 

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit: Becoming the Sea, Ripening, and Hidden and Revealed

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December 22, 2025 · 7:00 am

Coming Home with a Paintbrush

by Albert Levi (Hod HaSharon, Israel)

A few months ago, I returned home from reserve duty in Gaza

The streets were quiet

My boots were still covered in dust

And inside me, a storm was still raging

There are things we carry back from war that have no words

Things you don’t talk about over coffee

Things that settle in your chest and stay there unless you find a way to release them

For me, that release came through paint

I walked into my studio the very next morning

Not because I felt inspired

But because I needed to breathe

And sometimes the only place I know how to breathe is in front of a blank canvas

I opened jars of acrylic

Picked up my palette knife

And something in me started to move

I didn’t plan to paint what I painted

But I reached instinctively for blues and whites

And I began creating something that felt like light

Lions with fire in their eyes

Doves carrying quiet prayers

Trees that held the memory of generations

Maps of Israel drawn with energy and color, not lines

My name is Albert Levi

I’m twenty-three years old

I’m a Jewish artist living in Israel

And before I was an artist, I was a soldier

For the past year, I served as a combat commander in a special forces unit

I was called to the north, then to Gaza

I saw destruction, fear, grief

I also saw unity, bravery, compassion, and a fierce kind of love

And through all of it, I carried something invisible with me

A sense that even in the worst moments, we are not only fighting to defend life

We are fighting to preserve meaning, memory, and beauty

When I came home, I didn’t want to paint war

I wanted to paint what we are fighting for

Family

Spirit

Joy

Light

The stories we tell our children

The strength we find in ancient roots

The future we still believe in

So I painted

Every day

Not because I had something to sell

But because I had something to feel

And eventually, something to give

Now, my art hangs in Jewish homes around the world

Some are homes I will never visit

Some belong to people I will never meet

But I know that when they look at the canvas, they feel something real

They feel the roar of the Lion of Judah

The quiet of Jerusalem at sunset

The pride of Am Yisrael standing tall

Even when far from Israel, even when surrounded by different languages or customs, they see their reflection

I did not go to art school

I did not study composition or technique

I studied life

In the sand

In the silence

In the longing for home

My colors are not perfect

My lines are not clean

But they are true

Because they come from the same place the Jewish people always created from

From resilience

From heart

From hope that refuses to die

I don’t know if art can heal the world

But I know it can hold a piece of it

And that is enough for me

Albert Levi is a 23-year-old Jewish artist living in Israel. After serving as a combat commander in a special forces unit, he returned home carrying more than just memories. He carried emotions too big for words. That’s when he picked up a paintbrush. 

Through bold colors, Jewish symbols, and emotional honesty, Albert creates art that speaks to the heart of the Jewish people. His work now hangs in homes across the world, as a reminder of resilience, identity, and the light we continue to fight for.

You can explore his paintings at www.albertlevi.com

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December 8, 2025 · 7:30 am

Urban gardening: A guide for the perplexed

by Dan Fleshler (Jackson Heights, NY)

I 

The first person who ever planted anything 

knew more than I knew about growing

and blossoming, 

when, at 62, I started my first garden

on two swaths of dirt edged 

with flimsy iron rails abutting 

the chipped sidewalk 

in front of my apartment building.

One year later, toe-tapping in mid-March 

over patches of sleazy lingering snow, 

I had no idea where I’d planted

all my hostas and coleus or whether

they would return and what spindly growth

to preserve or uproot and whether everything 

I’d nudged into the earth had been ruined. 

So I waited, and pruned away weeds 

and leaves, and tried to pluck up 

everything that had been tossed 

from the sidewalk, including 

shattered Tanqueray and beer bottles, 

blunts and condoms, candy wrappers,

Dunkin Donuts cups and even grimy dentures. 

II

I had glimpses of ancient farming forebears, 

imagined them talking about the harvest

in anxious Aramaic. 

A haphazard, often indolent Jew,

I didn’t mark my days

based on their pastoral calendar, 

which relies on the harvest cycle 

and movements of the moon 

to divvy up the year. 

But in morning meditation sittings, 

before mindful breathing,

I’d begun to sprinkle in Hebrew prayers,

psalms and paeans that prompted wonder 

at miracles, like the astonishing fact 

that I was carbon-based matter aware

of itself, or the energy that exploded 

in my cells when insulin meshed 

with sugar.

The praise from radically amazed Jews

nudged me into trying to embrace, 

despite hard cold evidence, 

the Buddha’s claim that human birth

was precious and helped me confront 

all my plagues, especially the recurring

conviction, pestilent and dark, that time 

was ticking past 

with no purpose or point.

When I Googled “Hebrew harvest prayers,”

I learned that on Pesach, 

before the First Temple was embedded, 

Jewish farmers brought sheaves of barley 

to priests for blessings 

and chanted an annual prayer for dew. 

Then, craving abundant wheat, they started 

counting the Omer, a chant announcing 

each new day, along with the number 

of weeks, for 49 days until the holiday

of Shavuot, their harvest festival, 

as if keeping track of time, not forgetting 

and loudly proclaiming the days ticking past,

could yield the right amount of rain.

III

Three mornings after Google’s revelations, 

I spotted the woody rootstalks of my hostas. 

After two days, their tiny green stems bristled

after a light rain and the earliest bits of coleus 

pushed above the dirt. I knew enough 

to buy mulch and violas at the Home Depot 

and drop and shape them in the earth 

next to my sidewalk. 

By the time Pesach rolled around, 

I prayed for dew but couldn’t shift 

far enough away from myself

to count the Omer and anyway

I didn’t need the extra effort,

because there were already

new leaves and flowers.

A few more arguments for time 

to continue are lingering 

in my front garden, 

as people skulking past hurl 

KFC baskets, vape pipes, paper bags 

and bottles into mystifying soil.

Dan Fleshler’s short stories and poems have been published in North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Buddhist Poetry Journal, Half and One, and Masque & Spectacle. 

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December 1, 2025 · 7:30 am

History

by Hamutal Bar-Yosef, translated by Esther Cameron (Jerusalem, Israel)

In the year 1939 my mother,

who lived on a socialist kibbutz,

got a letter from her bourgeois mother

asking whether, in her opinion,

it would be worthwhile to move to Palestine.

Not worthwhile, my mother wrote back with roughened fingers.

Here you would not have servants.

Even jewelry, which you love so much,

even your wedding ring, would be frowned on here.

In the year 1949 my mother,

recently bereaved of her only son,

volunteered to help in a transit camp for immigrants.

What kind of help do you need? my mother asked

the woman from Iraq.

Can you polish my nails? asked the woman

and held out to my mother

long, delicate fingers adorned with rings.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef was born in 1940 on Kibbutz Tel Yosef. She studied comparative literature, philosophy and Hebrew literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is professor emerita at Ben-Gurion University. Bar-Yosef has published 17 collections of poetry, besides books of literary scholarship, essays, fiction, and translations from Russian, French, English and Yiddish. She has received numerous prizes, including the Israel President’s Prize for Poetry and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry.  Her poems have been translated into 16 languages. 

Esther Cameron is an American-born poet, essayist, editor and translator living in Jerusalem.  She translated Bar-Yosef’s previous collection, The Ladder, and novel, The Wealthy.  Her own poems have appeared in various periodicals in Israel and America; a monograph, Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan, appeared with Lexington Books in 2014.  Her Collected Works are available on Amazon. She is founding editor of The Deronda Review.  

Editor’s Note: The poems are from Bar-Yosef’s and Cameron’s book The Miraculous Mistake, forthcoming from Sheep Meadow Press.

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November 10, 2025 · 7:30 am

Collecting Languages

After White Squares by Lee Krasner (USA) 1948 *

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I won a Hebrew contest once,

not because I understood

the text blocks reading right to left,

            although I knew zeh meant “this”

            and ha meant “the”

but because I understood the random

algorithm of standardized testing

and that I couldn’t color in

too many D choices with my No. 2 pencil.

I won Honorable Mention

in a German Declamation contest once playing

a Hausfrau in Wolfgang Borchert’s “Die Küchenuhr,”

my hair in pink curlers, wearing my mother’s housecoat

on the Rutgers stage, the only top contestant

who did not speak German at home.

As a teen, I performed “Tri Medvedya,”

the “Three Bears,” to get eighth graders

interested in taking Russian classes

at the high school.

            Odna devoshka poshlya v lecu i zablyudilas.

            A girl went into the forest and sat down.

I took Greek classes from a Rutgers professor,

            So much based on the aleph bais of Hebrew

            Even the Russian kukla for doll

Czech lessons in Prague,

            Where I recognized from Russian

            Infinitives k’ pti to drink and plakat to cry

tried French with Rosetta Stone.

            L’éléphante est dans l’avion

The elephant is on the airplane

But it was my frustration with not knowing

my grandparents’ Yiddish that led me

to formal classes, to confront what little

I knew, what little I had absorbed,

robbed of linguistic heritage

by immigrant grandparents

who died too soon.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

* Editor’s note: This poem–an ekphrastic poem–was inspired by Lee Krasner’s work, White Squares. To view Krasner’s artwork, visit: https://whitney.org/collection/works/504

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November 3, 2025 · 7:30 am

Two Yahrzeit Candles

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

February 17th, my mother’s Yahrzeit.

I realized I had forgotten to light 

the candle for my father on February 11th.

They died years apart, my father at 62,

several months before his early retirement,

my mother at 92, a mainstay in my world. 

My father and I remained estranged.

He missed so many chances to be part 

of my life—never came to my wedding, 

my college graduation, or celebrated

the birth of our daughter, his only grandchild.

February 17th, I lit two candles chanted

the Kaddish for both parents, holy words 

in Aramaic that are deeply etched 

in every synagogue service. This ritual 

binds me to my ancestors, sends shivers 

down my spine as I reckon with shame 

at the growing distance from my father. 

There’s no accounting for the candles’ 

wax or for the duration of their burning. 

One candle with barely a flicker, 

while the other still flares two days later.

Who’s to say for which parent the candle 

burns brighter?

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Borderless, 3 Elements Review, and The Jewish Writing Project. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129 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.

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October 27, 2025 · 7:30 am

Hear, O Israel

by Leséa Newman (Holyoke, MA)

And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart.

–Deuteronomy 6:6

A man

A 90-year-old man

A 90-year-old Jewish man

A 90-year-old  Jewish man walking

A 90-year-old Jewish man walking briskly

A 90-year-old  Jewish man walking briskly through his neighborhood

A 90-year-old  Jewish walking briskly through his neighborhood for his daily exercise

A prayer

A 4,000-year-old prayer

A 4,000-year-old Jewish prayer

A 4,000-year-old Jewish prayer printed

A 4,000-year-old Jewish prayer printed carefully 

A 4,000-year-old Jewish prayer printed carefully on a scroll  

A 4,000-year-old Jewish prayer printed carefully on a scroll rolled inside a mezuzah

A mezuzah of gold 

With a six-pointed star

Hanging around his neck

For seventy-seven years

A present from his parents

To connect him

To protect him

Worn upon his heart

Every day since he became a Bar Mitzvah,

A man at age thirteen

Standing proudly on the bima

Chanting loudly from the Torah

All those decades ago

Snatched

Yanked

Snapped

Stolen

The sudden theft

Leaving him bereft,

Stunned, and shaken

By what has been taken,

His veiny fist pressed

To his curved bony chest,

What has always been there

Now nothing but air.

(For Stanley)

Lesléa Newman has created 87 books for readers of all ages including the memoirs-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father, the novel-in-verse, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard;  and the children’s books, Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story, The Babka Sisters, and Ketzel the Cat Who Composed. Her literary prizes include two National Jewish Book Awards and the Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award. Upcoming books in 2026 include the children’s books, Song of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Welcome: A Wish for Refugees; and Something Sweet: A Sitting Shiva Story. For more information about Lesléa, visit her website:  www.lesleanewman.com .


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October 20, 2025 · 7:30 am

Daffodils and Nuns (1957)

By Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

Daffodils, ridiculous, happy flowers with
small pinched faces in yellow or orange
gaze innocently at the world haloed
by petals like the yellow habits of nuns.

A day off first grade, I was dusting wine bottles
in Pop’s liquor store when black-cloaked nuns
with pinched white faces and fleshy foreheads 
pressed into white bands shuffled into Pop’s store.

The bells over the door chimed their welcome,
but I didn’t see heaven, only over-sized
penguins with huge silver crosses blazing
like lightening across broad chests.

I remembered my mother’s warning
never to enter a church where nuns 
might steal a Jewish child and
a story foraged from the forests

of Poland that told me of priests 
inciting pogroms at Easter from 
their pulpits, and I ran up the stairs
to Pop in the backroom, screaming,

“Nuns, Nuns, here in our store!”
Pop touched a finger to my lips,
held me close in his arms, said,
“They’re only here collecting charity,
money for Saint Mary’s down the street.”

No matter where my fears first blossomed,
I know I would have preferred nuns in yellow
and orange habits. Maybe I would have even 
given them the quarter I had buried deep in 
the pocket of my red overalls.

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.


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October 13, 2025 · 7:30 am

Our stories forever intertwined

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Santa Monica, CA)

How many more tears

do I have left for a home

I’ve never been?

Longing to see where my mother

played when she was just

a daughter.

The other boys left as my father,

named after Elyahu, ventured into the water, 

seen as dirty, I’m afraid, his name a tricky thing to hide.

And where my grandfather took a routine beating

on the way to school for being a Jew

in Tehran.

How many more tears

do I have left for Palestine?

They say thirty percent of the deaths are children alone.

Aid distribution a catastrophe,

a needlessly fatal obstacle course for the hungry.

How can the extremists live with themselves?

I hear the stories, read the poems,

and feel changed. Please don’t look away

for too long.

We must know

the horror

to alter it.

Suddenly, reservoirs of tears

I thought had emptied

appear replenished.

How many more tears do I have left to cry

for the hostages– their families, the honorable peace builders–

even that poor dog, killed.

From Be’eri to DC, followed by chants of “Free Palestine!”

This–this is not how you liberate,

though I myself have no answers beyond love.

That is the antidote I hold onto tightly

mistakenly thinking I could leave it

to the political experts.

How many tears do I possibly have left

listening to one of the survivors

after all she has lived through on her kibbutz lately.

Vehemently stating how unwelcome the PM is

like a bad word, I do not wish to give his name

the time nor the space.

Of course the last thing on earth she would want to do

is pose with him. What— for optics?

You really want to discuss the optics right now?

How much longer will I be chained to the news

eagerly awaiting the latest episode of Amanpour?

This is my least favorite addiction.

But who else can I trust?

Am I supposed to go about as normal?

The whole of it has been tossed upside down, to be reductive.

Trying to gather a morsel of control:

listen, dialogue, donate, organize, protest, build peace.

Rinse, Repeat.

While my family and my love hide in the mamads.

Bombs where there should be falling stars

over your home and mine.

Giving way to a day when we share

the bounty of olives,

laugh over Turkish coffee, the irony.

Together in the shuk

bound, our stories

forever intertwined.

Lillian Farzan-Kashani is an Iranian American and Jewish therapist, poet, and speaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Much of her work is rooted in being a child of immigrants and is reflective of her intersectionality. Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https://www.lillianfarzan.com/

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September 29, 2025 · 7:30 am

Is God at my diner?

By Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

This Rosh Hashonah

I did not go to services.

I did not pray 

with the congregation.

I did not walk 

up to the Ark.

Instead, I went for my morning coffee

at the local diner.

Was this a crisis of faith?

I don’t think so.

God sat at the next table over

watching me, making sure

I was all right.

He’s OK with me 

ordering my usual fare

while I assure Him 

my belief is constant and true,

whether I’m reading a

prayer book or a menu.

The practice of religion

may be communal,

but it is also deeply personal,

I think, as I sip my hot coffee

and know with certainty

that in the coming Yom Kippur

I will be inscribed

wherever I happen to be.

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/

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