Category Archives: poetry

October 19, 2026 · 7:30 am

Eli, Eli

by Judith R. Robinson (Pittsburgh, PA)

eleven tolling 

orchestral bells 

as Elgar tries 

with eloquence

to grieve like a Jew

but the cello cries out

O God not again

as I do each New Year

for Akiva for Masada 

for the executed 

piled deep in pits

at Belarus and Rawa Ruska

for Chelm, Lelow, for Telz,

for the hundreds of shtetls

for Sobibor for Belzec

for the dozens of camps

my people incinerated ghosts

ash in the soil of Europe

O God, now for Pittsburgh

my city in America

for friends I knew

the freshest blood

for the Rosenthal boys

for the other innocents 

the eleven souls praying 

in the synagogue

for the eleven new dead.

*dedicated to the victims of the Tree of Life massacre, October 27, 2018

Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website: www.judithrrobinson.com 

Author’s note: The poem (and the painting which inspired the poem) are part of the permanent collection of the Rauh Jewish Archives at The John J. Heinz History Center of Pittsburgh. PA. Regarding the reference to Elgar, he was Sir Edward Elgar, a British composer who wrote some very moving, very sad music, such as the Cello Concerto in A minor, which is considered a masterful expression of grief, hence my reference to him as “grieving like a Jew.” Here’s a link to the Center if you’d like to browse through its collection: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/research/rauh-jewish-history-program-archives/

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October 12, 2026 · 7:30 am

The Calling, a Triptych

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I.

I can still see the cardboard box my father brought to me when he cleaned out his father’s house in late 1969 after my grandfather’s death at ninety-three. I can still see the curled edges of sepia photographs, fading penciled names and places in Yiddish or Cyrillic or German or Polish. I couldn’t read any of those languages then. I can now. I can still see myself on our playroom sofa rifling through the box. Saying to my father, I don’t know who any of these people are. He stashed the box in the basement boiler room.

II.

It has been thirty-five years since I visited his house looking for that box. He turned to me and said, The boiler burst and the room flooded. I felt sick, nauseated, that all that history was gone. My grandfather, being the last of his generation to pass, held onto these artifacts. Irreplaceable. 

I miss the way my father and I talked about his family’s history on the way home from monthly Jewish Genealogical Society meetings. How I could tease out his passive knowledge by offering a bit of what I knew. I am the only person in the family now who knows where our grandparents are buried. The only one who’d been there, placed stones on their graves in remembrance, honoring their memories.

III.

How lucky it was my father and I had that time together. How lucky it was his mother came to America in 1913, before the Great War that drove her family into safety’s diaspora. Before Soviet occupation drove her brother to a Siberian labor camp and Nazi occupation carried the others away, never to return. How lucky it is, dear ancestors, that I am the one you’ve tasked with remembering.

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.

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October 5, 2026 · 7:30 am

At Sixteen

by Annette Friend

I tell my mother
my honest truth
edged with blades

from a teenage
tongue that knows
only a pinch of the life

my mother suffered.
I am blinded by
my good fortune,

sheltered behind the veil
of my birth here in America
not the streets of the shtetel

in Poland where she grew up,
facing famines and pogroms,
the horrors of World War I,

Russian soldiers pillaging
her small village, friends, family,
when they invaded.

I listen, but don’t hear
the sad stories she tells me,
surrounded by the glow of America

even if the streets she found
weren’t paved with gold.
I scream, I will date whom I choose,

a handsome Italian-Catholic boy
who looks like Paul McCartney
What does my mother know?

This is a new world.
I cut her to the quick
with my sharp knifed words,

standing here well-fed
and clothed in freedom,
instead of buried

in an unmarked green grave
of the Poland she left
now almost Judenfrei

free of Jews as Hitler wanted,
only because of her courage
to book passage in steerage

at sixteen.

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, The San Diego Poetry Annual, The Jewish Writing Project, and the Paterson Literary Review. In August 2025, Annette along with artist Judy Langhoff published a book of ekphrastic poetry and paintings titled Pen and Brush: In Contemplation. She was honored to be chosen for third prize for her poem, “The Salvation of Books, Newark, N.J., 1959” in the 2026 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards.

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September 28, 2026 · 7:30 am

Holding On

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Los Angeles, CA)

I pick up a dandelion

While missiles fly overhead

My 34th birthday may be next weekend

Though I try holding on to any semblance of innocence I can muster 

This life has become a complicated one 

Soldiers to protect and wars I don’t support 

Perhaps it was always this way

Though I may not have been privy to it

I have gotten better 

At placing down the weight of the world 

Reminding myself I am not the governing bodies

Nor people waging wars to sell their weaponry

I am but a person

Celebrating Persian new year 

Holding on to tradition while those in my motherland

Have been cut from the world for 3 weeks and counting 

Only a person

Running to the bomb shelter

Dog leash and water bottle in hand

Perhaps I dissociate daily from the reality of the situation

Perhaps this is how I survive the reality of the situation 

Holding onto joy where I can find it

Maintaining there is still good in people

Even the ones sending the bombs

I suppose anything is possible with empathy

If I could only stretch my mind enough

How I wish the tyrants would do the same

How I wish the simple people were treated as sacred 

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 20, 2026 · 7:30 am

Shalom Aleichem

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

I say hello to you as I drive on the Garden State Parkway

that bisects the cemetery in Newark. I have not been to see you

in years. Visiting Day at the Grove Street Cemetery is only one day

a year, the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

You know the local police are there to protect you, but it’s too late.

The cemetery’s already been vandalized many times over.

I like to think only your decaying bodies lie in those caskets. 

Your spirit is still flying around, maybe inhabiting someone else.

That while I’m driving, you’re making a brisket or cutting up

onions and carrots for stew or soup. That while I’m driving

you’re thinking about your daughters and grandchildren

Over There, the ones you’ll never get to see again. That 

you still refuse to learn English and sometimes

you forget your teeth. I await your Aleichem Shalom.

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet whose work has appeared in more than seventy journals, including the Jewish Writing Project, Minyan Magazine, Jewish Literary Journal, Vita Poetica, and Of the Book. Recent books include Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press), The Wanderers: Poems (Shanti Arts), and the forthcoming Memory Collector (Kelsay Books).

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September 14, 2026 · 7:30 am

To My Best Knowledge, Judaism Is

by Claudine Nash (New York, NY)

an ancient thread

dyed in modern colors

woven into our every action

and outlook,             

to my best knowledge, Judaism is

the comforting cloth

that warms me upon waking,

the string that ties me

to every Jew who ever

stood at the footpath

of the mountain. To

my best knowledge,

Judaism is the fabric

of my family, it is

the holiness laced into

our everyday moments,

our rituals, meals, music,

worship and sacred

times and seasons, to my

best knowledge, it is

the stranger welcomed into

our tent, it is a quilt

of blessings.

Claudine Nash is an award-winning poet who lives and writes in New York.  She has authored five poetry collections, most notably Beginner’s Guide to Loss in the Multiverse (Blue Light Press, 2020) which won the 2020 Blue Light Book Award.  She has also edited three poetry collections and is a practicing psychologist. Widely published, her work has been nominated for the Pulitzer, Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes and briefly travelled through space as part of the Writers on the Moon time capsule of contemporary writing. 

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September 7, 2026 · 7:30 am

Tashlich

by Judith R. Robinson (Pittsburgh, PA)

We live the days

between the days

of awe and lamentation.

Down to the river’s edge

the pale rabbi treks, arrives,

sways, raises a fist

plump full of crumbs

to cast into the sparkling

current of hope.

Where are the fish?

Where are the fish big enough

to swallow these sins?

To eat our sins

and swim off, swim off, fish!

Take our sins with you!

Purify us, save us, 

let us begin again

souls washed clean again,

we pray 

       we pray 

             we pray

one more year 

         one more year 

                one more year.

Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. If you’d like to learn more about her and her work, visit her website: www.judithrrobinson.com

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August 24, 2026 · 7:30 am

Zayda’s Kiddush Cup

by Janice Alper (San Diego, CA)

The small silver cup was stowed
in steerage, it sailed across
an ocean to a new home. It
overflowed with red wine
every Friday night. Zayda’s
hand never trembled as he
mumbled the blessing to usher
in Shabbat. Now I hold it in my
hand carefully, as the wine spills
over to the sixth generation.

Janice Alper writes poems, personal essays, and memoirs. Her work has appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Bristlecone, and California Bards, and other places. She is the author of Sitting on the Stoop: A Girl Grows in Brooklyn, 1944-1957. Janice is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry, from San Diego State University. Follow her at www.janicesjottings1.com

Editor’s note: “Zayda’s Kiddush Cup” was originally published on OftheBook (https://ofthebookpress.com) and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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August 10, 2026 · 7:30 am

My Name is Chaim — Life!

By Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

We were Jewish when I was growing up,

American-style, New York-style Jewish,

the way our nearby kosher deli was kosher

but not kosher enough to be patronized by

the more religious Chasidim.

We patronized our local Temple Beth-El annually

on the High Holy days and smiled at all the strangers

in the fully seated congregation, pretended to

listen to the Hebrew prayers, imitated davening

with the others and nodded greetings of the day

when we all left to comfortably return to our

secular homes and apartments.

We knew that we were Jewish by the way we rooted

for the new-born state of Israel to survive the cold-

blooded attacks on its inchoate survival, by the way 

our friends celebrated holidays that others didn’t recognize, 

by the pride we felt when we noted the success of Uncle Miltie, 

the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Danny Kaye, 

Red Buttons, Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas — and rooted 

hard for Sandy Koufax (even as we privately kvelled 

in the memory of the grand accomplishments of the player 

and the man named Hank Greenberg, who, I later found out, 

had attended the same high school as I did).

My father didn’t make a big deal about religion,

never spoke about his European youth, and called me

Chaim (never once using my American name).

It wasn’t till my own old age (sixty years after he

found his forever home in Jewish Heaven)

that the wisdom came to me to comprehend

my Jewish-Yiddish name.

He had escaped the hell of his Polish ghetto and

had married a Latvian beauty of a similar escape and,

after they thought they were done filling our home

with loving girls, ten years later, I appeared, a son, 

to be loved without condition, a son who somehow 

represented life, a promise of the continuation, 

not so much of our Jewishness but of our name 

and our mystical — more than mythical — connection 

to Moses and David and our new heroes of the decade 

of my birth, with names like Herzl, Ben-Gurion, 

Eban, Dayan, Allon and Meir.

We Jews know well how to survive and thrive.

We understand the holiness and the value and vitality of life.

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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July 20, 2026 · 7:30 am

Immigrants All

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

I come from wandering Jews,

merchants, lawyers, teachers,

grocery store owners.

I come from those who rode steerage

slept above deck in turbulent seas,

walked miles as young teens

to depart from Bremen, Germany

leaving all they knew

speaking Russian, Polish, Yiddish,

carrying only brass candlesticks

and a few coins.

Born from a mother

who labored long,

the only one in her family

to be born in a hospital.

All the others were born at home,

assisted by midwives.

I remember flowers, bloated

peonies on dining room wallpaper,

lilacs and lilies of the valley

gathered in large bouquets

to grace our table. I remember

my mother as a lion,

my champion at school.

When teachers were difficult,

she sang for me.

Sang sweet songs

in a kitchen, her haven,

spoke Yiddish to her father,

a frequent visitor. I remember

hot nights, looking out 

my bedroom window.

Scents of honeysuckle and roses,

haunting train whistle,

far in the distance.

How we might stray far from our roots,

escape the cloistered life

of segregated neighborhoods,

only to return, imprinted

on some cellular level

by those early risk takers.

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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