Category Archives: poetry

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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September 26, 2025 · 7:30 am

Unetaneh Tokef

by Theresa Werba (Spring City, PA)

Oh God, I am so afraid.

The future looms before me, unknown.

I fear what I do not know,

cannot know.

I fear your power over my fate.

You’re going to judge me, so I must speak of the

sacred power of this day.

I pray for mercy and truth,

because you are the judge

who knows, and sees all.

What will you write, and seal?

How will you record, and count?

What will you remember, of all 

I have forgotten?

I love books, but the Book of Remembrance

I fear, as it reads itself aloud.

What will I hear?

What has my hand signed?

The sound of remembrance!

The shofar— loud, penetrating,

piteous, strong, strange,

elemental, earthy, and

yet of spirit— but within myself

will I hear your still, small voice?

Will I rush forth with angels,

seized with trembling and terror

as they proclaim, “Behold, The Day of Judgment”?

Will I be judged as angels?

Will you judge me as a shepherd does

his sheep, passing, counting, numbering,

decreeing my living soul, my nefesh,

its destiny?

B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivun,

Uv’Yom Tzom Kippur yechateimun.

Oh righteous God,

will I live? Will I die?

Do I have an appointed time?

Will I drown? Will fire consume me?

Will I be stabbed? Will an animal destroy me?

Will I starve? Will I die of thirst?

Will the earth shake? Will malady decimate me?

Will I be stoned? Or burned?

Will life be peaceful, or will I suffer more?

Will I be poor, or rich?

Will I be brought low, or raised up?

I worry about all these things, and yet,

You give me some control over my fate,

because I can turn to you, pray to you,

and do good in the world,

wherein you may alter the course,

alleviate the punishment,

change the decree of my future.

And so I stand, expectantly,

in the New Year,

knowing that I have atoned,

trusting in your judgments,

though I do not understand them, or you, or why.

And I try to be less afraid of the future.

B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivun,

Uv’Yom Tzom Kippur yechateimun.

Theresa Werba is the author of eight books, including What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse (Bardsinger Books, 2024), Finally Autistic: Finding My Autism Diagnosis as a Middle-Aged Female (Bardsinger Books, 2024) and Sonnets, a collection of 65 sonnets (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift, Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Fevers of the Mind, The Art of Autism, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Her work ranges from forms such as the ode and sonnet to free verse, with topics ranging from neurodivergence, love, loss, aging, to faith and disillusionment and more.  She also has written on adoption and abuse/domestic violence. Werba is the joyful mother of six children and grandmother to seven. Theresa holds a Master of Music with distinction in voice pedagogy and performance from Westminster Choir College and is known for her dramatic poetry readings. She is a member of Beth Israel Congregation in Eagle, Pennsylvania where she will be singing “Aveinu, Malkeinu” for the high holidays. 

You can find more about Theresa Werba and her work at www.theresawerba.com and on social media and YouTube @thesonnetqueen. 

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September 22, 2025 · 7:30 am

Braiding the challah

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)


            for Rachel


I watched as your hands melted

into soft dough, the dome of it,

puffed and swollen, and how naturally

your fingers formed and divided it

into four roughly equal parts,

then each of those into snakes,

the kind I remembered creating

in kindergarten with clay.

 
I watched as you designed four

round Challahs as Rosh Hashanah

gifts for friends. You said it was easy, 

and I wanted to believe that, as I observed

you, the snake charmer, plaiting the strands. 

You alone knew the rhythm, the form 

of what would soon become four fragrant crowns.

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

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September 19, 2025 · 7:30 am

T’shuvah

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

It was just before the high holy days. 
My brother traveled from Hawaii to the east coast
to spend the holidays attending my father’s shul. 

He was invited to have lunch with an orthodox family,
members of a local Chabad.

I found the location of the house and decided
to surprise him. I knocked on the door, entered
the house, and asked for my brother by name.     

I was not dressed as an orthodox Jew. 
Nor was my brother. No beard, no white shirt,
no black fedora, no black jacket, no tzitzits. 

“Jack! Is this your brother?”  I heard someone call out.  
“Yes…  T’shuvah!” my brother announced with a sly smile.  
We greet with a hug. I’m vaguely familiar with the word. 

Like a password: it explains my appearance, my presence.  
Ahhh, T’shuvah! They shouted the word as if it was a toast;
their faces alive with smiles

Richard Epstein, a long-time resident of the Washington, DC area, was brought up in the Orthodox and Conservative temples of Scranton, PA. He has also spent some time as a student of Buddhism. Richard often examines and questions his religion through poetry. He has been a featured reader at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Kensington Day of the Book festival, Philadelphia Ethical Society, U.S. Navy Memorial, The Vietnam Woman’s Memorial, the Memorial Day Writers Project, and Walter Reed National Medical Center. He is the editor of two veteran anthologies and his poetry has appeared in The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Jewish Writing Project, Poetica, and others.

Author’s Note: T’shuvah — One who returns.  Being that all definitions are inadequate, t’shuvah involves repentance. 

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September 12, 2025 · 7:30 am

We Must Have Apples

by Beth Kanell (Waterford, VT)

Rain returned as we met the new year. She danced,

spread perfumed presence. Rosh Chodesh Elul sang to us. 

Mouths wet at last, our tongues merged in prayer, chanted

gratitude. Thirst assuaged.

The calendar refreshed proclaims the Days of Awe.

Yesterday’s air, dry with drought, hung dusty with death—

now the tree trembles, as droplets pelt the leaves,

soak into soil. Roots

demand tenderness. Who longs for honey on the tongue, 

while the hills bruise to umber, tarnished with gold, splashed

with blood-bright crimson? The weather forecast misses this:

proposes paper profiles  

as we taste promises. Out to sea, cyclones seethe. Rain

may increase this evening. The first day of the Jewish new year

starts at sundown, rarely the same day of an autumn month

the calendar also dancing

which is why we are picking apples in such rain; wind could

scatter them on the ground, bruise them, aromatic invitation

to passing deer, who devour in darkness. We are almost ready,

recipes laid out. Memories

of grandparents and of children’s questions. Of answers

that we can’t yet believe. Of what we could not prevent: raw

grief for the unrescued, the damaged, the struggle to praise

as we witness death. Wash

with tenderness. Fruit, too, desires cool water. Paring. A wiped

board for sorting, slicing, blade laid to red-green apple peel 

that curls in crisp helix around our fingers. Regrets, resolutions:

a busy kitchen, scrubbed hands,

heart shaken and struck by the evening news. Rain splashes,

weeping. It falls on the just and the unjust, the judged, the parched

urgency of the garden in autumn as squash ripens, carrots swell,

atonement hesitates, the Taurid meteors

spit fireballs across September’s crisp crust. Aroma of apples.

Of my mother’s cinnamon willingness, my father’s tobacco,

the sour tang of sweat and fear in any crowded room. Open doors

admit fresh forgiveness: hear the rain.

Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont among rivers, rocks, and a lot of writers. Her poems seek comfortable seats in small well-lit places, including Lilith Magazine, The Comstock Review, Indianapolis Review, Gyroscope Review, The Post-Grad Journal, Does It Have Pockets?, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ritualwell, Persimmon Tree, Northwind Treasury, RockPaperPoem, and Rise Up Review. Her collection Thresholds is due in early 2026 from Kelsay Books. Join her for conversation (bring your own tea) at https://bethkanell.blogspot.com.

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September 8, 2025 · 7:30 am

Maple

by Lori Levy (Sherman Oaks, CA)

My friend says I’m always looking for maple—

for what’s good and sweet, like the syrup made from

the maples of my childhood in Vermont.

Not everything in life is maple, she says.

Maybe I’m looking for it more these days.

The older I get, the more I notice

the bittersweet taste of life. I wish I could say

it’s like the chocolate I use to make brownies,

but it’s more like this:

as I’m sitting with a friend in rapt silence,

watching Itzhak Perlman play violin in Los Angeles,

another concert is going on in Gaza,

a bloodcurdling one of booms, bangs, screams. 

My siblings in Israel send me photos of flowers blooming

in green fields: lupines, cyclamens, clovers, daisies.

The war is in its fifth month,

but there they are, walking among irises, anemones. 

I read about an 84-year-old woman

held hostage by Hamas in a dark, airless tunnel,

how she’s given six dates to eat, her food for the day,

a bottle of water placed just beyond her reach:

she’s too weak to get up from her mattress.

Palestinians are dying. Israelis are dying.

Children in Gaza are starving. Israeli hostages are being raped.

My worldview begins to crack and crumble:

Was I wrong to believe people are basically good?

I used to laugh in denial when my daughter said evil exists.

Now I dig in the dark, desperate for a trace of maple.

Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, and numerous other online and print literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Her poems have also been published in medical humanities journals and Jewish journals. In 2023, two of her chapbooks were published: What Do You Mean When You Say Green? and Other Poems of Color (Kelsay Books) and Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont (Ben Yehuda Press). You can find some of her poems on Instagram at IG@lorilevypoems. Levy lives with her husband in Los Angeles near their children and grandchildren, but “home,” for her, has also been Vermont and Israel. 

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