Category Archives: poetry

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 , , , , , ,

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 6, 2024 · 7:30 am

Thirsty roots

by Jane Schulman (New York, NY)

We buried my father on a rise  

under a jack pine where steam rose 

from the fresh-dug grave, colliding  

with January air.  

My sons unloaded the casket  

from the back of a pickup and walked it  

to the open grave, a Star of David  

carved on the coffin lid. 

For years my father railed against  

synagogues, Zionism, all kinds  

of God talk – evangelical  

in his atheism.  

But in the end, when I asked  

one last time if I could bury him  

when he died, he shrugged and said 

if it means so much to you.  

It did.  It does. As his last gift,  

he let me bury him a Jew.  

Now the Star of David rests  

above his chest as thirsty roots 

of the jack pine mingle  

with heartache and nettle. 

Jane Schulman is a poet and fiction writer. She works as a speech pathologist with children with autism and cognitive delays.  Jane published her first book of poetry, Where Blue Is Blue, with Main Street Rag in October, 2020.  Her writing has appeared widely online and in print. She was a finalist for the Morton Marr Prize at Southwest Review.     

2 Comments

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

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 , , , , , ,

April 8, 2024 · 7:00 am

Greeting

by Carol Grannick (Evanston, IL)

How could I have known on the night I began

tilting then circling my hands in front of my eyes 

pulling in light like a warm breeze at twenty below

welcoming Shabbat in with the light for the first time 

with gifts of candles, prayer, song, bread, wine

and my wondering, wandering self peeking 

as an explorer into something new undiscovered 

and yet there for generations before me 

Others knew the right place to go, where

to seek light and they guaranteed it was there

Trusting in this, I placed the candles just so

turned in prayer and welcomed Shabbat

and surprising me like a sudden embrace

she reached her arms out as if she 

had waited patiently, lovingly all these years

ancient and new, unmoved by my disregard. 

Carol Coven Grannick is a poet and children’s author whose middle grade novel in verse, REENI’S TURN (check out the wonderful trailer from Filmelodic and nice reviews!), debuted from Regal House Publishing in 2020. Her poetry for adults has appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Jewish Writing Project, NI+ Holocaust Memorial Issue, Bloom, Bluebird Word, Ground, The Birmingham Arts Journal, Capsule Stories, West Texas Review, Silver Birch Press, The Lake, and more. Her children’s fiction and poetry appeared/is forthcoming in Cricket, Ladybug, Babybug, Highlights, Hello, Paddler, and The Dirigible Balloon. There is rarely a day when she does not write in order to hold on to the treasure and meaning of being alive in this world.

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , ,

April 1, 2024 · 7:30 am

From The Old Country, Through Cuba, To The Family Duplex, Montreal

by Lisa Miller ( Lexington, KY)

For Ma—my great-grandmother

A five-year-old girl

schmaltz & gribenes, cholent, gefilte fish, chicken soup & matzah balls, tongue, chopped liver, latkes, stuffed cabbage, kishke, kasha, farfel, plátano frito, arroz con pollo, fricasé de pollo, ensalada Cubana—

The hands that smell like garlic, dill, parsley, parsnips, saffron—the kitchen—

soft, warmed, sheltering, applauding, soothing 

comfort—

Always Home.  

Lisa M. Miller is an inclusive mind-body health specialist. She facilitates therapeutic arts workshops that call in deep healing and synchronicity—a compass for meaning, intuition, and well-being. She’s an empty nester from Canada, living in Kentucky, married to her 1986 Jewish summer camp sweetheart. Her newest book, Woe & Awe, will be published by Accents (Spring 2024) Her podcast is called: The Women’s Well. Follow Lisa on Instagram: @LisaMillerBeautifulDay

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

March 18, 2024 · 7:30 am

After Lighting

by Jane Schulman (New York, NY)

Nana’s tale, Brooklyn, 1907 

My brothers stood on Mama’s right. 

I hung on her left, fistfuls of skirt  

clenched in my hand.   

Mama struck a match,  

lit the candles, chanted the blessing 

to welcome the Sabbath.  

The sound of keys in the lock  

cut the silence.   

Papa stomped into the room:  

Blow out those candles.  America’s no place  

for your bubbe’s mishegas. 

The mouths of my brothers rounded 

in fear.  They smelled the fight 

coming.

 

Candlesticks knocked to the floor.   

Flames stamped out.  

Then and again and again.  

    *       *        *        *        *        * 

Astoria, Queens   1983 

A Friday afternoon in May,  

Nana and I set the table  

with bread and wine  

and my best china.  

I light two candles after  

she lights hers. We cover  

our eyes and murmur  

the blessing, stumbling  

over the Hebrew words.  The taste  

of prayer new to our tongues. 

Jane Schulman is a poet and fiction writer. She works as a speech pathologist with children with autism and cognitive delays.  Jane published her first book of poetry, Where Blue Is Blue, with Main Street Rag in October, 2020.  Her writing has appeared widely online and in print. She was a finalist for the Morton Marr Prize at Southwest Review.     

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , , ,