January 22, 2024 · 7:30 am

I am the wound

by Haviva Ner-david (Galilee, Israel)

I am the wound. I am wounded. Forever. 

I am the crying child, the one who wants to scream and scream and scream. Why is the world this way? Why so much destruction and hate? Why so much killing? 

I am the children, looking at the destruction adults created. Aren’t they supposed to protect us?

I am the teddy bear, sitting alone. Abandoned. My child gone. Where is she?

We are the guards. The shields. We want to protect our children. But we are useless against the enormity of the danger.

I am the wounded player. We are all players in the game the politicians are playing with us. Wounded, hurt, screaming in pain on the ground. 

I am the shattered window. I was once clear. The world looked clearer through me. Now I am broken, shattered into pieces. Although maybe only part of me. Are there still pieces not shattered? 

I am the wounded knee. Will I ever feel whole again? Will I ever be healed? What will it take? Will I ever stop hurting?

We are the healers. We’ve come with a bandage, to protect the wound. But we cannot fix it. There will always be scars. 

I am the fist, hitting the wall. Frustration. Anger. Let it all out. 

I am the pirate, the enemy. Or am I the victim? I, too, am wounded, missing my hand. But I will move on, move forward. Wounded but not defeated. Life is still worth living.

Where does it hurt? All over. When I apply pressure, it hurts. 

Where is the hope? I am looking for the hope. Searching everywhere.

Don’t worry. I am here. You found me. It will be okay.

A note from Haviva Ner-David on writing these words: 

For my Soulwork course for Ritualwell, we explored four different “soul modalities,” one each session. On the first night, we did Soul Image Collage. Each person in the class made a collage.

A profound occurrence happened when I was creating mine. I chose my images (part of the process), pasted them onto the page to create the collage, and then I looked at the collage. 

It looked so painful, hopeless, despairing — which was not surprising considering that I am living in the midst of a brutal war. But there was only pain; I could have sworn I had chosen a hopeful image or two. 

I looked on the floor, the couch, my desk, but I found nothing. 

Just when I was about to give up, I stood and noticed a clipping that had fallen between the couch and the desk. I picked it up, turned it over, and it said (in Hebrew): “Don’t worry. It will be okay.” 

Yes, I had clipped those words from a kids’ magazine when I had done my image selecting. Wow!

I pasted the missing clipping onto the collage and wrote the words that appear above. (The prompt was, “I am the one who…”)

Here is Haviva’s collage:

—

Haviva Ner-David is a writer and rabbi. She is the founding rabbinic director of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul on Kibbutz Hannaton, in the Galilee, where she lives. She is a spiritual companion with a specialty in dreamwork and other Gestalt modalities (such as soul image collage, inner child work, and nature soul work) who companions a variety of clients of different ages and faith traditions, including (but not only) many rabbis and rabbinical students. She is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs, two novels, and one children’s book (with another soon to be published) — the only children’s book about mikveh. Haviva is also an activist, focused mainly on building a shared society of partnership between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. She was born with a degenerative form of muscular dystrophy (FSHD), which has been one of her biggest life challenges and teachers, and together with her life partner, Jacob, parents seven children (one adopted and six biological). You can visit her website for more information about her work and books: https://rabbihaviva.com/

3 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 15, 2024 · 7:30 am

What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam

By Jessica Ursell (Campania, Italy)

My beloved Zayda Nachman Libeskind’s life consisted of circumstances finding him in the unlikeliest of places, such as when he was escaping Poland on a rickety craft in the dead of night on the River Bug with two warring armies (the Soviets and the Germans) shooting at each other from opposite sides of the river, and later when he was framed, interrogated, and beaten by Soviet agents in the remote reaches of Kyrgyzstan because of a mysterious envelope he was forced to take with no knowledge of its contents, or when years later, during a ceremony pertaining to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Gerhard Schröder then federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1998-2005) made a point of personally approaching my Zayda to express contrition for the horrors perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazi regime during the Shoah.

So when Nachman, a survivor of brutal Soviet gulags, shootouts, starvation and all manner of deprivation, traveled to the deep American South to participate in my official “pinning on” ceremony when I was promoted to the rank of Captain in the United States Air Force, it was another in a long line of the unlikeliest places for a man of his age and experience and, for me, the greatest honor of my life.

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama was about the unlikeliest location conceivable for the youngest son of an unemployed carpenter born to an impoverished Jewish family in the industrial city of Łodz, Poland in 1909.

Jewish and proud, my Zayda actively sought to join the Polish army during the period between the first and second world wars because he was a patriot and wanted to resist the ugly Polish caricature of Jewish men as weak and cowardly.

His attempts to join the army were met with a considerable amount of skepticism by the Polish military authorities who rejected him multiple times due to his being underweight (read Jewish).  But Nachman was determined and kept applying until finally the Polish military authorities, surprised and confused by his persistence, accepted him.

When, immediately after finishing law school, I chose to join the United States Air Force (USAF) as a lawyer in what was then known as the Judge Advocate General’s Department (now USAF JAG Corps), it was nearly as unusual a choice for me who had been brought up with a European Jewish Bundist ethos as my Zayda’s was back then. 

Like my cherished Zayda, I too, wanted to prove to anyone and everyone what it meant to me to be Jewish. I wanted to defy ugly stereotypes and demonstrate that Jews are able and willing, even eager, to serve their country, in ways that historically were exceedingly difficult, or even impossible, for Jews. I wanted to battle the hateful concept of Jewish inferiority and expose the oft promulgated lie that Jews living outside of Israel are loyal only to Israel. I felt that by actively making a choice to serve my country in uniform as a lawyer, it would be a tiny, but personally meaningful way, of demonstrating my desire to be a part of something greater than myself, and to, hopefully, engage in work that would bolster democracy – a value that I find inherent in the concept of Tikkun Olam. In this respect, when I served as Chief of Operational Contracting, I was fortunate, among my other duties, to be the officer responsible for interpreting, applying, and ensuring compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Promotion day arrived as did my parents and my beloved Zayda. I adored my grandfather, and was thrilled that he would make the trip with my parents. Driving all the way from New York City to Montgomery, Alabama, where I was working my first assignment as a JAG, the distance they traversed was not only through several states, but into an entirely different world. They journeyed from the urban diversity and the Yiddishisms spouted by all New Yorkers, Jew and non-Jew alike (oy vey!) into the deep south, with all of its not so distant past, and still simmering present, laden with racism and overlaid with a veneer of southern homeyness, hospitality, and homogeneity.

The entire experience was, I imagine, a bit surreal for all of them.

It was definitely surreal for me. What I remember most all these years later is the juxtaposition of my background and my new reality – my New York Jewish family and my new friends and fellow airmen from all over the southern United States and the midwest – virtually everywhere else other than New York.

Zayda Nachman, with his sparkling cerulean eyes, enchanted everyone he encountered. This was nothing new. His optimism and zest for life and colorful experiences, despite all that he had endured, was contagious.

Unlike many others, who chose not to talk about and thereby relive the horrific brutality and nightmares they endured during the war, my Zayda made the deliberate choice to speak out, and bear witness to the unspeakable.

Yet, my Zayda rarely spoke about the instances where his own actions helped to prolong and save the lives of his fellow prisoners in the merciless Soviet gulag of Opalicha in Yaroslavl oblast. We know of Nachman’s actions only because they were relayed to us by those whom he helped, and on the rare occasions my Zayda referred to these events, it was only tangentially in talking about the entirety of his experiences of extreme deprivation, starvation, and brutal forced labor in the Opalicha gulag.

Years after the war, my mother heard from several of Nachman’s fellow prisoners at Opalicha who moved to Israel. They explained that my Zayda Nachman drastically understated the consequences to himself had he been caught sheltering fellow inmates. He would have been executed – not “merely” beaten. 

When I think about my Zayda Nachman’s experiences during the war and the way he met the very worst of humanity with the very best of his humanity, I am struck by the awareness that Nachman lived his life through the lens of Tikkun Olam, while he also embodied the core values of the United States Air Force – Integrity, Service before self and Excellence in all he did.

Everyone at my promotion ceremony was so warm, welcoming, and genuinely full of joy and affection for me and my family. I was deeply touched to see how everyone delighted in meeting my family especially my wonderful Zayda. It all happened as though it were a dream. Even during the ceremony I had to keep reminding myself that it was actually real – that I was standing in front of my parents and beloved Zayda and all my new Air Force friends achieving something that would have seemed inconceivable to me only a few years earlier.

My commander Colonel Turner was respected, indeed revered, by all of the junior officers. He treated us with kindness and respect and was gentle in correcting any of our errors. We all were better officers because of the way he modeled leadership. So it was a monumental honor that he and my Zayda pinned on my new rank. Colonel Turner treated my Zayda with great warmth and respect. When I look at the photo of them with their raised arms poised above my shoulders pinning on my new silver Captain’s bars the surge of pride I still feel is profound.

Reaffirming the oath, the ceremony, the cake, and being surrounded by my friends and family made for a memorable experience but the one thing that stands out above all else is the way my Zayda Nachman was beaming with pride throughout the entire ceremony and afterwards. It was, I think, a vindication of all that he had endured to make it to America, the Goldene Medina – that his Jewish granddaughter was proudly serving the country that he believed stood for truth, justice, and the American way.

Now when I reflect on the burgeoning and violent acts of antisemitism that have metastasized throughout the United States since my Zayda passed away in 2001, I know deep in my gut that my beloved Zayda Nachman’s optimism and vision of America as a safe haven from pogroms, persecution, and privation has been shattered. 

Tikkun Olam, the uniquely Jewish concept of repairing the world that my Zayda held so dear, is more crucial now than ever before. 

Nachman would be horrified and brokenhearted to see the promise of America betrayed as neo-Nazis, marching at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, shouted “Jews will not replace us” and one year later the deadliest antisemitic terrorist attack in US history that killed 11 people and wounded six including Holocaust survivors at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018.

Antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of bigotry are now openly touted as patriotism and not just by fringe political figures. Such beliefs are now horrifyingly mainstream. 

Nachman’s famous optimism sprang from the idea that learning, knowledge, and understanding can breed tolerance. Tolerance leads to respect for differences and respect can lead to peace and even friendship.

My beloved Zayda Nachman taught me that the essence of Tikkun Olam means standing up for the rights of others even when one’s own rights are not in jeopardy. 

Besides voting, as my Zayda did faithfully in every election (he viewed it as a vital act of citizenship), my efforts at Tikkun Olam are to continue speaking out, and committing to never being a bystander to injustice. 

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 ardent advocate and public speaker against antisemitism, racism, 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” and “Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House,” were published by The Jewish Writing Project in July 2022, and October 2022, respectively. Jessica‘s poem, “Sedimented Rock,” was selected by Beate Sigriddaughter, former poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico and was published by Writing In A Woman’s Voice on 18 November 2023. Jessica’s most recent poem, “A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects,” will appear in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine as well as online (v. 216 Scars Publications).

16 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Family history, Jewish, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, Judaism, Polish Jewry, Russian Jewry

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 1, 2024 · 7:30 am

Ancestors

by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Huntington Valley, PA)

Last year I searched for my grandfather’s grave at Har Jehuda Cemetery.

Nathan Weisbord. 

Section C25, row 2, location 47.

But couldn’t find him. 

Once, I was able to run my hand over Hebrew letters incised into the stone.

Once I was able trace the date of his death from the Spanish flu: October 1918. 

But now he is twice buried.

This time in a jungle of tangled weeds and branches. 

Buried by neglect that afflicts old Jewish cemeteries like this one.

Cemeteries passed down to owners unwilling or unable to maintain what was entrusted to them. 

We are the caretakers of our ancestors.

Responsible for remembering them and reciting their names. 

It’s not easy for many of us to find our roots. 

Nature unchecked reclaims its own.

Paths to our history are blocked by twisted roots.

And burned records.

And toppled gravestones.

And the rubble of cemeteries in the old country.

The last time I visited Har Jehuda I was a volunteer. 

One of many warriors, armed with rakes, hedge trimmers, and bare hands.

Working to clear the paths, section by section. 

We have not yet reached my grandfather’s grave.

But we are persistent.

We Jews. 

That’s how we survive.

I had hoped to accomplish much as a volunteer. 

Bus alas, my ability to twist and bend

Had gone the way of my youth.

So I sat down and continued weeding and trimming on the ground. 

But when it was time to leave, I found myself stuck.

Lacking the strength to get back on my feet. 

So I wrapped my arms around the nearest gravestone.

A monument to man named Joseph Feingold

Who died in 1948. 

And he helped to lift me to my feet. 

As Jews, we are responsible for each other in life and in death. 

And as I honor my ancestors, they will continue to lift me.

Natalie Zellat Dyen began writing humor pieces and essays for newspapers while working as a technical writer. Since turning to fiction, her work has appeared in a number of publications including, Philadelphia Stories, The MacGuffin, the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Willow Review, Alternative Truths: Endgame, Jewish Writing Project, Damselfly, CERASUS Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal. Her short story collection, Finding Her Voice, was published in 2019. Her debut novel, Locked in Silence, a work of historical fiction, will be released on February 1, 2024.

To learn more about Natalie and her work, visit her website: www.nataliewrites.com. 

2 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 25, 2023 · 6:30 am

An Unexpected Invitation

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Brooklyn hosts many different religions,

but for this less than practicing Jew,

the invitation to attend a Mennonite

prayer service was indeed a surprise.

Much different from traditional

services in my own synagogue,

this service was held in a coffee shop

with hymns and readings wafting

over the cakes and pastries.

What impressed me most

was the unmistakable

sense of community,

a fellowship of followers.

Fundamentalists, sure, but

holders of a tenacious grip

to the tenets of their faith.

I bore witness to their devotion, 

admiring the warm coat 

of their faith while I shivered 

in my own garment of doubt,

a requirement, it seems,

of the Jewish religion,

while I sat and prayed during

the High Holidays. 

It must be so comforting

to be so sure.

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/

1 Comment

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

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

December 18, 2023 · 7:30 am

It Took a War 

by Jena Schwartz (Amherst, MA)

~ for Stella ~

It took a war for us to do this –

her words as we exchanged numbers 

after two hours of talking over decaf, 

trading name stories, hair products,

questions of what even matters now,

questions of what constitutes courage,

affirmation that we’re not overreacting. 

It took a war for us to leave our houses 

in the morning, to interrupt our routines

and leave the pets wondering, 

risk a new beginning, discover 

we have the same necklace, 

the silver cube with the Coleridge 

quote engraved in the tiniest letters –

he looked into his own soul…

mine a gift to myself as a young woman 

not yet out, not yet found, 

hers a gift from her best friend, now gone 

yet always with her. 

What bookends our days, 

what bookends our lives?

Always my thoughts turn to the spaces 

between – between danger and safety, 

sunrise, sunset, 

birth and death, war and peace. 

All of these absolutes that when 

broken open reveal a thousand 

stories, shards, fragments, letters

so small we need magnifying glasses

to read them. 

You have the right to remain curly, 

the slogan goes, she told me.

You have the right to remain Jewish. 

You have the right to reach out 

across the bridge, to bridge the divide, 

to burn bridges when you need to, 

to turn to face the door where the Shabbos bride 

blesses the room with her messengers of peace,

the door with its mezuzah

reminding us to love our God

with all our heart. 

It took a war to see how quickly 

our sense of safety would quake 

under the weight of hatred, 

a doppelganger for a love of justice, 

and how justice herself weeps 

at how words so laden 

with suffering are thrown around

so casually without listening 

to the sounds of those who live 

inside of them, who cannot keep 

up with counting their dead, 

and whose cellular memory 

is not a thing of the past 

but the face of a woman 

who could be my daughter 

dancing in the desert, 

the daughter whose name 

is in the title of one of my new friend’s 

books, and how this morning 

this new friend asked for my address

so she could send an inscribed copy,

and we shared links to hair products,

some slant way of saying it took a war,

we need each other now, 

we cannot do this alone, 

we are for each other 

and for ourselves 

and for the other, 

the stranger, 

the never 

again.

Jena Schwartz is a poet, essayist, and writing coach whose work has appeared in Jewish Journal, Cognoscenti, On Being,Tikkun, and Vox Populi, among other publications. She lives in Amherst, MA, where she serves as Poet Laureate at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Learn more about her work at www.jenaschwartz.com.

This poem first appeared on Friday Dispatch, Jena’s Substack page, and is reprinted here with permission of the author: https://jenaschwartz.substack.com/p/friday-dispatch-it-took-a-war

2 Comments

Filed under history

December 11, 2023 · 7:30 am

The Challenges of Conversion

By Joseph O’Keefe (Rockville Centre, NY)

Please do not call me by my Hebrew name. As a convert, I am considered the child of Abraham and Sarah (Avram v’Sarah), but they are not my parents. Brian and Cathy are.

For all the richness that Judaism has brought to my own life and family, I have never been able to reconcile with this tradition – particularly as it involves the love and support of those that positioned and prepared me for the choice to embrace a new faith. 

Is it possible to feel fully accepted when such a distinction is made between Jews-by-birth and Jews-by-choice? At what point does the symbolism of a shared ancestry ostracize the convert? And how can their ‘real’ past be recognized while simultaneously honoring the history of their adoptive one? 

Anita Diamant opens her invaluable book Choosing a Jewish Life with an anecdote about a rabbi telling a convert that even Fitzgerald can be a Jewish name. That may be true outside of temple. But where it also counts, during rites and rituals, the gentile’s past is essentially disregarded.

Having been raised a Roman Catholic, I was familiar with the Biblical stories of Abraham and Sarah, including how they are told that their descendants will someday be as numerous as the stars in the sky – the very beginning of Jewish lineage and the reason why all converts are considered their children. 

There is an undeniable beauty in the idea that we Jews share a common set of parents and that our ancestors were prophets singled out by the Almighty. To be born to Jewish parents is to draw a continuous line between oneself and the ancients, but the convert lives both inside and outside the diaspora, and assigning a single surname to the entire group can leave us feeling ‘other.’

Heritage should be a point of pride, particularly for a group whose history is so heavily defined by attempts to eradicate it. The stories of crypto-Jews, those Jews who secretly practiced their faith in 13-14th century Europe, were an inspiration to me during my conversion and remain so now. Even today, some Jews proudly refer to themselves as Kohans – descendants of an exalted line dating back to the Israelites. My birth name, O’Keefe, tells its own story, but it is easy for converts to feel some insecurity when their Hebrew names so clearly denote newness, i.e., the absence of longevity. 

Not all sects recognize converts like myself as equal members of the faith, and those looking to join stricter denominations are subject to an even more rigorous process than I was. Between the ascendance of antisemitism and the hard-right drift in Israeli politics, I worry about the distinction becoming relevant should my family ever need to seek safe haven – this despite the fact that, as many of the Jews I know have noted, the conversion process has left me more knowledgeable than some born into the faith. In fact, there are plenty of stories of Jews by choice who took to their new faith so strongly that they became more orthodox than their partners had anticipated or hoped. 

My parents had already come to know and love my wife before I chose to convert. From the time we began dating, we knew that religion would be an issue, and there were plenty of intense discussions along the way. She had been raised in an observant home, attended yeshiva, and wanted to be married under the chuppah. Like countless others in our position, we took a class together while I did some one-on-one study with our rabbi and learned some basic Hebrew. In time I found myself in the mikvah, successfully pleading my case in front of the beit din and embracing a new faith while my wife was reconnecting with hers. 

Admittedly, I do not recall thinking much about my new name during the conversion work. It was not until we were invited to  to the bema after I had finished that it truly dawned on me. 

Members of my family had come to temple to celebrate, and my in-laws were sponsoring the post-service meal. My wife had been helping me with my pronunciation and I was sitting nervously waiting to be called when the rabbi introduced us by our Hebrew names. She said it quickly enough that few likely   noticed, but I did. And then again at our aufruf. And during our vows. Now it is written in the ketubah that hangs in our home and will be recited at my children’s mitzvot and someday at my own funeral. 

My conversion certificate is a joyful souvenir of the time spent learning about and embracing Judaism, but its signatory line stings. It is a reminder that no matter what has been gained and how I have worked to join this community, there are some lines that can never be breached. Nevertheless, I continue to live a life informed by faith, and we are raising our children to do the same. My parents have since passed and though their names are illuminated on the dates of their Yahrzeits and I remember them at Yizkor, I cannot help in moments of solemnity to feel envious of those who carry the names of their actual parents along with them and, even more, to think that mine deserve better.  

The questioning of tradition is itself an expression of Judaism. On the very first night of conversion class, the rabbi told us that doubt was an essential part of the journey and that so long as we were to be Jews, it was our responsibility to argue and debate. So here I am doing my part. If Judaism means to embrace its converts, recognition of their actual pasts is a good place to start. 

Joseph O’Keefe is a research administrator from Long Island, NY where he lives with his wife and two children. 

1 Comment

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

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

December 4, 2023 · 7:30 am

I forgot to light a candle

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

I forgot to light a candle the other day:

It was an uncle’s memorial,

But he was gone before I was,

And the recollections second-hand:

What my father mentioned,

The documents entrusted to me,

The rare, very rare, comments of my grandfather.

I did not know the precise date until

After they too were gone, when

I dug through the papers

And figured out the World War

Two details. They did not mark

The date.

Nor did they light a candle,

And certainly no prayer was uttered.

No kaddish for the boy gone in France.

My grandfather might have

Been bemused, or likely annoyed,

That I would recited the doxology

For his sons, or for him,

For that is an obligation I have

Saddled myself with.

But this year, I neglected

To consult my calendar in

A timely fashion, and the

Day on which I should have

Lit the candle to

Honor the sacrifice of

The too-young uncle

Had already passed.

No candle this year.

Perhaps this scribble will do

To recall the uncle gone

Before I, or my elder sibs,

Arrived, though both of them bear

His name in some fashion. Perhaps

Their lives will make do

For the absent flame.

Dennis Gura is a father, husband, and an engaged and serious Jew who tries to understand a complex and confusing world as best as possible. A native Angeleno, he has been deeply engaged in Jewish thought and experiences his entire life–the ethnic, the ethical, the secular, and the religious.  He was privileged to study at Machon Pardes in 1982-83, and has since bounced around various LA synagogues and Jewish groups.

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit his Substack page, where this poem first appeared (and is reprinted here with permission of the author): https://dennisgura.substack.com

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 27, 2023 · 7:30 am

Watch and Wait: A Jewish Mindfulness Practice

By Susan Spector (Cornville, AZ)

You. Have. A. Brain. Tumor.

Five words and everything changed. I became a patient on a Watch and Wait protocol I now call WaWa.

And that’s what I’m doing today. I stalk the online portal, waiting for my test results. The radiology report shows up just before bedtime. 

I skim over my three favorite words: the first one is “stable.” The second and third words go together: “grossly unremarkable.” Kinahora. That’s what my Yiddish-speaking Jewish grandmother would say, invoking the evil eye, not wanting to jinx the good news. 

I search out the fear, sensing I’ll find it, but not in a mindful, meditative or particularly grateful way. That gratitude I once believed would last forever, where did it go? 

“FLAIR hyper intensities in cerebral white matter and white matter lesions.” And there it is. Something new. Something to be afraid of.

I chug my water, determined to flush away the gad, short for gadolinium, the intravenous contrast used earlier in the day. I want the heavy metal poison out of my body.  Gad is an injected light source used to illuminate what’s lodged deep inside my brain. Its atomic symbol is Gd, an acronym my tradition uses as a placeholder for the sacred nature of God’s ineffable and unpronounceable name. I contemplate a quote from the Holy Rascal teacher, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, “God is real and everything we say about God is made up.” It’s a mystery how the gad knows just where to go in my body. 

Ironically, I met the light of the Infinite Mystery, what the mystics call the Ein Sof, through the rogue cells deep inside my brain.  

When I broke out in a sweat on one of my bi-annual retreats inside the big magnet machine, I listened closely and heard a small voice, over and above the noise of the beast. I lay still.  Inhale, Sh’ma, pause. Exhale Yisrael, pause. Breathe in Adonai, pause. Exhale Eloheinu, pause. Breathe in Adonai, pause. Return the breath to the Source. Exhale, Echad. A six-word Jewish prayer mysteriously appeared. Despite the thrumming, drumming and clanking noise inside the machine, I connected. Partnered with divine energy, everything changed.

I head for an emergency visit to Dr. Google, worried I’m moving toward a life inside an assisted living facility. In the morning, I wake up early with no more clarity than the night before. I grab my coffee, sit down at the table, pull up an empty chair for my partner and anxiously fire up the laptop. I like to be early for the Zoom Room. It dials down the anxiety of meeting with the expert meditation guides. The neurodocs. 

In the beginning, they gave me the mantra for finding my sense of calm and quiet within. They gave me the practice. The WaWa. Now they keep me on track and pull me out of the rabbit holes I can’t seem to avoid. 

The lead meditation Teacher/Neuro-oncologist shows up, wearing a crisp white lab coat and looking radiant on the screen.  She gets right down to business, with her unusual combination of strength, clarity and comforting softness.

“Your MRI looks beautiful. All stable.”

“Yeah, but what are those new white matter lesions?”

She points to highlighted areas of the brain image on her screen share.

“This big white lesion is scar tissue. See how it follows the surgery path where Dr. Yirah did his magic to “let flow occur?” And these other white dots, well, you could call them “blessings of maturity.” 

She’s a poet. She skillfully moves the conversation and the meeting forward. 

“Were you comfortable with the nine-month scan interval or do you want to try and push it out to one year?”

“I don’t know, what do you recommend?”
“I would be comfortable either way.”

I turn to my partner, now sitting beside me at the table.

“What do you think?”

“I’d rather see sooner than later if something’s going to change” he says without

hesitation.

The neurodoc/poet moves the conversation along, directing the question back to me.

 “So, you’re the only one we haven’t heard from, what do you want?”

“Part of me wants to graduate to the annual milestone, but I’m more comfortable with 9 months also.” 

Everyone smiles at each other from their Zoom squares and I finally exhale.

The apprentice meditation teacher enters the Zoom room. He is a resident intern with a clipped data-only voice. 

“White matter lesions, clinically insignificant, 30% of MRI’s, higher in older people.” 

The master meditation teacher enters the Zoom room. The neurosurgeon.
I tell him I spent time last night with Dr. Google, chatting about white matter lesions.

“It’s Watch and Wait, not watch and worry. At least you weren’t consulting with

ChatGPT!” 

The mindfulness. The challenge. Return to the WaWa. 

Return to the breath. 

Susan Spector is a brain tumor survivor who focuses on writing as a path to healing She is a retired educator. Her true education began with her diagnosis at age 62. She is currently at work on a series of essays under the pen name Shoshanah bat Malka, with the working title Reporting Live from the Frontal Lobe. 

1 Comment

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

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

November 20, 2023 · 6:30 am

Needless To Say 

by Lesléa Newman (Massachusetts)

                                    October 30, 2023

“I’m back to counting noses,” says my friend

who needless to say is Jewish. As needless to say

am I. We bend our dark heads together

across the narrow table, leave our coffee 

to grow cold and speak in hushed voices

which needless to say is so unlike us 

usually so out, loud, and proud

which needless to say is now totally

out of the question in this New England café

as we quietly question ourselves:

Should we unclasp the Jewish stars around our necks?

Yank the mezuzahs off our doorposts?

Straighten our hair?

Change our names?

Ask friends if they would hide us?

Are we overacting?

Are we underreacting?

How did our ancestors know when it was time to leave?

Is it time to leave?

Needless to say, there is nowhere to go.

Lesléa Newman has created 85 books for readers of all ages including the dual memoir-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father 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. Her newest book, Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard, a fully illustrated book-length poem celebrating the life and legacy of Matthew Shepard, has just been published. For more information about Lesléa, visit her website:  www.lesleanewman.com .

8 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , ,

November 13, 2023 · 7:30 am

Outwitting the Angel of Death

By Elaine Freilich Culbertson (Philadelphia, PA)

My mother was extremely superstitious, and her superstitions guided much of what went on in our home. We were held to certain behaviors, what we should and should not do and most importantly how to overcome bad luck. Spitting three times (pooh, pooh, pooh) was a regular practice whenever compliments were given or received. We couldn’t whistle in the house or sit on a made bed. We couldn’t open an umbrella inside or step over someone’s feet. If my mother was fixing a hem on a dress I was wearing, I had to chew on a thread to keep my wisdom from being sewn away. Babies could not be held up to mirrors and if you sneezed while someone was talking about a dead person, you had to pull your left ear up to avoid the angel of death. Never hand a knife to someone with the edge out and most importantly don’t take a direct path home from the cemetery lest the angel of death follow you.

My mother used to say that when a baby falls, an angel swiftly glides underneath to cushion the impact. She believed there were angels and was particularly well-versed in how to recognize and avoid the angel of death. I liked the idea of angels being on guard for babies, angels whose wings provided safety, but I was never sure what to think about the angel of death, in Yiddish the “malachomovitz.” Death was inevitable, this I understood. Outwitting the “malachomovitz?” How could a mere mortal do that? To say someone looked like or acted like the angel of death was the greatest insult. To get the better of the angel of death was the greatest heroic feat.

One day my mother and I were assured of the presence of angels when I told her about an eerie incident that had occurred on the off ramp at 22nd St. and I-676 in Center City Philadelphia.

It was on the way home from work in the western suburbs during rush hour that I was exiting I-676 to my home in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. I had the reverse commute – everyone coming out of the city while I was coming back in from the suburbs. The myth was that there was less traffic going in that direction, but it wasn’t the truth. Each evening the crawl from I-95 onto 676 seemed to last longer than the evening before. On this night, I was aware as I crept up the highway of how the seasons were changing. The sun had started to set earlier each day as it does when fall fades into winter. It was that time of day when shadows and objects can play tricks on one’s perception, when the sun can blind you with its brilliance as you are driving and then suddenly disappear from the horizon, leaving only the first wan glow of illuminated streetlights as guides. Things look different at that time of day and the eye can be fooled by the descending darkness. I’ve heard it called “the gloaming,” that romantic time of day when the light has mostly faded but it’s not quite dark yet, a time when on this night I was fumbling for my headlights, realizing that I thought I saw a person standing on the 22nd St. ramp.

As I approached, what had been an almost amorphous figure resolved into the shape of a woman clad only in a short-sleeved shirt and a long skirt that almost touched the ground. Her hair was blowing in the wind. It was a chilly day, but she had no coat or outer garment to protect her from the oncoming night air. The expression on her face was one of distress. She was attempting to stop cars as they drove up the ramp, indicating with her hands that drivers should roll down their windows to listen to her pleas. No one was complying. This was years before the stop light had been installed at the top of the ramp, and it was always a bit of a free-for-all as cars tried to merge onto 22nd St. The drivers that evening had no intention of stopping for her and as she grew more frantic, she stepped further and further into the lane of traffic. 

By the time I reached the top of the ramp she was in front of my car, determined to stop me. I rolled my window down and asked her to step aside. She shook her head and began retelling her story of why she was on the ramp. Her car was on the road below, just past the off ramp, broken down. She needed money to get home. Any amount would help. She insisted that she was not a beggar, but a commuter who had a sudden mishap.

Something about her touched my heart. I hated seeing women in desperate straits. A homeless woman on the street was a more pathetic sight to me than a man. Her vulnerability seemed double that of a man in the same dilemma. I imagined myself in her situation. I wondered if anyone would stop for me. Certainly, I was better dressed, but in that helpless moment might I have left my coat in the car and started walking, hoping someone would help? 

I told her I would give her $10 if she would step away from my car. The tears were running down her face as she mouthed a thank you. I found $10 in my wallet and handed it to her. If that was all it took to save her in this moment, then I didn’t feel I had been duped in any way. 

The cars behind me were beeping furiously. How dare I stop to help this street person! How rude of me to extend their commute time by even 10 seconds, for that was all the time it took.

“Please get off the ramp!” I was sure she could hear the insistence in my voice.

“I will,” she replied, and as I started to drive away, I lost sight of her. 

I made the turn onto 22nd St. and just as I was ready to pull through the first intersection on the Ben Franklin Parkway, a car traveling at ridiculously high speed ran through the red light, completely heedless of anyone, vehicle or pedestrian that might have the right of way.

I gasped. 

If I had been one second sooner onto the ramp and into the intersection, that car would have broadsided me, surely injuring or perhaps killing me.

Because I had stopped to help the woman on the ramp, I had been late to what might have been a dreadful fate.

That evening I called my mother, as I did each evening, to recount the day’s events. At this point in her life, she lived in a retirement home, and anything I might tell her was of great interest, as the days stretched out uneventfully for her.  When I told her about the woman on the ramp and the speeding car, she said very determinedly, “She was an angel.”

“Mom. I thought angels only helped little babies or led people to their deaths.”

“You are my baby. She didn’t let you get hurt. She was an angel. I am sure of it.”

Who knows, maybe she was. That angel of life had helped me outwit the “malachomovitz.”

Elaine Culbertson is the chair of the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council, a statewide organization of teachers, survivors, and liberators who volunteer to keep the lessons of the Holocaust alive in the schools of the state. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Act 70 Committee and a convener of the Consortium of Holocaust Educators in the Philadelphia region. Elaine represented the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Museum Fellow and a Regional Educational Consultant in the Mid-Atlantic. She presently provides professional development for teachers using Echoes and Reflections, a curriculum resource developed by the Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem and the Anti-Defamation League.

Elaine retired as the director of Curriculum and Instruction in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, ending a 36-year career in public education. She is the executive director of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. For the past 18 years she has served as program director of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers’ Program, a seminar based in Poland and Germany, that has provided professional development to more than 1100 teachers in its 36-year existence. She works with teachers and students to connect the events of the past with the genocides of the present day. Elaine has written chapters in five different books on Holocaust teaching methods and lectured across the United States, using the story of her own parents’ survival as the basis for her presentations on developmentally appropriate and morally responsible pedagogy. She is working on a memoir that incorporates her mother’s writing with her own reflections on being the daughter of survivors.

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , , , , ,