Tag Archives: immigrants

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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December 1, 2025 · 7:30 am

History

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

In the year 1939 my mother,

who lived on a socialist kibbutz,

got a letter from her bourgeois mother

asking whether, in her opinion,

it would be worthwhile to move to Palestine.

Not worthwhile, my mother wrote back with roughened fingers.

Here you would not have servants.

Even jewelry, which you love so much,

even your wedding ring, would be frowned on here.

In the year 1949 my mother,

recently bereaved of her only son,

volunteered to help in a transit camp for immigrants.

What kind of help do you need? my mother asked

the woman from Iraq.

Can you polish my nails? asked the woman

and held out to my mother

long, delicate fingers adorned with rings.

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

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

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

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