Tag Archives: lost lives

By Shai Afsai (Providence, RI)

— Prague, Czech Republic 

Tisha Be-av and Tu Be-av 82 liftrat katan/August 2022

After Yehuda Amichai’s “Poem Without an End”

In a synagogue

they have made a Jewish museum.

The Torah scrolls and rabbi’s chair 

are gone.

There are no children running

through the aisles

no elderly congregants

claim their regular seats.

In their place —

men with bare heads 

and women without much clothing

move about the sanctuary.

They have made a Jewish museum

in a synagogue.

Exhibit panels line the walls

where siddurim and ḥumashim.

would be shelved.

Instead of prayer and study

cameras snap, 

cellphones sweep the room 

for panoramic pictures,

and tourists pose

for selfies.

No more amen, 

no more yehe sheme rabba,

no more shabbat derasha,

no more kiddush levana.

Come evening,

members of a local symphony orchestra 

perform medleys to great applause

for culture-worshipers.

After fifty years

of fascists and communists

there are not enough Jews left

to fill the beautiful space

with devotion.

For what else can the building be used?

In this bustle

it is at least safe

for now

from being covered with the thickening cobwebs

of  I. L. Peretz’s golem

or becoming home 

only to Kafka’s marten-sized animal.

The full moon wanes.

In a cemetery once

at a burial,

I heard a Jewish woman 

say:

“The problem with the Orthodox 

is they made Judaism into a religion.”

But in this building

I see the trouble

is

that others

have rendered the religion

into a memorial.

Shai Afsai (shaiafsai.com) lives in Providence. In addition to short stories and poems, his recent writing has focused on Benjamin Franklin’s influence on Jewish thought and practice, and on the works of the contemporary Dublin author Gerry Mc Donnell. Afsai’s writing has been published in Anthropology Today, Ibbetson Street Magazine, Journal of the American Revolution, Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, and Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review.

Note: This poem first appeared on Poetry Super Highway, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.