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.
The Jewish Writing Project 