Tag Archives: memorial

October 19, 2026 · 7:30 am

Eli, Eli

by Judith R. Robinson (Pittsburgh, PA)

eleven tolling 

orchestral bells 

as Elgar tries 

with eloquence

to grieve like a Jew

but the cello cries out

O God not again

as I do each New Year

for Akiva for Masada 

for the executed 

piled deep in pits

at Belarus and Rawa Ruska

for Chelm, Lelow, for Telz,

for the hundreds of shtetls

for Sobibor for Belzec

for the dozens of camps

my people incinerated ghosts

ash in the soil of Europe

O God, now for Pittsburgh

my city in America

for friends I knew

the freshest blood

for the Rosenthal boys

for the other innocents 

the eleven souls praying 

in the synagogue

for the eleven new dead.

*dedicated to the victims of the Tree of Life massacre, October 27, 2018

Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website: www.judithrrobinson.com 

Author’s note: The poem (and the painting which inspired the poem) are part of the permanent collection of the Rauh Jewish Archives at The John J. Heinz History Center of Pittsburgh. PA. Regarding the reference to Elgar, he was Sir Edward Elgar, a British composer who wrote some very moving, very sad music, such as the Cello Concerto in A minor, which is considered a masterful expression of grief, hence my reference to him as “grieving like a Jew.” Here’s a link to the Center if you’d like to browse through its collection: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/research/rauh-jewish-history-program-archives/

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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

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May 15, 2023 · 6:30 am

Poem of an End

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.

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November 5, 2018 · 7:32 am

Pittsburgh 1918, 2018

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My father, an immigrant,
crossed the ocean,
went to live with his older brother,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to 5th Avenue High,
worked hard to understand
the strange English language,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to doven each Shabbos
in the local synagogue
a world away from the
sumptuous temples of Squirrel Hill,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant
knew anti-Semitism, later escaped Hitler,
was spared the horror of that morning,
in Pittsburgh.

What would he have said
were he born a century later
to witness murder so heinous?

Would he have cried out to the heavens
in mourning for his lost brethren,
knowing it could have been any Jew, anywhere?

Would he have recognized the
the darkening of the national identity
as human behavior descends into blind hate?

Would the ghost of my father have screamed
in the sanctuary with the fallen?

My father, an immigrant,
died in 1974, a devout believer.
His soul lingers with the eleven,
immigrants or not, who died,
in Pittsburgh.

He never questioned
the existence of evil in the world.
Would he have been surprised
that it came home to Pittsburgh
to shatter, until the next news cycle,
the spirit of man?

Coda:

And I, my father’s son,
fail to find the fitting words
necessary to speak of this tragedy.

The stop in my throat,
the tears in my eyes,
reduces me to silent outrage.

Others may be able to speak
more emotionally, more eloquently.
Instead, I will go out to my father’s grave,
put a stone on his tombstone,
and carry eleven other stones in my pocket
in remembrance of those Jews
who can no longer speak for themselves.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and 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/

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