Tag Archives: remember the hostages

October 13, 2025 · 7:30 am

Our stories forever intertwined

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Santa Monica, CA)

How many more tears

do I have left for a home

I’ve never been?

Longing to see where my mother

played when she was just

a daughter.

The other boys left as my father,

named after Elyahu, ventured into the water, 

seen as dirty, I’m afraid, his name a tricky thing to hide.

And where my grandfather took a routine beating

on the way to school for being a Jew

in Tehran.

How many more tears

do I have left for Palestine?

They say thirty percent of the deaths are children alone.

Aid distribution a catastrophe,

a needlessly fatal obstacle course for the hungry.

How can the extremists live with themselves?

I hear the stories, read the poems,

and feel changed. Please don’t look away

for too long.

We must know

the horror

to alter it.

Suddenly, reservoirs of tears

I thought had emptied

appear replenished.

How many more tears do I have left to cry

for the hostages– their families, the honorable peace builders–

even that poor dog, killed.

From Be’eri to DC, followed by chants of “Free Palestine!”

This–this is not how you liberate,

though I myself have no answers beyond love.

That is the antidote I hold onto tightly

mistakenly thinking I could leave it

to the political experts.

How many tears do I possibly have left

listening to one of the survivors

after all she has lived through on her kibbutz lately.

Vehemently stating how unwelcome the PM is

like a bad word, I do not wish to give his name

the time nor the space.

Of course the last thing on earth she would want to do

is pose with him. What— for optics?

You really want to discuss the optics right now?

How much longer will I be chained to the news

eagerly awaiting the latest episode of Amanpour?

This is my least favorite addiction.

But who else can I trust?

Am I supposed to go about as normal?

The whole of it has been tossed upside down, to be reductive.

Trying to gather a morsel of control:

listen, dialogue, donate, organize, protest, build peace.

Rinse, Repeat.

While my family and my love hide in the mamads.

Bombs where there should be falling stars

over your home and mine.

Giving way to a day when we share

the bounty of olives,

laugh over Turkish coffee, the irony.

Together in the shuk

bound, our stories

forever intertwined.

Lillian Farzan-Kashani is an Iranian American and Jewish therapist, poet, and speaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Much of her work is rooted in being a child of immigrants and is reflective of her intersectionality. Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https://www.lillianfarzan.com/

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July 8, 2024 · 7:30 am

Safety for Jews

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

For the challah baking event at my synagogue,

a gathering to bring us together during these terrible times,

I carry in two extra bags of flour, four jars of honey,

sesame and poppy seeds we need at the last moment.

I am stopped at the gate of our building, a police cruiser

parked at the entrance, the two, armed guards,

glocks ready at their waists, know me, I am here often,

but still say, “We need to check your bags.”

They poke the grocery bags with a long stick,

find flour, honey, sesame and poppy seeds, scour

my purse for any hidden weapons, then wand me

in search of anything dangerous they might have missed.

I thank the two young guards, too young for such weapons,

tell them how grateful I am for their thoroughness

in protecting us, try not to think of the thugs

with AK-47’s that these innocents might have to face.

How did it come to this? Swastikas painted in the bathrooms

of my sons’ high school.  Friends tell me

they are removing mezuzahs from their front doors.

Do we need to hide all over again, here in America?

A parent tells me her daughter who wears a Jewish star

on her college campus was surrounded by a vicious group,

fellow students, yelling for her to leave, a dirty Jew, she no longer

belonged, shades of Nazi Germany.

We Jews are damned when we are weak, maligned as sheep

led to slaughter, but also damned when we fight back

and told we should take the high road, forgive and forget.

Just make peace.  What hostages?  What massacre of innocents?

As Jews, we thought if there comes a day when we need

to run, there is finally a safe place to take us in, the land of Israel,

our own Jewish state, our homeland.  Now Israel herself cries

for her captives, her dead.  

Safety for Jews is always an elusive dream.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

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October 30, 2023 · 7:30 am

The Last Lullaby

by Lesléa Newman (Massachusetts)

                                    (October 7, 2023)

Never again the sound of their laughter,

Never again the sound of their cry.

Never again the sight of their smiles,

Never again the sight of their eyes.

Their tiny starfish hands—gone.

The small stones of their toes—gone.

Never again their shrieks of terror,

Never again their shrieks of joy.

Never again to play peek-a-boo,

Never again to say, I see you.

Their milk-white baby teeth—gone.

Their desert-smooth dimpled cheeks—gone.

We didn’t know it would be their last supper,

The last sip of soup, the last slice of bread.

We didn’t know it would be their last bath time,

The last soaping up, the last rinsing off.

The last lifting of arms to slip into pajamas,

The last carefully chosen story to read.

Never again their warm weight on our laps,

Never again their quick hop into bed.

The last tucking in, the last goodnight kiss,

The last lullaby, the last shutting the light.

Gone….the last….never again.

We didn’t know. We didn’t know.

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 .

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