by Bill Siegel (Boston, MA)
1. Mudke
They named me Mudke
Makes me think of mud cakes, mud crawlers
Muddy Waters
But they must mean Mordche
which translates to Mordecai
The Latin mort, Death
coupled with the Hebrew chai, Life
In America, they changed it to Morton
dropping the chai, taking the life out of the name
How could you saddle a baby with a name like that?
My aunt chided her sister
As if forgetting it was her own father’s name given to me
As if forgetting it would keep their father’s name alive
2. Velvel
A stutter, or better, a strut
One syllable with each shoulder’s swagger
Vel~right shoulder forward and
Vel~with the left now
Say his name twice if you say it once:
Vel~Vel
3. Ben
Son of,
the rising sun of the father’s new life
The dawn of his hopes
The bend when a river changes course
Giving birth in its time to a new flow
Ben, bene, bien
The good son
May he not forget his ancestors
May he remember where he comes from
May he remember his names
That they may carry him
Where he’s going
4. Yankel Yisroel
Who wrestled with God’s Messenger
Or maybe God Himself
The original knock-down, drag-out, one-fall, winner-take-all
first fixed bout, a mismatch made in Heaven
Who wrestled with the mighty Thunder King
forcing It to reveal Its name
Jacob, who became Israel
Yankel, who became Yisroel
Yankel Yisroel
Who patrolled the Shadow of Death
lined with the dead of Hitler’s demons
That would boil his people
To make soap for the armpits of strangers
Peel their skin for lampshades
Who stood, barely 20 years old,
at liberated death camps, surrounded
by the dead, the dying and the barely surviving
Who stood between captured German officers
And the interrogating Americans
Using his Yiddish to translate,
to bridge the combatting languages
To make what happened perfectly clear
5. ha-Levi
Children of Levi, the one desert clan
To keep their name for 40 centuries
Through 400 years of slavery
And 40 years in the desert
Temple servants and warriors
Guardians of the faith, stationed in every city
And still the tribe with no land of our own
4000 years and still we wash
The hands of the Cohanim
before the priestly blessing
Look now at the graves of ha-Levi, the Levites
See the cup carved into the stone
Like all Levis before me, my stone
will honor Miriam ha-Levi
And her well of Living Water
that will never run dry
6. Mudke Velvel ben Yankel Yisroel, ha-Levi
All this in one name.
All this in my name.
Bill Siegel lives in the Boston MA area, and writes both prose and poetry – about family, fishing, jazz, and more. He has two manuscripts in process: “Printed Scraps”, poems inspired by Japanese woodblock prints; and “Waiting to Go Home”, about family and memories of growing up. His work has been published in “Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust” (Northwestern University Press), and “Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop” (University of Arizona Press). His poems also appear in Blue Mesa Review, Rust+Moth, JerryJazzMusician, Brilliant Corners, and InMotion Magazine, among others.
The Jewish Writing Project 