The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

My Turn to Carry

I read about it ahead of time. So when I first lifted
the Torah—holding my breath, braced for how heavy
it must be—the frail tenderness of its rustling body
sealed my bitten lips. If I hadn’t read ahead, I would have
snuggled the wrapped bundle to my left shoulder, where
my babies pressed against the wing of my collarbone
where the cramp of an infant’s insides could warm,
release, burp or bottom gurgle, sobs ceasing.

But the directions said to pull the cloaked scroll instead
to my right, which was the shoulder that my Girl Scout sash
used to drape—merit badges hand stitched, needle and thread
(my mother sympathetic but insistent: you can do this),
the angled sweep of fabric loose against me. Not over my
heart. But freeing the other side of my ribcage, the side
where later a cancer nodule nestled, to inhale.

Which is what I tried to do, keep breathing, so surprised:
“I am holding the Torah. The Torah!” All its presence then
nestled against me, filling me, the way I felt before that baby
emerged from my straining birth canal, tiny heart linked to my
own through a throbbing cord. Flesh of my flesh. Child, I knew
in that moment I’d always wonder where you were, and long
for your safety. Likewise, the Torah. Painstaking copy of cryptic
symbols, uncertain history, out-of-date habits, a transcript
of men, while the women who’d birthed them grew small in the
rearview mirror. Sweet bundle in your embroidered gown,
now I’m ready to challenge you, with my love.

Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont among rivers, rocks, and a lot of writers. Her poems seek comfortable seats in small well-lit places, including Lilith Magazine, The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, The Post-Grad Journal, Does It Have Pockets?, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ritualwell, Persimmon Tree, Northwind Treasury, and Rise Up Review. Find her memoirs on Medium, and her reviews at the New York Journal of Books and Historical Novels Review. She also writes feature articles, short stories, and novels, recently This Ardent Flame and The Bitter and the Sweet.

Featured image in this post: Bochum Synagoge 2, New synagogue Bochum: Torah scrolls in Torah ark Reclus, creative commons via wikimedia commons.

The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

In This Land

In this land the rocks speak holy words,
the wind chants psalms as it blows through
branches of date palms,
the jackal howls in the wilderness.

The people in this land are complex
rushing here and there like New Yorkers
on steroids, yet stopping to offer
the stranger a cup of water.

The people of this land know
a cup of water comes from the narrow place
between life and death.

In this land people have claims
to places that may never have existed,

that Place in the desert where Hagar’s son
almost died of thirst
that Place on the mountain where Sarah’s son
was bound and almost sacrificed.

What place in the desert belongs to
the children of Ishmael?
What mountain belongs to
the children of Isaac?

The stones keep speaking holy words
the wind keeps chanting psalms
the people keep rushing here and there
stumbling toward an uncertain future.

The jackal still howls in the wilderness,
but the land will endure forever.

Carnival of Awe and Fear

Come face what happened, history and truth
hear the screams of agony at our Torture Booth.

Come on in, don’t be lame, play Raging Fear, it’s just a game.
Jump on Virtual Genocide, our latest roller coaster ride.

Want to see the devil’s face and learn his secret name?
Maybe you’ll find out when you ride the Terror Train.

Rape & torture, terror and blood,
how awesome it is to drown in the Flood.

Between good and evil it’s hard to choose
cause both God & Satan take off your shoes.

You can’t change the future if you don’t face the past
without Fear and Terror, Redemption won’t last.

After officially retiring in 2014, I started a blog, writing only in prose. Poetry had never held much interest for me, having been forced to memorize and recite numerous poems during my elementary school years. In early 2020, the growing Pandemic necessitated great changes to our accepted norms of social interaction. It seemed like a good idea to gather resources for emotional survival, and I decided one resource would be the poems of Robert Frost. It turned out that poetry was just what I needed. I returned to the poetic form, this time with an understanding and deep appreciation of its power.

My first poems were about daily life, flowers, love, observations from my walks, all of them pretty sappy. My realization that there was a deep vein of spirituality below the words was slow to develop. When the Pandemic forced me to participate in Shabbat services and celebrate High Holidays sitting alone in front of a computer screen, poetry became a lifeline and my use of specifically Jewish themes and images became one of the foundations of my writing.

I share my poems and liturgical writings on my website, on Ritualwell (a website of Reconstructionist Judaism), and many have been used in synagogue services.

Featured image in this post: Black-backed jackal Creative Commons (33204337335),Adam Tusk, creative commons via wikimedia commons.

The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

Bas Mitzvah

The boys did it on Saturdays
so I Refused
Refused because Saturdays
the Shabbos Bride
presided
Friday nights for the girls a pokey prelude
          Refused
because we were taught
by the Rabbi’s wife
all hugs and bluster
not the taut scholar I aspired to be
           Refused because when I asked
the Rabbi who Cain and Abel married
if not their sisters he pulled
my ears and scolded “You are too
curious for your own good” Good
I fumed what is not good about
being curious
         Refused then to actually learn
to read Hebrew
so couldn’t go with my friends in the class
who I urged
         Refuse       But they didn’t
My parents not too upset because I was
a girl after all—

Gutsy, huh?

Not when I relive
the shudder of standing
before the Ark of the Law
Torah unveiled
expecting to be—Refused
              by a God of favoritism.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Ivy Schweitzer has lived for many years in Vermont and taught English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the creator of White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862, a weekly blog, and writes about women’ issues, social justice and identity. Most recently, her poems have appeared in the Passager Poetry Contest for 2022, Ritualwell, Tikkun, New Croton Review, Mississippi Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and The New England Poetry Club’s Prize Winners’ Anthology 2024. A collection of poems titled Within Flesh: In Conversation with Our Selves and Emily Dickinson, co-written with Al Salehi, appeared in February 2024 from Transcendent Zero Press. They are working on another co-written collection titled Broken Open: Practicing Humanity with Rumi, about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. Her solo collection of poems, Tumult, Whitewash, and Stretch Marks, will be published next year by Finishing Line Press. Visit her author page at https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ivyschweitzer/.

Featured image in this post: Torah Reading at Robinson’s Arch, Michal Patelle, creative commons via wikimedia commons.

The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

Kaddish to Eretz Ashkenaz

The slender, intricate facades of painted European towns
As pretty and tall as brave soldiers
In long coats, with a loyal dog, a proud eagle flapping
Standing on the back of victory

Holy victory! The chazan is silent, the cheder is closed,
The letters of The Book came back home to roost.
Vo iz mayn loshn, mayn haym?
Mayn mishpukhe iz a vey fon a beyn vos iz nit mer

Yiddish is to German what a butter knife is to a scalpel
It is a crude language made for bitter wit, bitter cursing
And a helpless bitterness at the cruelty of the world

My language is a language of barbarians with swords
A language of fighting, a language of sneering
A language of not giving a fuck
A sword to the scalpel

Too late, and at what cost?
I am not I, my people are made dead flesh wearing plastic coats that look like skin
Or is this who we were always meant to be?
Peel an Ashkenazi of the white and blue-
As empty as the Treblinkan groves

The tall, tall trees of Northern Europe
The snow-capped mountains
The far-reaching fields
Do not miss the sound of Yiddish
The nigun of a long-murdered chazan

The Eternal Fugue

Your ashen hair, Shulamith.
When they took Yochanan’s head,
His Yod became an Iota,
His Jude became a Jötunn.
They passed his black locks
Through the Philosopher’s Stone,
And it turned out Nibelung Gold.

My golden locks, Shulamith.
I am Grimm’s Outlaw,
I have been made to feel a stranger
In any home I choose,
And no chair is right.
A rat that looks like a gentile,
A Jew with a butcher’s face.

Everyone wants a piece of the Jew,
And the Jew wants a piece of nothing,
A peace of nothing,
A piece of you.
Your ashen hair, Shulamith.

Your ember hair, Shulamith.
Daughter of Edom and David.
That red, red thing,
Precious beyond northern gold,
They burned it all to ash.

My ashen roots, Shulamith.
They burned it all into gold,
A field of rapeseed in the sun.

Your ashen hair, Brünnhilde.
He hath disgraced you and deceived you,
What should be his sufferance, the German’s humility?

Why, revenge, by his instruction.
Bring me his head on a plate, Allfather.
Give me his lips to kiss.

Your golden hair Portia, your Ashen hair Jessica.
They stole his Rhineland Gold and then
They tore away his flesh.

The knight does not love you, Rebecca,
Like the stormtrooper yearns for your flesh.
He’ll steal you away, he’ll burn you with passion,
He’ll die for the sake of your hair.
Your ashen hair Rebecca, Rowena’s golden locks.

Your ashen hair, Margrete,
As schwarz as your maiden name.
They stole all your gold and tore off your flesh,
They killed all the gods
And took off your head.

Their golden blaze, Shulamith.
They always come by night.
They take of your flesh,
And they take of your hair,
They pass it through your
Philosopher’s Womb.
My golden hair, Margrete.

The golden sun, Shulamith,
Has set upon the Rhine.
Your ember currents, o river,
That red, red gold
In that grim white land,
Where hunters kill monsters for sport.
Your golden hair, Cinderella.

Avishai Edenburg is an Israeli, an American, and a grandchild to Holocaust survivors from Hungary. He writes poetry in English and Hebrew about the intersections of Israeli, Jewish and Ashkenazi identities, atheism and tradition, and, occasionally, beauty and personal pain.

Featured image in this post: Sarajevo, Ashkenazi Synagogue (5), Dans, creative commons via wikimedia commons.

The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

OH RABBI

Her little yarmulke pinned
to her salt and pepper hair.
Her rainbow Tallit.
Her utter brilliance.
Oh reform lesbian Rabbi,
now I want to go to Synagogue. All the time.
Eagerly standing alone in the narrow pew
until my feet ache.
Watching her rock and chant.
Devouring her prophetic words.
All those years, slogging through childhood conservatism,
Utter vapid boredom.
Her internet profile says on fire with god.
I will try to believe.
She wears Birkenstocks.
I wear Birkenstocks.
I will fast on Yom Kippur
Hineni.
I will attend Torah study to learn
in her divine presence
about Deuteronomy.
And Shmita.
And Jubilee.

Oh Dodi Li.

W/HOLE

Hebrew is a language of roots. NEKEV is an aperture, a hole. nun kuf vet is the root. LENEKEV is to puncture. MINUKAV is to be perforated. The word for feminine is NIHKAYVA. Same root. A woman is made of holes. Defined by holes – by that hole. On October Seventh, the women in the Gaza envelope, the NIHKAYVA were tortured, mutilated, raped. But nobody listened to the women. The feminine binary. Or not feminine or not female or not binary – doesn’t matter. Violence conjugates the word. Weapons of death stored in tunnels. NIKBA is a tunnel. On October Seventh they bulldozed holes through the fence. That which is punctured, the MINUKAV, cannot be made whole. And oh the NAKBA, the NAKBA – the catastrophe – Arabic word. Two halves of one whole. Everyone’s holy place. Or just home.

Lisa Badner’s debut poetry collection, FRUIT CAKE, was published in 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Lisa’s writing has appeared in Rattle, the New Ohio Review, The Satirist, PANK, Fourteen Hills, Unbroken, Poetica, The Fruit Slice and others. Lisa lives in Brooklyn. https://lisabadner.com/

Featured image in this post: Sommerimpression I, Grey Geezer, creative commons via wikimedia commons.