David Adès: These Are the Men
Into the lush gardens of their hearts
they took me,
gardens of unexpected flowerings
amid bracken and tangles of vines
Jena Schwartz: Preparing for Sabbath
This voice of mine is stuck tonight,
words falling everywhere as I prepare
for the Sabbath, sweeping piles
of debris from the ground…
Baruch November: Dream 12
They tell me it is okay to dance
to this music as we all should
be very modern religious Jews
who need to bust the most modern moves.
Baruch November: St. Louis Park, M.N.
they would ask how it felt
“to be a kike, to taste a baby’s
blood, to kill a savior?”
Paul Celan: Death Fugue
Black milk of dawn we drink it in the evening
we drink it at noon and in the morning we drink it at night
Baruch November: Beard 7
In its color alone,
my beard is the sun falling upon the evening
and some days
it is chaffing brambles, poison
sumac, creeping red vines everywhere.
James Q Whitman: Why the Nazis studied American race laws for inspiration
The US had race-based immigration law, admired by racists all over the world; and the Nazis, like their Right-wing European successors today (and so many US voters) were obsessed with the dangers posed by immigration.
Don Krieger: Breendonk Generations
1. Anna and Isaac met in an orphanage where they were hidden as Catholics. They married in Antwerp. The house door was six inches thick. Two great bolts shot into … Continue reading
Majid Naficy: Helen
Sometimes I see Helen Passing by Wearing a long skirt. She pushes a metal walker Scraping against the ground. She always asks: “Sir! What day is today? What day is … Continue reading
Philip Terman: My Russian-Jewish Grandparents and The Birth Parents of Our Chinese Child Meet at a Café and Discuss My Child’s Future
Schmu-el and Malka and our child’s Chinese birth parents are sipping tea at a café somewhere between the Pale Settlement of Russia and central-rural China. They speak in signs and … Continue reading
Chana Bloch: Potato Eaters
My grandmother never did learn to write. “Making love” was not in her lexicon; I wonder if she ever took off her clothes when her husband performed his conjugal duties. … Continue reading
Camouflage: Strangers with Secrets Meet in Post-War Germany
A Memoir: It was 1957, twelve years after the end of the war in Karlsruhe, West Germany. Most of the scars from the heavy Allied air raids had been covered … Continue reading
Vox Populi 