The following is part of a series of columns in which local community members write about their favorite Jewish books. This week’s column is by Sherry H. Blumberg, Ph.D., R.J.E., the director of education at Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst, Ill. She also teaches in the Hebrew Studies department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at the Sacred Heart School of Theology.
She is presently working on the poetry section of the “Women’s Torah Commentary,” to be published by URJ Press in November.
Any moment can be a poetic one, filled with word pictures that reach in and touch the deepest part of us. Poems can cause us to laugh, cry, sigh and wonder.
I love to read poetry (especially Jewish poetry) and the summer is a wonderful time to discover and explore. A poem break can last for a few minutes, or continue for as long a time as I have.
Two of the best anthologies I know are “Voices within the Ark, The Modern Jewish Poets” (Avon Books, 1980, no longer in print), edited by Howard Schwartz and Anthony Rudolf, and “The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present” (City University of New York Press, 1999), edited by Shirley Kaufman, Galit Hasan-Rokem, and Tamar S. Hess.
I find that in the quiet moments of summer these books — with their variety of voices — always find a way to enchant, stimulate, or teach me. They can become salve for a tough moment, and give words to feelings that soar.
“Voices within the Ark” includes poets from all over the world who write in a variety of different languages (all translated into English) — Hebrew, Yiddish, English (United States, Canadian, British and Australian and South African), Arabic, Amharic, Dutch, German, Italian, French, Czech, Greek, Spanish, Hungarian and Russian, to name a few.
Some of these poets are famous, like Yehudah Amichai, Hayim Nachman Bialik, Primo Levi or Nellie Sachs. Other poets are lesser known, but each of their poems helps to paint a picture of Jewish life and concerns around the world.
One of my favorites is by Ewa Lipska, who was born in Poland in 1945 and still lives in Krakow.
In “If God Exists,” the writer has dinner with God, goes on a bicycle ride with God and then delivers these wonderful lines that often go through my head.…“If God believes, then he prays to himself for eternal hope.”
If we Jews are supposed to try to be God-like, then we must have eternal hope.
The second anthology, “The Defiant Muse,” features women poets exclusively. I love the feminine voices — sometimes strident, often loving, always seeking to understand the world.
Beginning in biblical times with Miriam and Deborah’s poetry, the anthology includes everything from medieval verse to modern Israeli poetry.
These poems touch often on pregnancy, stillbirth, motherhood, loneliness, marriage, shopping, praying, war, love and friendship.
For me, one of the most powerful poems is “The Goat,” by Shin Shifra (translated by Tsipi Keller), a sabra born in 1931.
In the poem, a neighbor, Shoshanna, asks after a sick goat, and upon hearing that the goat has died, Shoshanna says, “He’s better off now.”
The poet is incensed that the woman could not find compassion for the poor goat, so she doesn’t look Shoshanna in the eye.
The poem ends:
“…..Next day
They found the neighbor
Shoshanna hanging by her neck
In her father’s stable.
If only I had looked into her eyes.”
For many, this is a sad and shocking poem. But I read it and remember to look into people’s eyes and try to understand the full meaning of what they are saying, even if it isn’t in words.
I want to end with a Yiddish poet from “Voices Within the Ark,” Mendel Naigreshel, who survived Dachau and Buchenwald. He wrote:
“What will remain after me?
A door standing ajar,
A shelf of books,
Old and dusty, and an empty chair —
Where I dreamed forth my poems,
That I believed in…..”
These words, and the many others in these anthologies, deserve to be read over and over. They should be read quietly and out loud, to others and ourselves.
They are special poems, Jewish poems — words for us today.
Loading ...