Nostalgia

Olga Kirsch

1948

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget itself.

Give us the land we have wandered in time
Through foreign parts, far, so far and then,
Every year at Passover we repeat the line
Next year we shall see Jerusalem
Perhaps I shall never enter the land,
Nor those who follow, but is a people’s hope
Not timeless like heaven’s orbit band
Wherein a…
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Creator Bio

Olga Kirsch

1924–1997

Poet Olga Kirsch was born in the town of Koppies in the Orange Free State of South Africa. While a student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Kirsch made a conscious political decision to write in Afrikaans rather than English, and she is the only Jewish writer of note to have done so. In 1948, she settled in Israel, where she taught English but continued to publish primarily in Afrikaans.

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