On an autumn night, on a bed of sorrows, far from home and shattered hearth,
My mother died;
A last tear froze in her eyes as she gasped a dying blessing
To me, her son, setting forth…
This black stone seal, from the City of David in Jerusalem, depicts two bearded men with their hands raised in a gesture of worship, flanking an altar or pedestal. The crescents on the altar or…
The only garden left in our walled-up town was the old cemetery, whose earliest graves dated back to the thirteenth century. It was densely overgrown. Picking one’s way to its remoter corners meant…