Unfinished People: East European Jews Encounter America
Ruth Gay
1996
Girls
My father lived to be ninety-eight, and until the end of his life he never failed to introduce my sister and me with a grand gesture as his “two disappointments.” We were, very simply put, an offense to his manhood—an offense made the more bitter by the fact that his brother, his ineffectual brother whom he despised, had three sons. To the…
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The Converts
On the holiest day we fast till sundown.
I watch the sun stand still
as the horizon edges towards it. Four hours to go.
The rabbi’s mouth opens and closes and opens.
I think: fish
and little steaming…