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The socially conscious writer Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) grew up in an established Sephardic family in New York. Lazarus’s eloquent essays, emotive poetry, and insightful translations—particularly of…
Like the golden bangles on the arms of a Bedouin woman, the hills of Gilboa bind their bracelets about the valley of Jezreel in the golden hours of late Adar evenings. Then do the women go down to…
We’re laughing our heads off:
None of us wears a top-hat
We just go around with heads—or without heads—
But the Rabbi of Uman
Holds up a mirror to the sun.
We laugh our heads off
When a gang comes…
Unsatiated passions want to be satiated,
Arms wish to be tired,
Lips look for merging,
Fingers long for cracking,
Green fires in the eyes are greening greener,
Like eyes of wolves in frozen fields,
G…
Upon your nakedness a white day celebrates,
You who are [so] poor and so rich,
A wall of mountains has frozen,
Transparent like a deceptive vision,
Attached to the horizon.
Noon. The vastnesses of…
Vilna, my great matriarch, an established Jewish city,
Jerusalem of the Exile, an ancient nation’s consolation in the north!
This [poem] is your patched kerchief, like the roof of the old synagogue,…
When night draws near your window, come to him naked.
Softly will he ripple and darken round your still beauty, touching the tips of your breasts.
I shall stand with him there, a stray wanderer…
My most pious songs have I written
On rising from my sinful bed.
God has given me a wealth of sins,
And God alone has saved me from my sins.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
King David was old, advanced in years. Though covered in bedclothes, he could not get warm. They searched the land of Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abischag the Shunammite, who was…
I have not sung to you, my land,
And I have not glorified your name
With acts of valor,
With booty of battles;
My hands have planted just a tree
On the quiet Jordan shores,
My legs have trodden down…