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Nathan, the shoemaker from Porisov, a small Jewish village in Poland, came home one evening shortly before his departure for Colombia with a Torah scroll under his arm. With a slight shiver, he lay…
Reb Shmelke:
Well, I can see that you are a clever man, so I will tell you the whole story in brief. [He takes a drink.] As you see me before you, I’m called Reb Smelke [Shmelke, as pronounced by a…
The Law has such a great house—oh, look what suitors she does have!Who can doubt they are illustrious,Since on such a grand house they call?Even the judges of the peoplehave engaged in wooing her,show…
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,…
Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch…
Every now and then a different door in the long corridor of the IsPolKom [Executive Committee] would yawn open, partly exposing the profiles of the office workers, emit a hum of muffled chatter and…
I know a town in White Russia [Belarus] on the River Dnieper. Its name is Shklov. I was born there, went to heder there, which is why I know it so well.The flame of life burns calmly there. Nobody…
When “Papa” Gonta bore down on Tetayev at the head of his Cossack army in the summer of 1768, the little town had a strange look about it: the houses large and small stood desolate, their shutters…
On the eve of the Day of Atonement, in the afternoon, I changed from the express to the local train that runs to my home town. The Jews who had traveled with me got…
Someone in a tales is walking your rooftops.
Only he is stirring in the city by night.
He listens. Old gray veins quicken—sound
Through courtyard and synagogue like a hoarse, dusty heart.
You are a…