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Arn-Wolf—parnes khoydesh (chairman of the kahal, the community council)Beyle—his wifeStere—his daughterRabbiFirst and Second Dayen (judges of the bes din…
I slept with a murderer every night of my life for two years. The murderer is dead now. He died some weeks ago in Chicago. That is why I am free to tell the tale.
I was a small boy at that time. I…
There’s a stale, sour stench: a miscellany of heaped-up vegetables and fruits, cheese, fried fish, sweaty bodies, thighs, urine, and belching drunks. The smell sneaks harsh but titillating into the…
Young Man:Tell us, Bar Kochba, the words to useWhen we return to our homesAnd tell of meeting you.Bar Kochba:For taking of the people’s land,For stealing of the people’s wealth,For towns…
In a dingy kitchen
Facing a Ghetto backyard
An old woman is chanting Jeremiah’s Lamentations,
Quaveringly,
Out of a Hebrew Bible.
The gaslight flares and falls . . .
This night,
Two thousand…
Would you, mama, believe if I told
That everything here is changed into gold,
That gold is made from iron and blood,
Day and night, from iron and blood?
—My son, from a mother you cannot hide—
A…
On Russian fields, in the twilights of winter!
Where can one be lonelier, Where can one be lonelier?
The doddering horse, the squeaking sleigh,
the path under snow—that is my way.
Below, in a…
The night draws in around my eyes
Its ring of haze.
My pulse has sent my blood into a blaze
Though all about me a gray coldness lies.
O God, that I by living day
Should dream I’m dead,
Drink it in…
“ . . . And all those who are on the left side go and wander in the world and seek to dress themselves in the body.”—From Zohar Beraishit
When the Havdoleh candle is extinguished,
In Gehenna, the…
Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let…