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# of the book

a jewish press

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## Posts

- [Marty Newman - 'Heisenberg's Ascent'](https://ofthebookpress.com/marty-newman-heisenbergs-ascent/) - 1. Heisenberg observed the ouroboros swallow its tail & disappear, bite its tongue & die of poison. A lonely creature, it bore no offspring. Never spoke, suffered from housemaid's knee & was tragically confused with the wheel. Its anatomy, the taxonomy of the void, the allure of the ambiguous infinite, filled his doctorate thesis… “Don't
- [Barbara Krasner - 'Art Is Chai'](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-art-is-chai/) - I took eighteen trips to art museums since last May. I took eighteen trips since getting the green light from my team of medical professionals to leave my house of immunoisolation, the result of a rare and incurable autoimmune disease triggered by the COVID booster. I took eighteen trips to art museums in New York
- [Barbara Krasner - Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-three-poems-2/) - Bound I can still see the spine of the thin book, a pasted label with an illustrated woman’s face, draped In tradition and mystery: Great Jewish Women. A pasted label on the red front cover, in the Hebrew School’s library. How the stories of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah brought me to my people’s
- [Richard Rosegarten - 'Heritage of Names'](https://ofthebookpress.com/richard-rosegarten-heritage-of-names/) - When Grandpa died Most of the family found out His first name wasn’t actually Alan It was Alexander Which only added to the mystique Of his names For, when he was alive, he insisted His Hebrew name was Elihu But Grandma insisted it was Eliyahu A long-running dispute Incidentally,
- [Elise Levitt - Four Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/elise-levitt-four-poems/) - Midbar You can never cross the desert midbar It’s too busy speaking out who you are, Writing on your weary bones in lime. Cham by sun and kar by stars. Footprints blow away with time But Adamah in my adam dam; Grains in everything I eat, My blood raised on kiddush wine.
- [Roberta Tovey - Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/roberta-tovey-three-poems/) - Krakow for my grandmother I can picture what she wore, visiting her aunt in the hospital in Krakow. She was always elegant– white jacket trimmed in black white leather gloves and her soft hat folding over her face. Behind the gauze veil her eyes were clear grey. And he saw her
- [Gaby Zabar - 'Wet Dust (Mecha-Golem 1996)'](https://ofthebookpress.com/gaby-zabar-wet-dust-mecha-golem-1996/) - In the year 1996 of the old era, after the world ended the first time, humanity aspired to be equal to God. Humanity worked together and achieved something great: a tower that approached heaven. In the year 1996 of the common era, before the world ended the second time, humanity aspired to be equal to
- [Gunilla T. Kester - Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/gunila-t-kester-two-poems/) - The Story of a Painting (and Lot’s Unnamed Wife) Western myths unfamiliar to her, she turns around in the driveway to see her son leaning against the glass watching her leave one more time. His eyes blur with tears. Or hatred? He’s just a boy nine years old who loves his mother.
- [[Translation] Rom Golan – 'When Isaac Wept'](https://ofthebookpress.com/translation-rom-golan-when-isaac-wept/) - Eliezer, servant of Abraham, stopped in the place where he had found himself, standing beside a well, ten camels around him and all manner of goods upon their backs. His mind wandered, and Eliezer marvelled inwardly, for had not both his master and his master’s master failed to trust him? One had bound him by
- [Carl Sherman – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/carl-sherman-three-poems/) - Yahrzeit The kitchen counter polished slab of granite flickers with recollection. We meet after midnight. I can’t sleep. You will never awaken, never know of my defection my sad excavations 50 years’ reflection, tarnishing love. My eyes close, I stumble toward bed but turn back to check and recheck the faucets,
- [Spencer Szwalbenest - Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/spencer-szwalbenest/) - My Enemy (December 12th, 2024, New York, NY) My enemy Is not like you or me. Savage that he is— He is no man Of flesh and blood Who can be shot from a distance. He is no man With loves and dreams, A mortgage, or a fantastic collection Of stamps. No, my
- [Jonathan Memmert – 'Shir'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jonathan-memmert-shir/) - All Israel has a place yet who will be for me. If I alone rest in the world to come will all Israel be guaranteed entry, and when, if not now, drought dust and war winds parch our belonging, are rains of existence milk and honey of sustenance only for
- [Lena Solomon – 'Painting'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lena-solomon-painting/) - Above the old Jerusalem graveyard white clouds disperse at the light blowing of summer’s wind Serene, blue skies over young soldiers’ graves. The sea of tears flooding the old graveyard drenched trees’ roots, the salt burnt their leaves. On barren brown branches. flowers’ colour of murky red, diluted, now turned pink A flock of
- [Eli Ehrenpreis – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/eli-daniel-ehrenpreis-three-poems/) - View I wondered why a lonely seagull Drifting in a summer gusty wind Flew by the north picture window, Turning toward the roof.Then seen again and again From window to tall window, Past the wedding guests Finishing their dinners.But omens are discouraged There are no reasons A bird with tapered wings drifts by a wedding
- [Howard Wach - 'Music Under the Stars'](https://ofthebookpress.com/howard-wach-music-under-the-stars/) - They arrive separately. Danny is 25, sturdily built, black-haired, olive-skinned, clad in faded army fatigues. Two-day stubble shades his dark features. Corinne is 21, blue-eyed, wearing a smart Dior knockoff she found at Saks on 34th St. Her blondish hair falls in waves around her face. Thrown into proximity by chance, by friends of
- [[Review] ‘Seventeen Spoons’ – Esther Goldenberg](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-seventeen-spoons-esther-goldenberg/) - (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Esther Goldenberg, Seventeen Spoons: The Desert Songs Trilogy, Book 2, 100 Block by Row House Publishing, March 2025, 432 pgs. Judaism began as an oral tradition before it was committed to writing. For generations, we trusted our rabbis and elders to transmit the stories and laws they had received from
- [[Review] ‘The Song of the Bluebird' – Esther Goldenberg](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-the-song-of-the-bluebird-esther-goldenberg/) - (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Esther Goldenberg, The Song of the Bluebird: The Desert Songs Trilogy, Book 3, 100 Block by Row House Publishing, March 2026, 416 pgs. In the conclusion of The Desert Songs Trilogy, Esther Goldenberg weaves together motifs from her previous books to create The Song of the Bluebird, centred on Serah Ben Asher. This
- [Barbara Krasner – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-three-poems/) - Brown is More Than a Color There between red and yellow lives the color brown. My given name, Bryna, translates to brown. Bryna, my immigrant great-grandmother. Bryna, whose sheitl covered her hair, once brown. Bryna doesn’t require anything from the throat like Chana or Chava. It’s prettier than brown. Roasted chicken
- [P. David Hornik –  Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/p-david-hornik-poems/) - Past Pastoral 1 We can have our youth back. Jim and Ed can pull into the driveway, wait for me, slumped; Jim taps a couple toots on the horn; I step out of my house, askew, still combing; another day of school. But laughter bubbles up from us as Jim’s old, gasping Studebaker
- [Hanna Yerushalmi – 'The Four Daughters'](https://ofthebookpress.com/hanna-yerushalmi-the-four-daughters/) - The four daughters haven’t stopped talking since that first seder. The wise one works as a therapist bringing peace between husband and wife. The wicked one uses her rage to prosecute pedophiles and bring evil terrorists to justice. The simple one had had enough and moved to Ramat Aviv where she raises four
- [Anna Stolley Persky – 'Oy Gevalt! Goy iz Farbotn?'](https://ofthebookpress.com/anna-stolley-persky-oy-gevalt-goy-iz-farbotn/) - Oy-yoi-yoi! Vey iz mir. As if we don’t have enough worries, now the cancel cabal is gunning for us Yids. The word goy, they say, iz farbotn. Where to start? Maybe with the word Zionist? A Zionist is someone who believes in our homeland, our people, our heroes that bring us such naches. They have
- [Bart Edelman – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/bart-edelman-two-poems/) - Prophecy I’ve written wisdom’s prophecy, On a white-washed wall, Outside the Citizens Bureau, But no one bothers to read it. They’re too busy with the comings And goings of the new regime— Spick and span, as usual— Until the bottom drops out. What a racket, I tell you. Yet not a soul appears alarmed,
- [David Allard – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/david-allard/) - Remembering Jeanie We went stone-gathering at dawn, Ungainly in old boots Still sticky-eyed and dry-mouthed To gather the rocks recently Risen from the new-ploughed earth My heart awoke first, and I forgot to breathe For a moment when I saw you - As if for the first time – Your black hair
- [[Review] 'Out Of The Storm: Holocaust To Hope' - Michael Halperin](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-out-of-the-storm-holocaust-to-hope-michael-halperin/) - (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Michael Halperin, Out Of The Storm: Holocaust To Hope, Cherry Orchard Books (Academic Studies Press), November 2025, 356 pgs Antisemitism did not begin when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, nor did it start with the pogroms of 19th-century Eastern Europe. Rather, as Michael Halperin establishes at the opening of his book,
- [Ira Director – 'On Apr 14, 2024'](https://ofthebookpress.com/ira-director-on-apr-14-2024/) - __________ Chicago-born artist and poet Ira Director holds a BA in Philosophy and Masters in English Literature and Poetry with works published in journals and e-zines, exhibited in galleries, and contributing to the International Mail Art Network. Poems and paintings are sometimes combined, with both integral to the pieces. He currently curates the Gezer
- [Elizabeth Edelglass – 'My Mother's Alligator Pocketbook'](https://ofthebookpress.com/elizabeth-edelglass-my-mothers-alligator-pocketbook/) - My Mother's Alligator Pocketbook gleams like high-gloss patent leather, but don’t dare make that mistake, these erratic ovoid squares once sheathed exotic reptiles that slinked through sizzling tropic climes before arriving at the Upper East Side store where cousin Sandra (nee Sadie) referred my mother, as if she needed the secret knock to shop,
- [Jonathan Memmert – 'Ode to the Ger'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jonathan-memmert-ode-to-the-ger/) - O
- [Ben Schulman – (((  )))](https://ofthebookpress.com/ben-schulman/) - Their veins have pennies in their eyes And they won’t shut up They keep clawing They keep chattering All this incessant chatter All that incessant talk Somewhere, in Unified air, of Tehrangeles, Where Western worlds come together A part in this corner of a desert
- [Marty Newman - 'The Mona Lisa - And an Aside about Turner'](https://ofthebookpress.com/marty-newman-the-mona-lisa-and-an-aside-about-turner/) - Strap on your stilts & raise a wreath to the monument. For Leonardo's missing rib, a sundial in a sun extinct prepare a flood of adjectives. To the tranquil, pious hands. (Her bald head's no mistake, should you decide.) The two-dimensional made concrete... & yet it's the ambivalent you climb to find, the famous
- [Eillene Leistner – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/eillene-leistner-three-poems/) - Crossings – A fugue poem He escaped Siberia across the Urals, his nearly frozen nose still intact, his once blond hair turned jet coal black. He crossed the Urals back to his home, destroyed by war, neighbors still killing his kin and more. He crossed that broken world, left it to be rebuilt, without his
- [Janice Alper – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/janice-alper-three-poems/) - Where the Train Tracks End I walk in silence along grass covered train tracks with teenagers, Holocaust survivors, chaperones. We are a sea of blue. Our jackets boast MARCH OF THE LIVING. Butterflies flutter onto the wildflowers, birds chirp in sparse trees. We shade our eyes from bright sunlight, stare out at the expanse of
- [Jonathan Papernick – Excerpt from 'The Oppressor Professor: A Novel of the Tentifada'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jonathan-papernick-excerpt-from-the-oppressor-professor-a-novel-of-the-tentifada/) - Even after teaching for more than twenty years on Weldon College’s bucolic campus, tucked away amid a mature hardwood forest of maple, beech, ash and oak beyond the Boston exurbs and the concrete belt of Interstate 495, barely a speck on the map between Worcester and the Quabbin Reservoir, Jake Altschuler still felt a sense
- [[REVIEW] - 'The Color of Time and Other Stories' by Barbara Krasner](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-the-color-of-time-and-other-stories-by-barbara-krasner/) - (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Barbara Krasner, The Color of Time and Other Stories, BlazeVOX Books, August 2025, 138 pgs Jewish stories invariably tell the history of our people. Whether fiction or testimony, they provide an outlet to articulate our pain, for ourselves and for a wider community. Within all Jewish stories lie invisible threads that
- [Bryan Schwartzman – 'Monument Park'](https://ofthebookpress.com/bryan-schwartzman-monument-park/) - Almost 38 years, to the day, before my father stopped breathing in the intensive care unit of a South Carolina Hospital, he brought me to Yankee Stadium for opening day. The Bronx Bombers played the defending World Series champions, the Kansas City Royals. I’d been to the stadium a few times, but that April 1986
- [Amiel Schotz – 'Shylock in Venice'](https://ofthebookpress.com/amiel-schotz-shylock-in-venice/) - I could do no more, no less. The fate that brought my father here, ill-omened town, stinking of show, deceit and filth-filled waterways—so outwardly respectable. But still I thrived, fitted into the walls vital as the mortar, though reviled. No goose that lays the golden eggs, the rat that vents the ducats of
- [David Saidoff - An Excerpt from 'Israel: Black Swan or White Unicorn"](https://ofthebookpress.com/david-saidoff-an-excerpt-from-israel-black-swan-or-white-unicorn/) - On October 7, my youngest twin who was then a reserve paratrooper in the IDF was called up to fly down to Gaza from his base in Blackhawk helicopter that landed just outside Kibbutz Kfar Aza at two in the afternoon. His unit was the 3rd to enter that community right after a crack Sayeret
- [Bryan Schwartzman – 'Far, Far Away'](https://ofthebookpress.com/bryan-schwartzman-far-far-away/) - Episode I: Summer, 1999…… It is a hopeful time in the Middle East. A new Israeli Prime Minister has promised to make peace between longtime enemies. Meanwhile, a young college graduate, Bryan Schwartzman, has left his home in New York to be part of it all and discover himself. Awaiting him is an unlikely
- [Fran Levin - '24 Hadley Court'](https://ofthebookpress.com/fran-levin-24-hadley-court/) - 1969 Sunday Night The wine glasses are talking to each other again. I can hear their high, tinny voices coming from the glass-fronted cabinet in front of me. My fold-up bed is crammed between the dining room table and the wall. Every time there’s the grumble of a bus riding along the main road behind
- [Barbara Krasner – Four More Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-four-more-poems/) - The Ring Cycle 1. The Lure of Gold, 1991 The Dutch masters encourage me to lift the lid of their cigar box in the credenza in my parents’ house. I open it and see the thin gold band. Pronounced gold prongs holding the tiniest, cloudiest stone. Maybe a diamond, maybe glass. Maybe haggled from
- [Haya Pomrenze – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/haya-pomrenze-three-poems/) - Things That Are Frayed Yellow hostage ribbons, now dirty and dull. Vocal cords from protesters at Hostage Square, muffling the hoarseness of fruit vendors at Shuk HaCarmel Hems of uniforms, soiled with fear. Arms, legs. Our flesh. Tzitzit made by volunteers, well-meaning, but unable to follow the separation of strands, knotting, and wrapping, the
- [Rebecca G. Biber - 'Fugue'](https://ofthebookpress.com/rebecca-g-biber-fugue/) - In the eighteenth century, laws were passed requiring Eastern European Jews to adopt non-Jewish names; but no record exists of the sale of these names or of price lists set according to their pleasingness. –Janet Malcolm, Six Glimpses of the Past I know my name by sound– –Tracy K. Smith, I Will
- [Barbara Krasner – Four Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-four-poems/) - Hatikvah: In Praise of Those Who Persevere Hatikvah. The song I learned during Friday night services at Camp Nah-Jee-Wah in the amphitheater overlooking the lake or in the rec center when it rained. Where we learned Yerushalayim shel Zahav and zeal for Eretz Israel. Hatikvah. The flow that brought me home as I listened
- [Lena Solomon – 'Berlin, October 7, 2025'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lena-solomon-berlin-october-7-2025/) - On October 7, I walked in Berlin between the walls, of the monument of death, a memory bound in the bond of life, with the souls of Abraham and all inhabitants in the Garden of Eden A recorded voice wafting through the wet autumn air recounted the story of monument’s creation, in German and
- [Alon Taïeb-Toper – 'Hrymilivka'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alon-taieb-toper-hrymilivka/) - “I just don’t understand why they have to dig up these ugly memories,” said Halyna, not taking her eyes off the carnation garland she was weaving. Hers were the most beautiful in town. “It’s only right, enough time has passed by now,” her husband answered. “Why can’t they just forget and move on like the
- [Patty Seybourn – Six Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/patty-seybourn-six-poems/) - What Hath God Wrought! A girl thought these words should be the first dotted and dashed onto paper letters reduced to two gestures, two signs in series, as though the vowels from a Torah had all fled and established their own identities and Morse, friend to her father, thought, Why not? Perhaps
- [Jessie Atkin – 'Supermarket Success Story'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jessie-atkin-supermarket-success-story/) - “It’s like museum temperature in here. Cold just to keep people awake.” I looked at my cousin. “I think it has more to do with keeping the food fresh, but I don’t want to argue with you.” We were moping around near the cheese aisle because our aunt was trying to find orange juice with
- [Alisha Goldblatt – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/alisha-goldblatt-three-poems/) - Woman of Valor Absolute bravery is the blood from the womb, red gemstone beating in the heart of her spouse. She soldiers on. Corseted in the fabric of the day, a woman weaves with chapped hands. Dark is the sound of a ship’s horn when it wakes her sleeping children. Even the maid gets
- [P. David Hornik – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/p-david-hornik-three-poems/) - Morning Bus from Be’er Sheva to Jerusalem In deep predawn lull at the bus stop, you can’t see those you glance at. Dark is king. * From the bus, dim farmland dawns. A small orange sun peers up unbidden, adds no light. * Cold morning on Jaffa Street: rivers of gold pour from
- [Paul Rabinowitz – 'Albuquerque'](https://ofthebookpress.com/paul-rabinowitz-albuquerque/) - windows down inhaling juniper and piñon pine Ray Bans resting comfortably on my face I pass road signs pointing to tribal reservation like Acoma Laguna Zuni Pueblos Sandia San Felipe Santa Ana when suddenly a series of dings warns me the gas tank is low like a beacon of light looming on the horizon I
- [Susan Blumberg-Kason – 'Golda in Milwaukee'](https://ofthebookpress.com/susan-blumberg-kason-golda-in-milwaukee/) - This chapter is an excerpt from an unpublished biography of Golda Meir’s childhood and teenage years in Milwaukee and Denver. Golda did not recognize the man standing in front of her. He wore modern, fitted clothes, not the dark robes of the old country, and his face was clean-shaven apart from a thin moustache,
- [Vee Lind – 'Dora Czaplewka' and 'Abe Hochman'](https://ofthebookpress.com/vee-lind-dora-czaplewka-and-abe-hochman/) - Dora Czaplewka When my grandma Dora was ninety she told me the story of her falling out with God back in the forests of Warsaw where her father was the manager of the woods. This was long, long before Jews were allowed to own their own land Before the women were allowed to raise a
- [Matthew Goldberg – 'In the Beginning – בראשית'](https://ofthebookpress.com/matthew-goldberg-in-the-beginning-בראשית/) - This slick black Pontiac, which traversed Route 66, when that was still a thing. You twist your key in the ignition, but it won’t. This mother-of-pearl music box, whose metallic teeth composed a melody which you can still recall. You wind the gear to make it play, but it won’t. This
- [Anne Whitehouse – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/anne-whitehouse-two-poems/) - In The Necropolis In the cemetery of Beit She’arim inside a tomb from the third century paved with mosaic and decorated with wildlife reliefs is carved an inscription commemorating a local resident. The author, though Jewish, had a Greek style: I lie, son of Leontius dead, son of Sappho, who after having gathered of
- [Adam Jon Miller – 'A Poetry Reading'](https://ofthebookpress.com/adam-jon-miller-a-poetry-reading/) - One day, in the open-air, a poetry reading across Zhongnanhai—right in the Eye of China. You can't recall a time, or a place, that wasn't Manufacture Red. In fact, your great race was almost dead. Yet it survived: cultural revolution, Mao, the laogai. The roughed-up, cloud-scraped sky, finally parted for Poetry. As one lyrical
- [Pesach Rotem – 'Passover Haiku'](https://ofthebookpress.com/pesach-rotem-passover-haiku/) - All who are hungry have a place at my table. My pleasure to serve. ___________ Pesach Rotem was born and raised in New York and now lives in Yodfat, Israel, in the Lower Galilee. He is a member of the Voices Israel Group of Poets in English and of the Israel Association of
- [Andrew Cohen – 'That Jew'](https://ofthebookpress.com/andrew-cohen-that-jew/) - Ironically, it was my eighty-four-year-old mother-in-law, who found it among the ever-growing Jewish-pride-paraphernalia that had cropped up on social media since the horrors of October 7, got me the hat for my birthday, a navy blue baseball cap with the words “I’m That Jew” and a white Star of David embroidered on the front—ironically, not
- [Bruce Black – 'My Grandmother's Hands'](https://ofthebookpress.com/bruce-black-my-grandmothers-hands/) - My grandmother used her hands to tend the geraniums with their bright red blossoms that sat in terracotta pots on the windowsill of her living room overlooking the corner of East 243rd Street and White Plains Avenue in the Bronx. I would sit on the sofa beside her on Sunday afternoons as she
- [Elana Shira Segal – 'Forward Go'](https://ofthebookpress.com/elana-shira-segal-forward-go/) - It is said that the death rate slightly increases every year around the Jewish New Year. Some speculate that it is part of the “Who shall live and who shall die” theme of the high holidays. Monty Finkelman understands this. He lost his wife, Minna, to cancer three years ago, four days before Rosh Hashana.
- [Deborah Bacharach - 'A Holocaust Glossary'](https://ofthebookpress.com/deborah-bacharach-a-holocaust-glossary/) - —From the testimonies of Judy Abrams, Johnny Jablon, and Michael Kutz Adult Being ten and small, my task with the partisans to crawl to the police station, place the dynamite, connect the wires, a personal victory avenging the death of my family my people.
- [Roberta Tovey – 'Anniversary'](https://ofthebookpress.com/roberta-tovey-anniversary/) - I never heard my parents recite the Kaddish There were only the squat unlovely candles in plain glass jars set out on memorial holidays —the public yahrzeit for those dateless dead murdered in Oswiecim or shot on the streets of Sosnowiec. The souls of my grandparents float over us all year graveless, light, jesting They
- [[Review] ‘The Scrolls of Deborah’ – Esther Goldenberg](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-the-scrolls-of-deborah-esther-goldenberg/) - (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Esther Goldenberg, The Scrolls of Deborah: The Desert Songs Trilogy, Book 1, 100 Block by Row House Publishing, May 2024, 384 pgs. There is a myriad of female role models in any of the Ten Sacred Texts of Judaism; however, their presence only reinforces the religious values expected of Jewish women via
- [Lior Maayan - Four Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/lior-maayan-four-poems/) - My Brother has been dead for fifteen years My brother has been dead for fifteen years. Mom says he was blue-eyed and brilliant for his age. Dad keeps quiet. I only remember one evening: I was young and what is engraved in me must be far from the facts. For some reason we changed
- [Deborah Bacharach – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/deborah-bacharach-three-poems/) - I am Called to the Torah Nothing in my home has ever hurt me, but I have heard the tic tic of the projector as bulldozers gather up skeletal bodies. Here I read The Diary of Anne Frank, moon over Peter. I decide to name my diary Kitty. I am not yet mortal. My family
- [Ethan Greenwood – 'The Last Time We Said Goodbye'](https://ofthebookpress.com/ethan-greenwood-the-last-time-we-said-goodbye/) - I heard through friends that Calev and his wife had a baby. Most people from Yeshiva were either married or engaged but it wasn’t on the cards for me. The woman I was seeing spotted an “adorable” pink cardigan on a website that she insisted I buy for his new daughter. The gift was wrapped
- [Burt Rashbaum – 'Candleflame'](https://ofthebookpress.com/burt-rashbaum-candleflame/) - It was a quiet night in the neighborhood. No moon; the sky black, streetlights illuminating only a small patch of sidewalk below their shining, the air crisp with autumn. Leaves blew around Meyer's feet, swirling into the streets with the passing of buses. Meyer walked home slower than usual. A rare night of peace in
- [Alex Gordon – 'The Black Devil of Berlin'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alex-gordon-the-black-devil-of-berlin/) - Otto Klemperer, a German conductor and composer, was born into a Jewish family in the Silesian city of Breslau on May 14, 1885. He was the middle child of three in a Jewish family. His father, a native of Prague, was a merchant. Thanks to his mother, an amateur pianist, Otto was introduced to
- [Barbara Krasner – 'Schuster's Kosher Restaurant'](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-krasner-schusters-kosher-restaurant/) - (This speculative nonfiction piece is based on a few minutes of recovered 8mm film from 1958, commemorating the author's maternal grandparents’ wedding anniversary.) Schuster’s Kosher Restaurant 1415 Coney Island Avenue, Coney Island Serving the American Dream in Brooklyn Since 1935 Anniversary Appetizers Cold Smoked Fish Platter—sable, lox, herring, sturgeon (upon request), whitefish, carp.
- [Pearl Abraham – 'Late to Spirit' Crown](https://ofthebookpress.com/pearl-abraham-late-to-spirit-crown/) - Is Anything too hard for the Lord? —Genesis, 18:14 Hineni Is that You, God, in the shaking leaves in the changed light of August, ushering in the solemn season: Who will live/die? I stand stilled in green shade, in wonder, my bare skin bumped up to answer Your poplar call, my early
- [Lilian Cohen – 'Passion'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lilian-cohen-passion/) - Sitting at her dressing table mirror Vered Marcosa applies lipstick, covers it with a thin film of powder followed by another layer of lipstick. She has to look her best for the television interview soon to start in the lounge downstairs in the aged care facility where she now lives. She blots her lips, pleased
- [Eli Daniel Ehrenpreis – 'Tarkhan and Me'](https://ofthebookpress.com/eli-daniel-ehrenpreis-tarkhan-and-me/) - “A good name is more desirable than great wealth”. Proverbs 22:1 Tuesdays are slow at Emma’s Bagel Café, and that afternoon, Lenny, the former shoe king of Niles, Illinois, and Edelman, the retired accountant, were served their lunches right away. They sat at their favorite booth next to the picture window, looking out into Skokie
- [Ruth Schreiber – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/ruth-schreiber-two-poems/) - Brother What, you travelled for an hour and waited for another just to see your brother? We don’t know what it is we don’t know why it came but we’ll treat him just the same These marvellous drugs will serve as glue electric shock is helpful too we’ll return him as
- [Shanti Ariker – 'Late in the Fourth Quarter'](https://ofthebookpress.com/shanti-ariker-late-in-the-fourth-quarter/) - My mother, Tina, was barely more than a chassis now, pillows propped around her to serve as inferior replacements for the evaporated body fat she used to fret made her look plump. “How are you doing?” I asked, though she didn’t acknowledge me. “It’s me,” I said. I was desperate to connect with her in
- [Larry Lefkowitz – 'The Romanian Connection'](https://ofthebookpress.com/larry-lefkowitz-the-romanian-connection/) - One doesn’t always know when one meets a genius. Then, I thought he was a slacker. He had been assigned with the rest of us Israeli army basic training graduates to a course for drivers of armored personnel carriers. Each time, while the rest of us were learning the theory and later the practice of
- [Laurel Benjamin – Six Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/laurel-benjamin-six-poems/) - Letter to the Angels, Poland, 1919 Psalm 74.14—Leviathan appears as multi-headed sea serpent My beard is scraggly clothes hanging on my skeleton but I speak not for myself We were never asked to empty our homes instead we treble-key birdcage howl sparrows scattering lime trees lined up We left river Stryi's platinum surface
- [Alex Gordon – 'Theodor Lessing: The Murder of The Prophet'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alex-gordon-theodor-lessing-the-murder-of-the-prophet/) - 1. The Birth of Auto-antisemitism The psychology of a Jew hostile to his people was described in the early twentieth century by the psychologist Otto Weininger, a specialist in self-hatred and one of the greatest Jew-haters among Jews: "Whoever hates the Jewish essence (Weininger himself. - A. G.), hates it, first of all, in
- [Julie Zuckerman – 'Rites of Passage'](https://ofthebookpress.com/julie-zuckerman-rites-of-passage/) - 1939 A doorbell sounded in the distance, but Jeremiah's brain was occupied with Roberta Steinbaum. He'd known her since third grade but had only recently noticed the way she tittered at his jokes and gave him playful glances that made his insides go wobbly. Deep in his daydream, it could have been a few beats
- [Kayla Schneider-Smith – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/kayla-schneider-smith-three-poems/) - Undercover The yoga studio on Chicago Ave has a Palestinian flag behind the reception, next to a keffiyeh, next to a cut-out of a watermelon. The teacher sits behind the desk, smiles at me. Later she will adjust my shoulders, rub lavender on my neck, speak in a lulled voice in a dark room of
- [Lesléa Newman – 'Disarmed'](https://ofthebookpress.com/leslea-newman-disarmed/) - “When do I get my arms back?” asks the boy as if they were two toys his mother took from him because they didn’t belong at the supper table where the boy had to sit still and finish his food before he was allowed to scrape back his chair and place his plate in
- [Lena Solomon – 'Sailing Through the Universe'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lena-solomon-sailing-through-the-universe/) - Peacefully gliding, holding hands we engrave images of hope on black canopies of emptiness throughout the Universe You whisper in my ear: “We may soon reach Betelgeuse, bright red and leave behind the Earthly flood of night”, Between tears of longing we watch the dark shroud of shadows, war-silenced reflections of past creatures evolved by
- [Paul Rabinowitz - 'Love Poem'](https://ofthebookpress.com/paul-rabinowitz-love-poem/) - at the end of a cobblestoned street under a pale moon waning ocean air swirls under frayed awnings into a dimly lit cafe hum of a thousand churning voices rumble under ceiling fans as late night lovers plan their next move It's getting late, I should get home he says turning from her dark eyes
- [Alex Gordon – 'In The Abyss of The Gulag'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alex-gordon-in-the-abyss-of-the-gulag/) - The abbreviation GULAG stands for Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps. The GULAG is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. Encyclopedias date the beginning of the policy of state anti-Semitism to November 1948, when the authorities defeated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. This organization, founded in April 1942, helped the USSR
- [[Review] 'Winter Light: The Memoir of a Child of Holocaust Survivors' by Grace Feuerverger](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-winter-light-the-memoir-of-a-child-of-holocaust-survivors-by-grace-feuerverger/) - Grace Feuerverger, Winter Light: The Memoir of a Child of Holocaust Survivors, Amsterdam Publishers, September 2024, 452 pgs. (reviewed by Monette Moradi) Intergenerational trauma is not a new subject for Jews in the 21st century. However, post-World War II and the Holocaust, this definition was not even researched, let alone acknowledged and treated as a
- [Jennifer Anne Moses – 'The Building'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jennifer-anne-moses-the-building/) - The building where my boyfriend lived was filled with Jews from Westchester County. When I say “filled” I don’t mean every apartment, on every floor. How could that be possible? It was a big building, more than twenty stories, with six or eight one- and two-bedroom apartments on each floor, some with balconies, all of
- [Hamutal Bar-Yosef – Three Poems (translated by Esther Cameron)](https://ofthebookpress.com/hamutal-bar-yosef-three-poems-translated-by-esther-cameron/) - We Had “We had a house built of stone!“ In the confidential darkness my mother would whisper the standard legend, with eyes closed, in a strange trance, stroking my cheeks with her thick, cracked fingers (she didn't buy herself rings till she was eighty – gold rings, set with gems). “We had a front
- [Judith Suissa – 'Memory and Mourning, from Vilnius to Marrakesh'](https://ofthebookpress.com/judith-suissa-memory-and-mourning-from-vilnius-to-marrakesh/) - Seven years ago, I stood in biting wind at the edge of an empty field in rural Lithuania, feeling defeated. The field was not actually empty, although it had appeared so when our car pulled up by the low fence that marked it off from the surrounding farmland. On our map, this was the location
- [Laura Hodes – 'Counting Chickens'](https://ofthebookpress.com/laura-hodes-counting-chickens/) - The decision has been made. We will make aliyah and join our children in Israel. It’s 1947; it’s time. Yes, it’s a pity that we are leaving one of our five behind. Our youngest, the baby. The one we always coddled, that Rachel held in her arms until he was four and too heavy for even
- [Anna Hirsh – 'Kitchen Windows'](https://ofthebookpress.com/anna-hirsh-kitchen-windows/) - The new neighbors have a mezuzah on their door. I glimpsed it while walking Dodi around the neighborhood. The lights in the house were off, so I doubled back for a closer look, wanting to be certain I hadn’t mistaken what I’d seen. But there it was, metal with swirls of blue and gold, the letter shin engraved proudly
- [Bob Findysz – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/bob-findysz-two-poems/) - When the rain stops The western sky is a Carolina blue blotterwater-stained in cobalt, charcoal andegg shell, pierced with shafts ofochre and chrome awaitinggold pots at the end ofa rainbow. The soft rolling thighs of loess desertsteppes show the jade stubble of atired laborer's two-day old beard,young pomegranate trees barebut for misshapen patcheson scrawny branches.
- [Chaim Wachsberger – 'Bad Sleep in a Bad Country'](https://ofthebookpress.com/chaim-wachsberger-bad-sleep-in-a-bad-country/) - Eucalypti stand in rowsof leg and bushy haunch,remains of fatted cattle ripped away. Next signs we’ll see are fires lining roads;or missiles spearing land; or ministers,a dime a dozen, walking streets, their gulletsbroad enough to swill a school of children—they intimidate history, they make it shake. Will a father’s cardboard house constrainhis children drawn
- [Lynne Golodner – 'Two Worlds'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lynne-golodner-two-worlds/) - North Shore, Oahu Winter waves thunder against a quiet landscape. Clash and combine, an angry swirl of blues lifting up and crashing down, and I watch it all from the safe, solid land. I’ve been in Hawaii for two days, my third visit in two years. I meet Israelis at the Waialea farmers market. Shabbat
- [Bruce Black – 'Swimming at the J'](https://ofthebookpress.com/bruce-black-swimming-at-the-j/) - Look, it’s not the Kinneretbut the water is blue,and there’s an Israeli flag out frontby the concrete barriers put in placeto prevent a terroristfrom driving a pickup truckthrough the entrance. There are blue-and-white pennantshanging over the pool, and blue-and-whiteplastic dividers between the lanes,and on the front of the building,instead of a yellow Jewish star,there’s
- [Eli Daniel Ehrenpreis – 'A Visit to the Doctor'](https://ofthebookpress.com/eli-daniel-ehrenpreis-a-visit-to-the-doctor/) - I went for a walk and then decided to visit an elderly relative staying at a hotel just off the beach. I stood by her door, knocking many times, but no one answered. I checked the pool where she enjoyed wading, but she seemed to have disappeared as if she never existed in the
- [Diane Lederman – 'Ida Schine's Tsuris'](https://ofthebookpress.com/diane-lederman-ida-schines-tsuris/) - (This is the ninth story in a collection called Saving Democracy about the impact of the Great War on the West End in Boston. ) “Shell shock victims missing From Hospital” Lieut Col. William H. Smith, Medical Corps in command at United States Army General Hospital 34 at Norfolk, today announced that some of his charges in
- [[Review] ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia’ by Julie Brill ](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-hidden-in-plain-sight-a-family-memoir-and-the-untold-story-of-the-holocaust-in-serbia-by-julie-brill/) - Julie Brill, Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia, Amsterdam Publishers, April 2025, 433 pgs. (Review by Monette Moradi) For Jews, looking into family history is a minefield of uncomfortable questions about what their grandparents great-grandparents, or even further relatives, went through in terms
- [Susan Michele Coronel – Four Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/susan-michele-coronel-four-poems/) - Kafka’s Sister’s Braid During the occupation Ottla divorced her non-Jewish husband to save him and their daughters. Her black eyes and black mouth twisted into a braid. The braid became rope, held by the children she rode with until the last stop on the train. Through the flame all you could see was a blister,
- [Jonathan Vidgop – 'The Teacher' (translated by Leo Shtutin)](https://ofthebookpress.com/jonathan-vidgop-the-teacher-translated-by-leo-shtutin/) - When I am brought before the court of Heaven, no one will ask me, “Zusya, why were you not Abraham, Jacob or Moses?” They’ll look at me and say, “Zusya, why were you not Zusya?” ~ Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol Reb Motale checked himself, set the Book aside and fixed his pupils with
- [Jennifer Anne Moses – 'Trouble with Charlotte'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jennifer-anne-moses-trouble-with-charlotte/) - More than once, his three daughters had all told him that they couldn’t stand Charlotte, but Bernie didn’t mind her. After all, he didn’t need more than occasional help to get from here to there; to cook his dinner; to vacuum and dust; to do the dishes and pick up groceries. At his old
- [Lia – 'Pick Any Summer'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lia-pick-any-summer/) - Seven days of mourning; that’s the proscribed ritual. Elena could hardly heave herself up the stairs to the women’s gallery to attend the convocation of the end of these seven days. Dezia pulled her and Melita pushed her, and it was with great effort that Elena’s crippled legs obeyed. It was her last public
- [Emily Alice Katz – 'Awake and Light your Lamp with the Oil of Gladness'](https://ofthebookpress.com/emily-alice-katz-awake-and-light-your-lamp-with-the-oil-of-gladness/) - She did find the address of the apartment near the Machane Yehuda Market, but her niece Libby wasn’t home. Or didn’t actually live there. It wasn’t clear which. Flora had been in Jerusalem two days and only attempted to find the apartment—that is: her niece—this morning, her last in the city. The situation was that, approaching
- [Ellis Shuman – 'A Story in Which Two Yeshiva Students Come to a Shtetl'](https://ofthebookpress.com/ellis-shuman-a-story-in-which-two-yeshiva-students-come-to-a-shtetl/) - Two yeshiva buchers went for a walk together and came to an unfamiliar village. It was Friday afternoon and Shabbos was swiftly approaching. As the sun began to set, the students realized they would need to remain in the village until the end of Shabbos. But where would they partake of their Shabbos meal?
- [Paul Rabinowitz – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/paul-rabinowitz-three-poems-2/) - The Melon like inhaling a part of memory I slice into the net-like rind of a perfect melon two halves separate and fall away under the glistening canopy of the magnolia tree pruning shears near chilled chablis glasses we celebrate another summer harvest in the closing moments of the waning light
- [Wendy Dickstein – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/wendy-dickstein-three-poems/) - Looking For Forests After the vet put Simba down he lent you a shovel dumped the limp body into your arms and told you to find a forest you shrouded him in a clean white sheet found your way to Karmiel Forest dug a hole by the side of the road laid the old dog
- [Alex Gordon – 'True Story'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alex-gordon-true-story/) - (A Jewish Interpretation of Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots) Bauschan is my daughter’s dog. I’ve been friends with him for six years now. He is of noble literary origin: named after the dog from Thomas Mann’s story A Man and His Dog. He is of the German mini-schnauzer breed. Thomas Mann called his Bauschan with a
- [Shulim Vogelmann – Two Extracts from While the City Burned (Mentre la città bruciava), translated by Anna Denzel](https://ofthebookpress.com/shulim-vogelmann-two-extracts-from-while-the-city-burned-mentre-la-citta-bruciava-translated-by-ana-denzel/) - Extract 1 (pp. 48-49) Jerusalem, 1997 A young woman dressed up as Charlie Chaplin dances, children all around her. There’s a cowboy, a superman, two pirates with eye patches, a fairy and Pocahontas. A clown on stilts scatters confetti, grabs a distinguished gentleman’s hat and drops it on the head of a real police
- [Eli Ehrenpreis – 'Interruptions'](https://ofthebookpress.com/eli-ehrenpreis-interruptions/) - I have a goal to improve myself. The meeting was my best chance to change my life. Deciding on something this important and carrying it out is never easy. I knew there would be barriers. I was running late and needed to rush, but there were three interruptions, the first before I even got
- [Mitch Browne – 'Eucalyptus Davenensis'](https://ofthebookpress.com/mitch-browne-eucalyptus-davenensis/) - Outstretched limbs trail faded, crisp tefillin strips, ushering the rising tongues that seek a fresh bed of ash for every generation _______ Mitch Browne is a poet and bricklayer from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. His poem Amity was awarded Best Poem by ZineWest in 2023, and his poem Outta
- [Carol Coven Grannick - Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/carol-coven-grannick-two-poems/) - Forever Shiva My mother’s mood was for talking and mine, for listening: stories of childhood on Chicago’s old West Side, reiterative: handsome adored brother with hands strong and soft dexterous on piano keys as on a beloved’s body. Stories of childhood on Chicago’s old West Side, reiterative: two siblings with two cousins
- [Alex Gordon – 'The Honest Man'](https://ofthebookpress.com/alex-gordon-the-honest-man/) - Every non-French person has their own image of France, literary, historical, gastronomic, architectural. When I was learning French as a child, I often looked at pictures of different neighborhoods of Paris and was unpleasantly struck by the “symbol” of this beautiful city, the Eiffel Tower, an ugly metal structure that spoiled a stunningly beautiful
- [Jen Rudin – 'This is Sylvia. I Can Hear You'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jen-rudin-this-is-sylvia-i-can-hear-you/) - (A companion piece to 'This is Stu. Leave a Message') This is the hospital they’ve taken me to? Sylvia thinks, looking up from a gurney as two young EMTs push her into the ER. She’d prefer Cedars Sinai — much cleaner than crappy Saint Joseph’s with the dusty wooden crosses hanging on the walls. Once in the
- [Barbara Schilling Hurwitz – 'Fashion Statement'](https://ofthebookpress.com/barbara-schilling-hurwitz-fashion-statement/) - Donning my IDF uniform of coarse green cloth I become one of them a shapeless fighter one of many, my individuality no longer identifiable Donning my IDF uniform I care not about my curvaceous shape my hair or decorative jewels I care solely for the confident message my stretched posture suggests Donning
- [Lawrence Winkler – 'Soap'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lawrence-winkler-soap/) - ‘What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.’ Yiddish Proverb The new direction of the train woke me. Vertical. I looked out the pitch-black window. I could see the orange glow of the crane operator’s cigarette, thirty feet below. My balance played catch up with the aerobatics. No one told me they
- [David Daniel – 'Nighttime by the Blue Line'](https://ofthebookpress.com/david-daniel-nighttime-by-the-blue-line/) - We climb a long sloping road to the northern border, the so-called blue line where kamikaze drones fly, where daily volleys of rockets and mortars crater the upper edge of this tiny nation. I am here as a volunteer, an extra pair of hands to barbeque meat for seventy-odd soldiers, the young men defending
- [Nina Kossman – 'Born Too Late to Remember'](https://ofthebookpress.com/nina-kossman-born-too-late-to-remember/) - In 1995 I visited my cousin Vera in a London hospital, which struck me as a pleasant and welcoming place, despite it being a hospital, or maybe precisely because it was a hospital, but not the kind of sterile place that American hospitals, as well as American hotels, usually seemed to me, sterile and too
- [Karen Paley – 'Reverse Assimilation'](https://ofthebookpress.com/karen-paley-reverse-assimilation/) - Several children at the John D. Runkle Elementary School in Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s used to make fun of our classmate Claire. Her eyes pointed to the ground when she walked, she’d cringe inside herself if anyone came close, and her skin looked like it never saw the light of day. We’d snipe at
- [Annie Charlat – 'Before the Banquet'](https://ofthebookpress.com/annie-charlat-before-the-banquet/) - Vashti knew the navy couch. People call her difficult; they don’t know she waited all her lifeto say no. A dance with destiny – draped, silken, & courageous. Like Robin HoodVashti stole from those rich of no’s to give to those who lack true lovingkindness. ________ Annie Charlat, MS is a psychotherapist and
- [Jacqueline Jules – 'Forty-Four Perfect Candles'](https://ofthebookpress.com/jacqueline-jules-forty-four-perfect-candles/) - This small blue box, four inches tall, holds forty-four candles. Exactly enough for eight nights provided one or more are not broken, misshapen, or missing a wick. I’ve never trusted one box to last me all eight nights. I buy two boxes to be sure, just like at the grocery, where
- [Lisa Grunberger – An Excerpt from 'The Happy Adoptee'](https://ofthebookpress.com/lisa-grunberger-an-excerpt-from-the-happy-adoptee/) - 1. Orphan Long Island, 1998 During the summer of 1998, two major things happened that shaped my decision to find grandparents for Rachel: during that summer I became an orphan and I learned my birth mother’s name. Six years after he lost his wife of 49 years, I have to tell my father that he has
- [Maxim D. Shrayer - Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/maxim-shrayer-three-poems/) - Last Will and Testament Thomas Mann has returned to the city of Lübeck. The municipal elders have gathered to welcome him home. He‘s old. He blushes. He feels like a young German lover. And he doesn’t know how to abolish his shame. Katia Mann tells her husband: “We don’t belong in this country. How
- [Rachel Howe – 'My JAP Journey'](https://ofthebookpress.com/rachel-howe-my-jap-journey/) - Don’t be a JAP. That was the clear message I had been given my entire childhood. It seemed like the most important thing NOT to be – not someone snobby, materialistic, or concerned about outward appearances. Or as my father, in his colorful parlance put it, someone who thinks their shit don’t stink. My father
- [Mark Russ – 'The Ghost of Kyiv'](https://ofthebookpress.com/mark-russ-the-ghost-of-kyiv/) - Pavel shot up from his knees, barely having time to make the sign of the cross, when he heard the cruise missile strike his motherland. "To hell with you!" Pavel raised his clenched fists in the air, then brought them down quickly. The missile strike interrupted the evening prayers at St. Sophia Cathedral where Pavel
- [Emil Draitser – 'Arrow Piercing Throat'](https://ofthebookpress.com/emil-draitser-arrow-piercing-throat/) - "I don't understand why, why they meekly went to their deaths!" These words surfaced in my memory for the first time recently, five years ago. In 2018, the Polish government decided to prosecute those who mentioned the participation of Poles in the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. Official speeches carried the reproach that
- [[Review] - A Visit to Moscow](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-a-visit-to-moscow/) - A Visit to Moscow - adapted by Anna Olswanger from a story by Rabbi Rafael Grossman, illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg (Reviewed by Monette Moradi) Separating fact from fiction is getting harder in our age of misinformation. We expect Jewish children at the age of maturity to read, repeat, and interpret the Talmudic
- [Danielle Fisher – "Tragedy"](https://ofthebookpress.com/danielle-fisher-tragedy/) - Tragedy And the thing they don’t tell you about a national tragedy is that the personal tragedies don’t cease her son’s untimely passing, his grandpa’s terminal diagnosis, lights blinking on and off, each one suffering alone in the dark and the nation heaves And it hits me like the bombs they have
- [Catherine Gonick – 'The News I Prayed Not to Hear'](https://ofthebookpress.com/catherine-gonick-the-news-i-prayed-not-to-hear/) - On this Tisha B’Av, I thought of my wife-in-law in Israel. My husband and his ex are both Americans, working together online to secure their grandson a U.S. passport. Just in case. Her parents survived Auschwitz. Tisha B’Av, the saddest, unluckiest day of the Jewish year, multiple anniversary of destruction, of the First
- [Talya Jankovits – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/talya-jankovits-two-poems/) - Lemon Trees Don’t Grow in Poland lemon trees don’t grow in Poland – she tells me,but they do grow outside her den window. Great bursts of yellow dangling off brancheslike heavy, milky breasts oozing summer citrus, warm in California sunshine, fillinga small rectangular space of dirt behind their trellised patio where we sit each fall,
- [Lois Villemaire – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/lois-villemaire-two-poems/) - My Great Grandmother Fannie Living with an aunt, her parents dead, she departs from a dot on the map, the village of Horby in Belarus. Her brother saved enough money laboring as a cap maker in a factory in Philadelphia to send for her in 1893. Like a prayer the story
- [Basia Winograd – 'Letter from a Zionist'](https://ofthebookpress.com/basia-winograd-letter-from-a-zionist/) - May 24, 1966, Tel Aviv My Dearest Feliks, Your silence after our last letter has not gone unremarked. Hanka and I not offended, don’t let that worry you, darling. We trust you’re busy with your titillating military duties and are not in any way displeased or annoyed with us. Word is that your
- [E.P. Lande - "Chagall in Sils Maria"](https://ofthebookpress.com/e-p-lande-chagall-in-sils-maria/) - “You have to understand,” Irmgard explained to Jane and me the evening before our departure, “spending time like this with Chagall is a privilege. You’ve been to their homes and we’ve all eaten together, but this will be different. You will be spending two weeks with a truly great artist. I hope you appreciate
- [Laurel Benjamin – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/laurel-benjamin-three-poems/) - In the Middle 1. Ghosts dreamed in the space between my parents. I read the reflection in their longing (though I didn't know the ache.) Grown, I found love to suit my own purposes, wind outside a river house singing to reeds and catkins, foghorn where soffits unseen—could they reveal creatures encased
- [Freddie Levin – 'Still Waters'](https://ofthebookpress.com/freddie-levin-still-waters/) - Enid sits in the center of the first row, a handkerchief folded gently in her hands. The dark polished wood of the coffin on the bima glows in the soft light. “Please rise.” The Rabbi makes a gesture. The congregation stands. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down
- [[Review] Places We Leave Behind - Jennifer Lang](https://ofthebookpress.com/review-places-we-leave-behind-jennifer-lang/) - Places We Leave Behind - Jennifer Lang (reviewed by Monette Moradi) With a memoir that borders on modern poetry in certain chapters, Jennifer Lang delivers an honest account of her nomadic lifestyle as a non-observant Jewish woman traveling through Jewish life worldwide in Places We Leave Behind. Seeing Israel, France, and two centers of Jewish life
- [Mildred Faintly – 'Brest-Litovsk': A Translation from the Yiddish of Anna Margolin (Lider, 1917)](https://ofthebookpress.com/mildred-faintly-brest-litovsk-a-translation-from-the-yiddish-of-anna-margolin-lider-1917/) - Brest-Litovsk 1. The old city, the little gray city astride the Mukhovets river, astride the borders of Russia and Poland both, its nationality precarious; when the smoke of World War One had cleared my Brest-Litovsk was lost, as gone as classical Athens, as Troy— But sometimes, in a whisper of painful love,
- [Anne Myles – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/anne-myles-three-poems/) - Tribe I’m driving towards Santa Fe with my old friend. Around us a landscape as alien as the moon. Sandy ground with tumbleweed and cholla, yellow haze of chamisa. Each mountain we pass is distinct, grooved by time and erosion. They make me think of the portrait on slate of an elderly Native
- [Catherine Gonick – Two Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/catherine-gonick-two-poems/) - Newcomers The only Jews in town, my father’s family was respected. The churchgoers in Red Oak, Iowa considered them People of the Book they hadn’t read. Kindergarten was a huge surprise, a place where everyone spoke another language and no one understood my father’s. By the time a boy on the
- [Paul Rabinowitz – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/paul-rabinowitz-three-poems/) - Diaspores A broken clothesline leans against its shadow nothing to hang memories on through the stillness of the desert landscape I meander fragrance of creosote bush underfoot dry winds blow clockwise shifting transverse ridges of sand In the distance a prickly pear cactus tempts the coyote despite
- [Lonnie Monka – Three Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/lonnie-monka-three-poems/) - אמא with an extended index-finger tracing circles in the air you said: “the end must be the beginning it’s all a big loop” lounging around in suburban New Jersey nested in sweaters & thick wooden chairs, we were bound by the many-colored trees of autumn whose curious beauty unlocks an ability to spin sorrow
- [Mark Tulin - 'Suitcases of Sorrow'](https://ofthebookpress.com/mark-tulin-suitcases-of-sorrow/) - People were forced to leave their homes with hastily packed bags, suitcases of memories, trunks of sorrows, old and broken, some with nameplates, but most were anonymous. They are now artifacts of misery, luggage that never left the station, separated from their owners, who went to their final destinations — tortured lives and skeletons stacked high. They
- [Ivan de Monbrison - 'Two Poems about Childhood'](https://ofthebookpress.com/ivan-de-monbrison-two-poems-about-childhood/) - 1. so little depth in this skull crater of bones a hole hiding in it like inside a hollow tooth strange cavity it could be a cell or a hideout you get the impression of slowly drowning senseless feeling of never have been really alive but clearly aware all that time that those garments
- [Julie Brandon - 'A Covenant Remembered'](https://ofthebookpress.com/julie-brandon-a-covenant-remembered/) - Am I ready to go Somehow bondage seems easier than following a man I’ve never met for a God I don’t remember Multitudes pull me in their wake All that I love goes so what choice do I have The heat, the cries of the little ones, the hurried goodbyes The sea lies before
- [Claire L. Frankel - 'Reapers'](https://ofthebookpress.com/claire-l-frankel-reapers/) - The seasons roll by first flowers and scent then tiny apples – Bigger and bigger – 25 years in the blink of an eye. “Your face has not changed at all!” exclaimed Maria. I can’t imagine why except this farm these apples the drought and the rain – A lifetime to explain. Ancient Jewish
- [Carol Dorf - Four Poems](https://ofthebookpress.com/carol-dorf-four-poems/) - On A Crowded Bus after Ryzard Krynicki A bus from El Paso is nothing like a train from Friedrichstraße station with its memorial to the children going east going west A bus from El Paso to Los Angeles to Sacramento is nothing like a trip through the desert without water, without food Listen this is where
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- [Zeeva Bukai - 'Requiem for the Lost'](https://ofthebookpress.com/zeeva-bukai-requiem-for-the-lost/) - I It’s August 1977, your year abroad in Israel. You survive a khamsin, a hot desert wind that lasts three days. Lying on the cool tiled floor, you breathe through a wet cloth like a fish beached and gasping for air. Your roommate, Natalie is visiting her family in Jerusalem, so you’re alone with

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