Click on the text of the poem above to see an enlarged version for easier reading. The Buried Womanby Gertrud Kolmar – Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner (10 December 1894–March 1943), known by the literary pseudonym Gertrud Kolmar, was a German lyric poet and writer. She was born in Berlin and died, after her arrest and deportation as a Jew, in Auschwitz, a victim of the…
by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub sometimes I wish the sequence of thingscould have more closelyresembled the corpus of the Delft master—a series of moments of contemplation,delicate with import.framed by pale glow and white marble,how could my days not have assumed amantle of meaning?the sun flowing through the many diamond frameswould have illuminated my letters fromold friends and imagined beaus in warrens of anxiety.and I would…
by Shmuel Hanagid (born 993 – died after 1056) She said: “Be happy that God has helped you reach The age of fifty in this world,” not knowing That to me there is no difference between my life’s Past and that of Noah about whom I heard. For me there is only the hour in which I am present in this world: It stays for a moment and then like…
Click on the images above to see enlarged versions for easier viewing/reading. At the Sewing Machine (from Songs of the Ghetto) Poem by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923) with translation from Yiddish by Berthold Feiwel (1875-1937). Illustration by Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925). Berlin, Benjamin Harz Verlag ca. 1902. Collection of Yeshiva University Museum (1996.023). Gift of Michael Cohn. – A haunting image from the famed and…
Click on the text of the poem above to see an enlarged version for easier reading. “Homeward” by P. M. Raskin was published in The Maccabaean in May 1917. As Naomi W. Cohen explains in her article “The Maccabaean’s Message: A Study in American Zionism Until World War I” (Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 1956, p. 163): “Four years after the…
At the Caféby Anna Margolin 1 Alone in the café now,as voices hush and fade,as lamps give off a pearly glowand float out of the caféand over the street—like luminous swans. —Waiter, black coffee—demitasse! Alone in the café now,with moments rustling like silk,I raise my dusky fragrant wineto the street, to the distance.And like a song is the thoughtI give off into the gloom,a…
Parable of the Old Man and the Youngby Wilfred Owen So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they sojourned both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,and builded parapets and trenches…
Image: For the Child Who is Unable to Inquire, Thou Shalt Explain the Whole Story of Passover (Seder plate). Harriete Estel Berman. Steel, tin, plexiglas, sterling silver, brass. Yeshiva University Museum. – A Newborn Girl at Passoverby Nan Cohen Consider one apricot in a basket of them.It is very much like all the other apricots–an individual already, skin and seed. Now think of this…
Marianne Rein. Click on images for larger views.Images: Photographs of her in the 1930s; an illustration she did in one of her letters to Jacob Picard; a letter to Jacob Picard; a typed page of her poems; a letter from the National Council of Jewish Women; and a handwritten page of her poems—the second of which is translated below. Europaby Marianne Rein The girls walked…
Contemplating Hellby Bertolt Brecht Contemplating Hell, as I once heard it, My brother Shelley found it to be a place Much like the city of London. I, Who do not live in London, but in Los Angeles,Find, contemplating Hell, that it Must be even more like Los Angeles. Also in Hell, I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course, Very…