A Passover Poem (and Its Postscript)
Above, you’ll see a poem that was published for the first time three years ago. The current Passover holiday has inspired me to add a postscript, which you can read over on my other blog.
Poetry Month Prompts & Poems
Three years ago, Moment magazine and its poetry editor, Faye Moskowitz, did me the great honor of publishing my poem “Dayenu.” As I explained when the poem was shared again on RJ.org during Jewish Disability Awareness Month in 2014, “Dayenu” emerged from a family Seder during which I’d been especially moved by the participation of my young nephew, who as a toddler was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech.
Fast forward to 2015/5775. And listen to “our little boy” summarize the Passover story. He continues to inspire and impress me — as do his amazing therapists and teachers (not to mention his amazing Mommy!).
Which reminds me: If you’re reading this and you happen to know S. “in real life,” please don’t mention this post. He can be rather camera/video-shy, and although his mom/my sister has approved my sharing this recording-via-iTalk, he isn’t aware that it exists. Thank you.
(Oh, there’s a bonus—you get to hear Grandma and Grandpa speak/participate, too!)
Monday brings the weekly batch of no-fee competitions/contests, paying submission calls, and jobs for those of us who write (especially those of us who write fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction). (more…)
In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”
My grandmother was the ninth child in an immigrant German farm family, the kind whose idea of a fun game was throwing live chickens at each other.
Source: Courtney Hodell’s “Babes in the Woods,” in Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (edited by Meghan Daum).
“God, Master of the Universe, please make this world safe for our people this year. Next year may we be in Jerusalem, but this year please take care of the Jews in our holy city and in so many other cities: in Marseilles and Copenhagen, in Argentina and Buenos Aires, Kansas and Seattle, Paris and Tunis, Sderot and Toulouse, Brussels and Donetsk. This Passover evening is a ‘night of vigilance’ [Exodus 12:42]. Please watch over us with divine care and compassion. Protect our sacred tombstones and graves from desecration. Protect our synagogues across the globe from Swastikas and shattering glass. Protect our innocent children on their day school playgrounds and our Jewish communal workers in embassies and community centers. Pour out Your wrath against the world’s injustices so that one day, You can pour out Your love. Ani Ma’amin — I believe that day will come. It is not here yet. Together, we will await that day. We will not wait passively. We will partner with you in a covenant to protect our people and remove them from harm’s way. And we will re-affirm in word and deed our daily commitment to justice, goodness and kindness.”
From Dr. Erica Brown’s “Pour Out Your Love?” in The Jewish Week