The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979–2011

notes

97 notes >Preface: Javneh, the city in which, according to legend, late first-century rabbis convened after the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, creating a school of Halakha, Jewish Law, ensuring the survival of the Hebrew language and its religion, and helping frame the final canon of the Torah . Metaphorically, Javneh represents the adaptations necessary for Jewish survival after cultural catastrophe. “A light unto the nations” (Isaiah 49:6). “Old Men”: Goldeneh medina, “golden land” in Yiddish; immigrants’ metaphor for America. “Hunger”: vilde chaya, “wild animal.” “Grandchild”: Elohai, neshama is the opening of a morning prayer, “My God, the soul you have given me is pure.” Literally, “she is pure.” “Kol Nidre”: the Kol Nidre (“All vows”) prayer is sung in Jewish synagogues at the beginning of the evening service on Yom Kippur. “We are not competent to make our vows,” see Marianne Moore, “In distrust of Merits.” “The Eighth and Thirteenth”: The passages in italics are from Testimony: the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov, who claimed it was transcribed from interviews with the composer. Although the book’s authorship is contested, its mordant and forceful style tallies so well with the composer’s music that I must conclude one of two things—either Shostakovich composed it, or Volkov was an extraordinary mimic. “Who Saves a Life: Poem Beginning with a Line by Fitzgerald/Hemingway ”: John Bierman, Righteous Gentile: the Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust, Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List, and Philip Paul Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, are useful biographies of three of the best-known rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. A quite different sort of book is Norman H. Gershman, Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II, a volume of photographs and interviews with families of Albanian Muslims who sheltered and rescued about two thousand Jews; see also the documentary based on Ger- 98 shman’s travels, God’s House. I continue to wonder why collections of Holocaust poetry include virtually no poetry dealing with the topic of non-Jews who risked their lives to protect Jews. “The large hearts of heroes” is from Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” part 33: “I understand the large hearts of heroes, / The courage of present times and all times.” “Listening to Public Radio”: La lutte continue, “the struggle continues.” The phrase was used as a slogan by the French Resistance in World War II. In the 1968 student demonstrations in Paris, a poster produced by the Atelier Populaire reads “LE VOTE / NE CHANGE / RIEN / LA LUTTE CONTINUE.” “Poem Sixty Years After Auschwitz”: International antiwar demonstrations , February 15, 2003, failed to prevent the advent of the Iraq War. “Writing on the wall,” see the Book of Daniel, 5:25–28. “the shekhinah as exile”: Shekhinah, from a Hebrew noun meaning “dwelling”; the Presence of God on earth, and/or the feminine aspect or emanation of God; in Kabbala, seen as the object of devotional prayer and meditation; said to have been divided from God at the moment of creation and to be yearning for reunion; said to have entered exile with her people after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. “Tearing the Poem Up and Eating It”: Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, was assassinated the following year by a Jewish law student who believed Rabin was “giving the country to the Arabs” and said he was acting on the “orders of God.” Commandments not to oppress the stranger are repeated a dozen times in various forms in the Hebrew Bible. “Divrei”: literally “words,” a term used in the Talmud to denote contrary arguments. Jews who fled to the desert fortress of Masada after refusing to worship Roman gods killed themselves and their children following a two year siege in A.D. 73 to avoid capture. Today Masada is an Israeli national shrine and a popular tourist site. “Settlers,” generic term for communities of Jews in the previously Palestinian territory of the West Bank. “Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit,” Zechariah 4:6. 99 “What Is Needed after Food”: “Arafat . . . Sharon,” Yasser Arafat was the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); Ariel Sharon was prime minister of Israel, 2001–2006. “The Book of Life”: “Yom Kippur,” “Day of Repentance...