The Girls of Rosh Hashanah
- The Girls of Rosh Hashanah
The girls of Rosh Hashanah in their college-student casual cool-looking skirts patterned and pink, turquoise and artsy slinky this year tight tops and midriffs fluttery filigreed earrings dark curls set them off best beautiful coal black pony-tailed coifs. Which one would Dave choose or Ben? I'll pluck this one for fair-haired brainy son. That one for riotous in-your-face son. Make a good match. If only you could— like plucking the last brilliant snapdragons or cosmos so spunky, chaotic and pink or serious cone flowers, steady from summer to fall. The last days of summer exquisitely mellow [End Page 125] the Rosh Hashanah walk— examine your life correct the missteps take heart and take courage start over again. It's a new year with promise for sons and for mothers for fathers and families to set a new course with blessings so many an admirable course, but how to improve it and say for each one, to each one like Abraham to Isaac Hineni "Here I am." Here I am for you.
A million marched in Europe to stop us to stop the U.S. from Iraq and now we can't get out. It's Rosh Hashanah and sadness reigns golden summer lights up my world horror deeper and deeper in Iraq a world away. Will it touch the beautiful college girls and boys— the Dave's and Ben's of my life and yours?
Buff Lindau grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, in the 1950s and '60s where Jews were very conscious of not being of the dominant culture. After getting involved in anti-Vietnam War politics and the heady early days of the women's movement, she wrote one of the earliest women's studies dissertations on Feminism in the English Novel: George Eliot, Virginia Wolfe and Doris Lessing. She has remained committed to Judaism and feminism, and has worked for many years as PR director for Saint Michael's College in Vermont. With her children grown, she has recently taken up poetry and has published in The Onion River Review.
