Tag: poetry2021

My favorite bible book, to tell the truth,is short and sweet and called the book of Ruth.Regarding what she looked like, whether shortand sweet to look at, there is no report.About her looks I am an ignoramus,but looks were not in fact what made her famous:her lovingkindness had the highest titerthat ever had inspired any […]

It isn’t over even when it’s over.Whatever is extremely far from us in spacebecomes extremely close to us when physically we travel,and what is far from us in time may find a placethat seems extremely close if mentally we can unravelthe memory that binds us to it. Face to facewe may confront what we knew […]

In theory we should engagewith four sons, whom I list below,including, at the top, the sage,at bottom one who doesn’t knowhow questions should be asked, and inthe middle the outsider whoconsiders rituals a sin,and one who’s simple, but heart true. We teach Passover laws to thosewho’re wise … and welcome to our tablethe wicked sons […]

It’s said that no dog barked when Israelites preparedto leave the land of Egypt in the middle of the night.The reason surely isn’t that no canine daredto bark, but that they felt that only Jews had earned the rightto praise the Lord for saving them and that they triedto be just like the celebrated Hound […]

Queen Esther, who is Jacob’s rose, and purple, Mordecai, are heroes, for they fought our foes: their names will never die!   Oh hateful Haman, persecutor of all the Jews in Persia: the Queen declares you didn’t suit her–– that’s why all Jews now curse yer.   For saving Hebrews from this killer dear Mordecai, […]

There is no greater condescension thanthe one we show to those whom we do not absolveof any errors that we learn they made before death turned them into history.The problems that they faced are ones that we with the simplicity of hindsight blithely solveas easily as murders that we read about in every murder mystery. […]

Not raped, but seduced, a sister became a cause that unloosed a battle of shame. No person escaped revenge, which is bad, though Dinah not raped: her lover a lad who loved her alas, not wisely or well, a lover, a lass, leading many to hell.   Revenge may seem sweet when it acts as […]

Distance from reality is a dimension that can’t alwayswith great precision be by all people measured,and since it is not physical but mental in unsmall ways,paradoxically it’s most greatly treasured when it is best defined as “most remote,”identifiable as something that most people can notidentify, due to its apparent emptiness  to emote,expressing just one puzzled […]

On Saturday nights in Joseph Epstein’s homehis family would watch the Rome-com of Sid Caesar,whose root was Ziser, not a ruler Romeelected, but Yiddish for a sweet guy, pronounced Zeeser. Jewish comedy has been by tragedy replaced,the zealot Mamdani its unsweet switch-hitterwhose anti-Jewish swerve has an unpleasant taste,not zees, sweet like Sid Caesar, but like […]

The rationale of the brief biblical creation narrative we readin Genesis may be to teach us that its goalreached — on its seventh day, which satisfied humanity’s great needto rest — not just  all people’s bodies but their soul. God’s was the spirit that created all the universe,whose climax was the Sabbath day, and not humanity,a […]