Miriam’s Well
Barbara D. Holender

Due to the merits of Miriam, a mysterious well, created on the eve of the first Sabbath, accompanied the Children of Israel in the desert.
Midrash

It followed her everywhere
like a lover, easing us to rest,
springing from hidden places
in our wanderings.

Always we were thirsty. Angered
by our wailing, she’d stamp her feet.
Even from the pools of her heelprints
we drank.

Once in anguish
she beat the rocks with her bare hands
again and again, weeping.
Water gushed, cleansing her blood,
soaking her hair, her robe.
She cupped her hands, rinsed her mouth,
spat; she splashed, she played.
Laughing, we filled our bellies. read more

Heaven on Earth?
Michael Aronson

Heaven on Earth
Smiling without Knowing
Seeing without Understanding

Query

How can I
Smile and not Know?
See and not Understand?

Heaven on Earth
Smiling despite Knowing
Seeing despite Understanding

Query

How can I

Smile and Know?
See and Understand?

Ignorance is Bliss!
Knowledge is Power!

What a blasted state we are in!
The blessing is also a curse

Gravitzit
Michael Aronson

Wearing a tallit katan
For the first time, wondering
Me,

ah Me?

Looking in the mirror
Tzitzit hanging, pondering
In heaven above and on earth below

Consecrated to holiness
I feel like Me, fascinating
That a sense of … intensifies

Standing between two worlds?
I am not so sure, dangling
Towards the ground

Shouldn’t we be tikkuning
Where the tzitzit are pointing?

Down
down
to God?
And the Earth below
Where She dwells?

A Message For My Children
Barbara D. Holender

I will be busy when I die
leaving messages in several languages
along your possible paths,
clues you may not understand but
will recognize as mine, and therefore
meant to encourage.

I will never be done with this world–
I will leave my tracks, not to follow
but to know, when you feel most at risk,
no life is entirely without precedent.

You will find me when you least expect
in your words and gestures and, with the years,
in your morning face in the mirror. read more

Avodah
Barbara D. Holender

Delight, O our God, in Your people Israel.
See how our souls mirror Your presence.

Let our yearnings be as words of praise
and our strivings as works of love.

Shower us

with compassion
as

we reach out

to You.

Ever-returning God
keep watch over Zion.

Oseh Shalom
Barbara D. Holender

Giver of peace,
teach us to see ourselves
in the face of the Other,
that we may learn to be
patient with fault
generous with love
sparing with anger.

Help us to understand
that our little lives
are potent with great good,
that we are healers in Your image,
that reaching out in need of You
to

others more in need,
we find You near.

Give us the grace
simply to be kind.

Then peace must surely come
to dwell among us.

On Reading A Translated Poem
Barbara D. Holender

Yiddish poem,
your bones stick through
your borrowed skin.

Poor immigrant,
your relatives are always explaining you
while your displaced persona cries out
in its own voice,
“That’s NOT what I said.”

How anemic you are–
Back in the old country
your blood sang like wine.

You speak to me
of lost family connections,
but in this exchange
I am the poor relation.

The Tower
Barbara D.Holender

Imagine a time when everyone
spoke the same language
and everyone knew what
everyone meant and a word
was a word you could bank on.

That was Almighty powerful
but no cause to smash the tower
and scatter the nations

Some ended up with words

defined by the King or
regulated by the Academie

But here we are free
of definitions and regulations
and specifications

and everyone speaks
the same language and
nobody knows what
anybody means