About eighteen
months after my
post about DNA testing, my life took an unexpected turn. I was contacted by
a cousin in Canada, who revealed to me that my maternal grandmother was Jewish.
I never knew about that part of my family‘s history because my grandmother died
when my mother was still a child and my grandmother’s story went with her to
the grave.
Since then
and through a series of fortuitous events, I have been working with the New Voices Project, which focuses on
the moral lessons of the Holocaust, and my poem “Flying African,” has become
part of their PSA for a forthcoming book, New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust.
The
research has been harrowing, but I’ve been using the work of Gregory H. Stanton,
The
8 Stages of Genocide, as a conceptual guide. I’ve also been fortunate
enough to receive a residency in “The
Writer’s Room” at The Betsy Hotel, where I will be able to devote myself
fully to research and writing.
Then, on October 3, 2019, as part of The Betsy Hotel’s “Meet the Artist” series, I will be reading
some more of the poems that I’ve written.
So, if
you’re in town, please join me at The Betsy Hotel at 5.p.m. as I embark on this
new phase into my genetic history.
Here is another of the poems--which seems appropriate for today--that I've written so far.
Here is another of the poems--which seems appropriate for today--that I've written so far.
The Shofar of Auschwitz
Rosh Hashanah, 1944
For Chaskel Tydor
It may not be a miracle like on Hanukkah,
but finding the shofar days before Rosh Hashanah,
when the Talmud teaches that Joseph was freed
from prison on the first day of the new year,
when the impossible is possible if we stay open,
made us think that maybe, this was a sign
Hashem had not abandoned us to our murderers.
So, in spite of the death, disease, and torture
that plagued the Lager, where to perform a mitzvah,
like a mishloach minot or teaching
the Pirkei Avot
could be rewarded by the fascists with a bullet
to the back of my head. But I didn’t care.
The shofar on my lips, I blew as if my life depended
on it, and then, a year later, three miles off the coast
of Palestine, as if to say, "We are still here. The tribe lives
on."