An Opening
It is said that if a Jew makes an opening
in his heart for G-d to enter,
even if it is as small as the eye of a needle,
a g-dly energy will flood through,
as though the hole were as wide as a road
many caravans travel.

And perhaps the riders of the caravans
will also be Jews,
who have come from very far, hauling
their belongings from one exile to another,
always anticipating the final sweet message:
The redemption is upon us.



Tangerine

for my grandmother

I know you only as a small boy knows an old woman,
peeling a tangerine for his small mouth
and from the inscription in the Yevtishenko book
you gave my father when he was a boy:
May you never be afraid of your Russian sensitivity.

But as I read your notebooks
I see that we share the same fear of science,
and a distrust for all the gifts we believe we have not earned.

And on the Sabbath before my wedding--
a day after my father and I had visited the cemetery
to invite you and Zada to the ceremony--
a stranger in a shul I had never been to
asked me my name
and if I knew you.

Ma Shissel,
I know you are watching over me,
peeling the hardships from my days,
allowing me to live as a boy
who has never put the hard skin of the world
to his lips.

 

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow turns 75 this month. In honor of that milestone, we sat down over Skype to talk. I first met Arthur in 2002 when I attended a week-long class on tikkun olam which he was teaching at the old Elat Chayyim retreat center in Accord, New York. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a terrific introduction to his life and work.

Arthur's made a career of highlighting Judaism's prophetic tradition and its call for social justice. That call transformed him, a staunchly secular civil rights and anti-war activist, into one of the Left's most outspoken rabbis.

Social justice has always been central; his doctoral dissertation focused on the 1919 race riots. In his early political career he co-wrote a bill to create a National Peace Agency, and served as senior staff at the Peace Research Institute (later the Institute for Policy Studies.)

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As America again enters election season, I'd like to remind my more conservative countrymen that we told you so. 

We told you, at the start, that the Iraq War was a mistake.  We pointed to the flimsy evidence, to the lack of a long-term plan, to the thousands of lives that would surely be lost in this bit of American adventurism.  But your cowboy in Washington had other ideas, and you believed his lies and misdirections about Saddam and 9/11.  Now we're stuck in a Middle Eastern Vietnam, hemorrhaging money -- although, thank God, not as much blood as before.  But: over 30,000 American injured soldiers!  You say "support our troops."  Well, we supported them when you didn't.  We didn't want them to die in a pointless and stupid war.

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Todd Hasak-Lowy’s first novel will be published in October. Its title is Captives and its hero is Daniel Bloom, a family man and screenwriter for Hollywood. Lately, Daniel’s become disenchanted by a world, or just a country, of contemptible materialism, of institutionalized greed. Politics, political rage, soon infringe on his work. Daniel’s new screenplay emerges as a revenge fantasy. A sniper runs amok, assassinating everything, or everyone, wrong: “bad guys,” CEOs, lobbyists, flacks. But, as the trailers say, “this time it’s personal.” The reader begins to believe that Daniel truly wants these people dead. Then Daniel believes that he does. Then Hasak-Lowy’s Captives darkens — like the theater before the feature begins.

Todd Hasak-Lowy teaches Hebrew language and literature at the University of Florida. His previous book, of stories, was The Task of this Translator. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Zeek will publish an excerpt from Captives in two parts. What follows is the second. The first can be found here.

— Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor

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Todd Hasak-Lowy’s first novel will be published in October. Its title is Captives and its hero is Daniel Bloom, a family man and screenwriter for Hollywood. Lately, Daniel’s become disenchanted by a world, or just a country, of contemptible materialism, of institutionalized greed. Politics, political rage, soon infringe on his work. Daniel’s new screenplay emerges as a revenge fantasy. A sniper runs amok, assassinating everything, or everyone, wrong: “bad guys,” CEOs, lobbyists, flacks. But, as the trailers say, “this time it’s personal.” The reader begins to believe that Daniel truly wants these people dead. Then Daniel believes that he does. Then Hasak-Lowy’s Captives darkens — like the theater before the feature begins.

Todd Hasak-Lowy teaches Hebrew language and literature at the University of Florida. His previous book, of stories, was The Task of this Translator. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Zeek will publish an excerpt from Captives in two parts. What follows is the first.

— Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor

 

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