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JUDY BELSKY Judy Belsky was born in Seattle in 1947. Her grandparents had arrived there in the 1920’s to lead the synagogue begun by young families recently arrived from Turkey. The family and that synagogue formed the inside of the palace; knocking insistently on the door in the era of the baby boom, were the mind blown sixties. It became compelling to find herself as a woman, Sephardic Torah Jew and writer. She is the author of a memoir Thread of Blue Targum 1992. A new memoir Midrash and Baklava (seeking a publisher) traces her childhood in Seattle. She has published individual poems from Abraham and Sultana a book of poems that interweave the Sephardic experience, the childhood in Seattle, the interstitch of Hebrew, Ladino and English. Judy lives in Ramat Bet Shemesh. She is a psychologist in private practice in Jerusalem and a mixed media artist. From photographs, she has traced the costumes worn by Sephardic women as they entered the State of Israel. Since these were discouraged and almost lost, her work catches them by the hem and preserves them.
Second Text
I On the olive tree Ivory blossoms open like the hand of a sleeper Loose and trusting they turn upward to catch a blessing. Burgundy and cream geraniums climb the wall agile as the neighbor’s striped cat. Memories weave back and forth.
II her nails gently curved domes. She twists the dough into miniature towers and places them around a larger loaf like small outbuildings around a palace. I peer at her brow where she remembers.
IV she visits her grandparents She travels from Bursa to Istanbul by carriage and train. Her nona’s house smells of jasmine, rose petal jam, toasted pumpkin seeds. She plays the oud for her grandmother who applauds as gently as spring rain on the courtyard Her half - smile fills my aunt’s day Silence sits upon her grandmother like a tiara. Afternoons they nap under a paisley shawl with long braided fringes Some of her grandmother’s silence enters her She takes it in like a long drink on a hot day
V She leans across ten decades to whisper to me: el silencio es oro.
VI Silence is the magnet that draws me Pauses beckon me into their spaces I dive again and again into the weft of their conversation to ponder their shades and subtleties their intended meanings their double meanings the gap between what they say and what they conceal Their unformed thoughts I shape and re-shape Their withheld risks I rush to
VII Silence is the scaffold in a hush of ruins the second that a page hesitates before it turns forward or back
VIII Before the modesty of things clothed in silence before the mystery that points to the handprint of G0d I incline my head
IX the waiting for redemption the one that pushes words through heir lips and the one with no sound that pushes hope through their veins
To draw music out of their silence Is my legacy
X My aunt hands me a sheaf of parchment so worn and soft it makes no sound when I unfold it On a fine lace of vanilla and black I make out a recipe- for Bread Between the lines a second text is recorded margin notes fragments commentary Bread Psalms
XI has written: Every moment is two moments Find the one obscured beneath the ordinary As you wait for bread to rise Decide what is worth waiting for Lift your blade and sculpt your intentions Beneath the blessing for dough is written another blessing: “To break off every yoke Is to share bread with the hungry” And then, these lines: Everyone is hungry for something: Feed your guests according to their hunger; Name your own. Requests are not random arrows flung into the air Thrust words with the precision of an archer: Avinu SheBaShamayim make the children rise Stretch them and stretch us into ourselves Reach down to us so that we may reach up to You
XII I return the soft pages To their familiar folds I enfold the multi-tiered text The two-sided moment The two sides of an open book The two sides of my heart The imprint of stone on tablet The instant when my heart of stone decides To awaken as a human heart That waits And beats now and now and now
after dark
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layers of identity press against each other like nested peasant dolls the walls are thin voices call each other in another mother tongue hijica ven aqui
my aunts take me on vacation no one enters the cottage until they scour and kosher the kitchen prepare the Turkish coffee and fresh biscochos
they dedicate a tiny temple beside another ocean shore
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they spread a white cloth over the table of time moments gather around an hour like children at the feet of the storyteller
durme durme sleep deep they say enter the temple of memory weave loose sheaves
into a golden basket bear your history like first fruits
3 praise rises fast in the yeast of morning prayer
pull yourself through the needle's eye stitch tradition to space set luminous layers of dreams by hand a small but complete sphere of influence eyes a necklace of sacred cities encircling skin a porous door light slips past bone white arches where walls bear witness where women tell visions ears emblems you raise by hand shape them to catch the sound of midrash let it leap from mouth to ear to mouth in seventy golden arcs
4 for what's been lost for what's been lost shed a silver tear bend it like a bow form a slender bridge to take you further than you ever dared to go make a bridge to last build a bridge of words inscribe oceans reams of sky wind on endless scroll your song
let the four-chambered house breathe one poem into another
Grandmother Bakes a Psalm
wake early Exalt the living God* stretch dough thinner than you thought you could There is no unity like His Oneness but not to the point of transparency He has no form or body press out circles with a water glass His holiness has no measure place heaping spoon full His flow of prophecy at the center of every circle Master to every creature crimp edges some will escape To his treasured people none like Moses will rise again bake until plump and golden His clear vision allow to cool the perfect pan He will never change His laws for all eternity permit the contents to grow against tension of sides test with tines of fork Our innermost secrets He perceives the outcome at the beginning He will revive the dead awaken the children In abundant kindness sing together Blessed forever Serve His name layered the language of my childhood
*Exalt the Living God, Jewish hymn
Jewish American Literature
the second time I cross an ocean I dive into the Atlantic
I retrieve head wraps and prayer wraps candlesticks a shofar old props in a play you never intend to produce again
from beneath our grandmother's headscarf I hear your litany fanatic reactionary patriarchal and, fresh from the heap racist
I follow the contours of your self- deprecating portrait the one you keep peddling and peddling it sells
you lie down one december dreaming you are Christian, Buddhist, or Nothing you wake up bewildered when your children are
how many ways can you deconstruct dis- illusion- ment you make the holocaust your only feast then you complain everything Jewish tastes of ashes
you rake the Bible for images you force on top- heavy poems
leave these to lovers who tremble make a blessing tremble before they caress parchment
you suck the pith too fast to taste you spit out seeds stained with the juice of pomegranates you shame the mothers if only Sarah were politically correct more like the oppressed Hagar then would you love her?
you squeeze old texts for better lines You run out
I stole them
your grandfather's cup still pours piyutim into my ears your grandmother's hands weave refrains of fire that stretch from Sabbath eve until Sabbath eve
I speak improbable languages woman Torah poet
at the borders I cross I wait for no passwords
my voice rubs sparks against the friction of old lies
Grandmother's Text
the first time I cross an ocean I am an onion
my grandmother hides me in the hold of the ship she combs wayward ends of silk tucks my tender skin in velvet folds she smoothes protective membranes around the cell where the code to my identity is stored she inverts me roots first
to the rhythm of surf she sings a lullaby Somos Judios her face is a map engraved with longitudes of exile gravity pulls her back wind pushes her forward she hovers in the air over two small graves shaded by willow branch she leans over me while I sleep she teaches me the circular dialect of her arms small sentries over a citadel the steps in her dance: move away move away another way home
she leans over me while I sleep to enter my dreams Somos Judios through her skin I smell the aromatic earth the wild roses in her garden she is happier on land the ocean erodes memories with no embankment to settle against on a road she can leave markers encode footprints in the earth
she scatters breadcrumbs in the air a gull catches them in his beak he soars high on the blessing in her dough
on deck my grandparents stand beneath the moon their evening prayers glint like silver seeds in the dark loam of the ocean Kavana moves constellations the captain keeps tacking, tacking to compensate
on the final dawn across a porous horizon trees begin to name themselves the customs officer asks what is wrapped in embroidered velvet? This? Nada Just paper I dissolve into paper for twenty years I am her text stained with her breath the secret of her intentions the leitmotif of her prayer her sacred architecture bone white arches light slips past blueprints of the Temple fine twined linen blue, purple and scarlet silks patterns for two sided embroidery remedies for healing her bone chant over the dead the rhythm of birth the quickening of anticipation written over the history of terror
In the history of wandering what to leave and what to take how to ease your body away from a landscape boundaries intact how to ease your thoughts away from one language into another how to embed an urgent message under your tongue Somos Judios sacred texts written in flight inscribed in parchment the rise and fall of her cursive in spaces between births snatches of psalms for each one born in Jerusalem another longs for her snatches of psalms between bits of conversation between volumes of Talmud I sleep for twenty years
I awaken as a girl
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