IJII

Ronda Angel Arking, a professional writer, editor, and curriculum developer, is Managing Editor of Conversations. This poem appears in issue 11 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

I cannot sing this place.

I stand on ash, balance
on the platform. The audience of ten
faces, hollow and ghostly, urges—
Try not to fall into those earthen jaws,
moats of dust mixed with rain.
Looking into the deep troughs, dizzy
from time-induced nausea, I think
of that lullaby, Sleep, sleep,
one day you will have raisins and almonds.

I try to make a song here.

The air drips with inky streaks,
bus fumes and burnt hair.
Charred scrawls on the station
wall condemn me to death,
Stars of David replace Xs, cross
out hearts, point to the letters in Polish,
need no translation: Gas the Jews.
I want to scream old songs, erase
these coal marks that smudge, but do not fade.

My voice is no vandal.

One small voice: I hate
the green narrow barracks

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Women Rabbis and the "Tree of Life": Reflections on the JOFA Conference, March 14, 2010

By Ronda Angel Arking

(Ronda Angel Arking is Managing Editor of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. She is also a Literature and Language Arts Curriculum Developer, graduate student in Biblical Literature, mother, and active member of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Baltimore, MD.)

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Ronda Angel Arking is Managing Editor of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. She is an active member of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Baltimore. This article appears in Conversations, issue 3.

             One of the most influential writers of Jewish philosophy, theology, and fiction during the early Victorian period was Grace Aguilar. A traditional Spanish and Portuguese Jew, Aguilar spent most of her short life living outside of a structured Jewish community. Yet her vast knowledge of biblical, and even some rabbinical, texts—as well as her highly Romantic prose—brought her works to a wide audience of both Jews and Christians.

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