Passover - Past and Present

The Talmud writes that the Temple of Jerusalem was whitewashed annually in preperation for Passover. It is recorded there that the Israelite families trekking on foot on one of the three annual pilgrimages would call out in excitement when they reached the foothills of the city of Jerusalem, "Look, the Temple is cresting the Temple Mount as brightly as the pure snow!"

When I first read this it amazed me as the solution to a riddle I had always wondered about. It is a racial memory-link to Jewish pre-Passover mad obsession with whitewashing our homes, more prominent among the Sephardic and Israeli Jews who did not wander as far as the cold exile of the European and Soviet continents when we were cast out of the Land of Israel.

At my home in Jerusalem the shlepping up and down ladders and getting rid of leavened products and kitchenware is at is most intense today. And although we grump through the ordeal and the feet hurt, I have taken a blog-break to express my feeling of joy and renewal.

We were enslaved, experienced exile from our homeland, suffered the Spanish Inquisition and countless pogroms and were almost wiped out in the unspeakable Holocaust. We were written off countless times, but here we are. Cleaning our houses, innovating and giving new life to a flowering and fruitful land that lay barren for centuries. And most important of all, raising beautiful and clever children.

For my graceful and slightly crazy cats, blue-eyed Kinneret, born on the shores of that northern sea, and his sister green-eyed Rachel, their 14th Passover cleaning is accompanied by lots of temporarily empty cartons lying about which as any cat knows are heavenly havens to scratch about and cuddle in while the world passes you by. For like children who do not live in great houses and have rooms for themselves, cat also have the ability to create a magical self-sufficient world under a table or inside a carton.

This is the translation of my poem about Passover at my father's table which appeared in the Israeli poetry journal "Mashiv HaRuach," [translated loosely as "Master of the Winds".]

Dad passed away when I was twenty-one and with each passing year I grow closer in memory to him.

MY FATHER'S PESACH SEDER

At my father's Pesach table

the ten plagues burned into my living flesh,

the wine spilled to signify each plague.

No small drop from one finger

the wine flowed into each Pesach saucer

taken down from locked closets

and polished till it shone

then poured into a great crystal bowl.

For the wine becomes our own blood,

when we weep and recall the slavery,

the treachery of Egypt which betrayed Father Joseph,

and we remember the blood of the infants of our wombs

buried alive between the great slabs of pyramid stone

worked with our hands.

At the Pesach table of my father

I fled Pharaoh's legions to the burning light of Moses's eyes,

I danced to freedom with the Prophetess Miriam

on the shores of the parted sea.

***

*Pesach – Passover in Hebrew

© Shira Twersky-Cassel

Childhood Memories

Cooking for Purim and hosting a house full of guests from all Israeli walks of life - from my son's Ethiopian students to our childhood friends -- return me to my early years when my parent's small railroad flat was the central homey meeting place of friends and family. And especially to thoughts of my mother.

Our flat was in the first elevator house in the Bronx, a once luxurious building that had been dissected into long narrow railroad flats. We were not well off but our refrigerator was always full of food. As a small child I would often wish that I could be allowed to sleep through the night without being constantly lifted and moved from chair to couch and on and on. My bed was in a room that opened up into the living-dining area where the many guests congregated.

My childhood was peopled with the faces and voices of the many friends and relatives who constantly visited our small apartment. There were my father's Chassidic Ultra-Orthodox family, my mother's Israeli relatives, her "landzleit" - those who had survived the concentration camps and managed to enter the US or Canada. My mother's family left their small Polish town, Ilje, for Palestine - the Land of Israel - after the First World War. My grandfather who was an active Zionist predicted that disaster was imminent for the Jews of Europe.

Our home was also frequented by the "Hebraists" working with Eliezer Ben Yehuda to create a modern spoken Hebrew, the Yiddish theatre crowd and chazanim [cantors] who were often well known opera singers.

My mother was constantly in the kitchen, preparing meals for the many guests and for the Sabbath and the sound and fragrance of fish being chopped in a great wooden bowl with a curved cleaver remains in my memory. When I was five, my father bought home matching mother-daughter aprons and a low stepladder for me to stand at the sink and help Mama - a task I loved.

Mama was a "beautiful dreamer" who, although she deeply loved my father and her children, had been deprived of her childhood dream of joining the Yiddish stage. Hers was an immortal beauty or as my father recalled their young years, "Who could look directly into her eyes?" He forever loved and saw her in that way.

Her eyes were the key - their far-away gaze set her apart, seeking a vision beyond the horizon of her everyday life. Her night-dreams were filled with herself as a bird soaring. She taught me to love and care for her beloved birds and this defined my inspiration when I began writing poetry.

Her prophetic dreams predicted who of her childhood friends had survived the concentration camps and very soon after each dream that very man or woman rang us on the phone or shouted up from the corner of Valentine and Webster Avenue, "Pnina, Pinchas ! We are here !" My father ran down to bring them up in the creaky elevator to our flat which became their second homes.

Below is one of my poems about Mama which appeared in The Deronda Review published by Esther Camaroon.

***
TO MY MOTHER: Bird Yearning by Shira Twersky-Cassel

"For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee." [Isaiah 54, 7]

Above time's prism where waits the city's perfect soul

suspended and concealed,

at this moment, hearts and wing,

you and I will capture the autumn wind.

To fly with you Lark-Mother

living as a bird, wing to wing,

for one short moment to learn, to soar and together sing,

to hunger for our temporal bodies.

As the light lives within the light

the soul lives in our bones and blood,

the illuminated soul sent forth

to occupy the burning flesh.

And I will call this light "To Yearn"

and your name was "Bird Yearning."

It is said that with the coming of the Hebrew month, Adar, we are joyous. Adar, which usually coincides with the month of March, brings with it Purim. This festival signifies the prevention of a massacre of the Jews of Persia in 486-465 B.C. planned by Haman, the Grand Vizier of the King of Persia, Achashverus. Believed to be King Xerxes, at that time Achasverus chose a new wife from the Jewish community, Esther. The name Esther is derived from the Hebrew word "hester", i.e. "hidden," hinting at the hidden turn of events.

Esther was able with the help of her brother Mordechai to foil Haman's plans by disclosing them to the king at a feast which she organized. And since Haman's evil was turned "upside down", against him, it is a Jewish custom to dress up as something or someone else in a fun way. A celebratory feast is eaten to commemorate Esther's feast, much wine is imbibed by the adults and laughter and silly behavior are engaged in by both old and young.

But Purim is totally unlike Halloween in that gory or frightening costumes which glorify death are not the custom. Costumes based on word games and puns are popular. For instance when the Secretary General of the UN was Kofee Anan - Anan is "cloud" in Hebrew - my son was the first to appear as a coffee can with a cloud suspended above his head.

Last week at my grandchildrens' school each class chose a Purim family theme and went with it. On Monday, the first graders all dressed up as grandmothers, the second grade as teenagers, the third grade as babies, the fourth grade as bride and groom, and so on.

For myself, Adar marks the month when the Mountain Swifts return to nest in Jerusalem and I anxiously await their call. Below is the translation of one of my many Hebrew poems about this beloved bird which appear in my book, "The Secret Life of Birds":

Conversations with Birds

At six of a morning
a sharp cry of clamorous delight,

the season's first troop of Mountain-Swifts
has entered my dream,

fled into the wind, into blue mists breaking,
they call out
- Adar is here
and we have returned to you.

(c) Shira Twersky-Cassel

What I missed most during my visit to Miami were the pitot, the pitot of the shuk, Mahane Yehuda, the open air market built when Jews began setting up neighborhoods outside the walls of the Old City.

So, soon after my return home I took my eleven year old granddaughter, Hedva Pnina, to share one of my great pleasures of living in Jerusalem, a walk through the shuk.

For centuries the fear of bandit gangs who roamed the deserted expanses outside the Old City Walls had created a crowded, intimate environment of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews living in close proximity with the Moslem, Christian and Armenian communities inside the old stone courtyards.

The Jewish philanthropist Moses [Moshe] Montefiore financed and built the first neighborhood overlooking the walls, Yemin Moshe, in the late 19th century. Other neighboroods soon sprang up and today this network of picturesque buildings decorated with mosaic symbols and handmade iron grilling are at the heart of modern day Jerusalem.

Such is the shuk which in this era of the supermarket remains our colorful and slightly raunchy alternative. Vendors sing out the best tasting tomatoes, corn, aberguines, apples, bananas, the delicious of whatever is in season at the cheapest prices.

Great chunks of yellow and white salt cheeses, the scent of colorful spices pouring out of jute sacks, barrels of pickled veggies and herring whet the appetite. The fragrance from giant trays of cheese and spinach and potato burekas, honeyed cinnamon and cocoa "rogalech" emerging from the ovens of small bakeries which line the street fill the air. After Purim, braids of fresh garlic suspended from the booths, and baskets of giant strawberries anticipate Passover.

But my favorite are the vendors - comedians, philosophers and showmen all. Their natural wisdom tests your own and you know you are a real Jerusalemite when you learn to exchange wisecracks with them while shleping your cart from the fallafel stand at the bottom of the shuk to the assorted roasted nuts and dried fruits shop at the entrance.

Below is my translation from the Hebrew of a poem that appeared in my book, Blackbird:

SMALL TREASURES; Mornings in Mahane Yehuda

Soon we'll go down to stroll in the weather
on a carpet of sage and three-leaved Yemenite clover.

It's a stormy day, skies hurry into laundry drying in the wind
- fold fragrance of distance and horizon into your closet
- place sachet of skies-one-hour-before-the-rain between your clothes.

You talk to the rising storm,
dark clouds are reflected in your eyes
that await the rain.

After rainfall -- bright calm of perennials washed clean
and hallelujah bird-song pairs heaven and earth.

Begin your day in the shuk,
the fruit and vegetable vendors have named you Pure Heart,
for you can measure a full weight in your hand,
- two kilos of dew and ambrosia
- a thousand fruit jewels for your basket.

Walk down Etz Chayim Alley,
there grandfather-prophet leans on his worn wooden crate,

in prayer he kisses the fringes of his prayer shawl
and turns to whisper a blessing,
"You are the first
to bring sage-fragrance to me this morning."

(c) Shira Twersky-Cassel

Jerusalem in Winter

During my stay in Miami in early January, there was an unprecedented cold wave. Miamians were outraged at this breaking of the unwritten rule: Hurricanes between June and November OK, but below 50 degrees farhenheit for 12 days ! The coldest period since 1940.

For me that was a warm winter. I returned in late January to my damp and freezing house - Jerusalem in winter is not what you may imagine the warm Middle East to be. My two cats, Kinneret and Rachel, dragged up to meet me at the door with teeth chattering. Since I have been home temperatures dropped to almost freezing and this morning rain has turned to hail.

Last night a rare snow forecast for the Golan and the Hermon Mountain - the northern heights - and Jerusalem caused Israelis from warmer Tel Aviv to pack up their cars with the kids and the warmest jackets they could shlep out of closets and make the annual pilgrimage to the capital. But in the light of dawn, dreams of charging around in the snow and "ahing" and "ohing" at the sight of ethereal stone buildings and Jerusalem Pines layered with a haze of misty snow had to be postponed. No snow yet.

Here's a poem I wrote about this season:

THE ROSES OF JERUSALEM

Roses do well in Jerusalem,
hardy beauties,
they withstand the winter gales
that whistle under stone threshold doors

they brave the wet snow that slows life down
when Tel Aviv joins us in wonder

and withstand the rise of High Holy Day winds
that tear into lesser blooms
overturning September's Tabernacle booths.

Wild Snapdragon and Caper Bush
clambering over Temple ruins these millennium
thrive with the Wild Rose, the mystic "Shoshana."

She holds head high
through Hamsin burn that lays waste the purple Fuscia bells
and the yellow Sharav sand-mists
that send us indoors
to contemplate eternity.

© Sole Copyright of Shira Twersky-Cassel

Brother-sister reunion

The mystery of siblings, raised by the same parents, who are different yet the same fascinates me. I observe my own grandchildren, raised by my son and daughter in law here in Jerusalem, and wonder at how different each is, although they share the same way of life and values.

The variations between myself and my brother, ten years my senior, may be easier to understand. His formative years were during the Depression when my parents were new Americans not long arrived from Palestine, having previously escaped from the turmoil of Eastern Europe before the Nazis initiated their crusade against the Jewish people and the world. Wandering Jews. I was raised in a home spiritually rich and economically struggling, but the refrigerator was always full.

After the First World War, my mother and father joined my gentle and kind grandfather in Brooklyn, a Grand Rabbi of Hassidim [I will explain this term in future entries] who had escaped Petlyura's gangs rampaging pogroms in the Ukraine during the Communist uprisings. My brother was privileged to know him well. My memories of our "zeida" are dimmer.

Born into the first elevator house in the Bronx, as soon as I knew myself my dream was to share in the adventure of the new Jewish State of Israel. The return of my people to our ancestral home. As a child, I sensed that the centuries of not belonging, of wandering and suffering had happened to me personally.

So I have built my life in Israel as my brother has in the United States. Two weeks ago I returned home to Israel from a long awaited visit with him and his family in Miami, and will share with you the thoughts that will arise in me as I digest this adventure.

Still the same but different, my handsome and funny brother and his family are the taste to me of our long departed parents.

And best of all, I gained a new friendship with a neice who also offered me an additional gift.

This blog for me to write my thoughts and poems to you.
So long and Lehit'

To Jerusalem - Opal

OPAL: Song to Jerusalem by Shira Twersky-Cassel

They call you Gold
I name you Opal,

I sing of tattered shadow and light
which consummates on nights of haloed moon,

I speak of ebony blackbird and swift
that come to roost like jewels set in opal stone.

And we shall gather tremors in sanctuary ruins
your crystal eyes to weep no more.

And once again the loyal caper-tree
will climb your Templed-Mount,
Selah.

© sole copywrite
Shira Twersky-Cassel