During the time I have been away from you the earth continued to turn.

The hottest August in the last 100 years hit Israel, the longest unending summer and the first rains meant to fall in October held back until late November.
Israelis dreamed of rain in their sleep. Sang of it, set forth prayers for rain from hearts and synagogues and from helium balloons carrying rabbis considered influental with the Lord.

Gale Sahara winds scorched the beloved green mountains of our ancient Carmel Mountain and we were suddenly set aflame. Within several days, an unprecedented forest fire destroyed one third of the Carmel's beautiful and variegated trees, brush and other vegetation. Forty four fire fighters died and countless forest creatures lost their lives. Towering flames were battled by fire fighting planes rushed to Israel from all over the world. Black smoke filled the northern skies.

While the country was still reeling in shock, Sahara winds turned into freezing gales and rain, flooding the northern settlements and hitting Jerusalem with cold fury.

Today the sun is shining. We lick our wounds and look forward to more happy events.
My first granddaughter's Bat Mitzvah.
The great bi-annual bird migration over Israel.

This poem appears in my new book, "Tales of Love and Ezile".

STORKS

Against the backdrop of azure sky, in arrow formation

migrating storks return to kibbutz skies.

Sabbath Eve twilight tints

their long-legged embrace of the great palms,

wave after wave - a gentle invasion of the great tree limbs,

they alight on the palm grove branches

bordering the fish ponds and the green lawns.

A klackity-klack chorus,

their slender beaks declare the day's adventures,

tell of long flights from Northern Lands,

and set up a racket welcomed in every kibbutz bungalow.

And if you fly silent among them, I am told,

they will turn their noble heads to you

and gaze hello.

(C) Shira Twersky-Cassel

Time to talk about Cats

About Cats

I grew up in a Chassidic home. Following in the foot steps of King David in Psalms, my mother and father instilled in me the love of animals. My father the rabbi would bring home a puppy from the home of a Bar Mitzvah student and Mom trying to keep a small railroad flat fit for human habitation, had to turn down keeping the sweet thing. But she did so with gentle regret and only after cuddling and feeding the small creature yesterday's challah soaked in milk. Abba and I would wander the then pastoral Bronx at 10:00 pm looking for an open pet shop, for my father would never abandon this puppy in a garbage bin.

So it was natural for me when making my home in Jerusalem to raise a dog and then her beautiful girl pup and later two cats. The latter came about when running up and down eight flights of stairs to walk the dog became a necessity after my son - the dog walker- got married Thank God. I missed life shared with a small creature and dreamed of a medium sized silky ball of fur that would follow me around the house talking to me in "meows" and bringing the wild into my home.

I was gifted with two kittens, the male brought to me from the shores of the Kinneret Sea in the north of Israel and so named, the female a sleak white Jerusalem lovely named Rachel for Israel's great poetess who is buried in the Kinneret graveyard with other well known historical figures.

Here is a poem from my new collection, "Tales of Love and Exile".

Garden of Eden

It seems to me the peace that reigns
in my home, the days of affection
are as it was in Eden's Garden

Within my walls there is no bloodlust
we talk and think our thoughts
each in our common way

fur and skin, eyes and heart
deep in each hours' occupation
find the time to say hello

seek out the touch and the embrace
voices that speak and sing
bark and trill and coo with love
and tell the tale

the truths of our brother and sisterhood
that was God's true intention.

Shira Twersky-Cassel (c)






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Lament for Jerusalem

Several days ago Jews world-wide fasted and commemorated the Ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. That date marks the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, of the Israelite kingdom and the final expulsion of the Hebrew nation from the Land of Israel. Last Tuesday at the Wailing Wall - the last remnant of the Second Temple - 100,000 Jews gathered together from all over Israel and the world to weep and pray.

The story goes that Napoleon when told about this Jewish fast day said that a people who recall the exile from their land thousands of years past are destined to return home. The first Zionist?

Throughout the long exile, the Jewish people - homeless and oppressed - refused to relinquish their faith. The shock of the Holocaust caused the United Nations to vote for a Jewish state in the ancient Land of Israel. The Arab lands of the Middle East didn't take this well and declared war against the young state.

Today, a fundamental element of Arab anti-Israel PR is their claim that there never was an Israelite nation or a First and Second Temple on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem [on those ruins the Moslem Golden Domed Mosque now stands]. No prophets, no King Saul, no King David, no King Solomon. All figments of our imagination. The Jews are just some European colonial tribe that invaded a region foreign to them in the twentieth century. Ishmael was the inheritor of Abraham. [By the way, there was a constant Jewish presence in the Land of Israel - later called Palestine - throughout the centuries of exile.

The following poem-story appears in my English language collection, "Poems of Love and Exile."

Exile

In the year 70 AD Titus's army
set up camps on Mount Scopus
and the Mount of Olives
that overlook the Temple Mount,

dragging great wooden posts
round the walls of Jerusalem,
the Romans laid waste the bright gardens
and orchards to prepare for murder and siege.

Our resistance gathered on the Temple Mount
fought the bitter fight, the stubborn battle,
but on the 8th of Av the Roman Legion broke through
and many of us were killed that day.

Titus's legionnaires brought tens of thousands
the Jews of Jerusalem onto the Mount,
and on the place that we had rejoiced and
prayed to the Almighty,

for eleven days we lay dying, without food and water
as Titus selected who would be sold into slavery
and who left to starve and die on the Mount
and cast into the ruins of the lower city

After that Titus set about the destruction
of the beautiful upper city and
of the Holy Temple, burning and smashing
everything in his wake

for that was his way,
to conquer a people who would not
bow down to Rome's false gods
and to leave desolation and destruction.

In the year 70 Titus looted the Temple
he carried off the great Golden Menorah
and the Holy Temple treasures
to his camp at Ceasaria,

and from there to Rome.
----
LAMENT
[from the Book of Lamentations
written by the prophet Jeremiah
after the events described above.]

Our skin burns with the famine
the children faint with hunger on the streets
they cry to their mothers
- where is our corn and milk,

young and old lie on the ground
the dead fill the alleyways and burnt houses
fallen by fire and the sword.

Our inheritance has been given to strangers
to those who hate us without cause.

Fallen is our crown, we are captured
like caged birds, to be taken to distant lands.

(c) Shira Twersky-Cassel

Israel's Coat of Many Colors

Jews settled in every corner of the globe during thousands of years, and in those diaspora lands of exile they were always singled out as the outsiders, as Jews. Yet in Israel, we bring with us the scent, the look and the mind set of the countless lands we wandered through.

A miniature United Nations, we come in every shape and color and language. There is friction between different ethnic groups but never hatred or violence. We are a family. Current DNA research has proven that Jews are all related, linked to the gene pool of the Israelites of the Biblical Land of Israel.

This gives me a real kick and I especially feel privileged that my own family are multi-ethnic Jews. My beautiful grandchildren come in all colors and enjoy a genetic mix of Africa-Ethiopia, Spain, Venice, Poland, Russia and the US, back to the Middle East.

This poem appears in my current volume of poems, "Stories of Exile and Love"

GRANDMOTHER

First came dreamy-eyed Rachel
child at the well, a jug on her shoulder,
she shyly offers water to Eliezer
come to find a bride for Jacob.

Next is our wild-eyed clever beauty
dark as Queen Sheba and as wise,
don't try to trick her,
she will catch you in it.

Three is twinkle-eyed
and pigtailed mischief,
the child her father was
with riddles and comic relief.

Four is our Greta Garbo,
pearl complected and grey-eyed,
she is Russia, haloed blond hair
frames her cameo face.

Five is our bright boy, a prince born,
with the green-eyes
and high cheeks of my father,
who brought him to me in a dream.

Six returns us to Ethiopia
a round-eyed beautiful babe
with fat black toddler legs
running towards me

Sometimes they play-walk
in a row, "like we were born,"
connecting each to the other
in a golden chain of love,

that reaches back
that reaches forward.

Oh Lord, that I would be allowed
to see the generations
they will bring forth.

The gift of Music

Due to technical difficulties. . . . I have been locked out of my electronic fix for almost two months. So hello once again!

I would like to talk about the great joy of music which has been my "high" all my life. How lucky to live in a time of free access to music, to have experienced the miracles of radio, TV, records, tapes, CDs, and the countless electronic musical babies being born every minute, a source of constant excitement.

In ancient times the chanting plays of Greek theatre were a center of community life. An important element of the First and Second Jerusalem Temple service were the poems and songs of the Levites. In exile, Jewish synagogues and homes continued this tradition with the hymns and songs of the Sabbath and holidays

Once upon a time, people waited with anticipation for traveling bards or for the local talent to appear in the square. If they lucked out, there was genius. I visualize the "salon" of Felix Mendelsohn's family, reveling in his and his sister Fanny's musical plays. The courts of the nobility and royalty enjoyed musicians, jestors and actors at will.

In my childhood, my brother's 76 speed records introduced me to the crooner Frank Sinatra. I remember my brother furious when I sat on one and cracked it.
When I was a teenager Frank made a great comeback. Then I loved him on my own and collected all his LPs which remain today on my shelf. By then I had my own room and could listen all night to that funky radio wizard, Symphony Sid, who blew my mind with Latin and Cuban rock and jazz - before the word funk was a word. Classical music entered the picture when I was fifteen. A guy friend who had a bit of a crush on me gifted me with an LP of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, leading me to the New York Times guide and its classical radio station, WQXR.

In the 1960's my first Bob Dylan was the 45 speed single "Positively 4th Street" The Beatles, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the original Santana. Then I fell into the loving arms of Jazz. Mongo Santa Mario, Thenonious Monk, Miles Davis, the list goes on. And of course I married a musician who dragged me from club to club to hear the Jazz greats live.

My passion for Israeli culture brought Hebrew Folk into my heart, oriental and Yemenite singers, and poetry-songs being written by the builders of Israel. A beloved art form in Israel is Hebrew poetry set to music. I have enjoyed the dream of having my own poems become musical lyrics. These classics, the Cantorial and secular and other new songs, music rich in the vibrant marriage of Jews coming together from the two thousand year diasporas of the world - Ethiopia, the Arab Lands, Russia, Spain, South America, the United States and every other corner of the globe - have given birth to a renewed library of Jewish music that is constantly growing.

The great Hassidic Master, Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem Tov said, "Music is man's link to the highest spiritual spheres." Although human history has been laden with much pain and suffering, this truth strengthens us.

The following poem which appears in my latest English language collection delivers "a little piece of my heart."

Beethoven

I often think of Beethoven
deaf to sound at his Third Symphony
which I fell in love with at a whistle
repeated over and over
by a student sharing
a City College Classroom with me.

Deaf Beethoven went on to write
nine symphonies, sonatas,
clarinet, piano, violin conchertos,
string quartets, and so on,
but the Ninth was his Ode to Mankind
that he loved.

He dreamed of a world community
and said, "I do not need to hear my music
with my ears, I hear it in my mind,"
- can you imagine that?

He hid his deafness
and did not get along well with the world,
it was a time of stigmas.

He died many years before the Devil
would force Jewish musicians
to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony of Love
to Jews marching into Auschwitz ovens.

Was Beethoven forced to witness this curse to his genius
this shattering of his dream, or did the Good Lord
have pity and cause The Old Master
to sleep during those horror years
when his dream of love went up in flames.

[c] Shira Twersky Cassel

The Walls Fall - May 1967 Jerusalem

When I first took the bus that climbed the hills from Tel Aviv to the then divided city of Jerusalem I was nineteen. My first glimpse from afar of the legendary city that my people had dreamed of for two thousand years was breathtaking. I was enchanted and I knew it would be my home.

My parents married in pre-State Israel, then called Palestine. They emigrated to the United States during the Great Depression and my brother and I were born in New York City. I was raised with an eternal dream posed like a flame before me - a beloved land of eternal blue skies that awaited.

The Roman conquerers renamed the ancient Land of Israel "Palestine" [for the Philistine tribes who had occupied the land before the Jewish Kingdom] in order to de-Judaize it. Following their destruction of the Second Temple and exile of the Judeans who survived the violent massacres, they wished to erace the nation's identity. This was common Roman practice following conquest.
But the Hebrews were different, they went into exile with the eternal Bible wrapped in their ragged baggage and in their hearts. During the long exile, their identity underwent many changes but endured.

During my first years in Jerusalem - the early 1960's - the city was divided. In 1948, the United Nations had voted Israel a member State including the Old City of Jerusalem. But the Arab countries surrounding the tiny enclave instantly declared war on the fledgeling state. When finally the cease-fire was declared after many bloody battles, Jordan held on to the Old City of Jerusalem. And so it was for 19 years. During that interval, Jews were denied access to all Holy Places. -- first and foremost the Wailing Wall where we had come to weep for thousands of years and above the Wall, the Temple Mount, the site of the destroyed Temple, usurped and covered by a mosque with a golden dome during the rise of Islam.

Between 1948 and 1967 the city was divided by a barren no man's land, cement blocs set up in the center of neighborhoods particularly vulnerable to Jordanian Legion gunfire. I took a job at the Israel Radio newsroom, there I heard many stories of the Old City where Jews and Arabs once shared lives. I wrote poems about living in this haunted city and imagined what lay hidden under the arch-covered streets and alleyways on the other side of the walls.

Next week we celebrate the unification of the city of Jerusalem recaptured in the 1967 war forced on Israel by the armies of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. The joy of return on that day was evidenced by the throngs from all over the country streaming to the Wailing Wall to weep and pray and blow the ram's horn. Many removed their shoes and approached the remaining wall of the ancient Second Temple in their bare feet.

Again, as in 1948, Israel was not destroyed by the invading Arab armies but emerged victorious. Today Jerusalem is a vibrant bustling city, ever- growing and changing and welcoming all who wish to visit or settle here.
But the sacred soul of "Ariel" one of the many names of this city found in the Bible, remains constant and faithful to its people.

Here are some lines from one poem written during "the silent years of separation" which I translated into Hebrew for the journal "Jerusalem" published by the Hebrew Writers' Guild:

JERUSALEM- 1961

Rounded blue hours sift down

into dusk from a pale sky

dusk is as dawn

veined marble trees

transparent twilight stone.

At night the hills are lit with other lives,

from another court

bells peal pear shaped sound

through narrow latticed leaves

tattered in moonflame

thorned walls creep overgrown

with barbed weeds and wire.

Luminous city spires and ancient towers

gleam and play ivory chess games

on the purple hours.

In the last watch

bittersweet reeds

pierce high.

(C) Shira Twersky Cassel

The Mystery of Senseless Hatred

In April Israel is caught between two memorials, Holocaust Day and Memorial Day for those fallen in Israel's wars of defence and the victims of terrorism.

This week Israel commemorated the memory of six million Jewish men, women and children who were lost to us, slaughtered by the Nazis in Europe during the Second World War. The war ended before the Nazis were able to make inroads on the populations of Jews who had settled in Greece and the Sephardi [Arab] lands but that was certainly their plan.

As a child I suffered recurrent dreams. Nazi boots stomped up the stairs to our apartment in the Bronx, broke down our door and dragged us out of our beds. I had been exposed to the outspoken memories of survivors from our family and of childhood friends from my mother's home town in Poland. I have Sephardic friends who had similar fears. That "other planet", the Holocaust experience is inscribed on Jewish DNA.

On Holocaust Memorial day, a two minute siren sounded at 10:00 a.m. All over the country we stood silent, traffic stopped and people emerged from cars and buses and stood in the road. At home, I went up to my roof to connect with my fellow countrymen and with them said a quiet prayer. We united in memory and love, wept and returned to our daily routine.That night we tucked our children into their beds behind secure Israeli doors that we will never again allow to be violated by the brutality of miserable wretches who are filled with hate.

The mystery of senseless hatred and of evil continues to threaten us today.

Below is a translated excerpt of a Hebrew poem which appears in my book, "The Secret Life of the Birds", published by Sifriyat HaPoalim, Tel Aviv. The subject is the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral land. If at that time - during the 1930's and 1940's - we had a home, i.e. the State of Israel - the Holocaust would not have taken place.

Palm Memories

When first she strode the sunlit land
- awaiting her return like a faithful lover -
a wail of sirens summoned the lost generations,

her tears rose like rain to fill the hollowed imprint
of her bare feet in the good earth.

When first she spoke the ancient living letters,
an articulation of rams horns renewed the festivals of life,

clicking palm trees bent to whisper wind legends
of what had been and the light of days to come.

Shira Twersky-Cassel (C)