Poems for the High Holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidrei, Yom Kippur

Two poems from my series on Jewish holidays were recently published by the Jewish Women’s Archive. Fittingly they were about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I’m writing this post just under the wire, clearly.

https://jwa.org/blog/high-holiday-poems

One poem from my series not included here was recently published in the North American Review. This one is from a series within the series on performances of Kol Nidrei. It feels personally fitting at the moment as I prepare to leave for Spain:

Kol Nidrei

May it be played by Casals,

my beloved Yom-Kippur-goy

of the cello. Perhaps he also

has vows to renounce,

an ancestor forced to convert

rather than burn, forebears

who wished to return.

He’s summoning them now

with his strings, with his bow,

grieving them now.

If you would like to listen to the recording, you can here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-pXTIUGQZA

And because I can’t resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKmxTxpuE8

!גמר חתימה טובה