My Jewishness as an Invisible Jew

You ask:
Who am I, where am I from?
Where am I going, where is my home?
Am I a Jew? Am I like you or unlike you?
What about my mother, and my mother’s mother…?

You say:
In a simple world, there is only one logic answer,
Chose between Yes or No.
You tell the truth, it can’t be both
Or perhaps…..in your mind,
You think that made up words will get you by?

I tell:
Who believes in poetry and songs?
In a surreal world, where broken links are whole…
I am a devoted Jew,
My mother is a Jew,
My mother’s mother is a Jew,
And I was born in shul,
They even taught me Torah
In the womb,
I have a Jewish home…
I’m not a homeless vagabond.

In black and white, before your eyes,
I stand as if I’m crazy, so bizarre,
Can you judge me as unworthy or
Will you take pity on me,
because I cry and sigh?
I’m a dismal soul; I’m an orphan,
I lost my mom, I lost my mind

Wandering from place to place
With no identity, no destination
Perhaps as a chutzpahdik,
I come to you and say
That the Torah is my home,
And as you shoo me away,
I leave and I return, I stay….

But if in my eyes, you find
The deepest sadness of the times
Can you tell me then:
What kind of Jew am I?

Times have passed,
The years were trampling over
My Jewishness—the mutilated victim,
And now it’s a homeless survivor
Who is broken, paralyzed by the cold,
With an identity shattered into pieces
For many generations, hidden away
And so its storyline can’t be told….
For lost neshamahs deprived
Of their beauty
And broken hearts in exile,
Scattered around,
Have served as its abode,
And it faded away,
Somewhere in between
Existence and non-existence

From ancient times, my Jewishness
Floated towards you
Like a tragic love letter
A message in a bottle
Washed ashore by a powerful storm
It emerged from underground
As the last breath of a lost soul
Who perished, having been
…buried alive,
For many years, countless times,
And it was left like that
With no food, no water.
Becoming today
The memory of the lost whispers of….
Shema Yisrael!

From the valley of dry bones
My Jewishness got resurrected
Like a stranger with no name
With no recollection,
Whose life has been erased
And instead, left like that,
Deserted, forgotten in time,
In anonymous shadows,
It metamorphosed
And now it’s like a fantasy, a dream,
Preserving the hidden calling from within.

By logical and tangible means
You won’t find it.
But if submerged in a mikvah
It will emerge again
Like a newborn,
And the Yiddishkeit will guide it.

And so, as bizarre as it seems
My Jewishness came forth like this
From the exile of
The coldest winter months
From the latest hour of the night
It survived, both dead and alive,
Shlepping alone,
Through penury, through madness
Hunger stricken, filled with tears,
Shaking, trembling—like a fugitive.

The story of my Jewishness
Started with the Children of Israel.
It was like Abraham in Canaan,
The call of one G-d, and not idolatry.
And then like Joseph,
My Jewishness was sold and jailed in Egypt,
And then like Moses, it had a speech impediment,
It needed a Joshua to speak for it.
Then it hid its origins like Esther
To save its people,
And it emerged again shortly just to
Hide itself from countless
Other oppressors
And the Spanish Inquisition.
And so hidden, it continued on,
And then it was reborn in the ghetto
And then it lived in the shtetl

In different forms,
It was hidden
From storm after storm
And ultimately,
It perished in the Holocaust
Along with the six million,
But my Jewishness will be reborn
Like the moon, it waxes and wanes,
But it never fades away,
And it comes back
In a different shape or form,
To live again
Among its Jewish brethren.

And so, as an imperfect Jew
That to you I may seem
Don’t deny my Jewishness,
And let it live.

As I fade away
In the ancient yesterdays
Like an invisible Jew, forget me not,
For many generations
And generations may pass
And yet, in a different life,
I will come back,
Metamorphosed,
From an invisible Jew
Into the stranger that
Found Yiddishkeit, like Ruth.

From invisible dreams,
My lost and broken-hearted Jewishness,
Learned to hope.
So take these broken pieces that are left,
And bestow on them a Hebrew name
So they’d be whole
As a Jewish soul
When they call out to you:
Shalom, and Shema Yisrael!