WHO IS THE MAN?
The high school student in me says,
Blow their brains out once and for all.
The college student in me says,
Learn Arabic and Hebrew, see both sides.
Both sides? My graduate student cries,
Alevai only two! Write poems of witty complexity.
And the zayde in me teaches his grandsons
Judaism, Judo and jokes,
and sings them to sleep with psalm 34:
Netzor leshoncha meira’ / Guard your tongue from evil/
U-sfatecha midaber mirma/ And your lips from speaking guile /
Sur meira v’aseh tov/ Turn away from evil and do good/
Bakesh shalom verodfehu./ Seek peace and pursue it.
WAR SONG BASED ON FREEDOM SONG I LEARNED AT 20 WITH SNICK (STUDENT NON-VIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE)
1.
It isn’t nice to block the harbors, close the highways, bomb the fields.
It isn’t nice to teach your children only you have real ideals.
[Refrain]
It isn’t nice it isn’t nice —
They hear but they’re beyond advice.
To them that’s victory’s price. So Never mind.
Never mind. Never mind. Never mind.
2.
It isn’t nice to rewrite history, effects and causes rearranged.
It isn’t nice when you start winning to think their hearts and minds have changed.
[Refrain]
3.
It isn’t nice to say all countries break the rules except your own.
It is’t nice to tell your people that’s the reason they’re alone.
[Final Refrain]
It isn’t nice it isn’t nice —
They feel their hearts must turn to ice.
When the shoe is on the other foot,
Both feet become one vise.
THE MEANING OF GOLUS (Yiddish for Diaspora) or WHY WE FIGHT
Rumors that a missing child had been
murdered in the local woods
brought all Jews of the Russian village
to shul to pray that they not be accused
of killing the child for its blood
to sweeten their Passover wine.
After three days of fasting and prayer,
the shamus burst into the shul and cried,
“Fellow Jews! Great news!
Our prayers have been heard!
No pogrom will occur!
The murdered child is a Jew!”
That, the Razbash would say
with fierce tears,
is the meaning of the Yiddish word, golus.
________
Zev Shanken’s recent publications are Teachings of the Razbash (Babushkin’s Playhouse) and a selection of his poems in JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Stories. (JPS/University of Nebraska Press).
Touching “good news.” an example of why Zionism had great appeal to East European Jewry.
That last poem about the murdered Jewish child is too sad and too true. Millions across the world, especially those thousands of safe miles away from the danger zone, are celebrating and justifying the murder of Jewish babies and children, the mass rapes and murders of hundreds of girls regarded as ‘whores’ for not covering their bodies from head to toe. Even the newborns are ‘settler colonialists’ (what bullshit) and according to campus decolonizers are proper subjects for revolutionary mass murder to restore colonized manhood through bloodlust violence (Frantz Fanon). And yesterday, Nick Fuentes (who dined with Trump and Kanye) called for the extermination of ‘perfidious Jews.’
He’s a Nazi and it’s alarming that Far Left neo-Stalinist professors and grade-grubbing brainwashed students agree at least that every Israeli (and those of us with Israeli connections, like my daughter’s birth on kibbutz) is that ‘perfidious Jew.,’ even when still nursing at the ‘perfidious’ breast of their ‘perfidious’ mother. Free Palestine…From Hamas. Free Israel…From Kahanists. Regardless of where you stand on Israel or Hamas, you must get everyone you know out to vote for Biden. Our Muslim friends must NOT sit this out. They will be first on Trump’s list for suppression and deportation. Perfidious Jews’ may not be far behind.