The Seven Ages of Wo-Man

"All the world's a stage": William Shakespeare's famous soliloquy on the Seven Ages of Man from As You Like It, is one of the best-known passages to have flowed from the Bard's pen. If you don't know it already, you can read it here -- and you can also check it out against Pirkei Avot, where Yehudah ben Teyma gives us our own alternative version at Avot 5:25.

Our own poet-in-residence here in Rechavia, none other than our member Pessy Krausz, was clearly inspired (or maybe provoked) by this idea to compose a piece of her own on childhood and perceptions of growing up. So, without further ado, here it is:

        The Seven Stages of Wo-Man (with apologies to the Bard)

Did my childhood begin after Nanny wheeled me round Leipzig’s park, 

recounting: Today your baby Die Gagaks! to the ducks did say: seeing mother’s delight

Or, as wrote the Bard, when mewling and puking in nurse’s arms?

 

Or, escaping Nazi overrun Belgium on a British soldier-packed, boat when

this prancing infant sang her little ditty all the way to Dover?

 

Or at Infants’ School huge hall, with even huger parents

when father bent to whisper into my five-year-old ear

Don’t tell them you’re German…was I? What was that, German?

 

Or at Junior School, missing traffic reading Margaret Mitchell’s

Gone with the Wind from home all the way to unwilling lessons?

 

Or at High School when this front row seated pupil heard intoned:

Would you like to sit with us? Us? Who’s “us”?

The Jewish girls…Where are they? In the back row!

 

Or at Bnei Akiva’s youth movement, as teenager with patent shoes...

is teenage part of childhood? A card on my 60th birthday informed

 

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely*.

When your inner child matches youngsters scrambling for your knee

childhood can be blessed with any number we choose it to be!