Prejudice and Pride

Our illustrious member Dr Pessy Krausz has some illustrious ancestors of her own. On her maternal side, her mother Regina Esther Rachel Markiewicz (née Langerman) was descended from Rabbi Isaac ben Avraham Chajes (1538 –c.1615), Rabbi of Prague and brother-in-law of the Maharal of Prague. Another of Pessy's luminary forebears is Menahem Manesh Hayyut (died 1636),  Polish rabbi and the first known Rav of Vilna.

In this poem, published yesterday in the Netanya AACI's Poetry Please, Pessy commemorates their memories --and those of others who tragically died more recently -- in a moving contemporary manner. Pessy has kindly let us reproduce it here. 

 Prejudice and Pride

What a sense of prejudice Menahem Manesh Chayyut

humbly rejected calls to reveal he composed Zmirot

that it was his talent our melodies created

which we sing with gusto at the Shabbat table

while his hidden name in the acrostic is revealed.

 

Menachem created the poem for Ma Yedidut where

Shabbat is a day of delight – grandfather of my mother

still lives, though died centuries ago 

in 1626 – in a Polish town a modest rabbi...

My mother owned without prejudice another  –

 

grandfather Isaac ben Avraham 1538 – 1615 rabbi

of the famed Altneuschul in Prague – we can sit

in what may have been his coldly marbled seat

warming our hearts while outside its clock

with Hebrew numbers tells of ages past

 

bursting with pride at my family members

of nobility on high – surely you will welcome our

pure soul-ed hostages who from Gaza’s evil tunnels below

sang Shecheyanu thanking the Almighty for sustaining life

while blessing their Chanukah candles improvised 

 

cruelly you are no longer there but I’ve adopted you all –

“the beautiful six” you are my hymn my pride and joy

Carmel Gat, Eden Yeruhsalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin,

Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi and Alexander Lobanov

with my grandfathers forever you fan our candle light

 Thanks, Pessy!