Silence is golden, but values are silver

Our Poet Laureate Dr Pessy Krausz has shared with us the happy news that another of her poems, 'The Meaning of Silver', will be appearing in this week's issue of Netanya's Poetry Please, and also in the journal of the Israel Association of Writers in English in December. This poem is about a very special piece of silver, the becher which appears on the right.  

Pessy's poem reads like this:

The Meaning of Silver

 Long ago and far away a century almost ago

Aron Eliyahu Hacohen my father was born

in a Polish village called Czychlyn but

moved to Lowicz, parents and siblings all

 

there its central square housed the market place 

shops to the side whose silver-tongued staff

served chatting folks exchanging woes

searching for wares hoping for bargains

 

Tim Gidal’s camera captures the scene 

head scarved women baskets on arms

children, chicks men in padded coats

under hostile elements silvery skies threatening

 

camera shoulder slung as with wife Pia

they fled Nazi onslaught arriving in Israel

where he gave me the picture I shared

with my father – by then wheelchair bound –

 

lightening recollection led him back ninety years                       

There’s Shmuel the wadding maker’s store

Moishe’s shoe shop, Yankel the baker’s next door!

Miraculous, incredible having escaped Nazi pursuit 

 

fled over hostile seas to England’s Dover

found us a village attic room while working in London

said to my mother “Here are my first earnings

go to town, buy us a Becher – a goblet for wine

 

must be of pure silver, no more no less!!” 

It graced our tiny table clad in a white cloth

though barely three I have instant recall

Kiddush with that Becher was entirely unique!

 

And uniquely it’s survived to this very day

graces my Shabbat table where Jerusalem’s home

they say Silence is Golden but Values are Silver

so generations may venerate what money can’t buy