fbpx
[additional-authors]
November 7, 2018

Divine wisdom,
Please show me how
To breathe
When the smell of hatred
Is hot and dank against my cheek
Blowing across the country
From my childhood home.

To walk
Into a synagogue today
In Los Angeles
When Squirrel Hill,
Sweet shtetl that raised me,
Is no longer safe.

To look
Into the eyes of my students and colleagues,
Friends and strangers
In solidarity with what they
Have always known
In shame for having forgotten
To grieve
The litany of losses
Private and public
Named and unnamable
Across the whole wide wailing world
Without crumbling to dust.

To plant
Flowers, when bullets rain
Words, to bandage wounds
Hope, when shadows grow
Long and dark across our faces
Faith that dawn will come
To act
As a bridge
A balm
A beacon,
A source of healing in the dark
Please show me how to add
To the sum of light
When the night looms so large
And my one flame
so small.


Deborah Elder Brown is an award-winning poet and journalist who lives in L.A. and was raised in Squirrel Hill.

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Cerf’s Up!

As the publisher and co-founder of Random House, Bennett Cerf was one of the most important figures in 20th-century culture and literature.

Are We Still Comfortably Numb?

Forgiving someone on behalf of a community that is not yours is not forgiveness. It is opportunism dressed up as virtue.

National Picnic Day

There is nothing like spreading a soft blanket out in the shade and enjoying some delicious food with friends and family.

John Lennon’s Dream – And Where It Fell Short

His message of love — hopeful, expansive, humane — inspired genuine moral progress. It fostered hope that humanity might ultimately converge toward those ideals. In too many parts of the world, that expectation collided with societies that did not share those assumptions.

Journeys to the Promised Land

Just as the Torah concludes with the people about to enter the Promised Land, leaders are successful when the connections we make reveal within us the humility to encounter the Infinite.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.