Wandering
Jew
‘Rootless
Cosmopolitan’[1]
Descendent of ha-Ivrim
‘the Hebrews’
those eternal ‘border-crossers’
forever moving

from place to place
for whom
place
is ever-mobile.

The tent-tabernacle
pitched and dismantled
at every staging post
in the stony wilderness
where place
shifted with the winds.

And then
after the sojourn
in the land
after the place of the Eternal
fixed in stone
was destroyed
sacred place
mikdash
reconfigured as
a cornucopia of
words
mikdashyah[2]
sacred scripture
accompanying
the people
on all our journeys

ever since
the ever-renewed
ever-renewing 
place of nourishment

and meaning.

Displaced
Jew
in a world of
the post-industrial
post-colonial
post-Sho’ah
post-Modern
misplaced
I find my place
in ancient tales
in words
crafted
and re-crafted
translated
into deeds
that beat out the rhythms of

the days and weeks
the months and years
that celebrate the blessings
of every day
that make of each moment
a place
a call to
‘Choose Life’
‘Pursue Justice’
‘Seek Peace’
‘Loosen the fetters of evil
undo the bands of the yoke
liberate the oppressed
tear apart every chain
feed the hungry
provide refuge for the homeless
clothe the naked
satisfy the afflicted.’[3]
today

every day
without delay.


Elli Tikvah Sarah

  1. See: https://www.rbth.com/history/327399-stalin-versus-soviet-jews Also: Gelbin, Cathy S and Gilman, Sander L., ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans: German Jewish Writers and the Stalinist Purges’ in Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.

  2. Mikdashyah: The name given to certain mediaeval Spanish Hebrew Bible Codices.

  3. Deuteronomy 30.19; Deut. 16.20; Psalm 34.14; Isaiah 58.6-7; 10.