One poem by Irena Klepfisz and one Psalm, a classical Biblical poem
This hevrutah session aims at giving the participants the possibility of engaging in the very short texts and discussing it both as an independent text and then its intertext – the text belonging to traditional Jewish text, one Psalm.
This discussion wishes to give participants opportunity to get familiar with one of the most amazing Jewish New-York based poet of our time as well to reflect again on the Jewish canon from the chosen perspective of children and (indirectly) women representation.
This discussion wishes to give participants opportunity to get familiar with one of the most amazing Jewish New-York based poet of our time as well to reflect again on the Jewish canon from the chosen perspective of children and (indirectly) women representation.
- Introduction: Irena Klepfisz is a poet, Yiddish translator, and teacher of Jewish Women Studies. She was born in 1941 in the Warsaw Ghetto and eventually hidden in a Catholic orphanage. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising claimed the life of her father, Michal Klepfisz, a resistance fighter and a Bund activist who was posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari medal. After the Warsaw Uprising, she and her mother, Rosa Perczykow-Klepfisz, hid in a village until the liberation. They then moved to Lodz and, in 1946, emigrated to Sweden, and in 1949, to the United States. Irena Klepfisz has been active in feminist, lesbian, Jewish secular and peace organizations. She began publishing her poetry in 1971 and soon focused her research on Yiddish women writers (e.g. Kadya Molodovsky and Fradl Shtok). She co-founded the feminist literary magazine Conditions and served as the Yiddish editor of the Jewish feminist magazine Bridges. She also co-edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Woman's Anthology. She is the author of A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (Poetry) and Dreams of an Insomniac (Essays). While teaching Jewish Women's Studies at Barnard College, Klepfisz also taught for ten years at a maximum security women's prison. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and was recently awarded the prestigious Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award 2016.
Leading Questions:
- Who is the protagonist of the poem? (position/where is she/he? – what age? – nationality? – gender?)
- Can you find specifically Jewish themes/leitmotifs in this text: if so – explain why/how Jewish they are?
- How do you think this text may relate to the debate on contemporary Jewish Identity?
Poem: from Irena Klepfisz from Periods of Stress (1975)
during the war
germans were known
to pick up infants
by their feet
swing them through the air
and smash their heads
against plaster walls.
i managed
to escape that fate.
during the war
germans were known
to pick up infants
by their feet
swing them through the air
and smash their heads
against plaster walls.
i managed
to escape that fate.
discussion about the poem (in Hevrutah pairs (about 20 minutes) should be followed with contrastive reading of the following Psalm
Psalm 137
1By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
The New International Version (NIV)
1By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
The New International Version (NIV)