Archive > Vol. 20 no. 2

Jacob Glatshteyn

Translated from the Yiddish by Marc Kaminsky

Without Jews

Without Jews there will be no Jewish God.
If we go — God forbid — away from the world,
the light in Your poor tent will go out.
Ever since Abraham recognized You in a cloud,
You have been aflame on all Jewish faces,
from all Jewish eyes You have radiated,
we have made You in our image.
In every land, in every town,
a stranger was also with us,
the Jewish God.
And every shattered Jewish head
is a broken pot of divinity,
because we were Your vessels of light,
the augury of Your tangible miracle.
Now our decimated heads
are counted in the millions.
The stars around You are nearly extinguished.
The memory of You is dimmed.
Your kingdom will soon cease to exist.
All the Jewish sowing and planting
is burned.
On the dead grass cries the dew.
The Jewish dream and the Jewish reality violated —
they die bound together.
The true witnesses sleep —
babies, women,
young people, old.
Even Your pillars, the rocks,
the Thirty-Six Just Ones
sleep a dead, an eternal sleep.

Who will dream You?
Who will remember?
Who will deny You,
who will be homesick for You?
Who will go — over a bridge of longing — to You,
away from You, only to come back again?

The night is eternal for a dead people.
Sky and earth wiped out.
The light in Your poor tent is nearly extinguished.
The last Jewish hour flickers.
Jewish God, soon You are finally not here.