Judith Baumel ~ This Moment

This Moment
for the Piperno family

1. Blessed Is.

There is no future with­out memory.
There is no future with­out feeling
ful­ly the moment in which we live.
At bad news we bless the One True Judge.
At good news we bless the One Who
sus­tained us till this moment came.
I maybe think that we will gath­er again
in the world to come not as a tend­ed flock
but like so many ragged, mad, confused
sar­dines con­verg­ing in a crowd­ed tin
in oil or salt, and some with­out our heads.

1944. A young US
army chap­lain dri­ves his jeep up to
the Roman Ghetto from Anzio where
he led a seder and he buried dead.
He finds the Tempio Maggiore closed but not
des­e­crat­ed in the eight months since
the Nazis round­ed up 1,259 in the piazza
beyond its gates. It’s June. Shabbat is near.
The place begins to fill with those who got
the news. The Nazis left and Rome is free.
Incommunicado all these months,
the Chief Rabbi appears, a ghost in this temple.

2. Kept us Alive

Those who still have heads dig out their head-
cov­er­ings. Borsalini, coppole,
bom­bette, kip­pot, beretti. The GIs wear
their gar­ri­son caps. The guardians, top hats.
The cler­ics, birette and crown turbans.
As cov­ered heads first bow then lift, the eyes
with­in these heads assess the human loss
inflict­ed by the war, by politics
by fear, by hunger. And betray­als. When
the sol­diers marched the Ghetto Jews
to bar­racks beside the Vatican walls the Pope
did noth­ing, though he did inquire about
the con­verts, “Aryans” he called them, of his flock.
Unmentionable betray­al looms ahead:
in February Rome’s Chief Rabbi will
in Santa Maria degli Angeli
con­vert, become a Catholic and reside
in the Gregorian Pontifical complex.
He’d always been pecu­liar and aloof,
a sour man dis­dain­ful of his kehillah.
They nev­er warmed to him, refused advice
to shut the whole place down and run in fear.
After sit­ting shi­va they nev­er say his name.

3. Sustained Us

The crowd is most­ly men. The women out
of sight, high high high almost heav­en close
to rich Assyrian paint­ings on the walls,
the ceil­ings full of tem­pera stars and moons.
I’ve dav­ened there and know how hot and cold
it is by sea­son, how unset­tling the bird’s
eye view, how lone­ly not to hear the prayers.
There stands below among the men a stunned
young girl. She’s tucked beside, I guess, her father
and she, as once upon a time I would,
debates her pur­pose in this space. Is she
the cho­sen apple of his eye. Or the
com­pan­ion who relieves his overflow
of self. Does he believe she might grow up
and learn to chant or study on her own?
No. No. Nor mine. Though mine had hoped I’d have
enough to fol­low him in wandering.
He’d say that Jews can enter any shul
in any place at any time and they
will find a meal, a home. It’s dif­fer­ent for
the Roman Jews who’ve been here straight through two
mil­len­nia absorb­ing all who turn
up at their gates, the wan­der­ers, the slaves,
the refugees, adven­tur­ers on the make.
Including Rabbi Zolli. Here I spit
the shame­ful name. Israel Zoller, born
in Brody near my father’s Galician town,
is just the type of lantz­man I know well.
Too book­ish proud to ful­ly feel a part
of any giv­en moment. Psalms elude
him. Mysticism attracts. I bet as Rabbi
of Trieste he snubbed James Joyce; in Palestine
he sneered at Joseph Klausner and dismissed
Jesus of Nazareth, his life, times and teaching.

4. And Brought Us

There is a sol­dier in this synagogue
who hasn’t seen his moth­er in four years
since leav­ing Rome, post-racial laws, and he
is now American, a citizen.
I’m telling you a sto­ry that the chaplain
told often in his long dis­tin­guished life:
The sol­dier doesn’t know if Mama lives
but he believes that if she does she’ll be
inside right now. He asks the cler­ic would
he speak her name out loud? and Rabbi Morris
Kertzer,  – that’s his name, I hon­or him –
he can’t, this Zolli is a for­mal man.
But Rabbi Kertzer tells the son to stand
beside him so his moth­er might look down
from up above to rec­og­nize her son.
The prayer begins — it’s Shehecheyanu – when
a woman’s screams assault the vast vault’s cloud.
As angels turn to one anoth­er, Holy
Holy Holy, men seek out the scream’s
unearth­ly source. Baruch Dayan Emet.
Or is it some­thing good? The women know
that one of them has rushed from the balcony.
And soon enough there is com­mo­tion in
the cen­tral well among the men who track
that woman run­ning to the bima’s gate.
A gate of right­eous­ness, a gate of light,
a gate of bless­ing. One reunion’s joy.
My father was a wan­der­ing Aramean
and year­ly he recit­ed “Not only one
has risen up against us; they do rise
in every gen­er­a­tion. Deliver us.”
Just six­teen ones returned alive to Rome.
In gen­er­al, I say the num­bers don’t
make sense. Is one enough or one too many?
I can’t look back, can’t be here now. I’ve lost
my head Dear God and so have You. Comfort us?

~

Judith Baumel’s books are The Weight of Numbers, for which she won The Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; Now; The Kangaroo Girl; Passeggiate, and Thorny. She is Professor Emerita of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She has served as President of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, direc­tor of The Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright Scholar in Italy.