Asenath longed for daughters
to whom she might teach
.
the ways of her mothers
but Joseph’s God had other plans.
.
In dreams her grandchildren nightly
crossed the sea of reeds again
.
and again she woke gasping
with the impossible hope
.
that they would remember Egypt
kindly, and their foremother
.
who had hoped for a girl
who would stay close to home
.
instead of boys who belonged
to someone else’s story
.
which would unfold without
her memory, without her bones.
Thanks, editors, for running this poem! (For anyone who’s interested, I posted some personal thoughts about this poem and the timing of this publication at my blog, here: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2009/11/another-torah-poem-published.html)
What a poignant poem, all the more so if we consider that each week, on Shabbat, we are to bless our sons that they be like Joseph’s sons Menashe & Ephraim (which has always puzzled me), the one named for forgetting the past and the other about fertility in a land of affliction.
i’ve found the b’nei menashe epic journey through china and burma fascinating, considering their struggle for israeli absorption, as well as their kin in india, bene ephraim, who share a similar plight in exiled poverty.
considering the burgeoning j.o.c. movement stateside, the subject of b’nei asenath’s multi-cultural background is timely: an artistic theme i’d like to see east asian jews tackle further.