AGAINST PURIM

by Barbara Ungar

ID 67399384 © Olga Kuevda | Dreamstime.com

Parading as Queen Esther in kindergarten

at my first carnival, in her long blue dress, 

I tripped and tumbled off the low stage.

Yet I teach my son the fairy tale:

Queen Esther was a secret Jew, raised 

by cousin Mordecai, who refuses 

to bow down to Haman, who’s convinced the king 

to kill all the Jews, so Esther risks her life 

to reveal herself and plead. The king relents, 

asks what to do to Haman. Mordecai says, 

whatever Haman says to do to me. Haman says 

hang Mordecai, so the king hangs Haman instead. 

We rejoice: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat 

hamantaschen, tarts shaped like Haman’s hat.

Bored at my son’s Purim carnival 

while his class intones Hebrew verses 

no one understands, and the teachers mug 

their way through the tale in drag, I read 

the whole Megilla, realize this was Persia

(Iran), Esther was in a harem, and Haman

wasn’t hanged, but impaled on a fifty-foot stake.

As the kids trip, one by one, to the front

to chant if they can, or just read the Hebrew

with no vowels, or blush and break down

in tears, I read, yes, Haman did plan

to impale Mordecai (so it’s a grisly take 

on the golden rule), but then they impale 

all ten of Haman’s sons. At every mention 

of Haman, everyone goes wild, twirling their noise-

making groggers and shrieking with laughter.

The besotted king gives Mordecai power so, 

the text crows, our hero slaughters 75,000 

of his foes in the city, and who knows

how many more in the countryside? This

we are enjoined to celebrate as Purim.

Party on. A vendetta thousands of years old.

Today, on Purim, I see photos of rows 

and rows of graves dug side by side for  

160 schoolgirls, and a video of an Iranian 

man in tears, holding the hand of a six- or 

seven-year-old girl, just the hand, all that’s left

of her. Of course we’ll pay in kind.

While the US vows vengeance for its seven 

(so far) dead, Jew-hatred blooms across the world-

wide web, and for every murdered child, 

how many will avenge? 

Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals. Honors include the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. She has published poems in Scientific American, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. 

IT’S NOT (YET) TOO LATE (MAYBE)

by Katy Z. Allen

Gazans Are Dying of Starvation. —The New York Times, July 24, 2025

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

A monarch butterfly flutters among the bushes and flowers beside the pond.

Memories rise up: 

a transformational summer in Jerusalem studying Hebrew;

the power of my first experience of the Kotel;

a summer rabbinic seminar at the Shalom Hartman Institute;

visits with my future mother-in-law in Tel Aviv, and later, in Kfar Saba; 

bicycling the shaded byways of the Hula Valley and quiet desert roads of the Negev in support of “nature knows no borders.”

A pond blanketed with giant American Lotus leaves and blossoms spreads out before the eye.

Netanyahu, State of Israel,

it’s not yet too late. (Maybe.)

You still have time to change course,

to save your souls, 

and the souls of all Israelis,

and the souls all the Jews spread out 

around the planet;

you still have time to remember that G?d created every single human being on this planet

and that they are all sacred 

in the eyes of the Holy One of Blessing;

you still have time.

Tall spikes of purple and white showy tick-trefoil mingle with abundant Queen Anne’s lace.

You have the power, the knowledge, and the ability 

to send massive amounts of medical supplies and food to Gaza,

to guard them from Hamas with your troops,

and to feed and treat 

and save the lives of thousands of ordinary starving Gazans,

who are trapped by your inhumanity.

You still have time.

A great blue heron stands silently, gazing into the water, listening, waiting.

It’s not too late. Yet.

But before long it will be.

And then you will have not only 

the blood of many, many more children, women, and men on your hands and your hearts,

but you will have desecrated all that is sacred and holy of Eretz Yisrael;

you will have violated every one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah,

if not by the letter of the law,

then most certainly by its spirit;

you will have lost and abandoned your humanity,

as individuals and as a country;

you will be deserving, 

(painful as it will be to watch), 

of every single bit of retribution that will come your way;

you will have destroyed the Jewish people and state more completely 

than Hamas could ever have dreamed of doing by itself;

you will have deserted your people,

your country,

and your G!d.

A pair of black and yellow swallowtail butterflies spiral upward in a dance of unity.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, eco-chaplain, and writer since the age of eight. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and The Jewish Poets Collective Journal. Her poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.

FIRING MORAH

by Stacey Z Lawrence

Morah Hebrew School Teacher Mug

I lean on a miniature 

sea blue chair, the color of Israel

& conduct my class to the curtain call with a 

rudimentary rendition of 

Hatikvah. The boys & girls adjust their babushkas 

torn from superhero 

sheets. They pretend to be partisans, they pretend

to survive genocide with water guns & plastic bricks

plopping the toy props across the stage like burial plots

& the synagogue chapel 

explodes

in waves of gratitude reigning 

down, micro-rubble crushed 

under rubber spinning & spinning 

strikes me as my students hold hands

swaying like paper cut-outs 

mouthing Hebrew words they 

do not understand

squinting & studying me, 

their Morah’s lips we blast

out this anthem beak fed from birth 

myths spun from milk, guts, honey &

the soot of charred Jews 

chanting hollow prayers into green wind 

we cradle some bald-cackling madcap 

who flies rabid dragonflies beyond his fancy 

fence like  

Dylan Klebold with a broken console 

       Boom, Boom, Kaboom, 

Fizz, Kaboom, Fizzle, Silence.

He crunches on fried falafel tossing

bits of chicks & peas, digging the edge of

that six-pointed star between his yellow teeth

planting olive trees & Long Island Zionists

beneath Alephs & Bets 

like Herzl’s Thieves of the West

his flying monkeys, 

stripping us of our Ashkenazi selves 

our Yiddish, our guttural cadence,

depositing our smoldering mishpocha

us Kikes still stinking of Zyklon B,

bitter the almond smell of 

neglected eggs, shoveling us 

beneath BritishpoundsAmericandollars,

wailing limestone.

Author's note: In December of 2023, days after the congregation celebrated my work with my students, the local synagogue fired me, prohibiting my entrance forever. It was the first night of Chanukah. 

Stacey Z Lawrence is a veteran teacher of English and a Literature Professor. She has an MAT in Theater and Speech and is a poet for Writing The Land, a collaboration between poets and protected land. Her poetry was shortlisted for the Fish Prize in 2019, and 2021 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. Stacey’s first collection of poems Fall Risk was released to acclaim in August 2021 through Finishing Line Press. 

MY WIFE SENDS ME A VIDEO OF ISRAELI ARABS AND JEWS SINGING “SOMEWHERE” FROM WEST SIDE STORY AND ASKS ME TO WRITE A POEM

by Dick Westheimer

The song sung in three tongues

swells and descends with the beat 

Bernstein intended, “Someday”

in English the tenors hold every note 

as they would hope. In Hebrew, 

full throated soprano voices sing,  

“We'll find a new way of living,”

followed in muted harmony, 

Arabic singers whisper about “a way 

of forgiving.” The music fills me

with the stuff of hope, of a 

new way of living and then 

I remember the plot, 

the Sharks and the Jets

didn’t make their lousy world

and Tony always had to die.

And as the the music fades

Tony rasps, “I didn’t believe 

hard enough.” But then 

I remember Maria’s 

final note was sung 

over the top 

of a major chord.

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Abandon Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Minyan. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.

IN SEARCH OF ALIEN CIVILISATIONS

by Martha Landman

According to a new study in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists at the University of Nottingham estimate that there is a minimum of 36 communicating intelligent alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. —CBS News, June 18, 2020

sitting on the veranda the other night
enjoying a hashish pipe
I got dreamy
and disappeared into the Milky Way
passing Venus and Mars
I didn’t stop this time
because they had a domestic quarrel   again
                                      palm to palm
my sky map forged me ahead      to Orion
who offered beer and cigarettes, chips and cheese
Conselice was staying the night
his nephew E.T. played with his Rubik’s Cube
                     trying to solve the Drake equation
we sat on a mega rock   Orion and I had a long chat
                                           between wake and sleep
about alien galaxies meandering around
when his laser phone detonated three loud shrills
it was Peter Backus wanting us to know
“we live in a very quiet neighbourhood”
Orion’s eyes were large      I tried to pacify him
quoting Rumi: “Love is the breath of the cosmos”
he took out his horoscope and zoomed in
                                      on other galaxies
stars were born as we looked at them
alien galaxies were signed in different languages
in front of No 23 a sign on a large wooden gate
said in Hebrew:  תישאר בחוץ לעזאזל – “stay the heck out” -
this is holy land      we assumed
         we needed an exit strategy
we weren’t going to make a covenant with hypocrisy
or with gypsies on walking sticks    their blood green
so we flowed down lava tubes through pigeon holes
                                into a glorious dystopia

Martha Landman writes in Adelaide, South Australia and has previously contributed to TheNewVerse.News.  Her chapbook Between Us was published by Ginninderra Press in November 2019.

THE HORA FOR THE FIRST PASSOVER UNDER PRESIDENT T***P

by Zev Shanken

It's a chilly afternoon for Tel Aviv,
but we swim like we used to
and shiver and laugh,

because we’re not that old,
though I’m fat and bald,
but as soon as I visit you, you—

No!  You don’t turn me young and thin and hairy again.

Instead, you teach me the Hebrew
for loving a land
even when bad guys win,

for you've shown me the movements
for dancing on sand
with partners whom you pray to change.

Zev Shanken lived in Israel in the mid-1960s before, during and after the 1967 Six Day War.  His poems “Twilight of the Greatest Generation” and “High Noon” appeared in earlier issues of TheNewVerse.News.  Last year, Full Court Press released his selected poems Memory Tricks. 

AGAINST PURITY

by Judy Kronenfeld

My father slipped out of Nazi Germany 

in history’s hidden pocket, but the sister

and her family he never talked about stepped 

over the crack between everyday

and juggernaut (deportiert 1942, verschollen
in Auschwitz, or für tot erklart

in the same hell). 

Briefly paused in Recife

on the way to Ascension Island,

courtesy of the U.S. Army, 1944, my father took in

the faces in gradations of brown,

and said, according to family legend:

“We should all intermarry

until we blend.” As if, to fuse 

the blacks and whites, the us

and them tense in his newly beloved

America would move us towards

a gene-pool Esperanto, one flavor, nothing

sticking out, nothing to hoist

a flag, or cross or crescent on.

Even a star. 

        

He dipped his pinky

in the Passover wine to spill the ten drops 

for the plagues God visited on the Egyptians,

and with his post-retirement

congregation, bowed to praise

the Creator “who has set us apart.”

But never held himself

apart or wished a plague

on anyone. In his decline, when congregants

visited the dementia wing, he could still mumble

the Hebrew prayers he’d learned by rote

as a kid, though almost everything 

in his life—including Paula, Mendel, 

Hermann and Charlotte—

was by then verschollen.

But someone is always saying

We’ve fallen from our ancient  purity—
take back our country!

        

Someone like Anders Breivik, self-trained in pure

ruthlessness, whose bomb and bullets 

shattered the charm enclosing open Norway. 

I remember  all of Oslo—like a village—

celebrating light in the dark 

of the autumnal equinox, 

gathering for the River Walk, 

the mud-slick banks of the Akerselva glowing

with candles and torches, spangles flickering

off the silver foil the school kids used 

to decorate the trees, all families—adopted African

or Asian children, Muslim mothers

in their sculpted head-scarves—

safe as houses.

And someone else, afraid to disagree,

will wave a torn and faded

flag, so long suppressed,

and holler yes!         

        

Like the proud father who bows

to God when his wife-and-kids-abandoning son 

fighting for Islamic State in Syria

is killed, who celebrates that son’s

martyr’s wedding (though the mother says

‘it’s a funeral for me’) in a great tent 

draped with black. 

        

It makes me want 

all things maculate, muddied

mottled, pocked, all things

tainted,     

stained,

blotchy, motley,

mongrel, splotched,

hybrid, scrambled,

half-caste —

If that’s what it takes

to defy Ein Volk, Ein Reich
Ein Führer, the wished-for

Caliphate, Judea and Samaria,

Trump’s Muslim- and Latino-

free America.         

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent books of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths (Antrim House, 2012), winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her fourth full collection, Bird Flying through the Banquet, will be published by FutureCycle Press in the spring of 2017. Her poems have appeared widely in  print and online journals including American Poetry Journal, Calyx, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, DMQ Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, The Pedestal, Portland Review, Sequestrum, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and Valparaiso Review, and in more than twenty anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Dept. of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside, and Associate Editor of the online journal, Poemeleon.

DON’T JEWISH

by Max Ochs

from Moby Dick or, The Whale. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent published by The Modern Library, New York, 1930

“I have no objection to any person’s religion, be that as it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person doesn’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; and makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. “   —Herman Melville


1
Attending Eastport Methodist’s annual Interfaith
New Years Eve service, I hear an Imam’s lovely voice;
it hearkens me to myriad wondrous childhood hours
in the synagogue we called Shul, where I loved to hear
my Hebrew cantor in prayer. A number was tattooed
on his forearm; his fierce eyes had witnessed the camps,
unspeakable things. Blessed be Reb Hammer, who taught
me to sing: Boruch Atah Adonai.
This Imam was singing  in the same heartfelt, earnest
and strict way as Rev. Hammer. That made me love
the Imam, as he called upon Allah, as a cousin. As family.
He disappeared before I could shake his hand,
look him in the eye and say: Salaam, you and I
both spermed down from one ancestor, Abraham,
upon whom God called, demanding sacrifice;
the same son I call Isaac and you call Ishmael,
a name which now narrates Moby Dick.

The image of Ishmael looking to knock someone’s
hat off in New Bedford, summons the mythology
of my father’s stories of being a tough
young street fighter, ready and rough.
Sound his name, Isaac, as a sudden laugh aloud.  
In 1927, Izzy clenched his fists in Far Rockaway,
and felt just as  punchy as brother Ishmael had
100 years before, opting to up with Ahab, aside
a devout cannibal, the harpooner Queequeeg;
Ahab the white-whale-chasing monomaniac.

1927, in Queens, a politically dangerous time
and place to out as Hebrew, around rival gangs.
Don’t Jewish (you were white). Don’t signify.
Not only Medical schools, even city sidewalks
had Jewish quotas; the system was biased then,
we heard, in favor of [LOL] waspy men.
Don’t you wish you were not? All that singing,
with a crying voice, like gypsies! Opt for the above
and kiss shiksas under the Brooklyn boardwalk.
Let them play tennis, where nothing means love.

Neither today is it fun to be statistically sucked in
to prison by society’s vacuum for being like Queequeeg
or Huck’s Jim, a brown male. My friends, already tired
of Ferguson, can’t identify; Ebola hemorrhaging in Africa,
eyesore ISIS spreading down Levant its blue videos of death
by beheading. My friends still watch TV, but any more
news and they’ll get depressed. I start to spout
war-warn rhetoric, my sermon about our future.
Our weary globe’s a-warming; no peace for Arab, Jew;
holy elephants poached for tusk, rhinoceros for horn;
Chestnut trees, honey bees, cod fisheries disappear.
Old species gone, sperm whales sure as you’re born.

Queequeeg’s Black Yojo Doll, Ishmael accepts;
The entire world’s other brands of religion too.
As long as it doesn’t insult or try to kill him.
Okay, for once, irony: darkness escapes light.
Ain’t no fluke, an enemy compels us to war.
Again. Honey, I know, but this time, even if
this be our fathers again, looking for a fight:
Maybe we’ve got just cause, and we ought.
And Jim shall have a song in scary cells of jail.
One sermon sold “inherent dignity”; I bought.
Avast, thou!  Ye haven’t seen the white whale?

When the Imam calls the population to prayer,
so all may pray together to the all-powerful creator,
remember Ishmael’s example: tolerate anybody’s
faith if they will, in turn, tolerate yours. Don’t
you wish you were free? Then pray on your knees
in the hospital with Ahab and the other amputees.


For decades, Annapolis poet Max Ochs used “stolen moments” to scribble poems at night while working by day for his county’s anti-poverty agency and the local conflict resolution center. Like his famous cousin, songwriter Phil Ochs, Max has maintained a faith in what organizers can do for just causes. Many poems reflect on his career as mediator, activist and teacher; others chronicle an ongoing dialogue between a “failed atheist” and the gods. Archived podcasts of his poetry and music can found on Grace Cavalieri’s “The Poet and the Poem” (Library of Congress website).  A “primitive American” musician, Ochs learned his licks from some blues greats: Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Son House, all of whom stayed with him in New York City. Tompkins Square records, which depicted Ochs as an “Obscure Giant of Acoustic Guitar," featured four of Ochs’s poems on the 2005 CD, Hooray for Another Day. Ochs lives with his wife, Suzanne, on the picturesque Severn River, just north of Annapolis, Maryland.