The Whole Mishpocha

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(10 0 0 1)>it's the Sabbath ...  // and my own child is sifting sand from sand on a summer morning //</em></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(10 0 0 1)>so indescribably beautiful you can't help but grieve</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(10 0 0 1)>The preciousness and resilience of Judaism lies within the effort of its adherents to hold both beauty and grief even when the latter seems overpowering. And overpowering it has been time and again for the family of Jews around the world; for every individual family trying to make it through a silent dark of healing. The poems in Phil Terman's anthology delicately balance between the universalist and particular between shtetl and suburbia tenderness and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(10 0 0 1)>tacheles</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(10 0 0 1)> between unspoken names and those lovingly recorded. Most of all these stellar and masterfully crafted poems are a testament to continuation against the backdrop of loss; a poetic Yizkor an inventory of Jewish life.</span></p>