a gift from ancestors who belonged from the outside
who left destroyed shtetls in Russia, in Poland,
who boarded steamships in Hamburg carrying the treasure of community
families who built sukkahs in Chicago ghettos
uncles who started factories that created belts and shoes
for neighbors who would not dine with them
uncles who went West to buy apple orchards in Spokane
who sent boxed fruit to pale nephews who played ping pong at Hull House where they learned the Bill of Rights
mothers who packed up children and fled apartments overnight when the Black Hand left threats in their doorways
fathers who slept on Brooklyn bakery shelves talking about a union
whose daughters ran away from Orthodox marriages and dreamed while drinking cocktails with cotton brokers at the Cotton Club
families who knew the limits of the promise
who understood that lynchings sent a Great Migration from the South
who served and ate in Depression soup lines and invented new machines for tycoons
families who knew
when the Yiddish letters stopped coming
from Poland, from Russia,
that their sons and daughters would be going East
sons would interrogate Nazi prisoners
daughters would care for wounded in Allied hospitals
sons would bomb oil fields in Romania, be shot down over Yugoslavia.
Parents covered mirrors,
turned off radios
and shared their grief with
other parents.
Their gift is courage and tenacity,
a gift that redeems.
We are here redeeming in a time of evil.
This poem was generated in Ritualwell’s “Sacred Words for a Fragile Democracy: A Jewish Creative Writing Lab,” July 2026
