Call of Abraham's Kin: New and Selected Poems

By Barbara Hantman

Barbara Hantman is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Queens
College, City University of New York, with a Master's Degree
in the Teaching of English from Teachers College, Columbia
University. She is Fresh Meadows Poets ' Corresponding
Secretary , and a monthly featured reader and lecturer at the
New York Poetry Forum . Barbara has served a generation of
NYC high school students, and is proud that her seven full-length
books of verse attest to her ability to versify in Spanish and
Hebrew, as well as the beloved English tongue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781469101385

Barbara Hantman

Barbara Hantman graduated magna cum laude from Queens College, and earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and membership in the Education Honor Society while there. She has an M.A. in the Teaching of Language, Literature, Speech and Theatre from Teachers College, Columbia University. Barbara has served a generation of NYC public high school students. Her accomplishments include a fourth book of poetry with Edwin Mellen Press that is fully bilingual in Spanish and English: CAPULLOS DEL ALMA: SOUL BUDS (2004). She has placed in poetry contests sponsored by Performance Poets Association (2001) and the New York Poetry Forum (2003, 2008, 2011). She won first prize in LONE STARS MAGAZINE’s Light of the Stars 2009 Contest for her poem, “The Velvet Toolbox.” Barbara enjoys her role as Corresponding Secretary for the Fresh Meadows Poets, and is proud of her holiday poems, which have appeared in MIDSTREAM MAGAZINE. Other publication credits include FRESHET, POETICA, THE DERONDA REVIEW, MOBIUS, THE CULVERT CHRONICLES, CONCEIT and WOMEN IN JUDAISM: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL. Her latest book, CALL OF ABRAHAM’S KIN, (2010) includes a smattering of Spanish and Hebrew bilingual poems. A sampling can be accessed at http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0069416049/CALL-OF-ABRAHAMS-KIN.aspx. It features poems with Jewish themes, and illustrations by gifted artist, poet and scholar Esther Leiper-Estabrooks of New Hampshire’s “North Country”. For more information, go to www.BarbaraHantman.com. A second book of Jewish-themed poems with Xlibris – BATHSHEBA’S LEVANTINE BOUQUET – is forthcoming.

Book preview

CALL OF ABRAHAM’S KIN

New and Selected Poems

Barbara Hantman

Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Hantman.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912942

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4500-0924-9

Softcover 978-1-4500-0923-2

eBook 978-1-4691-0138-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. Date: 12/30/2013

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

HOLY DAYS

Rosh Chodesh: Festival of Lunar Femininity

Meek and Quiet Sainthood

When Shabbos Enters the Room

Rosh Hashanah Commandments

Tashlikh Now—And Then

Salvation at Little Neck Bay

Yom Ha Kippurim: A Sonnet

Sukkot: The Lord’s Desert Feast

Shemini Atzeret: Solemn Nuptial

Simchat Torah: Beloved Bridge

Menorah Glory

Hallowed Hanukkiyyah

Lament of the Shammash

Tu Bi-Shevat: Arbor Day of Early Spring

The Purim Miracle

The Fast of Esther:

Perilous Revelation, Beauteous Savior

Purim Haiku

As Passover Approaches

Passover Preparation

For Yom Hashoah

Two Israeli Holidays in May:

The Fallen, The Upright

Lag B’Omer: Mournful Martyrdom,

Blazing Splendor

Yom Yerushalayim:

Stony Citadel of Heavenly Grace

The First Shavuos

Tisha B’Av: Lamentation of the Bereft

PATRIARCHS & MATRIARCHS

Abraham and Kin

Moses the Egyptian

Rambam: None Like Moses

I.B. Singer: A Childhood

Out of Eldridge Street

Name Tribute: Rabbi Harold Swiss

Don Capozzi

The Last Great Gift of Time

Father

He Was My Father, Abe

Fifty-Two Years of Motherhood

Name Tribute: Abraham Hantman

Oscar

Lou

Morris and Lena

Lincoln Place

Truest Acolyte

Amalie Beer: Salonièr

Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Salonièr

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Salonièr Impresario

Salka Viertel: Salonièr as Savior

Emma Lazarus: Hebraic Songstress

Grandma Sarah’s Hands

Grandma Sally

Sarah Leah

Sarah Leah (Hebrew version)

The Jewish Cemetery at Wethersfield:

Elegy for Aunt Rachel

Erna

Eternal Rose

Name Tribute: Rose Kirchman

Mother’s Day, or The Milkweed Nosegay

Love Is a Trio

TEFILLAH

Hebrew Prayer

How Great Thou Art!

Jonah’s Task

As Heaven’s Gates Parted

A Proper Awe

Poem of Hebrew Liturgy: Piyut

A Democratic Kindling

Divine Emanations: A Godly Minyan

Chevra Kaddisha

Prophets’ Psalm

Lilith: Soul in Exile

Beloved, Accept Me

Appreciation

Appreciation (Hebrew version)

Simple Blessings

Simple Blessings (Hebrew version)

Service of the Heart

Service of the Heart (Hebrew version)

Particular Liberties

Las libertades particulares

I Bless You

O ISRAEL, REJOICE!

Shelach: A Love Poem from Jacob to Rachel

Shelcha

To His Coyness

Couplehood

Through God’s Sweet Window

Nuptials!

The Jewish Woman’s Lament

Turn Off the Faucet!

So Much Beauty

Banyas: The Vale of Losses

The Lone Swan of Backwater Bay:

A Song of Survival

Homage to Chagall

Yen for Yidishkayt

Mensch

Love’s Autumn Embers

HISTORY AS CHEDER

Gloaming of the Gods

The Black Holes of Prejudice

Thanksgiving Veneration

Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses

Modigliani: Connoisseur of

Almond-Eyed Charmers

Shattered Belonging, Flaming Foundation

Etty Hillesum: Trampled Treasure

Love Sonnet by Ed Miller

Soneto de amor por Ed Miller

The Kleine Konditorei

Brundibar: Eternal Villain

A Melding of Yiddish and Teutonic

The Simple Child

Gratitude in Shoah’s Shadow

God’s Touchstone

Burden of the Elect

La carga del elegido

The Sabra Saga

Israel in Gaza

Path to Shalom

Thwarted, But Not Forgotten

Name Tribute: David Bergelson

Brighton Beach

Limitations of Purity

Las limitaciónes de la pureza

Deathly Default Deleted

Author’s Curriculum Vitae

Endnotes

For the new 21st century generation—

including Samuel and Bryce.

Acknowledgments

The poems with Jewish thematic that appear in CALL OF ABRAHAM’S KIN previously appeared in the following full-length books by Barbara Hantman:

*   WISTFULNESS AND OTHER FOIBLES (Edwin Mellen Press, 1996)

*   ASPECTS OF GRACE (Edwin Mellen Press, 1998)

*   SHADOWS OF EDEN (Edwin Mellen Press, 2001)

*   CAPULLOS DEL ALMA: SOUL BUDS (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004)

*   CLOUD-BEAM MEDLEY (Xlibris, 2007).

The following journals have published some of the poems included in this volume:

*   MIDSTREAM

*   POETICA

*   THE DERONDA REVIEW

*   MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE

*   FRESHET

*   CONCEIT.

I wish to thank Mr. Edward Miller, retired NYC art teacher, Iwo Jima veteran and co-Vice President of the Fresh Meadows Poets, for allowing me to use his touching Holocaust poem Love Sonnet in the History as Cheder chapter, and encouraging me to translate it into Spanish.

I thank Sabra Michal Nachmany for her expertise in proofreading and typing in Hebrew with vowel notations the following bilingual poems: Sarah Leah (Patriarchs & Matriarchs chapter), Appreciation, Simple Blessings and Service of the Heart (Tefillah chapter).

Finally, I am proud and gratified to have been able to include five charming and apt pen and ink illustrations (one for each chapter) by artist and poet Esther M. Leiper-Estabrooks, Poet Laureate of the White Mountains Region, New Hampshire.

Foreword

This is an insightful, informed and constantly interesting book. It calls out to all who are open to contemporary, amply revealing poet-response to sublime pathos and the beautiful light and dark word paintings of a discerning naturalist painter with words. CALL OF ABRAHAM’S KIN is a collection which strikes the reader as connected to the zimmerot (songs) and the melodic qualities of the klezmer music of Eastern European Jewry. These poems have the ring of an authentic yearning for the cultural survival of one’s people. I hear the voices of concern, of memory, of living recall of the more than 3,000 year procession of the remnants of a distinct, unique Zeitgeist voice of the tribes and converts of Yiddishkeit. Selections in this book of poems include the interwoven meanings of such basic words as Singer, i.e., the writer, the sewing machine manufacturer, novelist, psalmist, poet… all named Singer, and all invoked here. The best of teachers instruct by their example, and these poems are penned with the wise sense of awareness known in Yiddish as sachel.

Rabindranath Tagore, in his Calcutta-Hindu Gitanjali Song #48 writes, The repose of the Sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spreads over my heart. I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs. And so it is with Barbara Hantman, who seems to surrender to a larger arena of the heart and mind with these exquisite poems. There is admonition from immediate family, such as Grandma Sally, and again from neighbor poets such as Rose Kirchman, with the image of savored fresh sour cream consumed on an urban fire escape. There is the invocation of a Milkweed Nosegay, a dancing bride and groom, a holy society of funeral attendants known as Chevra Kaddisha.

As one reads these poems, there is a sense of a call out to the first Jew, Abraham, as well as to Sarah, Moses, Miriam, Zipporah, David, Johnathan, Bathsheba and many other historical personages that have been the object of Ms. Hantman’s refined poetic sensibilities. When I first read this manuscript, I felt as though I were being invited to ponder the lives of exceptional people. The Buddhist parable about the agile student who was meditating upon the