The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022

By Rodger Kamenetz

Kamenetz's poems whirl and shake on the page. He is the poet of the living history of unspeakable names and his book...sings with dark wit the tales of tough family spirits.

—Louise Erdrich, author of Love Medicine and The Night Watchman.

These are very exciting and original poems...a secret and almost intimate meeting place of English and Hebrew.

—Yehuda Amichai, author of A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994 and Open Closed Open: Poems

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Yehuda Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781963475043

Rodger Kamenetz

Roger Kamenetz wrote the landmark international bestseller, The Jew in the Lotus, and the winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Stalking Eljah. He is a Louisiana State University Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies and a certified dream therapist. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, fiction writer Moira Crone.

Book preview

THE MISSING JEW (1979)

Part One: The Invisible

The invisible is stronger than the visible.

The desert subtracted so many objects

there was nothing left but the wind.

Like all good ideas, God was stolen.

The Jews being superior thieves

removed all the markings.

The history of my family is

the history of breezes.

And the exodus, the getaway:

my grandfathers, one carrying

a barber pole, the other

a tailor’s needle.

Jews do not come from heaven

they come from Russia.

With green eyes and olive skin.

Jews do not go to heaven

they go to Baltimore.

They do not come from heaven

because heaven is always

in the back of their minds.

They don’t want to think about

heaven any more

it’s too much trouble.

God was stolen by the Jews

from an old Egyptian. My grandfather

with his sack on his back

carried God in steerage to America.

In the beards of rebbes

in loaves of challah

God was smuggled

into America.

But when they assembled the pieces

there wasn’t enough

God in America

to fill the empty spaces:

too much desert

too many opportunities.

The Jews went about their business

because they forgot God was

looking, and they dropped

the pieces all over the place

a little here, a little there

the sweepers have too much

work to do, there are

only a few sweepers, and they stand

with their brooms

looking for God in the dust.

The dead are with you when you try

to write history—it cheers them up.

Most of time is so gloomy and slow

but in history time moves with a lilt.

My grandfather on his boat to

America stood on the deck to

get some fresh air. A sailor

knocked him on the head with a bat

and stole his sack. There was

nothing inside it but rags.

The Jews’ history was huge and murky

no room for it anywhere in Europe.

If only the Jews could inherit Texas

it might be big enough to hold their past.

The Jews who went out West

wore cowboy hats

like Cousin Dan from Oklahoma

who showed up

at my grandfather’s funeral

by uncanny instinct

in his cowboy hat and boots

and just sat in the living room

while we stared.

It is amazing how the land

will transform a man’s face:

Cousin Dan looked part Cherokee

part fat cat oilman

(he sold buttons).

And he spoke with a twang,

the yarmulke kept falling off

his ten gallon head

only a cowboy hat

would fit.

Being Jewish is magnetic.

A polarity points us

in the same direction

just as all synagogues

have a praying wall facing east.

So that around a Jew, even if

he doesn’t know he’s a Jew,

there’s a disturbance in the air,

something has cut across

his spiritual field,

someone is interfering

with the regular broadcast

to insert a special message.

Because what 5000 years

would sound like is

a lot of Jews killed

for no particular reason

over and over

in an insistent rhythm

that beats under ordinary time

sending shocks everywhere.

Any time a metaphor

gets out of hand

more Jews are killed

to restore the general complacency.

An Explanation

An old man went to a rabbi saying, I demand an explanation for all this suffering. The rabbi said, Walk out of town, keep walking in a straight line and you will find an explanation. So the old man thought he had nothing to lose, he was going to die any day—he followed the rabbi’s advice and walked.

He kept walking and there was nothing just an ordinary road—a man in a wagon moving slowly. He thought maybe it would be all right if he got a ride with him, because the old man wasn’t used to so much walking. He called to the driver, and the driver whipped his horses. The old man ran after him, shouting, and finally the wagon stopped. He came around to the front of the wagon and was surprised to see the rabbi driving.

Why didn’t you stop?

You see, the rabbi said, A man in a hurry doesn’t have time for explanations.

Part Two: K

When a person who is close to you dies, in the first few weeks after his death he is as far from you as far as a near person can ever be; only with the years does he become nearer, and then you can almost live with this person.

—Isaac Bashevis Singer

K

1.

Once I hit my thumb with a hammer.

It was an accident.

I was nailing up a portrait

of my grandfather.

Pain runs in the family.

A dull ache spreads

through the family tree

flowering in ludicrous buds.

Probably infected

with the same luminous sap

we all stagger, limp

or walk improperly.

We do not understand ourselves.

In the portrait

he holds his limbs stiff

trunk straight

hair brushed high

in a pompadour.

2.

I spend my time in Riga

loading apples for the Duke.

We take them in a wagon

my father and I

and sell them in a market.

My father was a tailor

and so I am a tailor.

We call the dumb ones farmers

say they have goyishe kopf

don’t know how to make a dollar.

Market Place I sold vegetables

cabbage, celery, onions

sold them by the bushel.

I rented rooms to greenhorns.

They kept horses in their bathtubs.

Ben made my deliveries.

I said, Ben, you should get married.

I had a sister Sara.

We went down to City Hall

to get a dog’s license.

"As long as we are here

you can get a marriage license."

Then I found out he was stealing.

He kept back half the money.

But what could I do?

I had to sell the business.

I couldn’t fire family.

Then I had the soda factory.

We made chocolate soda

but they drove us out of business

when we couldn’t get the bottles.

Goyishe kopf.

Then I was a tailor.

Irvin rang doorbells and asked,

Do you have any cleaning?

That’s how we made the Depression.

I took one side of the street

and he took the other.

And when I had the clothing store

down on Gay Street, I kept

iron bars under the clothes.

If some tried to rob me—the bastards—

I hit them over the head.

And Dora tended bar with me

in Annapolis.

She kept a baseball bat

behind the counter.

You know something.

I wanted him to be a doctor.

A doctor looks at you and says,

Five dollars please. Thank you.

Five dollars. Thank you.

But he wouldn’t listen.

He had a job.

He was making twenty-five dollars a week.

That was a lot of money.

And he had a machine, a Chevrolet.

He wouldn’t listen that time.

And once in Riga

I went down to a lake

it was early morning

it was the Duke’s forest

that’s all I remember.

3.

He had a theory about the wind

he’d brought with him from Kamenetz.

How branches blocked the good winds

and kept the tree from blooming.

He told my father,

"Cut your hair.

The apple doesn’t fall

far from the tree."

To me he said,

"Act like a gentleman.

Walk up to a man and shake his hand.

Say, ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘How are you, sir?’

‘Nice to see you.’"

That October

his tree bore fruit.

I shook one down.

We each ate a slice.

He said, "Old apples

taste the sweetest."

Kay’s Cleaners

Thousands of needles, a forest

stuck in a table top,

little slabs of tailor’s soap

for marking hems and seams,

drawers and drawers of buttons

big, small, wooden, plastic,

yard sticks with old phone numbers

from the days of advertising,

worn cloth measures,

cards that read Kay’s Cleaners

stained at the edges.

In the back a yellowed Frigidaire

7-Up and an Eskimo pie,

a toilet where I’d

try on new pants and up two steps

the steam press, treadle run

lid up like a car hood.

Racks and racks of unclaimed clothes.

Here try this on—it fits you.

Pleated pants.

"Don’t worry

I’ll take them out."

Closing his eyes

he’d roll the fabric

between his fingers.

It’s good material.

The old neon Kay’s Cleaners.

K the secret initial

code name for the mispronounceable.

Once a sailor whose suit was burned

stormed in demanding K.

He looked up from his sewing.

My name is Walker.

Through the years, the sign

in the window faded.

The models, smiling

in their latest fashions

1943

turned sickly pink

still promising

magic dye

invisible weave.

The rows of unclaimed cleaning hung

in their sylph robes, yellow tickets

with unlikely addresses.

The trousers walked all day

in their racks

blown by the power fan

while their owners

moved to other cities

wore other clothes

used other cleaners.

A man who sews clothes knows crotches

waists, hidden seams; knows special stinks

kneeling down to take a measurement

a handful of pins in his mouth.

My grandfather’s fingers seemed enormous

compared to the needles floating

somewhere in their vicinity.

Arthritis had swollen every joint

thick as young trees, he could never

close his hands.

Aunt Ida on the coffin shaped steam press

made coffee, went to Jerry’s for a 7-up,

had little to do but got paid, she was family.

It was always family: photos on the wall

of grandchildren with missing teeth

smiling relentlessly while their edges curled.

Family. Family. It meant that every Sunday

Grandpa woke us making his rounds.

Sometimes he brought a