Editor’s Note: Frieda Levinsky, now living in La Jolla, California, shared her evocative poem with San Diego Jewish World.
Jerusalem
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem
Let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.
If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy..
–Psalm 137
Your inhabitants long
To see
Fair weather rather
Than bombs
As is this Belz child
Recalling the beautiful
Synagogue with gilded
Doves adorned on its
Sky blue ceiling where on the outside
We sledded down on the
Hilltop with our little friends.
Here we also wish to hear
Children’s laughter instead
Of the tears
That the city’s
Centuries cry as we hear
A chill-pained echo
Of history.
When Syrians conquered,
When enemies rejoiced,
You
Sang,
Rare peace,
Jerusalem.
Here,
Where King Solomon
Built
Beneath your shadowed walls
The sacred,
The Temple of Worship
God’s majesty,
Holy city
Where
Eternity’s timeless gate
Is sky-clouded
With mothers’ tears
For loss of
Sons and
Grandsons from the dawn
Of history as you endured.
When the Almighty,
Guards your people
Created like the humble weeds in
Fields,
Like forget-me-nots in spring; your
Rebirth
Jerusalem,
Timeless
Like the Creator,
Like an oak that grows
Heavenward you
Blossom.
Up
Your flag unfolds with hope
Gracefully on dale and hill as
You stand in mystery.
From many lands
Visitors come
To honor you, cherish you
As you slumber dreamily
On God’s footstool, we then hear
Chanting echoes of
David’s liturgy.
I survived
World War II
To pen these
Words in tribute
For the refugees in face
Of fear
With the goal of finding
Peace in your holy realm.
Jerusalem, here I stood
Like a sentinel seeing
My father, Moses’s, gilded
lettering etched on his tombstone,
The saintly giver of my life,
My love and with my
Support of all that
Is worthwhile in life like
My heart which beats
Ever so boldly in
Poetry, in pain and in peril.
On this Holy cemetery
Where the great Belz
Rebbe is bound with his
Friend, my father, his supporter
Of my faith, of the dignity
In life and in death.
On this August summer
Day when I feel the heat
Of the sun,
The light
That will shine forever
In my memory, in my
Remembrance with his
Life that will be like the
Eternal light burning
Brightly with the courage
In defending my faith,
My tradition.
Even in
The darkest moments
Of near death, in the hours
Of hunger, fatigue and
With the kernel to carry
On all that is dear in life
On my journey that
God will grant me
Hence forth on every
Uncertain step that I
Undertake to hold on to
The links of love,
Of life to carry the seeds
Which my father still
Lives through me with
My words through which I
Shed tears in the Kaddish
To remember
His holy passing.
On every step of my earthly
Journey along with moments of Gilded
Scrolled Jerusalem firmaments in my view,
In my memory of my
Matriarchs And
Patriarchs:
Jerusalem! I am
Ennobled with your grace, your spirit
And with my father’s resting place here All linked with me in an
eternal bond.
—-©Frieda Levinsky