I don’t remember where I saw this phrase, but I suspect I saw it somewhere and it stuck.
Jewish Food For The Soul
Jewish food for the soul
Is belonging to the culture bowl
Of background that goes back
Five thousand years ago.
Right down to my home in Brooklyn
Where I’d grown up winding up
In Sweden.
My family wasn’t kosher,
Never went to temple but for weddings or bar mitzvahs.
Yet I feel that life as Jewish was a mitzvah
From the secular to now. Nosher,
I could eat my mother’s blintzes, kasha varnishka
Forever and a day and never tire.
I am wired as a Jewess.
Feel blessed unto this day at eighty seven.
Heaven just to be a Jew each day anew,
So when I die I’ll proudly lie
With Star of David on my stone.
That, with only
twenty thousand
Jewish families found in Sweden’s stock.
There were twenty thousand on my block.
Food for the soul this moment as I write
Is simply knowing that I feel Jewish
Head to foot.
That’s it.
Jewish Food for the Soul 5.5.2022 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Poetry 