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I'm short, I'm Jewish and I'm a liberal.

quote by Paul Wellstone
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Short Rap

Short rap (echo)
Repeat x2
Short rap, is everything
Its what I think, its what I sing
Cause Im a rapper, who lets you know
When it comes to music, I will grow
Rap more raps than any mc
Your rap aint rap cause your rap aint me
Short rap, is what you find
The mastermind, short rap that rhyme
Too short baby, thats the name
When I rap my rap I rap that game
I tell it to you like you always knew
Short raps not fake, its always true
Its me, its you, short rap is life
Its everyday and every night
And I dont just say its this and that
Its everything, its what short raps
Short rap (echo)
Itz what?
Short rap(echo)
Fresh
Short rap(echo)
Short rap(echo)
Short rap(echo)
S-h-o-r-t-r-a-p
Short rap is what I call this beat
Rap that rap like no one else
Im sir too short all by myself
I make fresh raps without your help
And all I want is fame and wealth
Smooth in the game, just like that
And all you hear me say is rap
Short (echo)
Short rap, is way to hard
Every I stop, its time to start
Cause what you find, when I say rhymes
Is a non-stop rap, right on time
Im the kind of person you always thought
Couldnt make a record that would be bought
Sir too short, it couldnt be
Short rap, whats that, short rap is me
Short rap(echo)
Short rap(echo)
So so fresh
I like tenders, young and hot
You never hear short say baby why not?
Im sir too short, Im so down
Mc rapper from the oakland town
You better get up, short raps a song

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song performed by Too Short
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What Is A Jewish Poem?

WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?

What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -

Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?

I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –

Kindness is perhaps the ultimate Jewish poem
And Justice also-
And Jewish poems are not without their contradictions –

As I write this poem in Jerusalem in the land of Israel
I think of the small Jewish world of Troy New York where I came from so many years ago
And miss so many people no longer of that and this world –

Longing for Israel for two thousand years was the Jewish poem
Living here now is a blessing and a gift
I thank God for.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Dont Stop Rappin

Dont stop
Dont stop that rap
Too short
And I dont stop rappin
Just dont stop
Too short
I dont stop rappin
Dont stop that rap
Well Im sir too short
The true mc
Fresh again with the brand new beat
The big bank roller, I know whats happening
I get on the mike and I dont stop rappin
Dont stop
Dont stop that rap
Too short
I dont stop rappin
My rap dont stop, you know it cant
I get on the mic and I make big bank
Unlike some rappers that I know
Trying to get no, but that dont go
Im that rapper, sir too short
I know youve heard my name before
And if you havent, now you have
Sir too short dont stop that rap
Dont stop
I dont stop rappin
Too short
Dont stop that rap
Im so rough so tough when I talk my stuff
I dont stop rappin cuz Im too tough
Telling you rappers what its all about
Most mcs are played out
But not too short, Im the best
You know too short is so so fresh
If thats not short, your mind is snapping
The best is fresh cause I dont stop rappin
Dont stop
Dont stop rappin
Too short
I dont stop rappin
Im sir too short, the rapping man
Im a cold mc and I know I am
Im the big time rapper from east oakland
Into music and making fans
I love young ladies who love my rhymes
Cuz what they say is right on time
The only mc with fresh hits
Its sir too short, he never quits
Thats so so true, what they say

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song performed by Too Short
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Mosque of Omar and Jewish Temple

The Dome of the Rock was erected by the Muslim ruler Abd el-Malik in 688-691 A.D. It sits where the old Jewish temple mount was. The Roman General Titus destroyed the last Jewish temple around 70 A.D. This mosque is considered very sacred and would cause an international stir and possible war if it were destroyed.
The Jewish people begin to come back to their original homeland and after World War Two and the holocaust became the country of Israel again in 1948 under Jewish rule. They always have wanted to rebuild their temple. The city of Jerusalem went under their control during the six-day war in 1967. Jerusalem is a main point of any peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Everyone dealing with the volatile peace process in the world knows peace in the mid-east involves Jerusalem and the temple mount area.
Solomon’s Temple was the first temple built in Jerusalem and was completed around 953 BC and was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians and burned with fire in 586 BC. Zerubbabel and the returning exiles built the second temple, completing it in 516 BC. This temple was later embellished greatly by King Herod and was the temple Jesus Christ was dedicated in and preached in. Titus and the Romans destroyed this Temple in 70 AD.
Scholars such as Asher Kauffman are now saying Solomon’s original temple and the second temple built by Zerubbabel after the 70 year captivity to Babylon was aligned with the Eastern Gate and the temple was north of the Dome of the Rock mosque.
The Eastern Gate was the gate the Lord Jesus came riding thru on a donkey or what many Christians call Palm Sunday. This gate is now closed. The Golden Gate (Eastern Gate) in the eastern wall of Jerusalem gave access to the courtyards of the temple from the Kidron valley. The East gate was walled up by its Muslim conquerors (the Ottoman Turks) with great stones in 1530 A.D. The Prophet Ezekiel by a vision seen the Eastern Gate shut…Ezekiel 44: 1-3 'Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. And he said to me, 'This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut. Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the LORD; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.'
I remember starring at this gate when I was at the Mount of Olives knowing when Christ touches the Mount of Olives at the end of the Tribulation this gate will be open. Ezekiel seen this vision around 600 BC This alignment of the future Jewish temple with the Eastern Gate would only be appropriate. The architectural layout of the temple would surely have been to allow the Messiah to come through the eastern gate and go straight ahead into the Holy City. He would not be doing any turning left and then right or any 'jigs'. He would enter the city and go straight ahead and up into the temple.
This will allow the third temple to be built while co-existing for a while with the mosque now there.
As we look now at the present situation we see that the Dome of the Rock occupies the center of the temple mount. The future third temple could therefore be rebuilt to the north of the Dome. It would be on the same site as the former temple. There would be room to provide an acceptable easement between the two buildings. There would, in fact, be a clearance of 150 feet. This certainly would take an international agreement.
When Ariel Sharon presumptuously decided to take a stroll on the temple mount some years ago the result was bloody mayhem. There was a huge outcry throughout the Islamic world. For the Jewish temple to be built next to the Dome of the Rock mosque will take a peace covenant of world magnitude and import.
We also see in the book of Revelation 11: 2 KJV 'But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months'. Many believe this is a reference to the Dome of the Rock being there. Some say that later when the earthquake comes in
Zechariah 11 and Ezekiel 38 at the end of the Tribulation that this temple and mosque will destroyed as Christ touches the Mount of Olives preparing the way for the millennial temple of Ezekiel 40.
This would mean the third temple during Jacobs’ trouble and the Great Tribulation will not be the final temple.
It is uncanny that Jerusalem is a center of three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The oil in the area is of major economic and political concern to the entire world. The whole region is now involved with international politics and the Israeli Palestinian conflict is paramount..
We Christians believe in a second coming of Christ when he will open the Jewish peoples eyes showing them he was their Messiah. We think it is prophecy that they are back from the nations. Mathew 24: 15 lets us know the temple will be rebuilt and defiled. We believe the gentile church age will end and many prophecies written in the Old Testament concerning Israel and the region and the world will be fulfilled
The more I see the picture unfold with prophecy the more I feel that the Mosque of Omar called the Dome of the Rock will not be destroyed but will stay there next to the rebuilt Jewish temple and will be a sign of peace between Israel and moderate Islam brokered by the man of peace from Europe. Jerusalem will be given to both sides and an agreement will be reached.
The false liberal church will help broker the situation as well. Radical Islam will seem to dissipate and the anti christ will use the false prophet of the false church and this very liberal so called church of eclectic faith will seem to respect all faiths allowing the temple in Jerusalem to coexist with the Mosque of Omar.
This covenant will be broken after three and one half years when Russia will come down as written about in Ezekiel 38. The peace will be broken with the Jews and the anti Christ will turn against them and also give a mark where by no man will be able to buy or sell.
I totally believe we are soon to come to these days and we are in the last days of the church age and the times of the gentiles mentioned in Luke 21: 24. We are now in the time of sorrows and distress amongst nations (Math 24: 6-8) and soon will go into the Great Tribulation when all this will happen. Math.24: 21
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 11: 25 that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles become in”. This dispensation of the gospel to the gentile nations is ending and there will also be a great falling away towards liberalism that will accept gay life styles and various religions.
The false church will not be based on the Bible but theology, psychology, philosophy and the wisdom of man and so called reason. It will use religious rhetoric and talk about liberation and peace, it will appear to many as good but it really is a wolf in sheep clothing and eventually will back up the anti christ and be destroyed in the tribulation period. Many a person already talks about Jesus Christ separate from the Holy Scriptures. This false church will help lead to a unified Europe and extend its hand to the mid east peace process.
I always thought that the Mosque of Omar would be destroyed but even if it was the Arabs and Islam would want it immediately rebuilt. In order to really broker a peace this Temple and Mosque problem has to be settled.
Recently all kinds of Orthodox Jews are buying up East Jerusalem and tunneling and digging. There was a segment concerning this on 60 minutes. Many are also saying the Mosque and Temple can co-exist along side one another. Israel would never give up the temple area and Islam would never give up the Mosque of Omar. The peace process that will be started by the anti christ who will come to power in the west will settle this question.
We are in the times of prophecy. Hold on to your Bible faith and never let it go for some liberal church system that doesn’t preach Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures and revelation. We need twenty-four hour prayer going up in our churches and real praise and worship and Bible teaching

poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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We Must Be Liberal

I remember when I called you a honky.
And you called me a black ugly monkey.
Now both of us ride on a donkey.
'Haw hee haw.'

The brainiacs are on the attack.
Trying to cover their dirty tracks.
Those conservative try to debate...
How an elephant's gait can keep up the pace.

'Haw hee haw.'

I remember when I called you a honky.
And you called me a black ugly monkey.
Now both of us ride on a donkey.
'Haw hee haw.'

I remember when I called you a honky.
And you called me a black ugly monkey.
Now both of us ride on a donkey.
'Haw hee haw.'

Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa!
I don't know that.
But an elephant's trying to crush my back! '

Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa!
I don't know that.
But an elephant's trying to crush my back! '

The brainiacs are on the attack.
Trying to cover their dirty tracks.
Those conservative try to debate...
How an elephant's gait can keep up the pace.

'Haw hee haw haw...whoa!

Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa!
I don't know that.
But an elephant's trying to crush my back! '

Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa! '
Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa! '
Are we liberal?
'Haw hee haw haw...whoa! '

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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An Oak Wood Piano on Kristallnacht

The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.

The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.

The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.

One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.

Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.

The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10,1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.

Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Virginia's Story

Elizabeth Gates-Wooten is my Grand mom.

She was born in Canada with her father and brothers.
They owned a Barber Shoppe.
I don't remember exactly where in Canada.
I believe it was right over the border like Windsor or Toronto.
I never knew exactly where it was.

When she was old enough she got married.

First, she married a man by the name of Frank Gates.
He was from Madagascar.
He fathered my mom and her brother and sister.
The boy's name was Frank Gates, Jr.
Two girls name were Anna and Agnes.

Agnes was my mother.

Frank Gates went crazy after the war
He drank a lot and died
Then grandma Elizabeth married a man by the name of Mr. Wooten.
He had a German name, but I don't think he was German.
She took his last name after they got married.

Then they moved to West Virginia in the United States.

Their son, Frank Gates Jr. Became a delegate in the democratic party.
He use to get into a lot of trouble because he liked to fight.
He was a delegate from the 1940's to 1970's.
He died of gout in the 1970's.

Anna was a maid and cook.

She baked cakes and stuff for people as a side line.
She had a hump on her back (scoliosis) .
She had to walk with a cane.
She could cook good though.
She did this kind of work all of her life, just like her mom, Elizabeth

They were both good cooks

They had a lot of money because they had these skills
Especially when people had parties.
Because they would make all of this food and then they would have left-overs.
We got to eat a lot of stuff we normally wouldn't get because of that.
When they cooked, they didn't use no measuring stuff, they would just use there hand.

My moms name was Agnes Barrie Gates.

She married James Wright and moved to Cleveland.

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poem by Talile Ali
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Show Tune II

That's the long and short of it
now you know
how I've been waiting all these years
where I'm coming from
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
now you see
just how hot hot jazz was
how it turned about, my bookcase
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
now you know
that my arrest record's
not my best record
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
now you see
how the Past's like a love
you can neither leave nor live
that's the long and short of it

That's the long and short of it
now you know
it was no gun in my pocket
it was a rocket
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
and you're wond'ring dear
how I kept so pure
hull, it was easy
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
now you see
so bounce your head
into bed
that's the long and short of it.

That's the long and short of it
read the blues
in these tattoos
make a song of it
that's the short and long of it.

How I wish

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poem by Morgan Michaels
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18 Definitions Of A Short Poem

1) A short poem
Saves time,

2) A short poem
Saves time
For its reader, also.

3) A short poem is over
Before its read.

4) A short poem
Can be swiftly reread.

5) A short poem
Is a lightning flash.

6) A short poem
Is one metaphor only.

7) A short poem
Is less than nine words.

8) A short poem
Opens ones eyes
In the morning.

9) A short poem
May be a short prayer.

10) A short poem
May be a poem of a single word.

11) Poem.

12) A short poem
A small play on words.

13) A short poem
May be a single sentence.

14) A short poem is shorter
Than the definition of it.

15) It breaks up the icy sea within.

16) A chill down the spine.

17) There is no end
To making definitions of the short poem.

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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Ghost - Book IV

Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
'Bove other men, and, gravely wise,
Affect those pleasures to despise,
Which, merely to the eye confined,
Bring no improvement to the mind,
Rail at all pomp; they would not go
For millions to a puppet-show,
Nor can forgive the mighty crime
Of countenancing pantomime;
No, not at Covent Garden, where,
Without a head for play or player,
Or, could a head be found most fit,
Without one player to second it,
They must, obeying Folly's call,
Thrive by mere show, or not at all
With these grave fops, who, (bless their brains!)
Most cruel to themselves, take pains
For wretchedness, and would be thought
Much wiser than a wise man ought,
For his own happiness, to be;
Who what they hear, and what they see,
And what they smell, and taste, and feel,
Distrust, till Reason sets her seal,
And, by long trains of consequences
Insured, gives sanction to the senses;
Who would not (Heaven forbid it!) waste
One hour in what the world calls Taste,
Nor fondly deign to laugh or cry,
Unless they know some reason why;
With these grave fops, whose system seems
To give up certainty for dreams,
The eye of man is understood
As for no other purpose good
Than as a door, through which, of course,
Their passage crowding, objects force,
A downright usher, to admit
New-comers to the court of Wit:
(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen;
When I say Wit, I Wisdom mean)
Where (such the practice of the court,
Which legal precedents support)
Not one idea is allow'd
To pass unquestion'd in the crowd,
But ere it can obtain the grace
Of holding in the brain a place,
Before the chief in congregation
Must stand a strict examination.
Not such as those, who physic twirl,
Full fraught with death, from every curl;

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poem by Charles Churchill
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The Restaurant Keeper

In the City of Toronto there was once
a restaurant owned by a man named Imre Finta.
Born in 1912 in Austria-Hungary, Finta spent
his years of youth in my hometown Szeged,
immigrating to Canada after the Second World War.

Settling in Toronto, in 1953 Finta bought
the Candlelight Restaurant but it did not go well,
so he closed it. Then he opened The Moulin Rouge
on Avenue Road at DuPont Street.
The old fashioned Hungarian gentleman greeted
his guests warmly, politely kissing the right hand
of his female patrons.

I had never dined at the Moulin Rouge
but I encountered Finta in a brickyard and
at the railway station of Szeged in the summer
of 1944. At that time I was eight years old
and Finta, aged 32, was a Captain
of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie.
He was also a Nazi collaborator who supervised
the deportation of 8,617 Jews to slave labour lagers
and death camps. I was one of them.

A few months earlier, on March 19,1944,
the German Army occupied Hungary
and Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest.
His Mission was to implement in Hungary
the “Final Solution”, a Euphemism the Nazis
used to disguise the mass murder of the Jews.

In June 1944, swearing gendarmes pushed
a group of Jewish prisoners from the ersatz ghetto
of Kistelek onto a freight train. My mother,
my three year old sister Vera and I were
among them. We travelled thirty kilometres to
Szeged where the gendarmes led us to
an abandoned brick factory that was turned into
a makeshift concentration camp.

The brickyard camp commandant was
SS captain Angermayer, whom I remember
as a tall and lanky silhouette moving among
the prisoners in a black uniform.
He was assisted by ruthless gendarmes
in cock-feathered hats, armed with
bayoneted rifles and swords,
who terrorized the captives.

Living conditions in the makeshift ghetto

[...] Read more

poem by Paul Hartal
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Short People

Short people
Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
To live
They got little hands
Little eyes
They walk around
Tellin great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet
Well, I dont want no short people
Dont want no short people
Dont want no short people
'round here
Short people are just the same
As you and i
(a fool such as I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(its a wonderful world)
Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
To love
They got little baby legs
That stand so low
You got to pick em up
Just to say hello
They got little cars
That go beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
Theyre gonna get you every time
Well, I dont want no short people
Dont want no short people
Dont want no short people
round here

song performed by Randy Newman
Added by Lucian Velea
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Progressive Minds

Progressive liberals with a cause, covering over their spiritual flaws,
Saying what many want to hear; concerning God, they have no fear.
Progressing with the moral tides, on immoral waves the party rides,
As they drift far away from God, while leading with a confident nod.

Progress for all they say they make, as Godly morals they forsake,
Wanting to be all things to all, perpetuates the curse of Adam’s fall.
Bringing upon this mighty land, The Sovereign God’s uplifted hand,
One raised up in Righteous Wrath, against their liberal immoral path.

Many liberal minds in one accord, running a nation without The Lord,
Being followed by a large multitude, caught in a darkened servitude.
Though God may be on their lips, not in their heart, but liberal quips,
To build their liberal agenda friend, which has eternal ruin at the end.

Opposing God’s Righteous Decree, they desire to lead you and me,
Filled with liberal pundits galore, regarding truth, want less not more,
While liberal heroes they raise up tall, moral views they see as small,
Turning conservative concerns into, immoral agendas they’ll pursue.

They approve evil across the board, as the moral issues go ignored,
Counseling together in wickedness, despising God’s Righteousness,
Filling the land with darkened lies, professing to be the best of wise,
With wisdom apart from God, who’s returning soon with an Iron Rod.

(Copyright ©08/2008)

poem by Bob Gotti
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The Four Seasons : Autumn

Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on; the Doric reed once more,
Well pleased, I tune. Whate'er the wintry frost
Nitrous prepared; the various blossom'd Spring
Put in white promise forth; and Summer-suns
Concocted strong, rush boundless now to view,
Full, perfect all, and swell my glorious theme.
Onslow! the Muse, ambitious of thy name,
To grace, inspire, and dignify her song,
Would from the public voice thy gentle ear
A while engage. Thy noble cares she knows,
The patriot virtues that distend thy thought,
Spread on thy front, and in thy bosom glow;
While listening senates hang upon thy tongue,
Devolving through the maze of eloquence
A roll of periods, sweeter than her song.
But she too pants for public virtue, she,
Though weak of power, yet strong in ardent will,
Whene'er her country rushes on her heart,
Assumes a bolder note, and fondly tries
To mix the patriot's with the poet's flame.
When the bright Virgin gives the beauteous days,
And Libra weighs in equal scales the year;
From Heaven's high cope the fierce effulgence shook
Of parting Summer, a serener blue,
With golden light enliven'd, wide invests
The happy world. Attemper'd suns arise,
Sweet-beam'd, and shedding oft through lucid clouds
A pleasing calm; while broad, and brown, below
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.
Rich, silent, deep, they stand; for not a gale
Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:
A calm of plenty! till the ruffled air
Falls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow.
Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky;
The clouds fly different; and the sudden sun
By fits effulgent gilds the illumined field,
And black by fits the shadows sweep along.
A gaily chequer'd heart-expanding view,
Far as the circling eye can shoot around,
Unbounded tossing in a flood of corn.
These are thy blessings, Industry! rough power!
Whom labour still attends, and sweat, and pain;
Yet the kind source of every gentle art,
And all the soft civility of life:
Raiser of human kind! by Nature cast,
Naked, and helpless, out amid the woods
And wilds, to rude inclement elements;
With various seeds of art deep in the mind

[...] Read more

poem by James Thomson
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The Four Seasons : Spring

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation join'd
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own Season paints; when Nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest, and the ravaged vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless: so that scarce
The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulf'd,
To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste
At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
The expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold
But, full of life and vivifying soul,
Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads then thin,
Fleecy, and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven.
Forth fly the tepid airs: and unconfined,
Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
Joyous, the impatient husbandman perceives
Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers
Drives from their stalls, to where the well used plough
Lies in the furrow, loosen'd from the frost.
There, unrefusing, to the harness'd yoke
They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,
Cheer'd by the simple song and soaring lark.
Meanwhile incumbent o'er the shining share
The master leans, removes the obstructing clay,
Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe
While through the neighbouring fields the sowe stalks,
With measured step, and liberal throws the grain
Into the faithful bosom of the ground;
The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.
Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious Man
Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow!
Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend!

[...] Read more

poem by James Thomson
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Short Peoople

Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
To live
They got little hands
And little eyes
And they walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little fett
Well I don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
Round here
Short People are just the same
As you and I
(A Fool Such As I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(It's A Wonderful World)
Short People got nobody
Short People got nobody
Short People got nobody
To love
They got little baby legs
And they stand so low
You got to pick 'em up
Just to say hello
They got little cars
That got beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin' peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Well, I don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
'Round here

song performed by Randy Newman
Added by Lucian Velea
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Chanukah And Christmas

(footnote)

2100 years ago a band of Jews defeated the Greek army
And drove them off their land, reclaiming the holy temple
In Jerusalem and rededicating it to the service of god.
when they sought to light the temples menorah
They found only a single cruse of olive oil that
escaped contamination by the Greeks.
Miraculously the one day supply lasted eight days.
The sages instituted the festival of Chanukah
To publicize these miracles.
The Dreidel which is a four sided top with a
Hebrew letter on each side which means
“ a great miracle happened here”
was used later on in the years to give thanks to god
Without the enemy knowing that they were praying.
Chanukah, the Jewish festival of rededication, also known as the festival of lights, is an eight day festival beginning on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev.
Chanukah is probably one of the best known Jewish holidays, not because of any great religious significance, but because of its proximity to Christmas. Many non-Jews (and even many assimilated Jews!) think of this holiday as the Jewish Christmas, adopting many of the Christmas customs, such as elaborate gift-giving and decoration. It is bitterly ironic that this holiday, which has its roots in a revolution against assimilation and suppression of Jewish religion, has become the most assimilated, secular holiday on our calendar.

Christmas and Chanukah are known world wide
But these two faiths do not collide.
They walk hand in hand
For they came out of the promised land.

You see: the son of god was born a Jew
The Romans felt this was taboo.
No other religion could exist
This was controlled by the Romans fist.

JESUS preached in synagogues throughout the lands
Something that the Romans did withstand.
His own people wanted his death
But little did they know
That with this- a new faith would grow.

The cross on which he died became a symbol
Of Christianity, and that’s the way
God meant it to be.

Chanukah is eight days of giving while the Christian
Holiday is just one day, but during these
holidays we all kneel and pray.

We give GOD thanks for all the beauties of the earth
And for family and friends, and it is something
That will never end.
As long as man holds a belief in their hearts
And faith, -then all will be overcome and
Let GODS will be done.

poem by Louis Rams
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The Fall Of The Temple In 70 A.D.!

back across centuries
century after century
to the fall of Jerusalem
in 70AD Josephus says

claims that 1,100,000
Jews died most slain
were peaceful citizens
weak starving unarmed
butchered where caught

heaps of Jewish corpses
mounted higher higher
about God’s own altar
blood in streams flowed
down the Temple's steps

Roman supreme command
passion cruelly unleashed
detestation of Jews rage
overpowering battle lust
in legions now uncontrolled

legions spurred on by
craved fever gold lust
expectation of faith’s loot
observing now everything
around them made of gold

flames consumed
the chambers
that surrounded
the sanctuary
flame burning frenzy
roaring penetrated
the Holy of Holies
the inner sanctum

the Temple is ablaze iron attackers plunderer countless Jewish people
are caught slaughtered there is given no pity

for age sex rank priests laymen women children all alike were butchered every civil class pursued crushed in war’s iron grip

at siege's bile end faceless
masses are slaughtered
cred cried out for mercy
offered resistance makes
no difference to blood lust

far wind wide now streaming flames spread up hill’s height massive temple ablaze signal beacon pyre burning before God’s eye judgement given

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
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Junle Law And Refusal To Forgive

When Israelis captured Eichmann and
decided they would put him up for trial
many people thought their conduct vile,
claiming Israel's acts were grossly out of hand.
The Washington Post said this was 'jungle law, '
while William Buckley called on Israel to
forgive its enemies. Arendt, a Jew,
called Hausner 'a Galician who knew
no languages.' No Jews would turn their cheek
towards the enemies not just outside,
but those within, and chose to override
complaints of those who said, 'We must be meek.'
Few understood the shift in paradigm
initiated by the judges, Jews
who were not merely plaintiffs who accuse,
but people justly punishing a crime.

This poem was written fifty years after execution of Adolf Eichmann, at around midnight on 5/31/62.

Franklin Foer, reviewing Deborah Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial in the NYT,4/8/11 ('Why the Eichmann Trial Really Mattered') wrote:

To write about the trial of Adolf Eichmann is to put its most notorious court reporter, Hannah Arendt, in the dock. In the nearly 50 years since its publication, her account of those proceedings, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem, ' has come to overshadow its subject. The book, it is true, commands attention. It is a breathtaking admixture of genres (history, philosophy, journalism) and contains strong, often unconventional, moral judgments (especially her contempt for the Jewish leaders who cooperated with their murderers) . It aims to render grand historical conclusions but remains unintentionally and inescapably personal.

'The Eichmann Trial, ' by Deborah E. Lipstadt, can't entirely avoid Arendt, but it does manage to keep her largely offstage until the very end. Lipstadt has done a great service by untethering the trial from Arendt's polarizing presence, recovering the event as a gripping legal drama, as well as a hinge moment in Israel's history and in the world's delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust.
Aside from Eichmann's trial, in 1961, the Holocaust has been the subject of at least two other memorable legal battles. The first, of course, was the Nuremberg tribunals — proceedings that occurred amid the ruins of war and concentrated on the crimes of the Nazis, giving little voice to the still dazed survivors of the genocide. The second featured none other than Lipstadt herself. In 2000, she found herself the defendant in a British libel suit unsuccessfully brought by the writer David Irving, who protested her characterization of him as a Holocaust denier. This experience has made her a sensitive guide to the awkward complexities of squeezing the crimes of the Holocaust into the constricting confines of the courthouse.

The book begins with the daughter of an Argentine man dating the son of a German refugee. The Argentine man was himself German-born and half Jewish. Many fathers expect the worst from the boys their daughters bring home — but the man's suspicions about this one's family grew thanks to the boy's obvious anti-Semitism and his evasive answers to basic biographical questions. The man began to assume the worst and outlined his fears in a letter to a German prosecutor who happened to be Jewish. The prosecutor enlisted the man and his daughter in a stealth operation, and in the course of her snooping, the possibility arose that she was stalking Adolf Eichmann. When her father reported this astonishing finding to the prosecutor, he forwarded the tip to the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.
The Mossad wasn't initially enthusiastic. But once it grasped the importance of its target, it unleashed a risky kidnapping scheme, what Lipstadt describes as the prototype of the brash, clever operations that are the foundation of the Mossad's mythic reputation. The Israelis drugged Eichmann and dressed him as an El Al crewman to get him past the Argentine authorities.

Much of Western opinion, Lipstadt reminds us, was not pleased. Argentina demanded Eichmann's repatriation, and the American establishment agreed. The Washington Post editorial page condemned Israel's 'jungle law'; The Christian Science Monitor equated Israel's claims to those of the Nazis. William F. Buckley Jr. said the kidnapping was symptomatic of the Jewish 'refusal to forgive.' Even the American Jewish Committee asked the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to cede the prosecution to Germany or an international tribunal. But these challenges only made Ben-Gurion a more vociferous champion of the trial.

A principal villain of Arendt's book is Gideon Hausner, who had recently been installed as attorney general and who assigned himself the first chair in the prosecution. He was a strange choice for the job. There was little in his background as a commercial lawyer that suggested he had the courtroom skills to battle a cunning defendant, which Eichmann turned out to be. Indeed, Arendt accused Hausner of being more of a demagogic politician than a rule-abiding barrister. She disparaged his emotionalism and his aggressive effort to pin every crime of Nazi Germany on Eichmann. In one of her less-than-¬attractive letters from the trial, Arendt accused Hausner of having a 'ghetto mentality' and of being a 'typical Galician Jew,... one of those people who don't know any language.'…

It is always bracing to recall the world in which the Eichmann trial was held — where the slaughter was largely unacknowledged (and even unknown) . That's why Ben-Gurion and Hausner were spectacularly right to exploit the Eichmann prosecution for pedagogical purposes. They forced the Nazi genocide onto the front pages of the world's newspapers. Nearly 20 years after the fact, the Holocaust finally began to find a place in the public consciousness that reflected the size of the atrocity. (Indeed, the trial was largely responsible for making 'Holocaust' the universal term for the genocide.) Critics of the trial insinuated that the Israelis were somehow transgressing the bounds of fairness and justice by pressing these larger points. But Ben-Gurion and Hausner served precisely these goals by giving a voice to Eichmann's victims.

6/1/12 #10380

poem by Gershon Hepner
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