What is a Good Jew
Trent Gillis at On Being told me to preface every poem with a sentence. That's not always easy because the poem is it's own sentence.
My cousin Allen he sometimes reads my blog intelligent person father's side of the family one or two relatives on my father's side of the family not many they were not an effusive lot intelligently terse I do not have many relatives altogether my cousin Allen sends emails to me and some other people about Jews in Britain (can you be a Jew on the Left? What about Israel? What about anti-semitism? What about Cuba and Russia and Arabs?) my cousin Allen a little older than I am a woman I met on the subway a while ago said that our concerns shift as we get older and now Allen is concerned maybe he always was about how to be a Good Jew. When I went to the Beth Israel Synagogue Center Hebrew School one million years ago our rabbi Theodore Gluck now a therapist married to a yoga instructor he said how to be a good person should be one of our lifetime obsessions. He also said, apropos of my Bas Mitzvah speech, largely forgettable, never give the audience the conclusion. They'll figure it out. And if they don't, find another audience. Don't, for instance, end with my cousin Allen.