Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls

 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve”

 

-Joshua 24:15

 

For those who are desperate to be accepted as cool –

 

You cannot straddle the walls of the holy Temple

You cannot straddle the barbed wire of Auschwitz

You cannot straddle the banks of the Red Sea

You cannot choose two sides and call them one

 

Since the Hitler time there have not been two sides

 

You cannot wear both the tallit and the snakeskin

You cannot break bread with your grinning executioners

You cannot dance to circled drums and bullhorn chants

You cannot forswear your family murdered in the gas chambers

 

Since the burning time there have not been two sides

 

He who chooses the fashionable, the clever, the cool

Chooses to be a kapo, a funktionshaftling

His people will despise him, so too his masters

                   (Who in the end will kill him in his shame)

And his memory will be a curse, not a blessing

 

But you –

 

Choose bravely so that your name will be written in The Book

And written in the hearts of your proud descendants