My Exodus

In comparison to the exodus, which is finally realized in this week's portion, my life is tame. But then, my life is tame in comparison to the great journeys of my grandparents, as well. Jews often seem to be at the center of historic upheavals. As Bernard Malamud puts it in The Fixer, “We’re all in history, that’s sure, but some are more than others, Jews more than some.”

I’ve lived my life in the aftermath of flight—
the boats from Hamburg ballasted by Jews
who’d had enough of axes and broom handles,
of smashed glass and press gangs on the prowl
for Jewish boys with peyes* to pull. My zaide**
escaped the Cossack brigades, taking only his beard
and the trick of mounting a mare bareback at a canter.
Later his wife bundled her candlesticks,
her eiderdown and fled the once-kind neighbors
who had beat their ploughshares into swords.
Her belongings I fit into the van
with the cinder blocks, the boards, the scavenged settee,
and like the Sooners before me skedaddled West
toward a happy life of minor incident,
the luxury of burying my parents.
Was this her wish when she braved the parting sea:
that I cross over out of history?

*Sidelocks: Orthodox Jewish boys and men wear the hair at the sides of their heads long in obedience to the biblical commandment “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.”
**Grandfather in Yiddish