Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2008

Jewish Portrait 

by Dahlia Ravikovitch

trans. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

She

is not your sort.
A Diaspora kind of Jew who darts her eyes around
in fear.
Wears an old-fashioned dress,
her hair pulled back without a touch of grace.
Doesn't undo her bundles.
Why should she undo her bundles?
Any place she might stumble on
would be just a place of transience.
Her bed is unmade.
Transience requires no adornment.
 
On the road.
Caravans pass her by,
Ukrainian peasants in their carts
and dark-skinned refugees, screaming;
babes-in-arms dry up in the sun,
flies clinging to their eyes.
People carry mattresses on their heads,
a clangor of pots and pans.
People curse her as she goes by:
she's slow,
slowing down the caravan.
 
She goes off to the side of the road and stops.
She has no baby,
can wait for dark.
 
Suddenly she sees a coin in the dust--a spark.
She smiles an inward smile.
In her mind's eye
rivulets well up in the thicket.
It's wrong to think she has lost her mind.
A kernel of sun-crimson dawns in her heart.
There. She's no longer upset.
 
She has no use for this business, Jerusalem.
Day after day they wrangle over the Temple Mount,
each man smites and reviles his brother,
and the dead prophet shrieks,
Who hath required this at your hand, to trample My courts?
 
Once the caravan has crossed,
night will fall and she'll find her house.
Her feet stub against the sharp gravelstone,
dust soils her dress.
She will bolt the inner door,
seal the shutters on every side.
Only the soles of her feet will she bathe,
so boundless her weariness.
In the dark she knows the features of her face
as a blind man knows the feel of his temples.
Her eyes are the blue eyes of Khazars,
her face a broad face,
her body the heavy body of a native woman,
third generation in the Land of Israel.
 
June 4, 1982

Ravikovitch, Dahlia. Trans, Chana Block and Chana Kronfeld. 2008. Jewish portrait. Tikkun. 23(3):45.