Back to Issue Thirteen

 

A Yid Is a Yid by Matthew Lippman

A Yid Is a Yid

       I cry for all my Yid brothers and sisters.

       A Yid is a Yid.

               —Hasdai Harrison

It’s so quiet here

I want to cry into the quiet.

I go outside and listen for it

but you don’t have to

listen for quiet here.

It comes out of the trees

and sky without argument.

I am here in New Hampshire

and I never liked New Hampshire,

all that live free or die bullshit

never sat well with me.

Maybe that’s because I’m a Jew

and I don’t belong in America.

I said, Hasdai,

what’s the difference

between being a Jew

and being Jewish?

Kid’s 12.

He said, straight into my face,

A Yid is a Yid.

That’s it.

It might have been the quietest moment

of my life

so who needs the New Hampshire quiet?

There are guns in this quiet.

That’s America for you. Live free or die.

Maybe there are guns in a Jewish quiet.

I don’t believe that.

I believe there are words and letters

in a Jewish quiet.

Books.

When I wake up

all alone,

my family spread out across

the east coast of America,

I go outside into the inaudible

and cry into

the New Hampshire stillness

thinking that maybe my tears

will silence the guns in its quiet.

Those American guns.

A Yid is a Yid, I hear Hasdai say,

as the deer family crosses the field

behind my cottage,

my wet cheeks

slammed up against the January air.

So, I go back inside

and call my kids, my wife.

It’s like opening a book.