When Moment published “What Is a Jewish Poem?” by Myra Sklarew half a century ago, the magazine was new. Who could have predicted then how often that poem would be anthologized, cited and read aloud in classrooms? It opens with a run of questions—some comic (“Does it wear a yalmulka / and tallis?”), some solemn (“Does it live / in the diaspora / and yearn for homeland?”), and it ends in invitation:
Little Jewish poem
in your shtreimel hat,
little grandfather
sing to me,
little Jewish poem
come sing to me.
Myra died this winter at the age of 90, leaving to us the singing in her poems. A trained biologist, she turned her attention in book after book to complexities in nature and human history—wonders, mysteries and terrors alike. We’re grateful to her family for allowing us to publish her work in this issue. Here again there are questions about poetry. (Where can it take us? How does it conjure worlds?) And here again, we find an invitation: Come in—come in…. How hard it has become to imagine such a welcome. —Jody Bolz, Poetry Editor