Sempre Avanti

Sempre avanti, Italian.  “Always keep moving forward.”

I first learned this expression from Helena, a friend who typically signed off her letters with this expression, or else with Coraggio.   A historian and a convert to Catholicism, she worked with me on peace and justice issues in the 1980s and kept in touch over the years.  Several decades older than me, Helena took a lively interest in my academic work on Elie Wiesel.

In later years, she was afflicted with breast cancer and severe arthritis, and, even though aging, she remained lucid, gentle, and passionate.  The year after Mev died, one day, Helena, came home to find a note from her husband, an immigrant “self-made” businessman millionaire.  He had to leave her, he had written, because he had so much life he wanted to live. 

Just weeks before this happened: My friend Simone and I had dinner with Helena and her husband at their posh home.  With her usual grace, Helena made us feel like royalty.  At one point after dinner, her brusque and brilliant husband (he knew nine languages) interrupted our conversations and declared peremptorily, “I think we should all acknowledged how heroic Mark was throughout his wife’s illness.”  Simone and I glanced at each other, stating silently with our eyes, “Where is this coming from?”   We had not expected such a profession of sensitivity or sentiment from him,  since he often looked suspiciously at us, we felt, judging us as way too liberal for his Catholic belief system.

Two months later, Helena was alone.  Her husband could not be “heroic” and stay with her throughout her aches and physical diminishment.  Although he had retired, he had so much he wanted to accomplish, so many projects he wanted to bring to completion.  He had returned to the South and left Helena well provided for, financially.

Throughout this period she faced a dizzying shock akin to what I had experienced: A loved one, gone just like that!  Well, not at all the same:  I had twenty-one months to prepare for Mev’s passing.  She had no inkling that her husband was not going to be there that evening for supper.

Once trained as a canon lawyer (long before he made his vast fortune), her husband later got an appointment in an archdiocese as a consultant on annulments.  He eventually sued for divorce from Helena.  He remarried, to a woman younger and evidently livelier to his tastes.

Occasionally, she still managed to write to me, encouraging me to get a full-time teaching job, where I could savor the joys of academia, and always managing to sign her increasingly difficult-to-read notes with a sempre avanti.

Thich Nhat Hanh once made the famous utterance that the miracle is not to walk on water or on air, but to walk on this beautiful green earth.

The miracle for me was Helena being able to write sempre avanti.

Bella Levenshtein Tells Me of Her Dream

Last night I walked the corridor
Of a private Yad Vashem
On one side of the hall
Are the faces of the slaughtered
Stripped of their outer layers
Led to the fire
Returning to dust
No longer recognized as human
Yet fully human still

On the other side
The faces of the butchers
Lost in their outer layers
Leading millions to the fire
Turning into a well-oiled machine
Rising above humanity
Yet fully human still

I find my family portraits
On both sides of the hall

My father at five years old
Early white winter morning
Cradled in his father’s arms
Saying goodbye
Not realizing that it is their last goodbye

Grandpa Yerachmiel–
From whom I got my skin tone
And many other features–
Is scattered in a ditch among the others
No longer recognizable

Aunt Marxina
(About whom all I know is
She has my father’s eyes
“Was sixteen when she was taken by the Nazis”)
And she is taken away by her Aryan twin

And my uncle Moses
Who was a captain in the Soviet Army
I see him in that moment in the woods
Before he had to make that decision
To shoot or not to shoot himself

There is a thought in modern psychology
That every part of a dream
Is a part of the dreamer
The slaughtered and the butchers
Are all just parts
Of the same whole
I cry for all of them
I accept them all
Equally

Remembering Rosa Parks

That week Rosa Parks was lying in state in Washington, DC
I asked the students what they knew of her
There was the standard talk

Her sitting down
Her standing up
How courageous she was

Deema raised her hand and had a story to tell
One of the students she works with
Had the following experience on the bus

Like many Afghan girls who’ve come to the U.S.
Ayesha wears the head covering
Her English is steadily improving

She makes good use of the time on the bus
To study the odd English verb conjugations
She’s minding her own business

When a middle-aged African-American woman
Gets on the full bus
Sees her and stops dead in her tracks:

“You, terrorist!
What are you doing here, get off this bus!
Go back to your country!”

The woman gets so close to Ayesha
That she can feel the woman’s spittle
Hitting her face

Ayesha stands up
Offers the woman her seat
And says, “This is my country now”

The older woman scowls
Ayesha slowly walks away
As it is her stop

She turns around to look at the woman
She looks for five seconds or so
The driver asks, “Are you staying or leaving?”

Ayesha turns to the driver:
“I’ve leaving this bus
And I’m staying in this country”


--from Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

An Exceptionally Good and Inspiring Day, Monday 15 April 2013

In the morning inside at Kaldi’s
I visited with a former student
Nineteen years old
One of the strongest people I know

“Strength does not come from
Physical capacity
It comes from
An indomitable will”

In the afternoon outside at Kaldi’s
I was visited by a former student
Twenty years old
One of the most courageous people I know

“The satyagrahi uses trust, support, sympathy-
And, if necessary, her readiness to suffer-
To gradually open up the heart of the adversary
And disarm her opposition”

When I hear their stories
I realize that satyagraha-
Gandhi’s “holding onto truth”-
Has been their daily way of being


--quotations from Mohandas K. Gandhi

I Renounce Hyperbole

You’re one of the most beautiful souls
I’ve ever met

OK
I see you don’t believe me

You’re one of the most beautiful souls
I’ve ever met
In this millennium

The truth is like lightning
Bella Levenshtein
Pay attention

--from Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

Kafka's Axe

Dear Yulia,

Was reading Kafka’s letters earlier today.  The passage caught my eye: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Imagine, if Kafka were able to have absolute authority in a society like ours to proscribe the inessential books! The great Jewish moralistic totalitarian, forbidding those facile self-help books, predictable trash novels, lawn care manuals, celebrity memoirs, ephemeral best-sellers.

Tears Are OK

I tell you a joke
And no surprise
You laugh

You don’t censor your laughter
Do you?
No

You only censor it
If you realize
It will hurt someone

Your laughter is a natural outflow of energy

Same with tears
No need to apologize
No reason to squirm

If they come when
You are reading aloud
Something in your notebook

If they come when
We’re reading one
Of Rachel Corrie’s emails

The tears are a natural outflow of energy

We can be with your tears
Your tears aren’t taboo
Your tears are your truths

Each time the bell sounds
May we realize
We are all connected