POEM: ‘The Great Dying’
He gathered his friend’s dead flesh,
walked back and sat in a field reciting a psalm.
Kneeling, he signaled the signs of courage
and defeat with his bloody fingers,
each sign for each heart beat before the great dying.
An instinctive act, he ruminates.
He sounds the psalm like a warning bell,
befuddled by what he had done, unexpectedly,
chasing death in an everlasting tunnel,
an unending struggle to choose between
life and death, the blessing and the curse,
bonded like separate and one twin mountains.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
