Yom Kippur, 2023

Netanel Schwartz

I will tell you why I eat:
today we should afflict our souls;
today we should not drink,
nor eat, nor sleep the sleep of love.

My mother was weak with these things.
Yea, she fasted six days a year,
but when did I ever see her fasting
except strewn in her bed,
complaining for her coffee?

You say: what of eating and drinking?
But you were neither stood
at the center of the synagogue
as the gates were locked,
nor burrowed in the food
stores behind the bookshelf,
nor laid under the bed
by the water bottle, waiting
to sip.

I say: we all ate, we all drank.
Yea, all of us, all of us.

You say: what of the sleep of love?
The sleep of love I never heard of in my house.

Netanel Schwartz is a student at Yale University studying English Literature and Hebrew Language.

ABOUT THE ART | Tell Me a Story of Home by Elio Wentzel, 2023. Elio Wentzel is a student at Yale University.