Selected Piece - Poetry

by Leah Freedhoff, Canada

We walk amongst shadows.

Those cast by history,

those cast before their time.

In the silence between footsteps

we hear their echoes.

In the stillness,

we feel their breath of absence.

We came to say “never again.”

But again has come.

And still-

we are here.

We carry the lost.

The stolen.

The silenced.

The ones who never came home.

The ones still finding their way back.

We carry them like broken glass in our chests,

shards of names pressed against our hearts.

We carry them

in this prayer,

in this march,

in our neshama- our soul-

that will not dim.

Regardless of smoke,

we’ll light our candles.

Not because the world is kind,

but because we refuse to let it make us cruel.

Not because we were given space,

but because we carve it-

out of sorrow,

out of song,

out of the light we share with each other.

They can try to fray our thread-

to unravel our joy,

erase our memory,

unmake our people.

But we are sewn together

by a strength that outlives empire,

outlasts exile,

outshines fear.

“Esh tamid tisharef al hamizbeah”

A perpetual flame shall burn upon the altar.

It shall not go out.

That flame is ours.

Lit in hidden corners.

Lit in cracked voices and trembling hands.

Lit on Shabbat tables across the world-

no matter the weather outside.

This is not just remembrance.

This is resistance.

This is emunah- faith with teeth.

This is our power. This is our people.

We do not gather in fear.

We gather in defiance of it.

We dance at simchas

with the same feet

that walked through fire.

We pray with voices

that were once forced into silence.

We do this not in spite of our history,

but because of it.

They try to reduce us to ash.

So we answer with our flame.

The same flame they failed to put out.

The same light.

The same people.

We hold each other in the dark and we whisper:

More light.

More love.

More of us.

Because our fire still burns.

Because we still burn.

Unbroken. Unafraid. Unextinguished.