{"id":40145,"date":"2022-12-09T02:12:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=40145"},"modified":"2022-12-08T18:21:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T02:21:44","slug":"we-are-inheritors-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/12\/09\/we-are-inheritors-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"We are inheritors of history"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Toronto poet Simon Constam emailed me with a request to read his debut collection of poetry, Brought Down<\/em>, he described it as \u201cnotable because it addresses people\u2019s daily experience of God and the Jewish religious tradition.\u201d He noted, \u201cit is provocative and well-written as can be attested to by the reviews of it thus far.\u201d Indeed, the reviews I\u2019ve read have been highly complimentary \u2013 and justifiably so.<\/p>\n

I am neither religious nor a poetry buff, yet I found Constam\u2019s poems engaging. I liked his challenging and questioning manner. At 70+ years old, he has wisdom gained from life experience that includes approximately a decade in which he followed Orthodox Jewish observance. His knowledge of Judaism infuses his writing and I had to look up a few names and concepts, even though there is a glossary at the end of this 61-page volume.<\/p>\n

What I greatly appreciated about these poems is the theme that runs through most, if not all, of them: the title idea of \u201cbrought down,\u201d as it refers to what we inherit from our ancestors, whether we\u2019re talking about traditions, rituals, genes, coping mechanisms, etc. The lens through which Constam explores these ideas is his Jewishness. In \u201cYerushalmi,\u201d for example, he writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cToday I seem to have the face of a man I briefly stared at, on a bus on Rehov King David in the fall of 1969. \/ I wear the same clothes, dark jacket, dark shirt, rough tan trousers, dust-scuffed brown boots. \/ The mirror shows me, grizzled, unkempt, stocky, stoic, almost seventy. \/ My face is the face my grandfather wore. \/ My parents, aunts, and uncles swore the resemblance is uncanny. My history is clear. \/ I was one of Titus\u2019s captives marched through Rome in chains. I collected all my things in a sack to flee from Ferdinand and Isabella along the Jew-choked roads.\u00a0 I missed my fate in Kielce and Bialystock. I hid in the forests by Kishinev.\u201d It ultimately concludes: \u201cI am the inheritor of a furious history that\u00a0only in this place can I never deny or forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his struggles with God, Constam contemplates what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be human. While this all sounds quite serious, and it is, there is humour in this collection and, ultimately, it is hopeful. As much as he takes God to task, Constam is calling on all of us to question ourselves, and to accept our responsibility for the state of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Toronto poet Simon Constam emailed me with a request to read his debut collection of poetry, Brought Down, he described it as \u201cnotable because it addresses people\u2019s daily experience of God and the Jewish religious tradition.\u201d He noted, \u201cit is provocative and well-written as can be attested to by the reviews of it thus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[4242,218,387,21985],"class_list":["post-40145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-history","tag-judaism","tag-poetry","tag-simon-constam"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}