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B”H
Tishrei
5786/October 2025
Dear fellow-poets, friends of poetry,
With thanks for being privileged to reach
This time, with all it holds, we celebrate
The posting of this year’s edition of
The Deronda Review, as usual in two formats –
.html for easier online reading
And .pdf, from which a duplex printer
Can make you a facsimile of the issue.
The print edition, too, is now in press
And we will send one copy to each author
Who’ll send us, in an email, his or her
Address; more author copies may be ordered
at $5 each ($7 for other readers).
This time we’re
honored --
Among so many excellences, that speak
Of life and spirit and the will to live --
With Azriel’s heroic crown, which lets us
Hear the melody of immortal song
Above the rushing tides of human danger,
And Daniela Botha’s mental journey
With those drawn down into the underworld
Constructed by the foes of humankind:
To speak of such things in words that acknowledge
What’s done, yet shelter dignity and hope,
Is no small service to humanity.
We hope it may be read as a prayer for healing
Of those returned, and of all those who loved
Those who did not.
You will not find, herein nor on our website
A document that someone sent to me
Who had been charged with laying out the slain
After October 7th. I had to tell her,
Begging forgiveness, that I could not read it
For fear of being haunted all my nights;
I know someone who felt she had to watch
Those videos they made to celebrate
Their crimes, and it didn’t do her any good.
-- And after all that, the media, academe,
Even the arts, and not few churches likewise,
Despite their own being slaughtered not by us,
Have been exerting their imaginations
(at those same cutthroats’ prompting and dictation)
In tales of horror wreaked by us precisely,
Though none of all their fictions even touches
What actually they did and hope to do
Again to us.
Likewise our muse has as yet no report
On the truce that brings our dear ones back, at so
Immense a ransom; still unknown as yet
Is whether there will follow any truce
In the campaign to smirch our name and silence
Our voices even in the realm of Art.
It’s been enough
To make us ask what use a magazine
Founded with the dream of being a bridge
Between whatever might be left alive
Of Western Lit. (which for this editor
Was once the closest thing to a religion
She could profess) and this beleaguered splendor
Which holds on in Jerusalem, and with which
(“I balanced all, brought all to mind”) she chose
To cast her lot, thus taking one step further
Than George Eliot, who sent her final hero
Back to this land.
It seems one bridge-end’s down,
Save for the “happy few,” from some of whom
We have heard, and publish here with double thanks.
We will be grateful, too, to those who share
Our links, commend us to the networks, order
Copies to give to friends, perhaps to those
To whom our cause has not yet been reported
Aright…
Well, we’re still speaking. We are still alive
And plan to be (our next theme will be “Birth”).
And when the world has seen it cannot kill us
Perhaps it will consider listening.
Again, thanks to all out there who sent us poems.
May this year bring you good, and to the world
Courage and sanity.
In faith and hope
Esther Cameron, founding editor.
Will
While the writing on the wall
Didn't help at that time
It continues to be visible
Continuously scrolling
For those who choose to see
Whatever is left
Upon that wall
For those who choose to act
Upon those ancient
Determinations
That this one Land
Belongs to only one nation
Birth
Mindy Aber Barad, Co-editor
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