BRIDGES: Miriam, as you've never read her

This Passover, give yourself, your friends and
family, a gift:
Miriam, as you've never read her.

Excerpts from Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal
(Spring 2007) Volume 12 Number 1:

My grandmother watched fire
explode her house in a shtetle

and like Miriam One followed smoke
west to a dream.

Someone else's grandmother follows
this Monarch butterfly. I name her
Miriam Three as she and her children
walk the stones of the Rio Grande,
the sands of the Chihuahan Desert

while people who stuff butterflies into jars
wait for them.
Helen Papell
from "Miriam Three" p. 49

*******************

while he was on the mountain receiving God's ear
I was on the ground sweating in my toe-length
robe,
the stretch of burlap & the back of my neck wet
under the badly tied hair.

while he put aside his sandals to walk on sacred
ground
I walked in mine through manure to pen the cows.
smelling
like a horse. soothing thousands of anxious
wanderers
who left their slave-homes to come where? here?

he was so far away at the head of the column. he
never
seemed to notice we were getting older.
dying. I cleaned each
body. shaved their heads. clipped their
nails. shrouded
them in sheets. & covered them gently in sand.
Kazim Ali
"from the Book of Miriam
the Prophetess" p. 35

*************************************

Miriam, I'd like to call on you
to heal these wells, this common water, this
community.
May I invite you to the next meeting
along with the EPA people the engineers the
local officials?
This is Friday morning.
Tonight all rivers connect, and belong to you.
Dare I ask for a miracle,
a blessing,
some good advice?
Enid Dame
from "My Relationship with
Water" p. 43

********************************

"In the old days," she says,
"I danced at the defeat of those
who tried to keep us in chains.
Now I weep, even though
they want us dead.

"We manage to survive.
But we are all mingled
in the salt water
that once served
only to divide."
Karen Alkalay-Gut
from "Miriam" p. 41


This 148-page issue of Bridges is organized into
six interlocking sections: Miriam's Birth, Miriam
and Baby Moses, Miriam and the Exodus, Miriam in
the Desert, Miriam Confronts Moses, and Mourning
Miriam.
The issue includes Hebrew and Yiddish
translations, a short story and three reviews that
do not mention Miriam at all, yet relate to themes
raised in the Miriam work. The subjects of reviews
include books by Adrienne Rich (The School Among
the Ruins) and Bettina Aptheker (Intimate
Politics)-and Marla Brettschneider's The Family
Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish
Lives.

To order today go to:
http://www.iupjournals.org/bridges
or call 800-842-6796

Contributors to Bridges 121.1, Spring 2007
Kazim Ali, Karen Alkalay-Gut, Rebecca T. Alpert,
Sarah Antine, Miriam Axel-Lute, Cathleen Cohen,
Melissa Cooper, Enid Dame, Julie R. Enszer,
Rachael Freed, Pesha Joyce Gertler, Debbie
Goldman, Jill Hammer, Anne Kleiman, Diana Miriam
Jacobs Komisar, Blume Lempel, Julia Wolf Mazow,
Haviva Ner-David, Helen Papell, Yosefa Raz, Lia
Lynn Rosen, Joy Ellen Rosenberg, Yiskah Rosenfeld,
Shelley Savren, Mary Harwell Sayler, Nita
Schechet, Joanne Seltzer, Ruth Knafo Setton,
Steven Sher, Susan Sindall, Pete Wolf Smith, Gail
White, Lisa Yanover

Clare Kinberg, Managing Editor
Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal
4860 Washtenaw Ave #I-165
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Clare@bridgesjournal.org
www.bridgesjournal.org
iupjournals.org/bridges