A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
rabbis at night
Jerusalem, Israel
let’s go to rabbinical school, you say in the dark, together, we are dancing toward
Purim, your hair wrapped in a scarf, my face painted blue, we dance beneath the disco,
beneath bubbles and balloons, the boys leap around the apartment and try to pop them,
we tsk tsk and say boys, we’ve been told we’ll find our husbands here, we’ve been told
we’ll never amount to anything Jewish, too female, too feminist, too Reform, too queer,
but i believe you, in that moment between songs, though everything aches, though
everyone has drunk too much, though I cannot tell the difference between Mordechai
and Haman, though I can no longer boo at megillah readings, we are not crushed
beneath the heaviness of law, we are not our disappointments, you let your hair down, i
open my mouth to sing, we are enough, we are holy, we’re lifting off the floor now, we’re
flying in the dark,
Kayla Schneider-Smith
Originally from New Jersey, Kayla received her MFA from the University of San Francisco, where she worked as the first Jewish Resident Minister on campus and taught Intro to Creative Writing. Her poems and articles have appeared in The Jewish Writing Project, Invisible City, and Friends Journal. Kayla is currently studying at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, through an Arts & Culture Fellowship in Writing.
