On the first day, I connected with all the Jews I could find and made sure they'd be at the Twelve Tribes Reading, which is among, if not my favorite of the Nationals events. In the slam world, we are so scattered - one or two per city (even in New York!*), and fewer still that actually perform poems about being Jewish. In the early days of the 12 Tribes mic, Paulie would have to track down people with Jewish-sounding names and convince them to perform. Their protest? "But I don't have any Jewish poems!"
*[edit: Okay, maybe New York has a few more.]
I hear it at least once every year, from someone I try to convince to join the reading. And it brings me back to that round table in a stuffy college classroom, where we debated for weeks: what makes Jewish literature? Is it subject, author, lens? Is it anything? If a book is antisemitic, do we include it in a course on Jewish literature? Why or why not?
In the end, Paulie made a rule: if you're Jewish, you can read whatever you want. If you're not Jewish, you have to read a poem with significant Jewish content. This year, a Gentile poet* read a poem about losing her best friend to an Orthodox marriage. She didn't blame the Jews, or Judaism; she blamed his interpretation. It was a stunningly well-delivered piece, that could have been awful, but was instead thought-provoking, questioning, respectful and punchy.
*[edit: initially, in my haste to publish this essay, I said "One of the Gentiles..." and someone respectfully pointed out that I was doing what I said not to do in my essay a few months ago.]
Many poems about Israel this year, including mine. I read the piece I posted a few entries back, to many accolades. Most of us aren't that nuanced in our poems yet; there's a lot of screaming about "stop the fighting." Maya puts up* her piece about contemporary antisemitism. Paulie does "Field of Flames", but his hair has grown back this year. There wasn't an election that made him want to shave it. His parents are in the audience. So are my grandparents.
*[edit: initially I said "Maya drops her piece" which I meant like dropping a record, but forgot that in slam, "to drop" means "to forget." Maya did not forget her piece, she actually rocked it.]
My grandmother asks me afterward, why do we all write about the Nazis and not acknowledge the other horrors, namely the Inquisition. It is the biggest scar I inherited from her, the knowledge of expulsion. She always makes a point of saying that our family was among the high courts of Spain, part of the elite class, and still we had to leave. Being wealthy does not save us. Being intelligent does not save us. Nothing saves our lives more than being portable and invisible, but nothing kills our spirits faster than fleeing under the shroud of invisibility.
I want to tell her that the aftereffects of the Holocaust are what we write about, not so much the event itself. There are no websites dedicated to the re-emergence of the Inquisition, but the list of neo-Nazi groups grows as we sleep, as we embrace this generation of assimilation, and she knows this.
I am reminded of Dr. Justin Cammy, the Jewish history professor who said,
"The greatest periods of annihilation in Jewish history always followed the greatest periods of assimilation."
His thesis - it's really more of a conclusion - sits on my shoulder, next to the cultural memories of exile and hiding.
As the open mic comes to a close, the poets linger for just a few minutes in the stairwell, in the hallway. I see a number of Gentile poets, and I assume they've come to support their Jewish teammates, but then realize that not very many of those teams have Jews. One comes my way, and I ask him what he thought.
"It was great," he says. "I don't ever hear Jewish voices, no matter where I travel. They're pretty absent from slam as a whole. That's why this mic is so important."
Like a museum, I think. Like memory. Something to be preserved so the future generations knew we were here. Are we that invisible?
Or just that assimilated?
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