Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© August 12, 2015

Hey, I’m not shy

Just brown-eyed

Racine is a suburb of Detroit

Wall-to-wall used car lots

Ya got some kinda problem, Bud?

Transmission shops

Emission shops

Muffler shops

Brake shops

Body shops

Tire shops

Junk cars

Town’s only

Four miles by six miles

Barely enough room for people

But if a car is broken

Ford to Porsche

All of those people

Can probably fix it

(Read on …)

© July 11, 2015

Ain’t nobody like me, up here

Or just barely

I’m a Mediterranean oasis

Wherever I go

A hot-house flower among

All the dour Teutonic people

***

Young girl cashiers

Mostly blonde

See my silver Star of David

Dangling from my neck

Glinting in the harsh lights of

Small Wisconsin stores

“Ooooooh, how pretty!”

Some of them exclaim

When first noticing it

Bright against my olive skin

“What is it?” 

Some ask me

(Read on …)

© March 20, 2015

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

Haym Salomon (April 7, 1740 – January 6, 1785) was a Polish-born Jewish American businessman and political financial broker who immigrated to New York from Poland during the period of the American Revolution. He helped convert the French loans into ready cash by selling bills of exchange for Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance. In this way he aided the Continental Army and was possibly the prime financier of the American side during the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain. He died at the age of 44 after the end of the war, penniless. He did more than help finance the war against the British. He gave everything he had.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© May 1, 2011

Introduction to: A Rabbi Can’t Mend A Broken Heart

This new poem was inspired by, and written expressly for Rabbi Debra Nesselson.

Watching her blossom over the last year from being a relatively quiet figure heard from the bimah only occasionally, to becoming the voice and face of B’nai Torah Congregation to the world, has fascinated me. She is her own fairy-tale.

Today, Friday June 10, 2011 Debra Nesselson becomes a Rabbi for the rest of her life.

Her choosing to leave behind a career as a lawyer after spending seven years to become that, to spending another eight years transforming herself into a Rabbi so she could understand the law in a far more fundamental way, means Debra has spent fifteen years to get to where she is today.

More than a quarter of her entire life.

How many people would ever consider doing such a thing? Very few. Maybe we didn’t know what we had in our new Rabbi before today, but we certainly do now.

Here’s my poem to celebrate her new role in this important Jewish institution. If anyone deserves a poem to contemplate their lives, it’s Debra Nesselson. 

(First Note (2011):Because of convoluted and mysterious Temple politics, Rabbi Nesselson left our temple two months later. Not all things make sense, but what I wrote about rabbis remains what I believe. I still respect and care about Debra Nesselson.

(Second Note (2014): After a continuing tumultuous period of Temple politics over philosophy, and a merry-go-round of different rabbis, the sixty-year-old temple closed almost exactly three years after I first posted this poem. A tragedy.  This note was amended on September 24th, 2014, just before the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, 5775.  I remain friends with and infinitely respect Rabbi Nesselson.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  (Read on …)

I race to work
Knowing
No one’s there
I don’t want to miss
Another chance
To be missed

Although
This may seem
Illogical
Contemplation of emptiness
During unending time
Has rearranged my
Reality

(Read on …)

© January 12, 2014

Some words have a mystery to them. Although “Thank you” is most likely offered as a term of appreciation in every country of the world,sometimes as one word, each country has its own way of expressing that meaning. Not so for “cool”.  Cool is cool, everywhere.

 All over the world, every kind of person seems to understand what “cool” means and how to use it. I am guessing that it originally traveled wherever jazz musicians played in Europe, Africa or Asia, because if ever two words were eternally joined, “cool jazz” would seem to be first on a list of them.

(Read on …)