Reverential mirth

Tonight at sundown, Jews around the world will mark the first of seven days of Pesach, celebrating the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Families and friends will gather around tables, eat foods free from any leaven and repeat questions and answers that have been said for millennia.

So our poem for National Poetry Month today is by Israel Zangwill, born in London in 1864 of Latvian and Polish immigrants. Zangwill was active in the Zionist movement, although he was not wedded to the notion of Palestine as the only destination for Jews fleeing pogroms in Europe. He was actually instrumental in bringing 10,000 Jews to Texas around the turn of the Twentieth Century.

In addition to poetry, Zangwill wrote plays, including one called The Melting Pot, about the promise of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt was a big fan of this one.

Our poem is “Seder Night”, and it is as true today as it was in every year since Moses led the Children across the Red Sea.

“Seder Night”

Prosaic miles of streets stretch all round,
    Astir with restless, hurried life and spanned
By arches that with thund’rous trains resound,
    And throbbing wires that galvanize the land;
    Gin-palaces in tawdry splendor stand;
The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;
    The last burlesque is playing in the Strand—
In modern prose all poetry seems drowned.
Yet in ten thousand homes this April night
    An ancient People celebrates its birth
    To Freedom, with a reverential mirth,
With customs quaint and many a hoary rite,
Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright,
    Its God shall be the God of all the earth.