The Gallery: Poetry
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THEN AND NOW, Beth Ellyn Summer
A note from the artist: This 18-word story was inspired by our resiliency despite history's never-ending repetition.
About the artist: Beth Ellyn Summer fell in love with writing fiction as a way to process the real world. Most of her work contains humor, which she learned in spades interning for Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon. When she’s not writing, she’s working out, watching Wheel of Fortune, or playing with her cat, Penny Belle. Sometimes all at once. Because multi-tasking is the new self-care. She’s currently working on her first adult rom com, but her debut YA novel, At First Blush, is available on Amazon.
TEXT FROM A STAIRWELL, Chana Pollack
A note from the artist: In her nineties, my mother, may she live and be well, has stood in her Jerusalem apartment stairwell frequently of late, during air raid sirens. This poem was inspired by my being moved by her wellsprings of strength and good humor inspiring generations to come and transmitted, I feel, from generations prior. This poem was birthed by her text letting me know she was alright, she was standing in the stairwell.......
About the artist: Chana Pollack lives in Upstate NY, in Sullivan County where they are a Yiddish translator, poet and archivist.
A SESTINA OF GRIEF AND LEGACY, Cindy Kaplan
A note from the artist: This piece is dedicated to my grandfather and to my daughter, who carries his name. I used the sestina format to emphasize the cyclical nature of life, family, and intergenerationality.
About the artist: Cindy Kaplan is a writer, essayist, and advocate. Her credits include web series, sketches, and shorts for Disney Jr., Yahoo! Screen, VEVO, DEFY Media, and BimBam and articles for Free-From Magazine, The Jewish Journal, Jewess.com, and JewintheCity.com. Cindy is passionate about interfaith work and conflict resolution, and has directed and produced multiple short documentaries for NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, including TWO FAITHS ONE PRAYER, which garnered global media coverage and earned the organization's Changemaker Award. She is the Director of the JITC Hollywood Bureau, a narrative change organization devoted to advancing authentic representation of Jews in film and TV. She is also the co-founder of Hollywood Resumes, a career services business dedicated to entertainment industry professionals, where she's led workshops for studios, streamers, and professional organizations including Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, HRTS, PGA, and CMA. She graduated from Brandeis University with a BA in American Studies, Creative Writing, and Journalism. She writes the Substack Chocolate-Covered Lox about life with dozens of rare food allergies, what it means to be a Jew in the 2020s, and how to rethink and shift our culture[s] (pop, American, office, organizational, social) to be more inclusive and empathetic.
MARA, Talya Jankovits
A note from the artist: The naming of a Jewish child is considered divine. The name of my third daughter, Mara, came to me in a most serendipitous manner. The powerful connection and revelation of this name was undeniable. It surprised me that the reaction to her name was one of critical concern, that I chose to name my daughter after "bitterness". Bestowing a Jewish name to a Jewish child is one of the core elements in upkeeping Jewish identity and I wrote this poem to celebrate and elevate the beautiful power that lies inside my daughter's name. The repetition and separation of the word "why" adds layered meaning, the oft asked question to G-d in response to bitterness, why?
About the artist: Talya Jankovits is an award-winning writer of poetry, essays, and fiction. Her poetry collection, girl woman wife mother (Kelsay Books, 2024), received First Place in Contemporary Poetry in the 2024 Bookfest Awards. Her novel, The Very Unremarkable Life of Mrs. Etty Bloom (Running Wild Press), is forthcoming in June 2026. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters.
L’DOR VADOR, Darcy Grabenstein
A note from the artist: I wrote this based on a prompt from a Voices Israel online workshop.
About the artist: A marketing writer by profession, Darcy turns to poetry as a creative outlet. Her poetry has been published on Ritualwell.com, in two of Poetry Super Highway's annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) issues, in two holiday supplements of the Academy for Jewish Religion, and two anthologies published by Moonstone Arts Center. She participated in the Poets and Scholars Writing Retreat 2022, sponsored by Rutgers’ Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Her writing has appeared in Momentmag.com, The Times of Israel, and in two Chicken Soup for the Soul books, among others.
IMAGINING ABRAHAM, Susan Comnios
A note from the artist: In my poetry, my beloved grandfather, Zalman Rom, a refugee from both the May Laws and pogroms of Russia, often shows up as my father (or a father figure). A quiet, honorable man, he rarely spoke about himself, leaving us with little information about his life before he arrived in America. “Imagining Abraham” blurs the line between my grandfather and our ur-father, Abram. It also relies on an incantatory refrain to try to imagine what my family never knew about Zalman. Still, wherever there is love for a paternal figure in my poems, it is for him.
About the artist: Susan Comninos is a widely published writer and author of a recent book of poems, "Out of Nowhere" (SFA Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her individual poems have appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. The title poem from her book-in-progress, "Wild Joy of Receiving,” appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of The Baltimore Review and is forthcoming this spring in the anthology "The Color Wheel" (Terrapin Books, 2026). Currently, she serves as poetry editor for Judith magazine, an online Jewish literary journal. Since 2017, she’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose and SUNY Albany, as well as to adults in the community. The recipient of many Poets & Writers grants, she also won the 2010 Poem-in-Your-Pocket competition run by Tablet magazine. She lives in upstate New York.
THE DARK TIMES, Daniel Schindler
A note from the artist: My family lived through the Holocaust and I wanted to inspire people and remind people about what the Jews had to go through at that time but also what we are still going through today.
About the artist: Daniel Schindler is a fifth grader from NJ who is currently starting his studies towards his bar mitzvah. He is proud of his heritage which includes having a grandparent who survived the Holocaust. His jewish faith is reinforced by his parents and extended family. He believes being jewish is a huge part of who he is.
THIRD MOLARS, Leon Chartarifsky
A note from the artist: Third Molars constructs a poetics of testimony in which language, history, and the body are equally sites of violence. The poem frames war not only as physical devastation but as an administrative and linguistic assault: edicts, seals, files, enact a bureaucratic erasure that attempts to domesticate trauma into clean, manageable forms. Against this machinery, memory becomes subversive — a “crime” the speaker insists on committing. The recurring ember carried through time functions as a counter-archive: fragile, illicit, but enduring. Ultimately, the poem rejects historical linearity and instead dramatizes history’s recursive violence, implying that despite systemic attempts to silence, the conditions for new language, and thus new testimony, still emerge.
About the artist: Helena Barbagelata (1991) is a high-fashion model, multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, writer, researcher, and activist recognized for her work in creative and innovative fields. She holds a PhD in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Athens. Her artistic achievements have been honored by institutions such as the Onassis Foundation, the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, and the Ministry of Culture of Greece. She is affiliated with several international networks, including the Israeli Artist Network, the America–Israel Cultural Foundation, the Society of Jewish Artists (SoJa), the Young Italian Artists Association (GAI), and the Organization for the Democratization of the Visual Arts (OBDK). Her practice spans mixed media, sculpture, painting, video, dance, and sound art, and she has exhibited widely in solo and group shows. She is also the author of poetry, short stories, essays, and plays.
DRIVING TO HARTFORD TO BUY A TURKEY, Elizabeth Edelglass
A note from the artist: I started to have some success publishing short fiction when my characters became Jewish. Now my poetry characters are Jewish, too.
About the artist: Elizabeth Edelglass is a longtime fiction writer and book reviewer turned poet during pandemic isolation. Her short fiction has been widely published, winner of the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, the William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Her newborn poetry has appeared in more than twenty journals, was shortlisted for the Fish Prize, and won third prize in the Voices of Israel Reuben Rose Competition.
FLIGHT, Elizabeth Edelglass
A note from the artist: I started to have some success publishing short fiction when my characters became Jewish. Now my poetry characters are Jewish, too.
About the artist: Elizabeth Edelglass is a longtime fiction writer and book reviewer turned poet during pandemic isolation. Her short fiction has been widely published, winner of the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, the William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Her newborn poetry has appeared in more than twenty journals, was shortlisted for the Fish Prize, and won third prize in the Voices of Israel Reuben Rose Competition.
THE GRANDFATHER FROM BROOKLYN, Elizabeth Edelglass
A note from the artist: I started to have some success publishing short fiction when my characters became Jewish. Now my poetry characters are Jewish, too.
About the artist: Elizabeth Edelglass is a longtime fiction writer and book reviewer turned poet during pandemic isolation. Her short fiction has been widely published, winner of the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, the William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Her newborn poetry has appeared in more than twenty journals, was shortlisted for the Fish Prize, and won third prize in the Voices of Israel Reuben Rose Competition.
UNTITLED, Rachel Postma
About the artist: Rachel is from Holland, but could have been American (as a big part of her family moved there after 1945).
NAMESAKES, Danielle Selber
A note from the artist: A prose poem which acknowledges a name's resonance throughout generations and asks whether our given names shape us or we shape them.
About the artist: Danielle Selber is a Jewish matchmaker, American-Israeli dual citizen, and lifelong Philadelphian. She is the founder of the matchmaking program at Tribe 12, a first-of-its-kind initiative blending millennia of Jewish matchmaking traditions with modern dating realities and radically inclusive practices, and is a national leader in Jewish LGBTQ+ matchmaking. Her core belief is that “everything is matchmaking” - that building community, easing loneliness, and helping people find what they seek all serve the same meaningful purpose. In her free time she writes poetry, volunteers as a docent at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, and spends time with her three kids.
GENERATIONS OF WOMEN AT THANKSGIVING, Melanie Layoff Levs
A note from the artist: My poem, "Generations of Women at Thanksgiving," was inspired by this photo of me, my mom, my grandmother (of blessed memory) and my daughter. This is the only photo I have of the four of us. My grandmother passed away the following summer. I treasure this photo along with my rich memories of her.
About the artist: Melanie Lasoff Levs is a writer, editor, bookworm, rabid musical theater fan and enthusiastic volunteer who lives in Atlanta with her husband and their three children.
SUSAN MIC, Susan Michele Coronel
A note from the artist: This poem reflects my Yiddish journey—its frustrations and my desire to connect with my ancestors through language.
About the artist: Susan Michele Coronel lives in Ridgewood, Queens. Her debut collection, In the Needle, A Woman (Finishing Line Press, 2025), won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize. Three poems from the book were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in journals including The Jewish Poetry Project, The Mackinaw, Minyan, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate, One Art, Pedestal, Spillway 29, and SWWIM. In 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award. In 2021, she received a Parent Poet Fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. She holds an M.S.Ed. in Applied Linguistics from Queens College and a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from Indiana University Bloomington. She was selected to study at the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture in 2023 and 2026. She is currently working on a one-woman play about her Jewish identity and her desire to connect it to the next generation.
