Dedications to Bashert*
By Irena Klepfisz

These words are dedicated to those who died

These words are dedicated to those who died
because they had no love and felt alone in the world
because they were afraid to be alone and tried to stick it out
because they could not ask
because they were shunned
because they were sick and their bodies could not
resist the disease
because they played it safe
because they had no connections
because they had no faith
because they felt they did not belong and wanted to die

These words are dedicated to those who died
because they were loners and liked it
because they acquired friends and drew others to them
because they took risks
because they were stubborn and refused to give up
because they asked for too much

These words are dedicated to those who died
because a card was lost and a number was skipped
because a bed was denied
because a place was filled and no other place was left

These words are dedicated to those who died
because someone did not follow through
because someone overlooked and forgot
because someone left everything to God
because someone was late
because someone did not arrive at all
because someone told them to wait and they just
couldn’t any longer

These words are dedicated to those who died
because death is a punishment
because death is a reward
because death is the final rest
because death is eternal rage

These words are dedicated to those who died

Bashert

These words are dedicated to those who survived

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because their second grade teacher gave them books
because they did not draw attention to themselves and got lost
in the shuffle
because they knew someone who knew someone else
who could help
them and bumped them into a corner on a Thursday afternoon
because they played it safe
because they were lucky

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because they knew how to cut corners
because they drew attention to themselves and always got picked
because they took risks
because they had no principles and were hard

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because they refused to give up and defied statistics
because they had faith and trusted in God
because they expected the worst and were always prepared
because they were angry
because they could ask
because they mooched off others and saved their strength
because they endured humiliation
because they turned the other cheek
because they looked the other way

These words are dedicated to those who survived
because life is a wilderness and they were savage
because life is an awakening and they were alert
because life is a flowering and they blossomed|
because life is a struggle and they struggled
because life is a gift and they were free to accept it

These words are dedicated to those who survived

Bashert

*"bashert":  (Yiddish), inevitable,  (pre)destined. 

Watch Gabi von Seltmann’s short film collage, Dedications to Bashert, featuring Irena Klepfisz reading the work below:

Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) is a leading poet, feminist, lesbian activist, writer, editor, translator, and a pioneer in the rediscovery of Yiddish women writers. Her most recent collection, Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems 1971-2021 (2022) was published by Wesleyan University Press. She was born in the Warsaw Ghetto, and survived the war hidden in a Catholic orphanage and then, once her mother came to get her, passing as Aryan in the Polish countryside. Her father was a Bundist who was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. She immigrated to Sweden in 1946 and to the United States in 1949, where she grew up in a closely-knit, Yiddish-speaking Bundist Holocaust survivor community in the Bronx, New York.

Klepfisz received a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and did postdoctoral studies in Yiddish at YIVO's Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies. She also became active in the feminist and lesbian movements. She began to incorporate Yiddish in her English-language poetry, inspired by the bilingual poetry of Gloria Anzaldúa. She taught Jewish women’s writing at Barnard College for several decades, as well as teaching at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, and in Yiddish cultural programs.