Simchas Torah 1871
Chicago, October 8, 1871 around 9pm
They were dancing circles, facing inward, a hundred smiling faces,
a women’s dance, a roundabout of drunken tongue singing,
covered hair braided under floral kerchiefs,
the scarlet of their skirts like fire swirling the room.
Over the gendered rope line, the men in black
carried Torah scrolls against their chests and shoulders.
The men became the feet of the scrolls, the Torahs moving them
around the room, a spiritual elation, spreading light and song
as boys in suspenders and leather shoes clasped hands and elbows
meandering under and through the arms of bearded men.
The boys reached upward toward the velvet Torah dressings,
touched their fingers to the cloth, then kissed their fingers.
Again and again they kissed and shouted during the hakafot
until someone yelled, Smoke! The line of fire was wooden beamed,
homeless bound, death suspended, Run to the lake!
The Torahs became infants in the arms of wild men
running a familiar race to save themselves. They reached
the lake, saw fire around ankles. They danced
out of their shoes, their feet raw and burning.
They stared down displacement, the shame of a boy
leaving the hayloft with his pockets full of gambling,
conspiring about a cow, a kick, a lantern and flame.
The O’leary boy hid his face in ash, as men rolled
the scrolls back to the beginning, the first day of creation.
JAMIE WENDT is the author of the poetry collection Laughing in Yiddish (Broadstone Books, 2025), which was a finalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. Her first book, Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), won the 2019 National Federation of Press Women Book Award in Poetry. Her poems and essays have been published in various literary journals, including Catamaran, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, Consequence, Atlanta Review, the Forward, After Hours, and others. She contributes book reviews to the Jewish Book Council and is a Poetry Reader for The Good Life Review. She lives in Chicago.
