December 15, 2019To Combat Antisemitism, Write a VillanelleJulia Kolchinsky Dasbach

“When I don’t know what to do with the weight of current events—news sources stating that the new executive order is going to turn Jewishness from religion to nationality and three victims and a police officer are dead at a targeted shooting inside a Kosher Deli in Jersey—I turn to form. Not because it helps me reign in the chaos and overwhelming emotion, but because within its constrains, I feel it can run more wild. Especially with the villanelle. Every refrain, though seemingly the same, shifts and reframes meaning and music. It feels like one of the only ways to write about the present moment, which keeps feeling like a ghostly specter of history repeating itself, slightly changed and recontextualized. After reading the news Wednesday, all I could do was think about the past I come from and write, repeat myself and keep on writing. I use the term ‘Zhid,’ which is a derogatory, anti-Semitic slur in the Russian language, similar to the word ‘kike.’ It comes from the word for Jew in many Slavic languages like Ukrainian. These aspects of my identity—immigrant, refugee, Jew—I know I have been very privileged to choose when to disclose, unlike most members of my family whose accents give them away. To enforce any one of aspect of identity as what defines us—something this administration has been doing since its onset—is devastating, hurtful, and dangerous. People are continuously getting hurt. And hate is only growing on all sides. So we keep on writing. This poem echoes back to Langston Hughes’ ‘Let America Be America Again’ and hopes, always hopes, we can create a space of love, ‘And make America again!’”