iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

It’s time again for what seems like another bi-monthly translator’s day, and while I am not a translator, here is a poem originally published in Tsukunft in 1915 under a different title.

Night and Rain

Night and rain. All the beasts
Sleep in their cages,
Only the quick squirrel
Leaps from branch to branch.

All the benches and huts empty,
All the paths — wet;
The homeless from the street
Come to find hiding places.

One sits on a bench
And rain pours from his face,
His hands — only just
Raked through the garbage.

His dead eyes look off somewhere,
As if through bars,
And a piece of bread falls
From his breast to the grass….

Night and sorrow. A drizzle falls
From the trees
And with a violent start from sleep
The lion leaps…

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 12h

Last call of the day was basically someone older who needed a trip-sitter while making a payment online. I am cool with that. Past closing time? Sure. A challenge? Absolutely not, just the way I like it.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 16h

It gives me serious agita that I can’t (and don’t) link the most accessible article about Leivick and Der Volf because it is there. I‘ll tell you it‘s there, but I’m going to judge you like hell if you look.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23h

sometimes someone twigs my accent isn’t right and I wind up confessing where I’m from. So they ask me about America. Because of where I work, I have to be rather circumspect and just say that it’s changed. As of tomorrow, I have lived here half my life.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Because even a stopped clock can be a doorstop, I guess, I have apparently come in handy for knowing something. I don’t hardly expect be taken seriously after this, but it does prove I’m good for at least one other thing than knowing what the Klezmatics do for day jobs.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Wow. Get the job he decided I should get, don’t complain if he disappears all day to play Tomb Raider, don’t mention my reservations about things or upsets, but forget tomorrow is a weird local holiday and he’s got off and ask if the British flag needs to be folded like a US one and I’m a bitch. Ok.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’d say the biggest issue for my kid growing up in a Jewish/Presbyterian interfaith household is that one of us will talk about sex and the other is perfectly happy to let her believe in parthenogenesis. No prizes for guessing.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Melekh Ravitch wrecking me today for a change.

Farewell Chava, my childhood pain,
First love and love’s terror,
You left not only me
But our people too.

May life, this strange one, be good to you,
Perhaps what happened had to,
May your sons only see the mother in your face
And never the Jew…

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’ve always operated roughly on the premise that until all of us are free, none of us are free. But I see people who have gotten their freedom treat those who haven’t as second class. And they’ve forgotten that while they might be able to monetise that identity for themselves, its tenuous at best.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I always get the wild mushroom soup on the off chance it will kill me and I won’t have to do this shit anymore

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So the book I finally got my grubby little hands on was Israel Efros’s account of visiting the DP camps in Germany, and which has this page that first appear in the scanned version

A red and black pages saying ‘remember 6000000’ in Yiddish and Hebrew

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Oh my goodness, to this is my first Yiddish book that still has its dust jacket and there is a tipped-in page that isn’t in the YBC scan and my goodness, it’s silly but I‘ve wanted my own copy for a while now.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My musty book came! My musty book that I had given up all hope of ever seeing came I‘ve already roughly Englished it, have never received any kind of response asking about rights, but it‘s here and I’m thrilled and I’m waiting until everyone else goes to bed to open it so I can be alone with it.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Leivick frequently puts what would otherwise be annihilating grief and trauma into another self or, perhaps, a self-shaped box, but he sometimes meets these other selves, so I lean toward the idea of doppelgängers with their own agency, their own agendas, and, like that, is able to carry on.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I would have posted the essay from Leivick about his own childhood (and adult) concept of Yom Kippur and judgement, but instead here’s David Opatoshu writing about Yom Kippur from New Guinea, where he was stationed.

Yes, Yom Kippur approaches. My third Yom Kippur in the Army, and every year I’ve written you a Yom Kippur letter. The first year from Camp Dix, the second year from the Oregon desert, and this year from New Guinea. For me, it’s a mightily important holiday. I am stunned by what a great ethic we Jews possess. Firmly-fixed days when people must bare themselves, examine themselves, must see the ugliness they carry within themselves. And I, as a young Jewish man of the twentieth century, can adopt this in my fashion. Fit the holiday to myself. Thinking in this self-reflective frame of mind, the imagination soars:

‘…He lies in a pit. A pit he dug with his own hands. With tooth and nail, sweat and saliva, he cut, tore clumps of heavy jungle dirt. Hands and elbows, knees and back, dug into the sopping jungle dirt. With stomach cramps and burning lungs, he curled up and remained lying in his foxhole. He closed his eyes.

‘When was it? How long ago? An hour? A minute? Or the day before? There is no today, no yesterday and no tomorrow. This moment, nothing more, now he lies in the pit. The cold steel muzzle of his rifle rests on the edge of the pit. And his eyes struggle over the rifle. Eyes — opened wide, with a forceful jerk, want to pierce, cut through the black wall of the jungle night. There, somewhere in the dark of the jungle — not far away — lies the enemy. There, in the bowels of the jungle, behind the gnawed roots of a primeval tree, a pair of eyes strain towards him through hot fog that rises from the wet jungle earth.

‘What’s there? A shadow? It moves. Shoot? And if it is a shadow? Shooting would reveal my hiding place. A rustle! Right? Left? Lie down. Be quiet. Calm. Be cool. Like they taught you. Wait, wait. Hold the rifle tighter; like that, like that. You see? It’s nothing, just your imagination. Wipe the cold sweat from your forehead. Loosen your belt. It’ll ease those stomach cramps that won’t let up.

‘How long the night is. There isn’t any end to the days-long darkness, night is full of terror and fear. Night is full of knife-blades and hot lead and stabbing, shooting, tearing, squealing of torn-open mouths when the blood starts to spurt! gushing from pieced flesh. This is the night.

‘He lies in his foxhole in the depths of the jungle frontline of the war. It’s night — the night of Yom Kippur. He sees his grandfather, with flaming red beard, and grandfather, wrapped in his tallis, floats and sways. And he, a little boy, stands nearby and watches, rapt. And the grandfather takes his grandson and wraps him in his tallis, as well. The boy stands swaddled in the darkness, holding fast to his grandfather’s tallis. And a scent comes from the tallis, like of yellowed pages in an old prayer book. And the boy is well now, warm. Now he is protected by the tears of generations.

‘Huh? Did you fall asleep? What’s wrong with you? Do you want to kiss your life goodbye? Sleeping? Now? Keep you eyes open. Feel how hard the rifle it. Go on, count the stars. One, two, three, four. A sky full of stars. As though the sky has been ploughed and sown thickly with star-seeds. And the stars wink, sparkle, flicker — not stars, but the burning candles by the holy ark. And high above it — broad palm leaves start to sway and whisper. Not palm leaves — it’s grandfather’s tallis that whispers, cooly stroking his cheek. Grandfather strikes himself, writhing in anguish, gives an accounting of his soul. And him? Him, too. He ought to give an accounting of himself, as well. Who? Him? An accounting? Why? For whom? Not him. No Jew must give an accounting today. Past generations have given reckoning enough of their own sins. The reckoning of a thousand centuries stands read for the world to see. Numbers which were multiplied countless times in tears, in blood, in the flames of pyres. The world must now give an accounting. To him — the Jew — there must be given a reckoning,

and the accounting laid at his feet. He’d washed his soul clean when he took rifle in hand. He’s settled his own accounts when he went into battle to fight against the murder of millions, to fight for a free world. And now the world must give him an accounting. He — Jew, soldier, man of the word — is too big in its eyes. In his own ranks, in the body of the soldier who lay not far from him, who must now be his brother, was rooted a deep hatred for him. Four enumerated freedoms, heralded across the world. A dream, a hope, a certainty when victory came. They now fought for those four freedoms, life or death, and in his own ranks, the words were merely paper, although the rifle that he koshered with the blood of murderers and the fight for freedom, also made his own ranks kosher. He has given his reply to the world. Now the world needs to answer to him. Strike yourself in the breast with a fist, world, tremble in the hours of Yom Kippur, and give and accounting! Give an accounting!

‘He grabs the rifle. A shadow slips, snaking quietly across the jungle. Aiming slowly, calmly and coolly, aiming right at the middle of the shadowy form. Slowly squeezing the trigger, harder and harder and…the crack of a bullet, a spurt from the muzzle, a burst of powder and flame. Night again, Silent in the jungle. Crickets chirping, palms whispering. He lies in his foxhole and waits for an answer. Waits for an accounting…’

This, my dearest, is how I imagine Yom Kippur of 1944. Whether on an island in the Pacific, on French soil, or in a foxhole in Poland or Romania, Jewish soldiers lie and fight, falling in the battle for freedom. Will victory also bring them freedom? Will blood wash away peoples’ hatred of Jews? Will tomorrow be ours as well? So many doubts, so much sorrow

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Big is happy plonked on the couch with me watching Yellow Submarine, which is honestly one of my favourite films ever. Are the voices bad? Yes. Is the plot incoherent? You bet. I still adore it and I am enjoying watching my kiddo liking it, too

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Want to see ‘Elsinore’ so badly- I have known about that particular production of Hamlet for some time. And Andrew Scott! I ugly cried through ‘All of us strangers’ on a plane when feeling like the loneliest person in the world.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Up to my eyeballs in not one, but two Belarusian shochets from a hundred years ago.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Playing this week — slightly due to the current fixation on ‘autofiction’ in some circles, partly a culmination of a look at Leivick’s reaction to Dostoevsky (and Chekhov. But we throw away the whole Knut Hamsun, of course) blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/in-tsarist...

blumalangerobertson.substack.com

In Tsarist Katorga

Leivick in The House of the Dead or Leivick and Dostoevsky, Part Three

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Oh, what television show isn’t improved by your partner rooting around in a bag of potato chips after you’ve told them a million times you can’t hear anything when they do that. Apparently because it has subs, I’m not supposed to care.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

If only I could know everything about everyone in Ihumen in 1890, I would be a marginally less unhappy chappy.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I’m so excited, a friend has stuff on Chaim the Shochet in Ihumen over a hundred years ago and I am so there for it.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I had lost all hope about the musty Yiddish book I bought, but it seems like it might actually be on its way from the Midwest now.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Pick a thing, learn everything. I would love if I could just learn the correct protocol for everything at work. Instead it’s sometimes like ‘lick your finger, if the wind is easterly and it’s an alternate Monday...we’ve changed the guidance’

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I am about to out myself at work by bringing in rugelach. So we’ll see how that goes.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Hoping this is the year I get hit by a bus because I don’t want to do this anymore.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

One of my favourite articles by Leivick basically has ‘rich people’s stuff never gets thrown into the street and broken because they never even have to think about not having a home’ and ‘poor people deserve pleasure too‘ as a central thesis. I think these are good new year thoughts.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

We do an online pub quiz thing at work and my colleagues were unwilling to believe that the picture of the absolutely massive Liberty Bell shown in one of the photos wasn’t the real thing. Despite one of us being from Philly and other other from 20 minutes drive away and both of us having seen it.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I revive this every year for Rosh Hashana because this is one of my ways of looking at Leivick’s work, which is so concerned with time — by taking a cross-section of time. blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/on-rosh-ha...

blumalangerobertson.substack.com

On Rosh Hashanah It Is Inscribed

A tale of three (and a bit) Yomim Tovim

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Today I live at the corner of Death and Taxes. אוי וויי

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Sure he’s got the phd in the house, but he is defeated by the cable/broadband box. I wouldn’t know anything about this either, it turns out

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Government Soup Report: Say it once, say it twice… 7.5/10

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Decided to see how Till Eulenspiegel worked on the kids tonight

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I don’t ’as a Jew’ a lot, but as a proud British Jew myself — born one and happily self-made the other — this is the bind in which we find ourselves Too Jewish to eat the bacon roll. Too not-Jewish to keep kosher. Leaving aside whether we actually would eat the bacon roll today and why or why not

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Schrödinger’s Yiddish again today. FFS.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

So things might have gone off the rails while Dad is away and the kids were freaked out by weird noises and we started with the Time Warp and now the eldest has seen Dr Frank N. Furter. Verdict: ‘I LOVE HIM’

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I mean, of course I have an idea what’s going on here, but you’re not actually asking because you want to hear it. I understand enough about the way people behave to know that. I’m not *that* bad at peopling.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The worst thing for me about this chapter is that there are poems in it that I don’t know where they were ever printed . They weren’t collected in books. Are they all Tsukunft? Are the from the Philly Di Yiddishe velt? Does anyone know? Who to even ask?

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

What this is is a love poem for people with serious anxiety. Which means it is the best kind. (Oh, and Golem is still only on the drawing board, so I can ignore it. Hurrah!)

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is actually the criticism Ive been waiting for — about the love poems

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Absolutely brilliant stuff in this early evaluation of a poet I happen to admire about gaining a physical disgust for the words ‘spring,’ ‘flowers’ and ‘sunbeams’ in poetry. It so happens that I agree.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Ah, my Batman picture never posted.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Day’s been livened up by someone DMing me their private ‘celestial’ plan for peace in Gaza. Ok. Marginally better than ‘do my research for free.’ But still a hard pass.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Having one of those weeks where people forget or don’t realise I’m an immigrant or don’t ‘count’ me for some reason and say really awful things.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I am amazed that my family is baffled I don’t want to hear them yell and screech after eight hours of listening to other people yell and screech.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Basically, if you are Jospeh Opatoshu, H Leivick is going to write you a really, really enthusiastic birthday card and then publish it. Potentially in a foreign newspaper. Me, I’m trying to figure out how to escape the threatened ‘celebration’ of my birthday at work.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Watched my younger colleagues get cynical today. I’m so proud. They grow up so fast.

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Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Stuck in traffic in the middle of a set for Batman

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