Zackary Sholem Berger's Blog, page 5
March 21, 2019
Purim poetry 2019
Happy Purim 2019 from Zack, Celeste, Blanca, Micah, and Eleanor!
אַ פֿריילעכן פּורים פֿון שלום, סעלעסט, ביילקע, מיכל און אסתּרל!
איחולי פורים שמח משלום, סלסט, ביילע, מיכל ואסתרל
“There’s a point to both sides.
Let’s meet in the middle,” I said.
The Dialogue of the Triangle!
More civility, less anger.
Yes, a hamentash is filling —
But hanging the Agagite brings healing.
די פּורים־מעשׂה איז פֿון אַמאָל,
אוודאי נישט פֿון הײַנט.
ס׳איז מענער מיט כּוח, פֿרױען מיט קול
און ייִדן־פֿײַנט.
בעסער נישט צו דיאַלאָגירן
מיט המן־הרשע.
זאָלן די שׂונאים קראַפּירן?
נו, נישקשה!
הנה בימי אחשוורוש
היה צורר היהודים.
גם היום יש כזה
הן בחוץ, הן בפנים.
עלינו לחקור
את כוונות חבר ואויב.
יש דברי הבאי
ודברים בלב.
December 31, 2018
Available for pre-order: All the Holes Line Up, my new book of poetry and translations!
All The Holes Line Up is my first book of poetry entirely in English (well, there is one poem in Yiddish — I couldn’t help myself). The volume includes verse on topics as diverse as cities, God, death, and brothels.
The center of the collection is devoted to poems accompanied and inspired by the photographs of Jeremy Kargon. Kargon, a graphic designer and architect, is an artist with the camera as well, and captured images of a number of houses of worship — mosques, churches, and synagogues — which motivate my meditations on the intersections of the divine and the profane. “The Sanctity of Others” is the title of this middle section (which happens to be displayed, as well, at the Morgan State University chapel).
Another section of the book includes my own translations from Hebrew, Yiddish, and Chinese.
All the Holes Line Up is available for preorder from the publisher, Ben Yehuda Press (part of its Jewish Poetry Project series) or on Amazon.
Publication date: January 21!
The ten best things I wrote in the past year
In 2018, I had the good fortune to publish a number of shorter pieces in various places on topics in Judaism, bioethics, translation, and other areas. Here are my favorites from the year. 
1. I wrote a piece connecting the terrorist acts in Louisville and Pittsburgh, arguing that intersectionality elides important differences in identity of targeted groups.
2. I aired my internal conflicts about my 8th-grader’s trip to Israel.
3. Together with Len Rubenstein and Matt DeCamp, I wrote in BMJ about how the CIA perverted clinicians’ normal processes of care in the context of torture, even outside the act of torture itself.
4. I wrote a review in The Lehrhaus of a guide to practical medical halachah (Jewish law).
5. I translated a poem by Avrom Sutzkever for the Flatbush Review about the self-consuming altar set up in your brain. Yes, your brain! (BRAINS)
6. More translation of Sutzkever: one of his weird/poetic short stories in the Yiddish Book Center’s journal Pakn Treger. “Now to the substance of your letter, Munke. You’re about to die, and you want me to forgive you.”
7. Of course, I’m grateful to publish regular research reviews in the BMJ. Here’s the latest of them.
8. Can prior authorization ever coexist with patient-centered care? Leah Rand and I examined this bioethics question in the journal The Patient.
9. What does the classic code of Jewish law, in its understanding of what one can do on the Sabbath for a sick person, tell us about its medical cosmology? I wrote a piece about this in the journal Studies in Judaism, Humanities and Social Sciences.
10. I promised I’d limit this to 10. I published a lot in the Yiddish Forward past year (really a great publication!). My favorite recent piece was about a nascent group to promote health in the Charedi community.
Take a look at all or some of these, and let me know what you think in the comments or your other favorite forum!
November 26, 2018
Louisville and Pittsburgh: Terrorism, Identity, and Response
Two tragedies on American soil have shocked us in recent weeks. We should act on behalf of their memories in different ways, in our roles as Jews and Americans.
Read more on Medium.
October 11, 2018
Influence and Anxiety: Confessions of a Jewish Poet (talk of mine at Johns Hopkins, 10/19 at noon)
People in the Baltimore/DC area interested in poetry, translation, Jewish languages, or all three, you are invited to a talk of mine in Gilman 308 on the Hopkins campus, October 19th at noon where I am discussing — all those things, in the context of Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and the fruitful crises of the minor poet.
Through the good graces of Prof Neta Stahl and the Jewish Studies program at Hopkins.
August 1, 2018
Clinicians for Progressive Care endorses Drew Pate, MD, for Maryland Assembly 41st District (NW Baltimore)
Clinicians for Progressive Care is pleased to endorse Drew Pate, MD, the progressive choice for Maryland Assembly 41st District (Northwest Baltimore). During twenty five years of practice as a physician, Dr. Pate has achieved a thorough and compassionate understanding of what makes our healthcare system unfair and unsustainable: a failure to meet people’s needs where they are, fairly and affordably. His campaign focuses on what the people of Baltimore need, and does not pit one group against another with insinuations of violence or dehumanization.
Dr. Pate is double board-certified physician in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. He completed medical school at LSU School of Medicine (elected to the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha society) and completed residency at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore and at Harvard Medical School/Children’s Hospital in Baltimore.
In addition to his prestigious academic training and clinical expertise, Dr. Pate has something which many candidates (and too many of our establishment political figures) do not understand: the knowledge that community based health care is a necessary way forward to provide healthcare to the neediest and most vulnerable in a way which meets their needs. As a grassroots candidate with the Green Party, Dr. Pate can work with neighborhoods to make change, without being beholden to the status quo.
We need universal care, community health as an intersectional effort to treat the effects of racism, understanding for those suffering from substance use disorder, and the expertise to bring those proposals to fruition. C4PC believes Dr. Pate is the candidate to make those happen.
May 31, 2018
“Doctor, I Need My Rabbi”: How can Halakhah be Practical in Medical Ethics?
Thanks to the editors at The Lehrhaus for giving me the chance to review Rabbi Jason Weiner’s guide. They definitely improved my writing!
Would like to hear thoughts from anyone who cares about medicine and ethics.
“Rabbi Jason Weiner, a rabbi and bioethicist who serves as a synagogue rabbi, a posek, and as a consultant on a hospital ethics committee, has done a service to the halakhically observant Jewish community by writing a clear, modern, and compassionate book about dilemmas which patients, physicians, caregivers, and hospitals are likely to face. Approaching this book with my own particular biases, as an internist, bioethicist, and non-Orthodox but halakhically observant Jew, I would like to summarize its strengths and point out some areas where it might be made even stronger.”
My daughter is on a trip to Israel with her eighth-grade class, and I’m conflicted
“As I write these words, my 14-year-old daughter is in Israel with her eighth-grade day school class. I don’t know what to think about the trip. Are such trips a good idea for American Jews? Is it something I should welcome for my daughter? How much laundry will she bring back?”
I wrote a piece for the Forward about what a different approach to the Israel trip might look like.
Read more: https://forward.com/scribe/402107/my-daughters-eighth-grade-class-is-in-israel-and-im-conflicted/
April 30, 2018
Gun Control – Mandated by Health, Supported By Jewish sources
There are reasons in the Jewish tradition to support the practical steps that must be taken to reduce gun violence (background checks, purchase restrictions, limitation on magazine sizes and a ban on military-style weapons). Liberal democracy supports state interventions to preserve the public’s health, of course. 
While democracy is a foreign import from the point of view of Jewish rabbinic texts, even before Jews eagerly accepted democracy in its many flavors, the Rabbis of the Talmud found many opportunities to discuss the responsibility of the individual to society.
Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/396551/gun-control-mandated-by-health-supported-by-jewish-sources/
