Aroys Zine

Aroys means “out” in Yiddish. This is a little online (and maybe eventually paper) zine for content about what it means to reclaim, speak, and think in Yiddish. To be, love, and care for our full selves. The prompt for the first “issue” is a very broad and fluid question,“What is your name?”. You don’t need to stay on topic, you may submit in any language you want, and you may ask to be anonymous. Send your art, stories, poetry etc to knoblunhonik@proton.me.
Syl

—————————————-AROYS ISSUE 1 WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

By Moyshke Prentky
Externalized rage is a bait
An emotional tactic to lose control.
I will continue learning chaste and a new diet, not to lust the blinding white.
All praises be to der goylem,
Summoned from where?
ikh veys nit.

Who killed my younger version with a smile, for years
gently strangled the life force out of that joker,
Creating a positive vacuum!
Room to breath new life,
Took me from that universe.
With blessings gave space to stretch, flex, preen and dream,
In another realm.
This emotional, spiritual chemotherapy, astral travel,
Tsadikishe refue shloyme,
Has allowed me to be here.
And here is imperfect at best, but it’s better than there,
And where there is room for improvement,
There is hope.
And for that I say
A hartsikn dank, blaybt hofenung lebedik

By Moyshke Prentky
Landsman aren’t necessarily friends.
The line in blood-line isn’t necessarily a useful shape.
The geometry of galaxy, orbit and gravity outweighs the ray–
Easily deflected, redirected, corrupted
There’s weakness in binary, back and forth, no network, exhaustive track.
Triangles, circles lead to spheres of influence.

There’s evil in this house.
There’s love in foreign lands.
We all have capacities
To bloom and rot,
To corrupt and be corrupted,
To cause misery and bliss.
To grow the heart like a forest,
To wreck the liver as genocide.

Relationships with animals, people, the world, sun and stars are ethical alchemy. Intergenerational spiritual laundering.
100, 1000, 10,000 years
Of forgetting, re learning,
Of remembering, un learning.

By Nan
what is my name?
I am a traveller, a woman of many lands and many names; music is my name, the tunes standing in for pallid nomenclature. The kaleidoscopic whirl of memories of many lands, that is my identity.

A poem from 2012, from somewhere in the Caucasus Mountains.
My life, this silly time of mine,
what a blur of miles.
Bumping potholed roads leading hither,
leading yon
over mountains,
down dry river beds,
past ripe Georgian pomegranates, pears and peaches,
into the depths of human souls.
Miles and years and continents flow past.
Stone churches, mosques synagogues and chortens,
with Turkish saz music
strumming against my pain;
Ragas of delights
Nigunim to transport me
Voices deep and pure.
and melodies from lost worlds.
Crazy man on the marshrutka, bellowing away.
Me? Meshuga mayhap, but silent.
Bristly grey dog like Baloo long gone…
A drunk inviting me home. Why?
Sighnaghi honeysour wine
not sold in the 7/11.
Life not found on the treadmill of ennui.

From Zoë Aqua
This beautiful video is part of an ongoing collaboration between musician Zoë Aqua and animator Gabriela Sibilska. It imaginatively explores the visual language of Transylvanian synagogues, and is a testament to the ongoing belonging of Jews in Transylvania. Zoë’s incredible album “In a Sea of Stars”, a collaboration with Transylvanian folk musicians, was recorded live in historic synagogues in Transylvania. Find it here: https://zoeaqua.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-sea-of-star