Shemà

Here is Primo Levi’s poem „Shemà,“ which is included in the poet Joan Murray’s useful new anthology Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times. The poem is based on the principal Jewish prayer, „Hear, [Shema] O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!“ (Deuteronomy, 6:4-9). Levi returned from Auschwitz to his native Italy after the war, vowing never to forget the horror he had witnessed. The prayer, which he had learned as a 12-year-old boy studying for his bar mitzvah, echoed in his memory, like a clarion call. He borrowed its solemn liturgical cadence and style for the poem he wrote on Jan. 10, 1946, which he then used as the epigraph to his first book, If This Is a Man (1947). It is addressed to everyone who lives in safety, and it carries a message that has been brought back from the kingdom of death. / The Washington Post , 24.3.02