Eleanor Wilners On Ethnic Definitions :: On Ethnic Definitions Essays

On Ethnic Definitions is superstar of the shortest poems in Eleanor Wilners anthology Reversing the Spell, but it is arguably one of the more or less powerful. In Definitions, Wilner addresses issues of Jewish identity. As the title implies, she defines the Jewish spate in ten lines. The nature of her definition is not immediately obvious, however. At first, readers unfamiliar with Jewish devotion may believe that Wilners definition is a bleak one that centers around death. It does at first appear that Wilner is adage that the very definition of the Jewish people is their death and burial, their destruction. However, after a brief explanation of the Jewish theology behind the poem, readers will charm that Wilners definition of the Jewish people is by no means a sad one, but rather a definition that includes hope and a future. Wilner begins by establishing the poems setting with the first two lines the small Jewish ghetto in Prague during World War II. Readers must, of course, be familiar with some Holocaust tarradiddle to realize what Wilner is constitution about. Then Wilner describes the path that the dead were buried stand up for lack of room, calling it the underground / train to Sheol... (5-6). In old-fashioned Jewish theology, Sheol represented the underworld, or the afterlife. It was a place to which everyone went, no case how one had lived ones life. Continuing with the train imagery, Wilner writes that the Holocaust was a rush moment of ghosts (7). But all hope is not lost one day, the last-place train will arrive and the final / trump will sound (8-9). In the said(prenominal) line, Wilner lets readers who are familiar with Jewish theology in on what she is writing about. When she writes that the Saved dead will rise she is alluding to the coming of the Messiah, for Jewish theology asserts that the dead will be resurrected at that time (9). Then, in the most important line of the poem, Wilner states when the Messiah comes the dead who w ere buried standing up can at last lie down (10). In these a couple of(prenominal) lines, Wilner has gone through the entire Jewish life cycle in the early 20th century. Jews live in small, cramped ghettos they die at the hands of Aryan oppressors they are buried in a way unbefitting their religious traditions and they go to Sheol. The first five lines of the poem counsel on the death and burial of the Jews of Prague.