The Feast Of Freedom
I REMEMBER in my childhood
From my grandfather I heard
Charming tales of gone-by ages
That my soul so deeply stirred.
Mr Raskin has yet the unique distinction of expressing himself in English almost as trippingly as in Yiddish. It is only in 1910 that this "alien immigrant" published in his adopted town of Leeds - where he seems to have become a Member of the Royal Sanitary Institute (!) - a Yiddish collection entitled Ghetto-Lieder, with a preface by "Schalom Aleichem," the Yiddish Mark Twain. And now he has already mastered English sufficiently to write in the language - if not of Shakespeare - of Longfellow."
References
I REMEMBER in my childhood
From my grandfather I heard
Charming tales of gone-by ages
That my soul so deeply stirred.
I KINDLED my eight little candles,
My Chanukah-candles--and lo!
Fair visions and dreams half-forgotten
To me came of years long ago.
Israel, my people,
God's greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told