Yom Kippur 1984 is a poem by the Jewish-American poet
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "th ...
. One of Rich's key poems, it was reprinted in her 1986 collection ''Your Native Land, Your Life''.
About
The poem opens with two contradictory statements; a verse from the
Torah
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
, Leviticus 23:29; and a line from the poem ''Prelude'' by
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962) was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers's poetry was written in narrative and epic form. However, he is also known for his short ...
. The poem goes on to explores questions of identity, difference, and solitude, particularly from the lens of oppressed groups such as women, gender nonconforming people, lesbians/gays, Jewish people, and Black people. The central focus of the poem is the tension between the desire for independence and individuality and the longing for community and belonging. The poem is named for Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, during which observant Jews engage in fasting, repentance, and self-examination.
Rich has stated that the poem took her a year to finish, during which time she was reading Robinson Jeffers,
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
,
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...
, a city where she felt a lack of connection to Jewish ties. In "The Genesis of Yom Kippur 1984", the poem's 1987 companion essay, Rich outlined the key events during the 1980s that served as the impetus for the poem. The "young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening walk" referenced in the poem is
Edmund Perry
Edmund Perry, a Harlem resident, was shot to death by Lee Van Houten, a 24-year-old plainclothes policeman, on June 12, 1985 when he was 17 years old. The case briefly generated a firestorm of protest in New York City when it was revealed that Per ...
, a 17 year old Black teenager from Harlem who was shot to death in 1985 by a NYPD officer shortly after enrolling as a student at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. The line "faggot kicked into the icy river" is a reference to the 1984 killing of Charlie Howard, a young gay man from
Bangor, Maine
Bangor ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat of Penobscot County. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's 3rd-largest settlement, behind Portland (68,408) and Lewiston (37,121).
Modern Bangor ...
who was thrown into the
Kenduskeag Stream
Kenduskeag Stream is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 22, 2011 stream in the U.S. state of Maine. It is a tributary of the Penobscot River. The stream rises at ...
. The poem also references a series of murders of women in the
Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States. They form a ridge down the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco. They separate the Pacific Ocean from ...
committed in the 1970s by the serial killers
John Linley Frazier
John Linley Frazier (January 26, 1946 – August 13, 2009), also known as The Killer Prophet, was an American mass murderer who killed five people in Santa Cruz County, California, the first of three men who would go on killing sprees in Santa Cr ...
,
Edmund Kemper
Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer who murdered a total of 10 people, including a 15-year-old girl, as well as his own mother and her best friend, from May 1972 to April 1973, following his parole for m ...
, and
Herbert Mullin
Herbert William Mullin (April 18, 1947 – August 18, 2022) was an American serial killer who killed 13 people in California in the early 1970s. He confessed to the killings, which he claimed prevented earthquakes. In 1973, after a trial to det ...
.
See also
*
Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics is the ethics of the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. A type of normative ethics, Jewish ethics may involve issues in Jewish law as well as non-legal issues, and may involve the convergence of Judaism and the Western philosoph ...
*
Jewish feminism
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branch ...
*
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur (; he, יוֹם כִּפּוּר, , , ) is the holiest day in Judaism and Samaritanism. It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei, the first month of the Hebrew calendar. Primarily centered on atonement and repentance, the day's ...
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Rut ...