Morning Mug: Blessed Is The Match

The poem, “Ashre Hagafrur” (“Blessed is the Match”), engraved into the stone marker nearest to the foreground, is the last poem Hannah Szenes (pronounced “Senesh”) wrote before she parachuted into a Yugoslavian partisan camp in an effort to rescue Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz:

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Photo by Boris Shekhman