My Sister is So Silly

Lilith contributing editor Rachel Kranson, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh who is researching American Jewish life in the 1950s: “I’ve been looking through issues of Women’s League Outlook, the magazine for Conservative congregations’ sisterhoods. In a 1953 issue, I came across this little gem of a poem by Sadie Rose Weilerstein, author of the beloved Kton Ton books.

My Sister Is So Silly

My sister is so silly —
Of course, she’s only three —
  She wants to wear a yarmolke
And tsitsis just like me.
     “But girls don’t wear a yarmolke,”
I tell her ‘cause its true.
     She simply puts one on her head
And says, “I do.”

From The Singing Way by Sadie Rose Weilerstein (1946).