Of Loss and Longing for Someone I’ve Never Met: A Message for Alon Ohel

Jessica Ursell is a veteran JAG officer of the United States Air Force, poet, and public speaker against antisemitism and bigotry. The granddaughter of survivors of the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, and a descendant of a Taíno great-grandma, she understands in her bones what happens when intolerance, indifference, and ignorance take root in society. Jessica lives with her husband in Southern Italy where she writes about the complex interplay between trauma, power, love, loss, and madness. Recently published works include Jessica's poem, Mariupol Madonna: an Elegy for the Mothers of Ukraine, selected by the European literary forum Versopolis for Poetry Expo 2025. Her poem, Ricotta Cheese English, and her poem, Slumber, were published by Mediterranean Poetry; and I Can Walk Through Walls of Words, in Academy of the Heart and Mind. Jessica's other essays and poems include: At the Country Club with Superman; Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House; What My Zayda Taught Me About Tikkun Olam; and The Scream of a Post-October 7th Jew (The Jewish Writing Project); Sedimented Rock; and Climbing Vesuvius in Stilettos (Writing in a Woman’s Voice); Reverberations of October 7th: Musings of an American Jew on the Fourth of July; Say Their Names; and The Uneasy Supplicant (Iron Words: Israel War Stories). Jessica's poem, A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects, appears in Down in the Dirt magazine as well as in the book, The Limits of Language, and the book Where Icarus Went. Her latest poem, La Serenissima: on the way to Dorsoduro, will be released by Academy of the Heart and Mind in November 2025. Multiple military audiences, most recently the United States Navy, Sixth Fleet, have heard Jessica speak about the importance of never being a bystander to evil which she believes is the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust.   AM Y'ISRAEL CHAI