Model of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem
BRCA Anomaly
Even earlier than you’d imagine,
long before the conflagration spread
from embers of the judería in Seville
to auto da fé and expulsion.
No, back even further—before
the Diaspora brought the children
of Judah and Benjamin to Granada--
in the years when Herod’s Temple
stood on the Mount in Jerusalem,
not yet burned by Vespasian’s legions,
and the Court of the Women
thrummed with music and dance,
the mutation occurred.
You might call it a copying error--
no more than a typo—as a germ cell
divided, the random change of one
gene on the 17th chromosome of an egg
or sperm that helped form a Hebrew child.
A small deadly allele that makes breast
cells less able to repair DNA damage,
the genetics counselor explained, passed
down to descendants for centuries--
even to daughters of New Mexico’s
high mountain villages, baptized
and confirmed, whose first
sign of this ancient heritage is only
a nodule the size of a rosary bead.
Even earlier than you’d imagine,
long before the conflagration spread
from embers of the judería in Seville
to auto da fé and expulsion.
No, back even further—before
the Diaspora brought the children
of Judah and Benjamin to Granada--
in the years when Herod’s Temple
stood on the Mount in Jerusalem,
not yet burned by Vespasian’s legions,
and the Court of the Women
thrummed with music and dance,
the mutation occurred.
You might call it a copying error--
no more than a typo—as a germ cell
divided, the random change of one
gene on the 17th chromosome of an egg
or sperm that helped form a Hebrew child.
A small deadly allele that makes breast
cells less able to repair DNA damage,
the genetics counselor explained, passed
down to descendants for centuries--
even to daughters of New Mexico’s
high mountain villages, baptized
and confirmed, whose first
sign of this ancient heritage is only
a nodule the size of a rosary bead.