Rab­bi David Osachy is a health­care chap­lain in Jack­sonville, Flori­da. He descends from Yahudil­er, also called Krym­chaks, the Tur­kic-speak­ing Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion of Crimea and south­ern Ukraine. These small com­mu­ni­ties of tra­di­tion­al arti­sans and pet­ty traders were almost entire­ly anni­hi­lat­ed in the Nazi Holo­caust. The white mosque of the poem was destroyed, and the local Mus­lims expelled, in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry after Rus­sia gained con­trol of the area from the Ottoman Empire.