Introducing an insightful article that delves into the profound impact of four thought-provoking poems, each reflecting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. These poignant literary works serve as a powerful medium for exploring the complexities and emotions surrounding this longstanding issue. From evocative imagery to deeply personal narratives, these poems offer a unique perspective, inviting readers to engage in a meaningful exploration of this challenging topic.
Your Village
by Elana Bell
Elana Bell is a Brooklyn-based poet, educator, and facilitator of sacred rituals. She is the author two books of poetry: Mother Country (BOA Editions in 2020) and Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012). The following poem is from Eyes, Stones, a collection that was inspired by interviews conducted in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and America. Listen to Elana Bell perform the poem here.
Once in a village that is burning because a village is always somewhere burning And if you do not look because it is not your village it is still your village In that village is a hollow child You drown when he looks at you with his black, black eyes And if you do not cry because he is not your child he is still your child All the animals that could run away have run away The trapped ones make an orchestra of their hunger The houses are ruin Nothing grows in the garden The grandfather’s grave is there A small stone under the shade of a charred oak Who will brush off the dead leaves Who will call his name for morning prayer Where will they — the ones who slept in this house and ate from this dirt — ?
If you enjoy this article, visit our blog at The Ritual for related poetry.
The Diameter of The Bomb
by Yehuda Amichai
Yehuda Amichai is recognized as one of Israel’s finest poets. His poems, written in Hebrew have been translated into 40 languages including English, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Catalan.
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young woman who was buried in the city she came from, at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably, and the solitary man mourning her death at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle. And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans that reaches up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.
Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother was an American of German and Swiss descent. She spent her teen years in Jerusalem and San Antonio Texas. She has received many honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Robert Creeley Prize, among others. Listen to Nye read this poem here.
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
If you enjoy this article, visit our blog at The Ritual for related poetry.
No Pain Like Our Pain
by Rabbi Tamara Cohen
Rabbi Tamara Cohen is the VP and Chief of Program Strategy at Moving Traditions. More of her liturgical poetry can be found in Siddur Lev Shalem and on ritualwell.org. In this prayer she speaks of God as “the Divine Exiled and Crying One,” images that come from rabbinic tradition about the Shechinah, which are particularly apt for this last week of the period of the Omer, known as the week of Malchut/Shechinah.
“Look carefully and see if there could possibly be pain like my pain, like the one bestowed by You upon me.” – Lamentations 1:12 Dear God, help us look, look closer so that we may see our children in their children, their children in our own. Help us look so that we may see You – in the bleary eyes of each orphan, each grieving childless mother, each masked and camouflaged fighter for his people’s dignity. Dear God, Divine Exiled and Crying One, Loosen our claim to our own uniqueness. Soften this hold on our exclusive right – to pain, to compassion, to justice. May your children, all of us unique and in Your image, come to know the quiet truths of shared pain, shared hope, shared land, shared humanity, shared risk, shared courage, shared peace. In Sh’Allah. Ken Yehi Ratzon. May it be Your will. And may it be ours.
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