A year of horror

Tonight I attended a gathering of four Jewish congregations offering prayers for Palestine during a ritual of Teshuvah, or grief and repentance. One of the rabbis sang, 

Source of our Lives, Light in which all is seen: in this light we see our sadness, our regret, our pain for what we have done, or failed to stop from happening.

Another rabbi said, “Jewish tradition teaches that each life is a whole world. And yet the Israeli government has carried out a brutal assault on the lives of Palestinian people and now Lebanese people as well. We gather to help each other bear the sorrow and take action to stop the killing.”

A centerpiece of the ritual was a reading from a book of poems by Mimi German, each poem written in English, translated into Arabic and Hebrew, performed in all three languages. The book is War Poems: Israel-Gaza/The First 100 Days of Carnage (2024).

Many of the poems move me. One ends, in the English version:

no one remembers
the history books have been burned
we have all forgotten
never to forget 

In the photo, made in a very dark room, are left to right: Mimi German, who read her poems in English; Jenna Fliesen, who read them in Arabic; and Ronit Scheyer, who read them in Hebrew. The main photo was made at the end of the reading, as they showed some relief. An extra shows the reading in process.