New Yiddish Poetry from the Israel-Gaza War

No

No their death will not revive the dead.
No their hunger is not our bread.
More tears from them just make more tears.
Blood is red. Is red.

The beheaded child. The floating skull... ^{1 1} Literally “the skull on the water,” a reference to the story of Hillel from Pirkei Avot: “He as well saw a skull floating on the surface of the water and he said to it: Because you drowned others they drowned you; and those that drowned you will in the end be drowned” (Trans.).
The child under rubble. Lived hardly at all.
Snuffed breath of Jew and Gentile will not blow
Anyone’s grief away. No.

I sit and write. One letter. At a time.
Despair is nothing. Live? Maybe. Or die... ^{2 2} This line, written in Hebrew, reads literally “Despair is nothing. Shall I live? Shall I die?” and is a reference to Psalms 118:17 (Trans.).
No their destruction has not built one shred.
Dead is dead.

The Destruction of Gaza ^{3 3} The word ‘khurbn’ in the Yiddish title literally means ‘destruction’, but is stronger than the English word. It is used most often to refer to the destruction of the First and Second Temple, the total annihilation of a town, such as in the pogroms in Ukraine in 1918-1920, or the Holocaust.

My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west -- Yehuda HaLevi

In the midst of horror
comes a moment
when I feel an urge
to pull myself from the community.

Just then a voice inside me speaks:
How can you deny your origin
when the tears on your boy’s cheek
remind you of the Destruction
of the Temple?

When the Destruction of Gaza begins
I find myself in Guernica.
Not metaphorically,
not figuratively,
but actually there
as a tourist,
a new father with his son and his mother,
in an old caravan, ^{4 4} “Caravan”—the British English term for a mobile home (Trans.).
a mobile home more grounded
than all the countries in the world
at this moment.

On the telephone
my father reminds me
of Abba Kovner’s line:
“A Guernica on every hill.“

He wrote it
in nineteen hundred forty-nine
in response to the first Nakba.

We drive on farther
to the uttermost West –
Finisterra –
“the end of the earth.“

In the caravan, shut tight,
I talk to the Eastern Wall
saying:
Shma Yisroel, in Your name
and in mine, they are doing this.

Sevenfold (A Lamentation)

Steel and iron, cold and hard and dumb
Forge your heart, oh man – and come!
Ch. N Bialik, “In the City of Slaughter”

Tear your eyes away from the grey news stream
Sit on the floor and weep, and moan, and keen
At the sheer horror, obscene.
For there, where once a flower bloomed in the field,
A girl’s body lies, forlorn
And where an infant clapped its hands in glee
Blood-spattered dolls strewn between the ruined walls
Wail without a sound, without a voice
And wait for someone to hear them…
Forge your pain, your heart, forever
To that fence, that watchtower
That should have protected them
From the slaughter.
You - swear your ancient oath, be now their voice:
Sevenfold.

A Dark Dawn

Angry winds blow
and clouds blacken the sky.
Prayers are still of no avail
and children still die.
“These names are shared with permission” they go on saying,
showing those beautiful faces.
And still, everywhere, weeping,
and no one can help.
And what’s the exit strategy? The agenda?
Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
One hundred and seventeen days have passed
And there’s no end in sight. No end.

Alarms. All around, abandoned, annihilated.
Beginning: Bearing, beweeping, burying.
Catastrophe. Crying, calling: communications completely closed.
Dismal: Dead? Despair. Definitely – dead?!
Egregious (Enfeebled Eretz!)
Failure.
Guilty. Godforbid. Grieving guests.
Homes
Incinerated, immolated – Israeli
Jews
Killed, kibbutzim
Lost. Liquidated. Left? Let live!
May, must, mettle and morale, my medina, my mutiny (my enemies mania)
Not nose around – narrate! Not nothing; necessary. Nettling, needed –
Ongoing obligation of October.
Personal, powerful, painful
Questioning countenance. Cross,
Red rider. Rescuer.
Shhhh. Shalom – simchat
Torah. Tarbut. Tell.
Unfinished
Valedictory.
We will
Expect, yearn, see.
All. Around. After.

If I must die

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale