![the Open Siddur Project [logo]](https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Open-Siddur-Project-Logo-2016.svg){kind=logo}
Contributor(s):
Shared on:
Categories:
Tags:
TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.
| Contribute a translation | Source (English) |
|---|---|
A Lamentation for Gaza | |
Gaza weeps alone. Bombs falling without end her cheeks wet with tears. A widow abandoned imprisoned on all sides with none willing to save her. | |
We who once knew oppression have become the oppressors. Those who have been pursued are now the pursuers. We have uprooted families from their homes, we have driven them deep into this desolate place, this narrow strip of exile. | |
All along the roads there is mourning. The teeming marketplaces have been bombed into emptiness. The only sounds we hear are cries of pain sirens blaring drones buzzing bitterness echoing into the black vacuum of homes destroyed and dreams denied. | |
We have become Gaza’s master leveling neighborhoods with the mere touch of a button for her transgression of resistance. Her children are born into captivity they know us only as occupiers enemies to be feared and hated. | |
We have lost all that once was precious to us. This fatal attachment to our own might has become our downfall. This idolatrous veneration of the land has sent us wandering into a wilderness of our own making. | |
We have robbed Gaza of her deepest dignity plunged her into sorrow and darkness. Her people crowd into refugee camps held captive by fences and buffer zones gunboats, mortar rounds and Apache missles. | |
We sing of Jerusalem, to “a free people in their own land” but our song has become a mockery. How can we sing a song of freedom imprisoned inside behind walls we have built with our own fear and dread? | |
Here we sit clinging to our illusions of comfort and security while we unleash hell on earth on the other side of the border. We sit on hillsides and cheer as our explosions light up the sky while far below, whole neighborhoods are reduced to rubble. | |
For these things I weep: for the toxic fear we have unleashed from the dark place of our hearts for the endless grief we are inflicting on the people of Gaza. |
“A Lamentation for Gaza” was first published by the author on his blog on 1 August 2014.
“A Lamentation for Gaza on Tishah b’Av, by Rabbi Brant Rosen (2014)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
Comments, Corrections, and Queries