Ed. by Helit Yeshurun and Lilach Lachman

"I asked my father permission to depart, he allowed and departed. An Arab sailor in Haifa lifted me up onto the land and it allowed him to depart. The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe and the Holocaust of the Arabs of Palestine are one holocaust of the Jewish people. The two look straight in our eyes. These I will speak".

Avot Yeshurun, 1958

========

Shva Salhoov

Inflamed Nerve

Zion, in the beginning of my letter I'll ask for your wellbeing, how you feel
all is well? And how are your prisoners? Your Palestinians? Your Jews
say, how the children? And how are your abductors, Zion?
Zion, won't you ask
for my wellbeing?
I don't feel
too well.
My right hand forgot its cunning, its nerve inflamed
don't ask

Jerusalem 2011
From Hebrew: Lilach Lachman & Helit Yeshurun

***

Mahmoud Darwish

"The exile is so strong in me that I may bring it back"

One cannot ignore the role the Israeli occupies within my identity. It exists, no matter how I view it, it is a physical and mental fact. The Israelis have transformed the Palestinians and vice versa. The Israelis are not those people who had immigrated to Israel, and the Palestinians are not those they had been before. Inside the one is the other. If the Israeli will let go my identity, will this identity collapse? This is your question, I assume. I refuse to go into this. After all, I am a son to the Arab culture. If I were absent from this historical moment, I would find myself in Marocco or in Yeman. Therefore, one ought to admit that the Israeli of yesterday, not the new one, has got no power to expel me. Since I've got a broad and an enduring I.D, extended from the Atlantic ocean to Yeman; I've got where to go, where to die and where to be reborn.

Aman 1996.
From an interview by Helit Yeshurun, Khadarim 12
From Hebrew: Lilach Lachman and Helit Yeshurun

***

Bacol Serlui

Names

G-d of Ofakim, G-d of Be’eri, G-d of Zikim, G-d of Holit, G-d of Yachini, G-d of Israel,
G-d of Kfar Aza, G-d of Kisufim, G-d of Kerem Shalom, G-d of Magen, G-d of Mefalsim,
G-d of Nachal Oz, G-d of Nirim, G-d of Nir Oz, G-d of Nir Yitzchak, G-d of Nir Am, G-d of Netiv Ha’asarah, G-d of Netivot, G-d of Sderot, G-d of Sufa, G-d of Sa’ad, G-d of Ein Habesor,
G-d of Ein Hashlosha, G-d of Alumim, G-d of Pri Gan, G-d of Re’im,
G-d of the Holy Sabbath, G-d of innocence irretrievable,
G-d of eyes won't be shut, G-d of the dead children,
G-d of the burnt houses, G-d
In affliction and in captivity

What name shall I call out till you hear me
I fear for the flesh, afraid of Man
forlorn and wretched at your no-face.
Tell me the obscure from the lucid as you appear
In wrath, present at the sights of horror.
Myriads of men, atoms of soul
Pain-struck we 've come to entreat you.
In gathering of the names, the faces, the fears
Only the shofar bleating bitter
Ayekha
Where Are you

3 Heshvan 5784, Wednsday October 19, 2023
From Hebrew: Linda Zisquit, Helit Yeshurun, Lilach Lachman

***

Sami Shalom Chetrit

That Debate About Beheadings

And now they’re arguing about extent.
What if they did not behead babies
But only cleaved open the bellies of mothers?
Wasn’t that enough?
And what if they did not behead babies
But only slaughtered brothers with sisters?
Wasn’t that enough?
And what if they only burnt families locked in embrace?
Not enough?
And what if they raped girls, three by three, and then shot them in the head?
And what if they only raped them one by one, and did not shoot?
And what if they only shot, bombed, shattered, crushed, bashed, cried out,
As loud as loud could be, God is Great God is Great?
And what if God is Great but does not hear at all?
Or if He hears but he is not as great as they cry out?
And what if babies were not beheaded with an axe
But rather, slaughtered quietly with a large and sharp knife
To keep from disturbing the serenity of Allahu Akbar?
Enough.

25 November 2023
From Hebrew: Dena Shunra

***

Taha Muhammad Ali

Revenge

At times … I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I’d rest at last,
and if I were ready—
I would take my revenge!
*
But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who’d put
his right hand over
the heart’s place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they’d set—
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.
*
Likewise … I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn’t bear his absence
and whom his gifts would thrill.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbors he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school …
asking about him
and sending him regards.
*
But if he turned
out to be on his own—
cut off like a branch from a tree—
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbors or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I’d add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness—
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I’d be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street—as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

Nazareth, April 15, 2006
From Arabic: Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin

***

Aharon Shabtai

Tikkun

The horror
the dreadful disaster
disgrace
fractions of folly
dumb religion
obscurity of eyes
violent despair
won't repair, no officer
no bomb, no airplane
no more blood
heart-wisdom alone will repair
the physician alone will repair
the surgeon, the good teacher
the instructor alone will repair,
the medic, Arab, Jew, will amend
the calm traveller, the bike-rider
the sandwich carrier
crossing the street.
The one who opens the eyes will amend
The one who speaks in compassion
Will heal, the listener will amend,
The enlighted will amend,
awaiting and pausing will amend,
the guide in paths of generosity, of affection,
will amend, the painter will amend, the poet
will amend, disciples of peace will amend,
the gardeners of peace.

14.10.2023
From Hebrew: Helit Yeshurun & Lilach Lachman

***

Mahmoud Darwish

A River Dying of Thirst

There was a river here
two banks
a heavenly mother
nursing it
with drops from a cloud
a small river flowing mildly
down from the mountain tops
passing through villages, tents
like a gentle, light-footed guest
carrying to the valley
oleander shrubs and palm branches
laughing for the night owls on its banks:
“Drink milk from the clouds
water your horses
and fly to al-Quds and Damascus.”
It would sing for chivalry one time
another time for love
there was a river with two banks
a heavenly mother nursing it
with drops from a cloud
but they abducted its mother
It suffered a water stroke
and died, slowly, of thirst.

2008
From Arabic: Daniel Behar

***

Lilian Bishara-Mansour

War

In war, time
passes slowly
in war, bodies and souls
are kneaded
in twisting minutes
and time doesn’t pass
it dissembles
hours hold us captive
with the ticking of struggle.

Between the time
when streetlights turn on
and the void, the polluting hate
that glows in the dark of events,
skies dissipate,
skies flare up in orange flames.
I used to love orange
it stirred my appetites
you and I, an illusion held by two threads
the thread of leaving the place
the thread of staying under a roof
for diaphanous protection.
Jets roar and moan
news from the captive screens
jump between corpses
sound and image veil eyes and ears
we suffocate in this noise
we run and hide between mattress and blanket
drums are near and far
killing our colors.
And time…ah, time again
passes slowly
should I tell you about hope in times of war?
Or war when it eviscerates time?

October 10, 2023
From Arabic: Daniel Behar

***

Avot Yeshurun

From an Interview

& guilt—just for them? & the Arabs of this land, how much spiritual obligation do we have, how much did this land cost, a high price, to each & every one of us? a people lived here, who were also not guilty for us. but we were also not guilty for ourselves. we came here at the time of the decree of development. a leaf fell. did someone shake the tree? the fall is the fall. it’s from nature. & not to mention the fallen leaves. & not to use a poetic word, fallen leaves. if so, I don’t owe the Arabs anything, but I owe myself. & so we need to know how to interact with the Arab minority. don’t give them Tel Aviv. no. this land is mine. but it’s also the dwellers’. so we must offer them comradeship, not isolation, not exile, not estrangement. we owe this to ourselves. & remember & remember you left mother & father & you departed & you came here, & no one was guilty, & you found people. greet them in peace & live amongst them. because you knew what this cost would be on the future of the Arabs of Israel. for without you, who knows what might’ve been their development. & in this way you have cut off the hope of their future. but you should’ve known how much it would cost. & not to be a pig of the world. this we must remember. how much you paid. at every moment you pay for it. every orange you eat. don’t just make a blessing. remember & don’t forget. this you owe yourself. for you are not a forest pig. you’re a Jewish person. & if you remember you might turn this memory into action. so that your life in this land will not pass in spiritual, psychological & intellectual bareness. so that you won’t be cut down from the roots of yourself.

From an interview with Helit Yeshurun, Khadarim 3, 1982
From Hebrew: Ariel Resnikoff & Rivka Weinstock

***

Amichai Chasson

Pogrom

Will the hunters come for us tonight, again, out to get us
with rifle threats? Will they come quietly, stealthily, until a shot cracks
through crickets’ chirping? Perhaps they will come with trumpet blasts
like lords of the land tyrannizing Creation, bringing their sons
to study war, hoisting our corpses onto broad shoulders,
grinning, triumphant, parading through the streets.
Will they carouse afterwards at soused backyard bonfires? Perhaps
they’ll regale one another with tales of bullets fired and snapping spines.
Will they feast intoxicated on the taste of flesh and will a trail of fresh blood
dribble down their shirt
to their knee
to the floor
to the earth and be absorbed?
Perhaps then they will recall the acrid smell of dying prey,
convulsing in view of a hunter, a rifle and a kind-
eyed child who heard a cry
and saw a corpse and knew: His soul too
will rise to Heaven one day.

From Hebrew: Vivian Eden

***

Yitzhak Laor

He That Loveth Many Days

A sky of milk hangs like a sheet
outside our window, the room is redolent
with the scent of milk from your white skin, the breast,
your mother's, empties into your throat, my hair
slips past your head, my life
wasted. I sit for hours
looking at you like a baby looking at a man,
eye to eye. But what do I know? Granted, the what-is
comes from the what-is-not (the breath arises from the soul) and yet
where is the what-is going? Every morning I get up first thing
come into your room to hear
the bleats of your suckling, draining one by
one the moments of my life
into the fullness of your life (and when you're grown, my son, seek peace
even with those who pursue you

14. 8.1995
From Hebrew: Joshua Cohen

***

Dahlia Ravikovitch

Lullaby

Mama and Grandma
will sing you a song,
your shining white mothers
will sing you a song,
Mama’s shawl brushes
your bed with its wing.
Mama and Grandma
a mournful old tune
will sing in Jabalya’s cordon of gloom.
There they sat, clinging together as one:
Papa wrecked, coughing up
blood from his lung,
his son of fifteen embracing his frame
like a steel hoop girding
his father’s crushed form
-- what little remained.
True loves,
sweet doves,
thus did their captors make mock of them.

Mama and Grandma
will sing you a song
so you, sweet child,
may sleep without harm.
Rachel is weeping aloud for her sons.
A lamentation. A keening of pain.
When thou art grown and become a man,
the grief of Jabalya thou shalt not forget
the torment of Shati thou shalt not forget,
Hawara and Beita,
Jelazoun, Balata,
their cry still rises night after night.

1992
From Hebrew: Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

***

Haviva Pedaya

From: Genesis Here and Now (October 19, 2023)

And the land has been filled with Hamas. After a week that the roads have been crying, that they can no longer bear the corpses strewn all over, their remains partially unidentified, the next juncture is upon us: refugeehood, murder, Noah and Cain.
After that the refugee had escaped from captivity, he came and told Abraham. A refugee is one who has survived, only to pay the highest price. One who arrives in a solitary ark. He is a piece of wood from a wrecked ship. The refugee runs and above, in the sky, an angel flies. It is Michael, also a refugee. When Satan rose against God, was cast out of Heaven and fell, he grabbed Michael and sought to drag him down with him as well. Since then, Michael is the guardian angel of all refugees. The refugee runs, and wings flutter above, making a muted sound, rushing to notify Abraham that his nephew and his family are also among the hostages and kidnapped. Men, women, babies, elderly people and patients requiring daily medical support – and in these very days our brothers and sisters are held captive by Hamas.
Perhaps the refugee is an orphan hiding in the attic. Some suspect, as the fighting subsides, that it is in fact the orphan who is a murderer in a victim’s disguise. And humanity sets out on a journey of murderer and murdered, of land and country, of redemption and revenge, destruction and creation, of peoples and tongues, women and men, mothers and fathers, fathers and sons.
This year, Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah – where the final weekly Torah portion, V’Zot HaBerachah (And this is the blessing) is stitched to the first, Bereshit (Genesis) – the cycle of blessing and creation has failed. It was a black Sabbath.
A refugee is a person torn between past, present and future. A refugee is a person attached to a home that exists only in memory.
The refugees and evacuees are forever such, like the dove flying over dark and stormy waters, finding “no rest for the sole of her foot”.
What did actually happen in the aftermath of the Flood?
Once the waters abated and the land was dry, people emerged from their shelters to discover the scope of the disaster – the ruined houses, the corpses, the mutilations – they discovered that the world of yesterday was no more.
The corruptions consisted of slaughtering, cruelty, abuse, rape, and cannibalism – the flood of hatred and violence wrecked the flesh and destroyed the human race – “The end of all flesh is come before me".
Uprooted, the refugees wander about in Israel. A war has been forced upon us, against a murderous terrorist organization of the likes of ISIS. So, with the beginnings of the Israeli air strikes and warnings to the civil population in Gaza, a convoy of more than a million present-day Palestinian refugees began fleeing to the south of the Gaza Strip.
Each one remains an orphan of a family wholly bereaved. Childless parents, parentless children, a baby burned in the attic, grandmother and granddaughter, a couple who wanted to bestow blessing on the world, another who wanted to sing and protest against injustice, a peace activist, corpses, abductees, absentees, torn to pieces.
What remains are words without syntax, no sense and no sentence, solitary notes, obstructed enunciations, no window opened, no rest for the sole, for the soul. The syntactic chain that binds the words together is broken.
We do not know the conditions in which the captives are held, but clearly, at least some of them have been raped and abused, while others are little children kidnapped after witnessing their parents being murdered. One of the survivors testified that he would rather have heard that his wife was dead than kidnapped. The verse “They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger” comes to mind. How can one prioritize one disaster over another at the heart suffering?
Who was the refugee, thrown in midst of the disaster into the destruction outdoors, who was told, run, there’s no time to take anything, but take your shoes so that you don’t step on corpses?
Israel is suffering a deadly blow. War is not the right word, nor is terrorism. We are dealing with chamas and wreckage, that in the olden days of faith would awaken divine wrath in the scale of the Flood. All boundaries of the known have been trespassed, reaching down to the darkest irrationality of the human psyche.
This day calls for a token of the covenant, a rainbow stretched across distances between nations and historical eras. Europe and America partook in the silence of past horrors, and played a role in turning Jews into victims and objects of trauma. And the danger that lies ahead is that justified criticism against the Jewish settler-colonialism in Israel would be grafted onto the Western tradition of Judeo-Christian antisemitism. Without studying and understanding imperialist global terrorism, there would be no true international resolution of the differences between Palestine on the one hand, and Hamas and ISIS on the other. As Israeli Jews, we are responsible to act morally out of a powerful sovereign position, rather than one of victimization, but the war forced upon us is liable to drag us into the vicious cycle of victimization and revenge.

Beer-Sheva
From Hebrew: Ami Asher

***

Shimon Adaf

Aviva-no

32.
So where is the gate
in Gaza,
in Sderot –
The underworld of former times; the air
still faint
and we go

33.
For years I had this somber velvet
plunged between myself and forces shifting in the dark.

trapped within the synagogue till noon, vein-igniting purity,
then stepping out into the yard, an imposing ficus reigns

in stores of shade, among the foliage,
celestial voices chirp

in the thicket animals pass by, in the gaps
between the shuttered walls, three walls.

At dusk, when Sabbath ended,
my sister would bequeath me books, with fervent soul

I followed, little Sherlock Holmeses
run around with razored minds, slicing

piece by piece. For them, the body’s devastation
is a departure point, a reason to entwine, to meld

the loved one’s endlessness
into one deduction, all those branchings-out

into one event, the smallest of the deeds,
sleep and awakenings, the incense of routine, a gaze

not wholly solved and thus awaits opaque
for resolution, kissed or untouched lips, spells

still singe their rims and the head trembles with bliss. And they were
right: God, death, a machine on space’s border

were placed in ashen skies, the legions
of the stars above also followed with their eyes;

As for me, I did not notice their hum, or the flicker, or the drum
of the light’s horses who hasten as they summon

the messengers, the pile of evidence –
the darkness beaten over Gaza, chiseled

pipes, gunpowder packed,
Tearing down the veil Sderot.

From Hebrew: Yael Segalovitz

***

Marzouq al-Halabi

The 40 Rules of Engagement

If they tell you:
Forget about the past
the arrow once fired never returns,
and the owner of space and time is master,
say softly:
their master owns meaning.
If you enter their language,
take your language with you
and your memory
and a third language that blocks interpretation.
If you enter their time,
negotiate
as if time did not exist
Say: I don’t work for anyone
I’m a gazelle who loves to run free
who loves the melodies of shepherds
and the light of the moon.

If you speak
share all your pain with them
show them every scar in your soul.
Nobody dies from opening their heart.
If they ask you:
Do you hate us?
say: I do not love my enemy
but hate that question.
If they ask you about violence,
say: Did you leave us an inch of land
to plant roses for our women to shower on your soldiers
did you leave us a stream
to provide water equally
or so we might take walks by the estuary
and share our food
like a pair of hikers?
Whenever the scales tip in your favor,
they will remind you that they are the victims.
Believe them
and go along with them
but say with affection: And we are the victims of the victims.
Do not interrupt them
when they remember their dead in the cemeteries
of Berlin,
and recite the prayer for the missing dead.
Be decent if they weep
and say kind words about their hurt.
If they pray
have high hopes for the moment they encounter God
for you too need moments of hope.
What’s to stop the country having
two languages
two names
two colors
and two plaits?
But sign up to one law for all.
Maybe you can’t get back an orange grove
paved in concrete.
but bargain with them over the books
they confiscated,
so that life can continue.
History
must remain free
to include a third narrative.

May 2021
From Arabic: Raphael Cohen

***

Nurit Zarchi

Map

I sit inside my life, nest undone
in which seeps the wail of uprooted
trees, children’s clamor, a soldier’s
Sigh. Fledgling falls, dolphins
unmoored, groan. Injustice drags
at my hair. I could not stop.
To live – is that to be a steady
Guest at the feast of wrongs?
Say not: Rise and restore.
Clearly, I fall short, even when reaching out
I touch the void, flecking doe
Who can tell life from knowledge, as death
Gnaws at the pattern of the world.

From Hebrew: Mirjam Meerschwam Hadar

***

Yaara Shehori

Prayer

From the dark pit come
Out of break and storm come
From the corners of Gaza City
From a room without a window
From the dark shadow of death
From an hour not an hour
From not day and not night
On your own feet walk and come
On our own hands come
In humanity’s prayer
In the voice of the woman the baby the child
In longing for tomorrow come
In forgetting the evil come
In remembering the good come
From the lion’s den come
On a paper crane come
In tears and crying come
In broken letters come
In tall grass
In water saturated air
In the space empty of stars
In this season in this hour in the moment
In cradle song come
In the morning blessing come
In the girls’ eyes open to see come
In the red traffic lights come
In the open roads come
In the silent minute in the scratched flesh
Under a sky from which they withheld our rain come
On scorched earth come
On earth that sprouts leaves as if in anger come
With thousands of birds
With one bird
With the children the youth the elders
Rise rise*
Come

November 23
From Hebrew: Ariel Resnikoff and Rivka Weinstock
*A gloss from Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz’s 'Lecha Dodi'

***

Mahmoud Darwish

Truce with the Mongols by the Holm Oak Forest
(the last stroph)

… At last, we have climbed the hill. Here we are now rising
above the trunks of the story… new grass sprouts over our blood and theirs.
We will load our rifles with sweet basil and collar the necks of doves
with medals for those who have returned… so far
we have found no one to accept peace… we are not who we are
nor are the others themselves. The rifles are broken… and the doves fly far too far.
We found no one here…
we found no one…
we didn’t find the forest of holm oak!

From Arabic: Fady Joudah

=====================================================
Notes

Avot Yeshurun's "Argumentation" was written to explain his choice of two political poems contributed to a Hebrew anthology in 1958 (Avot Yeshurun, Collected Poems 1 (Kol Shirav) (Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 1995), 104.

"Inflamed Nerve" appeared in Shva Salhoov's The Torah of Cutting (Torat Ha-chitukhim) (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2011). The poem's intimate epistolary address woven into the allusion to Yehuda Halevi's poem, "Zion, Won't You Ask," challenges its translation. Notably, English grammar cannot allow for the forceful semantic and phonic effects of Hebrew conjugations:
אסיריך פלשתיניך יהודיך/ מחריביך
Likewise, Hebrew key words such as "shlomekh," "shlom," "shlomi,” and “eikh” orchestrate tonal modulations between the most intimately mundane, the sublime, and the ancient.
Taha Muhammad Ali's "Revenge" is from Peter Cole’s Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).

Bacol Serlui's "Names," [Shemot] written October 19, 2023, first appeared in the review Hamusach in a special issue dedicated to October 7. The names in the poem's first part allude to places in Israel’s Western Negev (kibbutzim and moshavim) which were subject to terrorists' slaughter on October 7, 2023. The code switching between prayer, Jewish sources, and vivid historical references is indispensable to the poem's mesmerizing music.

“Bishara-Mansour refers to time as murāwigh, deceitful. This modifier rests on a longstanding trope in classical Arabic poetry of referring to medieval time—dahr in Arabic, tevel in Hebrew—as the many-guised ghūl, the she-demon of the desert who leads wayfarers astray to perish. Time as pure empty succession, the antihuman time of war, the agony of waiting for relief and return, the tormented loss of daily cycles in prison and captivity, are counter-images for the nourishing heavenly mother. The image of the ghūl may refer to the internal process of signification in the Arabic qaṣīda." —Daniel Behar.
Translating murāwigh as “dissembling” is Behar's attempt to bridge the gap between the two temporal perspectives that organize Mansour's poem: "Bishara-Mansour’s figurative generosity brings out the dormant ghoulishness in time as a fiend frustrating our efforts to humanize it and to make a modicum of sense from atrocities around us." —D.B.

"Darwish’s ‘River Dying of Thirst’ was included in Trace of the Butterfly (Athar al-farāsha) [Mahmud Darwish, Athar al-Farasha (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2008]. The poem presents a mythical place purposefully unspecified as Palestine for a universal effect of an exilic perspective. Dualities in Darwish, as in the two riverbanks, often veil a politically charged contest for meaning in Israel/Palestine. His process of poetic ‘Palestinianization’ tends to adapt Jewish references, to decontextualize and then recontextualize them. The river, the coeval to the poet’s tongue, sweetly whispers the place-names al-Quds (Jerusalem) and al-Shām (Damascus, or the old Islamic name for the region of Palestine-Lebanon-Syria). Both are untranslatable in their complex matrices of signification. The untranslatability of place-names indicates that Darwish works up to his universal parable from a firm grounding in Palestinian-Arab cultural particularism." —D.B

Yael Segalovitz’s translation of Shimon Adaf's Aviva-No [aviva-lo]was published in 2019 (New Gloucester, ME: Alice James Books). The personal rupture that Adaf explores followed by his sister's death eleven years earlier anticipates the crisis of the present moment. The two poems cited here are part of the requiem's forty-three poems—the number of Aviva's years. Poems 32 and 33 draw attention to the texture of Adaf's personal language of grief; bringing together the calamity of Sderot and Aza, both its syntax and ethos take shape beyond traditional prayers and consolation.
Marzouq al-Halabi's "The 40 Rules of Engagement" was originally published in the “Time Off” section of the Arab 48 website on May 25, 2021. "Even if I wrote the poem to a Palestinian friend I would be glad that it would reach the spaces of Hebrew language, there too I had friends with whom to converse. I knew the long poem would maintain its own life in Hebrew culture. Likewise, when I was asked to transmit it to English. To be within these three worlds, this was my hope. And what's a dialogue if not this?" —Marzouq al-Halabi

"The challenge presented by Sami Shalom Chetrit's poem lies in the reality it describes. Hebrew and English each have sufficient words for violence, specific verbs for specific ways to destroy the body and dignity of others. Holding the specific terms in mind for long enough to set them on paper becomes an embrace of violence, at a time when the only thing that matters is bringing an end to violence. Enough, as Chetrit says. Enough." —Dena Bugel-Shunra

"Pogrom" is included in Amichai Chasson's recent book, Liminal Poems (Shirim al Saf) (Jerusalem: Kvar Series, Bialik Institute, 2022]. Chasson noted that "Pogrom" is "a dream poem (or more precisely, a nightmare) that was written as a memory, but in October 7 morning, the poem's lines have, frightfully, turned real." Vivian Eden quotes Chasson's interview to Haaretz: "I can’t shake off the thought that there is significance to Jewish existence in the land of Israel and I often want to free myself from that thought. What am I supposed to do with it? Why fight such a big war that isn’t connected to me personally? But I believe in that, and I have not managed to clean out that place and I don’t know if I want to."

Aharon Shabtai notes that "Tikkun" was written three days after Black Saturday: "Regretfully, and to my anxiety, today we have more despair, violence, blindness, and less and less heart wisdom." The Hebrew word "tikkun" means, literally, "repair." "Tikun olam"—the world's repair—is a Jewish concept defined by acts of kindness performed to amend and repair the world.

Yitzhak Laor's "He That Loveth Many Days" [ohev yamim] is included in He That Loveth Many Days (Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 1996). Translating Laor means not just hearing the Biblical texts that lie beneath his Hebrew, but also hearing the connections between the two, and bringing those connections to life in a language (English) where those register-relationships are often elusive if not illusory. I use the verb "hear" because I find Laor to be an oral poet—a writer of texts that must be spoken, or speak themselves, aloud—and the eros of his themes is also an eros of language in its sounding. He That Loveth Many Days finds some of its material from Psalm 34, which is a beautiful psalm that in some traditions is said to have been originally sung by a young David who was pretending to go crazy (Samuel 21). —Joshua Cohen
Dahlia Ravikovitch’s “Lullaby” [shir eres] is found in Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch, trans. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).

An early version of the poem was published in July 1989 in the Israeli journal Politika under the title "A Lullaby Translated from the Yiddish." The text incorporated prose excerpts from the testimony of Israeli soldiers involved in the death by beating of a Palestinian man (Hovering, 219).
The translation masterfully orchestrates a pastiche of allusions to Zionist and popular folk songs, Yiddish traditional lullabies, ancient Hebrew psalms and lamentations. Likewise, following Ravikovitch's daring code-switching, the translators redirect the biblical command, "Remember what Amalek did unto thee," to the protest and elegy, invoking the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. For detailed notes, see Hovering, 220‒21.

Haviva Pedaya’s "Excerpts for a Man" is a part of a script in progress since October 7, entitled Genesis Here and Now: The Politics and Theology of Inter-Religioustranslating this text was to transmit its dynamic shifts between the spoken flow of its historical and contemporary narrative and the density of its multilayered allusions to the scriptures.

Nurit Zarchi’s “Map” is the opening poem of her collection Dugmat Ha-Olam (World sample) (Tel-Aviv, Afik 2022).

Special thanks to Daniel Behar for his generous advise and meticulous eye.