I Know the Heart of a Stranger

I know the heart of the stranger.
It beats
And bleeds
And breaks.
I know this heart;
It is my own.

But this I do not know -
this hatred,
this tearing
and rending.
I do not know this
suffocation,
this strangled
heart of
darkness

The stench from
this sacrifice is not pleasing.
it is a desolation.
There is no delight in this,
only death and a heart of stone.

I do not know that heart.

Will you bring a rain
of scarlet hyssop petals
to flutter and fall
against the broken bodies
piled against altars
slick with blood?

I would know You, God!
I would know the heart of a stranger.
I would sing of Your glory
and teach Your ways with joy.

But this heart -
this heart of death
and desecration -
I cannot know this heart.
I will not know this heart.

If I knew that heart
I fear it would be mine.

The Arithmetic of Death

The arithmetic of death
Is made up of straight lines
And hard numbers.

Three.
One hundred eighty six.
Two hundred nineteen.
Might as well be
Six million.

Lives subtracted--
Their numbers carried
In harsh columns,
Where they multiply;
A geometric progression
Of loss
And death.

Murder is an irrational number
The empty set
Of grief to the power of
Infinity.
And sadness is a
Graceful
Brittle arc,
A broken circle
Bisected by
Love.


For the parents of the Israeli and Kurdish boys, and the Nigerian girls, who are grieving for their lost and kidnapped children. We are all diminished, we are all less because of their kidnapping, their torture, their deaths.

For all of us, who share in this grief. Let us pray, let us act, let us work to bring them all home.

Stacey Zisook Robinson
30

Humanity enough

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” 
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

I wrote to my Rabbi this morning. It was easier to write to him than, say, to write a "Dear God" letter, or worse, "Dear diary." But I had to write, because I am so disheartened, so saddened and sickened by the events that seem to have consumed us,  moving rough shod in a random swath of destruction and hatred and death. Here, in part, is what I wrote:

I hate what has been happening in Boston. It makes me ill, to think of this kind of carnage and innocence and hatred and loss, all rolled up together into a messy, bloody heap. Like so many, I feel impotent and aggrieved and disheartened and uplifted by the events. Heroism is such a transcendantal moment: offers of comfort to complete strangers, running one way rather than another, all of it.

It is this mounting blood-thirsty quest for vengeance that makes me shudder again, though. And it is blood thirsty: Kill them. I hope they die. Catch them and kill them. Again and again, I hear it-- not even whispered, not even a hesitant question. Just: Let me see them bloody and dead.

Is our sense of justice, and tolerance, and (for many of my friends) inflatable? So: the death penalty is a bad thing, except when we're really angry? Or scared? Tolerance is demanded, except when we need to be intolerant? I do not condone the actions of these two men. And really-- they have been tried and found guilty in our heads, in our hands-- they have not been convicted in a court of law. Isn't that supposed to mean something? 

I am NOT saying these were innocent. I don't know if they were, could only guess. But my heart is breaking nonetheless. Yes, there should be justice-- but have we suddenly made a weird turn somewhere and landed back 2500 years ago-- an eye for an eye justice? Is that what we want? Is that really justice?

I'm simple, perhaps. And quite naive. And terrified to say what I really feel about all of this, for fear of instant castigation. But I always thought that goodness and justice and love and all that crap should cover all the bases, even when -- especially when -- it makes you uncomfortable and angry and sad. But all I hear right about now, is this salacious and triumphant howl of victory over more dead bodies. I guess, it's just the right bodies that are lifeless right now...

There is a quote from Gandhi that has been making its rounds on facebook over the last week, about evil individuals and the mass of decency and humanity. I quoted Anne Frank (above), reiterating her belief in the basic goodness of people, even as she hid in fear of the mob that was howling outside her door, thirsting for her blood and her death. And make no mistake, her pursuers were absolutely convinced of her guilt, of their righteousness. She was an animal to be hunted, vermin to be exterminated. She was not human.

It was Hillel who asked us to strive to be human in a place where there are no humans.

I saw the face of that terrorist, in the news feeds on my computer, and during the sound bytes on every erstwhile news program on television. That terrorist; that boy. He is not too much older than my son. I hear the howls for his blood. For his death. The cries for vengeance to be paid for the death he brought to innocents. The deaths that we are convinced he wrought. Did he? Did he commit these acts of terror and atrocity? I don’t know, with 100% certainty, that he did. As I said—we can guess, but that boy’s voice is lost forever. Who knows, perhaps, had he been captured, he would have spewed hatred and invective and confession for those horrific acts. But I cannot say for absolutely certain that he would have, and that will haunt me for a very long time.

There is a midrash, a story that our rabbis tell, about the rejoicing and jubilation that God’s angels made, when the waters of the parted Sea crashed over the Egyptians who pursued the children of Israel in their flight from slavery into freedom. The angels danced at the death and destruction, laughed as those Egyptian soldiers and taskmasters drowned, and hard-hearted Pharaoh was no more. They celebrated – until the Angel of Death silenced them with a cry of anger and pain that went all the way to God’s very center, to God’s very heart. “Why do you rejoice?” God cried out. The idolaters are dead!  replied the Angels. And God’s Angel wept, saying “Are they not God’s children, too?”

There are no easy answers. Terrorism and violence must be eradicated. But we cannot accomplish this at the expense of our humanity. We must not, or what will we have become? 

In a place where there are no humans, let us all strive to be human...

Night of Fire and Glass

Seventy-five years ago, the Nazis marched through the streets of Germany and Austria, attacking Jews, smashing windows of Jewish-owned stores, destroying synagogues, ransacking homes and hospitals, burning books and Torahs.  For two days, Jews were terrorized, beaten and arrested and sent to concentration camps while the government looked on.  When it was over, 91 people had been murdered, 30,000 had been arrested and sent to camps, more than 1000 synagogues had been burned and more than 7,000 Jewish businesses had been destroyed.  After two days of rioting, the Jewish community was fined $1 billion reichsmarks.

How can we possibly speak of such unspeakable horrors, of such hatred and violence and inhumanity, that happened so long ago?  How can we possibly find the words?

How can we not?

We can, because we must.  We find the words, we tell the story, and we remember.

We do, because this must never happen again, to anyone, to any people, in any land.  We find the words, and so we say: amen


Words for Kristalnacht

09-10 November 1938

Stars littered the ground

Crystal fire

Shards of ice

Glass

The smoke of a thousand thousand years

Ascended

Coiling upwards, twisted

With the memory of a People

Chosen once in light

Chosen again

In darkness

In ashes and in blood

Pounding rhythms shout out

Felt through their nsoles 

Driving forward, driving onward

Faster and faster and faster, and pulled forward

Pulled ever onward

In a rush, at a run, rippling in shadow

It invades your blood,

That rhythm,

That pulse,

That pull and push

That wraps ‘round your heart

In pounding and pulsing rhythms

That cradle your source

Your soul

The darkness swallows the cries

Of a thousand thousand lights

A thousand thousand years

A thousand thousand sighs

Of love

Of hope

Of God

Leaving only broken glass

And crystal fire

And glistening stars to lead us

Home.

Night of Fire and Glass

Words for Kristalnacht

09-10 November 1938

Stars littered the ground

Crystal fire

Shards of ice

Glass

The smoke of a thousand thousand years

Ascended

Coiling upwards, twisted

With the memory of a People

Chosen once in light

Chosen again

In darkness

In ashes and in blood

Pounding rhythms shout out

Felt through soles 

Driving forward, driving onward

Faster and faster and faster, and pulled forward

Pulled ever onward

In a rush, at a run, rippling in shadow

It invades your blood,

That rhythm,

That pulse,

That pull and push

That wraps ‘round your heart

In pounding and pulsing rhythms

That cradle your source

Your soul

The darkness swallows the cries

Of a thousand thousand lights

A thousand thousand years

A thousand thousand sighs

Of love

Of hope

Of God

Leaving only broken glass

And crystal fire

And glistening stars to lead us

Home.