A very intelligent young person once asked me: “When did the Bible stop?”
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“I mean,” she said, “when did they decide that the Bible was finished? Why can’t we simply add on to it? Why can’t it be like a loose-leaf notebook, where you put things in and take them out whenever you need to?”
I admit I had found that question to be, well, irreverent.
Now I am not so sure. Now I actually think it was a great question and I have been asking it myself. Not about taking pages out of the Bible (though I am sure there are some things I would not miss), but about adding pages to the Bible.
Perhaps we are writing a new Jewish Bible for our time.
Especially since Oct. 7. That is what Rachel Korazim, one of Israel’s most noted and most beloved educators, has revealed to us — a new book of Lamentation. Listen to the podcast.
Rachel Korazim. (Courtesy photo)
What we are going to experience today is something that almost no one has experienced. We are going to get a first read — a first listen, actually — to a number of poems and prayers that Israelis have written since Oct. 7. Almost no one has heard this material before, so this is a dark Martini Judaism debut.
Illusion by Michael Zats
Amazing
How everything looks
Unchanged,
Even
When nothing
Remained
The same.
Home Front Command’s New Regulations for Small Talk, by Lital Kaplan (translated by Maya Valentine)
“What’s up?” Cancelled. Instead use: “What’s shaken up?”
“What’s beaten up?”
“What’s blown up?”“What’s going on?” Banned. Alternatives: “What’s breaking down?”
“What’s forever gone?”Instead of the rude “How are you?”
We must frown in the face of our friend and ask — “How war you?”And instead of the standard response, Forbidden by strict veto power:
“I’m fine, in fact.”
It is required to say — “Everything’s cracked.” And the truthful ones will answer —“Everything is shattered. Everything is shattered”
Kaddish by Asaf Gur (translated by Heather Silverman, Michael Bohnen, Rachel Korazim)
Yitgadal V’yitkadash Shmei Raba
And no one came
Many thousands called Him on Shabbat morning
Crying His name out loud
Begging Him with tears just to come
But He ceased from all His work
No God came
And no God calmed
Only Satan celebrated uninterrupted
Dancing between kibbutzim and the slaughter festival
And our correspondent goes on to report
All the while sobbing
Saying there is a burnt baby
And there is an abducted baby
There is an orphaned baby
And there is a day-old baby
Still linked to his mother’s body by the umbilical cord
He hadn’t even managed to find out his name
What will be inscribed on the tiny headstone
With a single date for birth and death
This is what the kibbutz looks like after Satan’s visit
Turning the broadcast back to the studio
Quiet now they are shooting
They are also launching rockets
And there is no government
And there is no mercy
Just the screaming and the pictures
That will never leave the mind
The seventh of October
Two thousand twenty three.
Mom is Always Right by Itay Lev (translated by Heather Silverman, Michael Bohnen, Rachel Korazim)
Mom said that when I grew up there would be no army. Mom was right.
I haven’t yet grown and already there was no army. It wasn’t there when I heard the screaming outside.
It wasn’t there when I saw dad so scared and stressed. It wasn’t there when the door was kicked in.
It wasn’t there when I hid under the bed.
It wasn’t there when we three pushed back on the door of the safe room. It wasn’t there when time just stood still.
It wasn’t there when they suddenly entered.
It wasn’t there when they tore dad off mom
Mom had said that when I grew up there would be no army.
Mom was right
Now all I want is to tell her that she is always right.
I cried, I screamed, and still she is silent.
Mothers by Osnat Eldar (translated by Heather Silverman, Michael Bohnen, Rachel Korazim)
They are gathering at night
One by one
She whose daughter was abducted and her bloodstained picture doesn’t allow her any peace
She whose son fell in battle
She whose children will remain forever in the little safe room in the corner of the house on the kibbutz
She who remained mute on the other end of the line scratching the horrors onto her skin
She who whispered from time to time to him. Or to her
“I love you”
‘I am with you’
I am here
Hello?!
She who wasn’t able to say goodbye
She who is holding onto a fragment of a film clip showing him alive
She who woke up on Shabbat with the knowledge of death germinating within her.
At night, in my darkened room, they are wandering in circles
Drooped shoulders, restless, sleep crazed.
Mothers
If only they could change places with the boy or the girl
Ready for captivity or death
Mothers.
Not yet used to wandering.
They come to me at night
One by one
I am hugging them with compassion, with longing
Absorbing into my body the feelings of guilt, the helplessness, the abyss
And caressing silently their new maternal title
Imposed on them.
This is powerful stuff — a true testimony to the literary creativity of contemporary Jews — and an even truer testimony to the resiliency of the Jewish and Israeli spirit.
In 1949, the eminent German philosopher Theodor Adorno famously said: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” He wondered aloud if such literary beauty would have the continued right to exist.
I will have to update his observation.
To write poetry after Oct. 7 is necessary.
Rachel will be teaching this material for Wisdom Without Walls: an online salon for Jewish ideas — on March 31 at 3 p.m. EDT. You will be among the first people to study it with one of the master teachers in Israel. Register here.
