*Note: I began writing this on Wednesday, continued on Thursday, and finished it on Friday. With the rapidly unfolding events, I make note with date stamps where each writing took place. I did this because I found myself in emotional whiplash all week. Maybe you did to and it will help you feel less alone*
Wednesday
Hashem Yikom Damam-May God avenge their blood.
This is the phrase traditionally said when Jews are massacred.
We say “may their memory be a blessing” when someone dies in almost any other setting but not this one. When Jews are murdered for being Jewish, we say something different because it links them to the deep, painful, and historic memory of Jews being massacred from time immemorial.
This past 6 days has felt like 6 months and it also feels particularly ancient. What is being written about what has happened in Israel feels like it could've been plucked from almost any time period but the one piece that it evokes for me is Bialik’s Al Ha’shechita, On the Slaughter:”
Mercy O Heavens, beg mercy for me! If a god be in you, with a way in you, A way that I never knew Pray unto him for me! My own heart is dead, prayer drained from my tongue. The hands lie limp, and hope undone. How long? Until when? How long?
Executioner! Here is a neck to hew With your mighty axe. Put me down like a dog. All the world's my chopping block. And we're just Jews, just a few. My blood is fair game. From the skull you sever Bursts the blood of old men, the blood of children. Murder's blood be on you forever.
If Justice there be, let it now shine forth! But if it wait till I'm killed from under the sky To shine, let Justice die And its throne be thrown to the earth And heaven rot with eternal wrong. Ye wicked, go forth in this your brute force, And live in your blood, a cleansed throng.
And cursed be he that shall say: avenge this! Such vengeance for blood of babe and maiden Hath yet to be wrought by Satan. Let blood just pierce the abyss And pierce the abysmal black of creation And there in the dark devour and corrode The low Earth's rotting foundation!
Thursday: I had intentionally not sought out the pictures of the babies but they came across my Twitter from the State Department. All I could do was picture my son’s body. I was broken.
Bialik wrote this in response to the Kishinev massacre. He was a master of his craft not just for his wielding of words but for his ability to weave his deep threads of Jewish knowledge within his poetry. This poem contains allusions to every aspect of Tanakh. It begins demanding the mercy from on high in the heavens and it culminates in the foundations of the Earth that are drenched with the blood of innocent people.
All throughout, Bialik rails against a God that is supposed to act with justice and compassion, yet events keep happening that undermine that notion. Babies stripped from their mothers in 1903 and babies stripped from their parents in 2023. If there is a God in heaven…
The poem bounces back and forth between the gut-wrenching and heartbreaking events and the holding out a scintilla of hope. As Alexandra Wright writes in her exegesis on this poem:
“perhaps after all, there is a God in the red blackness of the earth, soaked with the blood of God’s children.”
I, like many of you, have lived with a sense of helplessness this week following the events in Israel. Most of us are far away, yet we feel the pain on a different level. We have friends and relatives that have been killed or who are directly in harm’s way. I am filled with rage, a rage that threatens to swallow me at times. I’ve thought back to all the people I have befriended over the years on various trips and years in Israel. Some I haven’t spoken to in forever and still they feel like family. Am Yisrael, the people of Israel has never felt more real to me.
It reminded me of a Facebook memory I deleted a number of years ago that was written during Israel’s incursion into Gaza in 2008. I wrote then, in my unbridled passion, “let’s go into Khan Younis and fuck some shit up.” As I would be reminded of that in the years that followed, I would always cringe at that ancient status update (remember those?). I didn’t cringe because I felt that, but I cringed because I remember what it feels like to be so consumed with fiery passion that it seeps into your blood.
That’s where I found myself this week again and I was having trouble harnessing it. As I felt that drive for vengeance envelope me, I felt it darkening my soul. Unalloyed hatred does that, as we saw from those reprehensible Hamas terrorists. It makes you subhuman. How else can you explain killing innocent people, let alone babies?
As I felt the tendrils of this hate swirl, I turned to our tradition to see what it had to say about striking a balance between righteous rage and recognition that maybe it’s not ours to solely carry.
Friday: More updates-blockades, incursions, citizens being brought in in Israel to dig graves because there aren’t enough people to dig-רחמנא ליצלון–Please for God’s sake, God, give us something.
In the later stages of the book of Bamidbar Moses is told to prepare to wreak vengeance upon the Midianites in 32:2-3:
נְקֹ֗ם נִקְמַת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מֵאֵ֖ת הַמִּדְיָנִ֑ים אַחַ֖ר תֵּאָסֵ֥ף אֶל־עַמֶּֽיךָ׃
“Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.”
וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־הָעָ֣ם לֵאמֹ֔ר הֵחָלְצ֧וּ מֵאִתְּכֶ֛ם אֲנָשִׁ֖ים לַצָּבָ֑א וְיִהְיוּ֙ עַל־מִדְיָ֔ן לָתֵ֥ת נִקְמַת־יְהֹוָ֖ה בְּמִדְיָֽן׃
Moses spoke to the militia, saying, “Let troops be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreak יהוה’s vengeance on Midian.
In and of itself, it is noteworthy that this act is linked with Moses’ death. First, I want you to focus on the language of vengeance here. In the first verse, it is nikmat bnei yisrael, the vengeance of the people of Israel and when Moses passes it along, it’s nikmat adonai, God’s vengeance.
Moses has learned his lesson from earlier verbal foibles. It’s not about him or them. They are tasked with acting on God’s behalf.
This is what the Chiddushei Ha’Rim, the first Rebbe of Gerrer chasidim highlights when he sees the connection of this with Moses’ death.
Given that Moses could’ve hesitated in carrying this act out as it meant that it expedited his death, it speaks to his great credit that he didn’t make this about himself. If a person makes vengeance about themselves and not about something larger like God, then the vengeance fails.
This is because vengeance is an anger in which our best inclinations win out over our evil inclinations.
I stopped in my tracks when I read this. It gives justification and validation to vengeance. Anger, something we normally try to minimize, has a time and place. AND his teaching limits it. If it’s just about you, then you’ve failed in what vengeance is supposed to be, a victory of the good inclination over the evil.
I’m still chewing on this teaching but I have found it to be comforting during this period of turmoil. God, I want to wipe out all of Hamas for the evil that they spread. I want them to suffer when it happens. God, I want innocent people not to be killed if it’s possible.
Yes, I recognize that you might now be saying “But they tacitly support Hamas! They haven’t done anything to fight back!” To that, I would say-if we know what Hamas is capable of, given this past week, how easy would it be for you fight back against them?
This is where I am. I am still broken. I am still struggling with my emotions. I am still challenged by the certainty of so many on social media. What’s new, right? And, from this teaching, I feel slightly bolstered.
Bialik recognized the danger of vengeance for what it can bring about. But perhaps there can be holy vengeance. Reminding ourselves of the larger issues at play here, that it’s not just about us, may be one of the keys. As much as our enemies don’t see our humanity, we can call for their demise with God’s help so that others of God’s creations don’t have their blood spilled.
When Bialik speaks to The Executioner, he calls out in Hebrew to Hatalyan. We don’t know whether he’s talking to the perpetrators of the pogrom or to God. That is intentional because the root of that word can also mean to be held in doubt.
I feel this doubt. Not for seeing the evil of what Hamas did but for worrying about what it does to us. How do we harness our righteous hatred? I don’t come to you with answers today, just a plea that if you feel the same, you send word because I feel so alone.
We need each other. We need something more than our own hate in this moment. If not, we turn into the worst versions of ourselves.
If there is a God in the red blackness of the earth, soaked with the blood of God’s children….Hashem Yikom Damam-May God avenge their blood and save ours.
With hopes that this Shabbat be one of peace and tranquility for all of Bnei Yisrael