Gaza Journal 50: Dvar Torah
It is the end of one year, and the beginning of the next. This day marks, of course, the end of 5784 by the Hebrew calendar, and the beginning of 5785. We celebrate with apples and honey, honey cake,and prayers to express our hope that the next year will be sweet. But this Rosh Hashanah also marks the end of a year of brutality and death in Gaza and looks forward, with the State of Israel’s escalation of its war into Lebanon, to twelve more months of bitterness. How, I wondered, as I made my way to Rosh Hashanah services, to hear the sounding of the shofar and welcome the new year with my...
Gaza Journal 3: An Act of Remembrance
A student asked about the poppy in my lapel today after class. I explained what it was for, and that I wore it as an act of remembrance for my father, who served in the Second World War, and for all of the people who have died and continue to die in our wars. She said...
Gaza Journal 2: Sevenfold Vengeance
“We have an obligation to bear witness to suffering. Yet, if that witness is to have any meaning apart from passively registering the fact of the suffering, it must repudiate the violence that caused the suffering and speak against the power that deployed the...
Gaza Journal 1: Bearing Witness
I am diminished by the death of every noncombatant, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. It happens that, at this point, Palestinian deaths have diminished me five times more. I posted this in social media earlier this past week, just before Shabbes, as I reeled...