Rachel Korazim, who lives in Israel, has been teaching online Hebrew poetry classes to hundreds of students since the onset of COVID. Over the past four years, Heather Silverman from California and I have collaborated with Rachel to provide translations of the poems.
Since Oct. 7, the class has focused on poems written by Israelis in response to that tragic event. A few months ago, Rachel, Heather and I decided to compile a bilingual anthology of 59 poems—some by established Israeli poets and others by new voices, including Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh, of blessed memory.
The anthology is titled “Shiva: Poems of October 7.” “Shiva” refers to both the Hebrew word for seven—the date of the event—and the mourning and loss we all feel.
The book has just been published and is available on Amazon, with all royalties going to the Israel Trauma Coalition to support survivors of Oct. 7 and its aftermath.
Here are two poems from the book:
“Prayer”
By Avital Nadler
When you return
We’ll sit, just the two of us, in the shower
You, in the gentle water
I, facing you
Will gently wash your hair
Erase all your memories
Will sing to you the song of the hyacinth
And of the rain tickling the window
I will carefully clean from between your toes
Every trace of the tunnels
I will tell you about the moon that shone
So many nights when you weren’t here
I will wipe the tears off your face
The gentle water will wash them away
I will braid your hair
Dress you in pajamas
Just the two of us in bed
And a caring hug
Hope
Love
Fear and a prayer
That there never will be a next time.
“Be’eri”
By Adi Blechman Sofer
Soon winter will be here,
Weeping clouds will water the earth
Making red carpets grow
The anemone will flower first
Yet no one will come to admire its beauty.
The buttercup will bloom next
But there will be no festival
The poppy is last to bloom. Silence.
No one is there.
The protected flowers had already been plucked
In the fall.
Some comments about “Shiva: Poems of October 7”:
“These pages take unimaginable pain and transmute them to art. The poems are powerful, important and remind us of the rawness and the resilience that poetry brings to our lives.”
—Rabbi David Wolpe, Emeritus, Sinai Temple
“These poems—of pain, betrayal, grief, generosity, courage and grace—cracked my heart open in the way that only broken fragments can do. Together they offer a window into the diverse responses of our Israeli family to this most devastating chapter in our history.”
—Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Central Synagogue
“This is a heartbreaking collection of poems that brings words to the wordlessness of suffering. Each stanza takes the reader into a world of darkness and leaves us with shards of light.”
—Dr. Erica Brown, Yeshiva University
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