The Two Souls of Jewishness

(a massive re-write of The Dialectics of Jewishness)

And now, I watch terrified

at this future I have long foretold,

as a nation birthed from the ruins of one

Final Solution

enacts

another,

killing the grandkids

of those whose land and homes they stole.

In the name of Biblical authority,

these death-lords of Zionism

have killed babies, bulldozed homes and home defenders,

jailed children, defamed those of us who said “Nay!”

Yet as teenagers and far beyond,

my Jewish friends and I

dedicated years to a movement

to erase racism and nuclear war,

and bring peace to ‘nam,

living our prophetic heritage I had not learned,

and re-discovered our elders’ years

fighting capital’s day-to-day destruction

of Earth and of workers’ lives.

But this human face of Jewishness has been eclipsed for decades

while Zionist presumption has dominated Jewish institutions–as

it always has the Israeli State—

and respectable Jewish voices in the town I live in

seek obeisance to Israeli idolaters

who sacrifice other’s lives—and their own humanity—

to their imagined god of hate and land.

And yet—

a dialectics of possibility expands my aging lungs

as tens of thousands of Jews, Palestinians and other youth

besiege Senators,

seize Grand Central Station, streets and Malls

chant their hatred of racism,

the occupation, and genocide,

gathering power, generating

new ideas

of a world where

everyone

is a light unto the nations

and babies can be cherished

instead of bombed.