October 7 and a poem

[David Seidenberg]

Dear Chevra,

It was beyond my imagination one year ago that Israel would not just still be at war one year later, but also actively expanding that war. Sometimes I try to remember what it was like emotionally before October 7 and I find it hard to do. So many many dead in Gaza, so many Israelis still hostage. 

According to Gershon Baskin, top Israeli negotiators have told him that Netanyahu refused to end the war when there was a completed deal on the table. This is also hard to imagine, but the harm caused by someone who cares above all to remain in power is not surprising but perhaps to be expected. 

But people don't subscribe to this list primarily for the politics, though that has always been part of my agenda here. So allow me to share a poem I wrote recently in response to October 7 and the war. I also feel obligated to say that poetry is not liturgy -- liturgy has the role of affirming what a community believes in, but poetry for me often has the role of deconstructing what the community or individual reader believes in. 

Anyway, this poem, "The smell of a field that God has blessed - for October 7", is one of three grieving poems I have written about the attack and its consequences. The poem and its epigrams are below, with notes on midrash connections at the link given below. 

I hope it will be useful to some folks on this list, whether for October 7 or Shemini Atseret, on this one year anniversary after what has been terrible year. 

Also, I wrote a chamber orchestra piece that grew out of my emotional response to the attack and the war. It can be listened to here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lAzja-Y3toEnynlWN5O4Tw0xHAbkmTtx/view?usp=drivesdk

תכלה שנה וקלילותיה, תחל שנה וברכותיה

That's something we say on the Sefardi liturgy every year. May it become true: May all these curses end and may new blessings begin.

Gmar chatimah tovah,

David Seidenberg

Here's the poem:

"The smell of a field that God has blessed - for October 7"

“See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that Hashem has blessed” – said the unslaughtered one

 

A parable: before the king would arrive at a city, the people would go out to meet him and receive him in the field, and at that time, anyone who wanted had permission to approach the king… That’s how things are in the month of Elul (before Rosh Hashanah). – Shneur Zalman of Liady, the Alter Rebbe

 

I.

The King is in the field – המלך בשדה Hamelekh basadeh – that’s what they say.

Mamesh in the field –

in the ashes, mixing further in the soil with every rain,

in bone fragments too small for the eyes of Zaka,

in blood making soil sticky with killed life.

 

“It was while they were in the field” – there Cain struck Abel;

The field, where Nimrod the hunter slaughtered animal after animal,

species after species,

Violence founding his kingship;

The field, where Esau cut Nimrod down to loot his God-sewn cloak.

 

II.

Last year those poets were saying, See, the trees of the field in Be’eri:

weeping over blood-sown soil, too sickened to rejoice.

They said, a tree no longer wanted to be a tree.

But trees know nothing of that violence, human-on-human.

What they do know: what rises against them, the axe and the fire,

the clearcutting that is its own green holocaust.

 

Maybe a tree could know this much: the human corpse buried ’neath its roots,

could know it by the nutrients effluent from the mulching,

all the copse weaving roots together, tasting together the nostalgic concoction,

remembering Abel’s body, buried with Adam’s tears, Eve’s drenching sobs–

after Cain had flown.

 

III.

Those rabbis taught: Abel’s blood stayed stuck to the surface of the trees and rocks –

so it’s written, “your brother’s bloods”: bloods – blood thrown here, blood there,

on this exposed root, that rock,

this moss, that trunk.

The soil at first refusing to swallow that first bloodletting.

 

But the soil has long resigned itself to that draught.

 

IV.

Nature is divinity, say mystic and Rebbe.

The King is in the field – the King is the field!

The trees already knew it.

 

Some day we will know this by feel,

not by way of a teaching.

Then will it be known, how

every spilled blood drop burns the field.

Then how many calves’ necks will be wanted, to break, to purge

the bloodguilt, all the dam naki דם נקי, from this land?

 

The King is the field –

and every murder a deicide, every own blow a God-wounding,

bloods, flowing, by family, by clan, child and soldier,

gush fully from God’s wounds.

 

V.

Our Father Our King, our Mother, our Parent, our Nurturer, our Ruler, our Savior –

How small you make yourself, small enough to dwell in each grain of soil,

each mycelial thread, each drop of blood soaking into the minutest volume of earth.

Show us grace, show us you are listening, that you ever listened,

though we have no thing to give back, nothing to show our merit.

 

Only one thing have we shown: we will destroy this world if you let it.

Maybe you have no choice but;

it says, “melekh l’sadeh ne’evad” מלך לשדה נעבד – a king is subject to the soil,

The King is servant, in thrall to the field –

so if we enslave earth, we enslaved you.

 

Rachmana lits’lan רחמנא לצלן, God help us; the King in the field, is the field;

The King, the field, the tree, the blood, the bone.

The soil – drinks.

(Follow this link for midrash connections, citations, and explanations:  https://ritualwell.org/ritual/the-smell-of-a-field-hashem-has-blessed-a-poem-for-october-7th/

Most important: Zaka is the organization in Israel that carefully collects all human remains after a terror attack or an accident, so that they can be properly buried.)