Psalm 137

Elliott batTzedek

My god how beautiful it is, it could break open your heart, it broke open my heart, the ways Jews grieved and mourned for Zion and Jerusalem for two thousand years. We lay down and wept and wept and wept for thee Zion.

And in those words everything everyone has lost and wept for.  We lay down and wept and wept, remembering thee, Zion.

And yet: happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.

As if any grief, however vast, however deep, down to the core of the Earth and up into the stars, could justify genocide. As if mourning, even thousands of years of mourning, somehow makes just children’s bodies broken, dashed, shattered, scattered.

What have we become that we can pretend our need to feel safe, to be safe, justifies colonization, occupation, imprisonment, mass murder?

My god how awful it is, how horrible beyond measure, how it breaks your heart open, that weeping for Zion has been swallowed whole by Zionism.

If we remember thee, Zion, our memory must stretch back and back, to grasp what our ancestors yearned for, to grasp being forced to sing our songs in a strange land while ruled by violent occupiers.

To grasp the Commandment repeated over and over and over that we must be kind and moral and just for we were strangers once.

Only when we dare grasp our full memory can we fully remember Zion, fully remember what we have lost and what we are losing now.

And only when we remember what we are losing can we fully weep.