David J. Wasserstein is professor of History and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Before coming to Vanderbilt he served as professor of Islamic history at Tel Aviv University. He’s provided the following short introduction to his poem which he’s translated from Hebrew into English.
After the pogrom in Huwwara, on 26-27 February, I was like many Jews and Israelis in shock. That shock eventually, a couple of days later, took shape in the text below. It is a cento, a work composed largely of quotations from other texts.
The two principal sources are Deuteronomy and Bialik, lines from which are interspersed here with each other. There are also references to the book of Nahum, to the Qur’an and of course Alan Paton.
Haim Nahman Bialik, regarded as Israel’s national poet (though he died in 1934), went to Kishinev (now Chisinau, in Moldova) shortly after the horrendous pogrom there in 1903. His poem on that event, “In the City of Slaughter,” is a monument of modern Hebrew literature, shocking for its subject and dramatic in its execution. I have changed only a couple of words from the lines I have borrowed.
HUWWARA
Up! And go to the village of slaughter
……..And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy
……..God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the
……..Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth.
And come to the courtyards and with your own eyes see and with your own hand feel, on the
fences and the trees and the stones and the plaster of the walls, the congealed blood and the
hardened brains of the fallen.
……..Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.
And then go from there to the ruins and pass over the breaches
……..The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face
And cross over the split open walls and the shattered ovens
……..They shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways
They look like the open mouths of mortal, black wounds
That have no healing, and will find no remedy
……..The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself
And let your feet sink in the feathers and stumble on wires and broken bits and pieces
……..If thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God and walk in his ways
And fragments of books and scrolls
……..And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord
Do not stand still over this destruction. Pass on from there
……..And they shall be afraid of thee.
For God called up the spring and the slaughter together
The sun shone, the acacia bloomed, and the slaughterer slew
……..And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit
……..of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy
……..fathers to give thee.
Cry woe to the bloody city
Cry, the beloved country
..
And you shall flee from thence, and come to a courtyard, and in it a mound
……..And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the
……..right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them
Upon this mound two were slaughtered
A man and his dog
……..Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field
A single axe slew them both and on the same garbage heap they were flung
……..Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out
And pigs will poke around in the mingled blood of the two of them
……..The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine
……..hand to
Tomorrow rain will come and sweep it away
……..Until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly
Into one of the sewer streams
……..Because of the wickedness of thy doings
And the blood will no longer cry out from the sewage and the garbage
……..Whereby thou hast forsaken me
And all will be as nothing, it will be again as though it had never been.
..
Cry woe to the bloody city
Cry, the beloved country