Over the past year, I’ve been writing Jewish liturgies as a spiritual/political response to Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. They can be found on the website Jewish Prayers for Gaza.
I will continue to add to the site regularly – please feel free to use and share them widely, with attribution.
I recited this memorial prayer yesterday at a vigil sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine – Chicago. The gathering was organized “to grieve with us the lives lost in this most recent Israeli onslaught upon Gaza, and to honor the countless Palestinians who have fallen victim to the ongoing Nakba since 1948.” It is based on the traditional Jewish prayer “El Male Rachamim” (“God Filled with Compassion”). .
El male rachamim shochen bam’romim
ha’metzei menucha nechonah
tachat kanfei ha’shechinah.
Oh, God filled with compassion,
whose loving presence ever surrounds us
bring perfect rest to those
who have been killed without pity in Gaza,
in refugee camps, in apartments,
in homes that provided no sanctuary,
as they worked, as they slept,
as they sat down to share meals together,
as they fled from the overpowering might
of rockets and bombs from above.
Receive their souls with the fulness of your mercy.
bind them to the souls of their ancestors
whose lives were unjustly taken
during the dispossession of the Nakba –
an injustice that continues
even as we call out to you now.
Source of all mercy, protect these precious souls
with the shelter they were denied in their lifetimes.
Gather them under the softness of your wings,
show them love, bring them home.
Remind us that no one is forgotten in your sight,
that all are welcome at your side,
that each and every one of their lives
is a story of sacred worth and meaning
that can never be lost.
As we rededicate ourselves to their lives.
Turn our grief and anger into resolve.
Filll us with strength and will and purpose –
inspire us to stand as one in solidarity,
that together we may end this injustice
once and for all.
Ba’al ha’rachamim tastireihem
b’seter kanfecha le’olamim.
Source of all compassion,
extend your shelter across the land
that the refugees may return home soon in our day –
that all who live between the river and the sea
may enjoy the blessings of equity,
of justice and of peace.
V’nomar,
and let us say,
Amen.
Gaza weeps alone.
Bombs falling without end
her cheeks wet with tears.
A widow abandoned
imprisoned on all sides
with none willing to save her.
We who once knew oppression
have become the oppressors.
Those who have been pursued
are now the pursuers.
We have uprooted families
from their homes, we have
driven them deep into
this desolate place,
this narrow strip of exile.
All along the roads there is mourning.
The teeming marketplaces
have been bombed into emptiness.
The only sounds we hear
are cries of pain
sirens blaring
drones buzzing
bitterness echoing
into the black vacuum
of homes destroyed
and dreams denied.
We have become Gaza’s master
leveling neighborhoods
with the mere touch of a button
for her transgression of resistance.
Her children are born into captivity
they know us only as occupiers
enemies to be feared
and hated.
We have lost all
that once was precious to us.
This fatal attachment to our own might
has become our downfall.
This idolatrous veneration of the land
has sent us wandering into
a wilderness of our own making.
We have robbed Gaza of
her deepest dignity
plunged her into sorrow and darkness.
Her people crowd into refugee camps
held captive by fences and buffer zones
gunboats, mortar rounds
and Apache missles.
We sing of Jerusalem,
to “a free people in their own land”
but our song has become a mockery.
How can we sing a song of freedom
imprisoned inside behind walls we have built
with our own fear and dread?
Here we sit clinging to our illusions
of comfort and security
while we unleash hell on earth
on the other side of the border.
We sit on hillsides and cheer
as our explosions light up the sky
while far below, whole neighborhoods
are reduced to rubble.
For these things I weep:
for the toxic fear we have unleashed
from the dark place of our hearts
for the endless grief
we are inflicting
on the people of Gaza.
Yedid Nefesh 