Well, Mr. Kenyatta, I posted my last comment on “10 Questions for White People” and ended up spending the evening reading your work here on Medium. Sound and solid as a rock, are the only words I can find to describe my experience of your mind.
This piece harmonized with the poem I mentioned (in response, to your 10 questions). In The City of Slaughter is considered the most influential Jewish poem of the twentieth century. It was written by Chaim Nachman Bialik, a Russian Jew, who reported on the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev.
The poem’s departure from tradition was jarring. The sound of our first language moves through us like music and Bialik wrote the poem in Hebrew (not Russian). Usually, reporters lamented the loss of life and the horrors of violence. Bialik did the opposite. He held the Jews accountable for their failure to defend themselves during the slaughter. Bialik did this, by holding a mirror before them and forcing them to see what he saw in the remains.
"Arise and go now to the city of slaughter;
Into its courtyard wind thy way;
There with thine own hand touch, and with the eyes of thine head,
Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead."
The first time I read the poem, the confrontation with my own fears and cowardice nearly drowned me in shame. I was spared nothing, for the poem is long.
"Question the spider in his lair!
His eyes beheld these things; and with his web he can
A tale unfold horrific to the ear of man:
A tale of cloven belly, feather-filled;
Of nostrils nailed, of skull-bones bashed and spilled;
Of murdered men who from the beams were hung,
And of a babe beside its mother flung,
Its mother speared, the poor chick finding rest
Upon its mother’s cold and milkless breast;
Of how a dagger halved an infant’s word,
Its ma was heard, its mama never heard."
I was young then and had no voice by which I could defend myself, object, or oppose the wrongs around me. That would change. I would change. Jews would change.
"Descend then, to the cellars of the town,
There where the virginal daughters of thy folk were fouled,
Where seven heathen flung a woman down,
The daughter in the presence of her mother,
The mother in the presence of her daughter,
Before slaughter, during slaughter and after slaughter!"
One day, Jews would defend themselves, and when they did, the slaughter ended. Please do not mistake me, I am not advocating violence. I am saying that self-defense is the only thing that stops violent and aggressive people.
Mr. Kenyatta, I wonder, have I captured the spirit that moves you? If not, I apologize for taking a wrong turn.
PS. Israel is in terrible shape right now. Internal division is ripping it apart and tearing Jews in every land apart. No one afford this, for the slaughter waits, perhaps it has already begun. Nonetheless, I still believe that we must remember, or we will die.
