Three Years Later: Ayeka? Where Are You?
#october7 #octoberseventh #parshatbreisheet #lightanddarkness #cainandable #parshapoetry #wordshavewings #ganeden #novamusicfestival #wewilldanceagain #ayeka #whereareyou
A few days after October 7, 2023, I wrote this poem, slightly altered, for Parshat Breisheet. I re-post it here on October 7, 2026 with an important addition at the end. I hope you will take the time to read both the first poem and the addition.
May Parshat Breisheet allow us to seek the light even in darkness.
In memory of those who perished on October 7, 2023 and beyond, may their neshamot know rest and their families comforted.
Leann
Sounds rise from The Leafy Garden,
whose borders extend from bruised purple mountains
to a sea crusted with tears.
Cries, not from the jackal howling,
not from the cranes who fly wide-winged above,
but from a child alone,
soaked in urine,
whose dazed brown eyes
blink at the bluest of skies,
as her tiny hands reach up.
The air, pierced with her cries,
echoes with Ayeka
Where are you?
Between eucalyptus trees in an autumn garden
a paradise of people leap swiftly
like a herd of hunted gazelles.
In and out they weave;
the hunter and the hunted,
in a dance of death.
Bullets whiz around them,
through them.
Their blood soaks the ground and calls out,
Ayeka? Where are you?
Ayeka, cry out the parents,
the old and the young.
Ayeka, in disbelief
weep the Jews.
Their voices reach to the heavens,
but perhaps it is not loud enough?
?אַיֶּֽכָּה
Where are you?
The Torahs tremble in the ark,
as their silver bells tinkle ...
Jewish blood calls up from the ground
soaked now for generations.
Where are You?
אַיֶּֽכָּה
Three years later, written on October 7, 2026, for Parshat Breisheet.
In Judaism both light and darkness are created in Parshat Breisheet. We live in that balance of light and dark.
Long ago our ancestors marked the beginning of the new month in darkness on mountaintops and searched for the tiniest sliver of the light of the new moon to begin the new month.
Our calendar begins a new day in the darkness of the evening.
As the Sabbath departs we search for three pinpricks of light in the evening sky.
It is in darkness that we pursue the light.
וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב
וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר
Other posts on October 7th and its Aftermath
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Other posts on Parshat Breisheet
Leann, your words and images crunch my gut .makes me feel the chaos, the blood, the trauma. It can't ever happen again.