IT’S NOT (YET) TOO LATE (MAYBE)

by Katy Z. Allen

Gazans Are Dying of Starvation. —The New York Times, July 24, 2025

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

A monarch butterfly flutters among the bushes and flowers beside the pond.

Memories rise up: 

a transformational summer in Jerusalem studying Hebrew;

the power of my first experience of the Kotel;

a summer rabbinic seminar at the Shalom Hartman Institute;

visits with my future mother-in-law in Tel Aviv, and later, in Kfar Saba; 

bicycling the shaded byways of the Hula Valley and quiet desert roads of the Negev in support of “nature knows no borders.”

A pond blanketed with giant American Lotus leaves and blossoms spreads out before the eye.

Netanyahu, State of Israel,

it’s not yet too late. (Maybe.)

You still have time to change course,

to save your souls, 

and the souls of all Israelis,

and the souls all the Jews spread out 

around the planet;

you still have time to remember that G?d created every single human being on this planet

and that they are all sacred 

in the eyes of the Holy One of Blessing;

you still have time.

Tall spikes of purple and white showy tick-trefoil mingle with abundant Queen Anne’s lace.

You have the power, the knowledge, and the ability 

to send massive amounts of medical supplies and food to Gaza,

to guard them from Hamas with your troops,

and to feed and treat 

and save the lives of thousands of ordinary starving Gazans,

who are trapped by your inhumanity.

You still have time.

A great blue heron stands silently, gazing into the water, listening, waiting.

It’s not too late. Yet.

But before long it will be.

And then you will have not only 

the blood of many, many more children, women, and men on your hands and your hearts,

but you will have desecrated all that is sacred and holy of Eretz Yisrael;

you will have violated every one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah,

if not by the letter of the law,

then most certainly by its spirit;

you will have lost and abandoned your humanity,

as individuals and as a country;

you will be deserving, 

(painful as it will be to watch), 

of every single bit of retribution that will come your way;

you will have destroyed the Jewish people and state more completely 

than Hamas could ever have dreamed of doing by itself;

you will have deserted your people,

your country,

and your G!d.

A pair of black and yellow swallowtail butterflies spiral upward in a dance of unity.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, eco-chaplain, and writer since the age of eight. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and The Jewish Poets Collective Journal. Her poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.

CIVILIAN SPACES

by Tricia L. Somers

AI-generated image by Shutterstock

Heaven just sounds
like another kind of hell
Truth is the most
dangerous tale to tell
 
With the Torah
in one hand
and 2-ton bombs
in the other they prey
 
on children and their families
Chased from home
to rescue facility
No such thing as a safe place
 
Gas explorations
off the coast of Gaza
All hail to money
and to wealth be the power
 
Hallelujah and Amen
in His image
A reflection of creator
seen in the creation
 
It used to scare me to think
What if there is no god?
Now it scares me to think
What if there is?


Trish is out of L.A. CA where she lives with her Significant Other and a crazy cat or two. Online her poetry can be found at The New Verse News and Rat's Ass Review where she is an active member of the workshop. Offline, she has fierce debates with the cantankerous editor of The American Dissident print journal where she has poetry and essays. To read her take on current issues, and/ or say hi, please visit her newsletter Bitch n' Complain on Substack.

LET THEM DRINK WATER!

by Amy Wolf

Last Thursday [December 14], on the eighth night of Hanukkah, JVP members shut down eight bridges and highways in eight cities across the U.S. to demand an end to the genocide of Palestinians. Thousands of Jews and allies protested in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego — eight cities symbolizing the eight candles lit on the final night of Hanukkah, plus the shamash, or “helper” candle. JVP members blocked traffic for hours, singing, chanting, carrying giant menorahs, and holding signs reading “Jews says ceasefire now” and “Let Gaza live.” Hundreds were arrested. —Jewish Voice For Peace

Let them drink water!

As you protest, and shut down bridges

As you congratulate each other on your solidarity 

And stop traffic

They are dying of thirst, and of dysentery,

And a dozen water-borne diseases.

The bombs are killing far fewer

Than thirst, hunger, bacteria.

Don’t look away.

Rather than chanting prayers 

With our street-borne menorahs,

Rather than snarling the evening commute,

Should we not be commandeering boats,

And airplanes 

And jeeps

And our cousins and relatives in the Knesset, 

In the State Department,

To bring water to the Gazans?

To give a cup of life to those who thirst,

The babies, the children, the adults alike?

And now food.

Do you know that over a million are starving?

That none know where their next meal is coming from?

In these circumstances, it is little more than a week 

Before that next bomb will not matter.

I am tired of marching.

I do not believe the merchants of Pike Place Market 

Control the foreign policy here

Let alone the War Cabinet of Eretz Yisrael.

Principled Jews the world over have prayed and demonstrated,

Occupied, chanted and sung.

Not a morsel of food have we been able to bring over that border,

Not a cup of water.

"Nation shall not lift sword against nation;

Neither shall they study war anymore" 

Gave me such hope, in the beginning, as my relatives sang it

In Grand Central Station, in Capitol Buildings, in the street, in Hebrew.

It's an important prayer, straight out of liturgy, out of Torah.

I grew up singing it.

Surely this would work!
Surely when the President and the Congress saw

That Jews ourselves condemned this indiscriminate massacre,

They would prevail on Israel to stop.

Catch the murderers, catch the rapists, execute them,

But leave the population alone.

Their answer, an unqualified, inelegant, "We can't."

Mixed in with a mind-bending, gas-lighting, "We are!"

Pretending to be cautious of non-combatant deaths

While leveling whole city blocks on top of the heads of babes,

In full view of the whole world.

Those blinded by the narrative say, "But the images coming out of Gaza

Are only what Hamas wants you to see. I don't believe them."

True, to the extent that the images don't show us weapons amassed in tunnels,

Soldiers in uniform plotting their next strike, or hoarding supplies,

Untrue in that those buildings are truly flattened, those babies dead,

Filmed by iPhone and uploaded by stunned and defeated citizens. 

I am tired of marching.

Where are the convoys of boats full of Americans,

Heading to the Gaza coast with water and food?

Where are the airdrops of sustenance from private planes,

Where are the means by which we might feed the starving?

In Sudan as well, in Syria, in other lesser-known conflicts,

I look at us out in the street, closing bridges and highways,

And see a feel-good exercise.

Show me one person who has changed their mind on the urgency

Or right of an issue, because they were stuck in traffic one extra hour,

While their little ones and spouse waited at home.

I'll show you two who were run over while protesting,

One dead in her twenties, the other badly hurt.

Sign me up for the convoy, the jeeps, boats, and planes

Flying an American flag, daring the Israeli army to stop us

From bringing food and water.

Oh wait. Rachel Corrie.

This experiment has been run before.

They would not hesitate to fire on us either.

They rolled a bulldozer over her young body

As she stood between it and a Palestinian house

They were intent on demolishing.

24 years old, from Olympia, Washington.

Dead in 2003.

This is why we close bridges and march against our own merchants.

Israel is too deadly a place to demonstrate.

Amy Wolf is an LMT and energy worker who resides in Seattle, WA, and is studying writing.

GRAVITY WILL GET US

by Alan Walowitz

“Just last night, there were shots fired outside of Temple Israel in Albany. And just yesterday, the menorah of Chabad Sunset Park in Brooklyn was vandalized.”  —Mayor Eric Adams, December 8, 2023

Some of us are willing to wait
till our native caution fails  
on the worn and slippery stairs.
No matter our disparate falls 
in the garden, or the desert, the reclaimed land,
or holding the safe door tight, 
against the next volley.  
It all becomes so much the same
in the short history of you and me. 
Today it’s news, tomorrow we’re gone. 
Who has the will to study and learn,
as Torah demands, such a short stay?.   
 
Everyone’s bound to fall,
even the lithe and balletic among us 
give way to age and our own sad shuffling.
Some will make a thud when we hit the ground, 
some a noise of lesser note,
as we learn, again, as if we didn’t know, 
this is not a movie. 
No shot, no bang, no dying fall.
Sometimes a shatter will sound
before we get the sharp reminder
what the slimmest shard might do.
 
Let me hide in plain sight long as I can—
I’ll agree to shut my mouth for now.
My forebears knew how to sound grateful,
and content, the price for being taken in. 
But one dyspeptic uncle, always a stranger,
warned never to feel safe—even here,
in The Golden Land.
Hah! his voice-- though not heard for years--
now rings like an alarm in my ears:
Boychik, you just wait and see. 

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

SIMCHAT TORAH WAR

by Elya Braden

“Bereshit” print from Nireh Or

The beginning is the promise of the end.

—Henry Ward Beecher

 

Every Fall we rock the house,

dance & sing & lift the scroll.

Roll back to B’reishit. In the beginning—

chaos cleaved into light & dark

a man a woman a garden a fall.

 

Roll back l’dor v’dor—generation

to generation. 

Roll back Deuteronomy’s gifts—

Ten Commandments, Moses peering

into the Promised Land.

Roll back Numbers’ sufferings—

rod, stone, bland manna,

a wilderness of complaint. 

Roll back Leviticus’ hundreds of tiny edicts

the cost of forgiveness—

denial & purification.

Roll back Exodus’ hungry waters,

locusts, frogs, endless night,

          lambs’ blood to guardian our sons.

Roll back to Genesis—father/mother/handmaid,

multiply two sons & divide 

by one patch of desert.

 

So, who’s to blame for blood feud? 

Isaac & Ishmael? Or their mothers—

Sarah & Hagar? Sarah’s laughter 

withering on her lips as her handmaid 

suckles Abraham’s eldest— 

a legacy of lack & opportunity.

Or blame God—God’s two-faced 

promise: I will make of your son 

a great nation. 

 

Well, one thing we know about land 

is God ain’t making any more.

Yet we multiply like frogs, spill

from lakes & puddles & faucets & mouths, 

our hunger rises like the papery wings 

of a thousand moths splitting their cocoons, 

stripping the trees of green.

 

So why not drone a war on this day 

we dance & sing, raise Torah scrolls 

above our heads to celebrate return? 

B’reishit bara Elohim,

“In the beginning, God created…”

 

Air raid sirens the only psalms now sung 

in this land of too many Gods.

Editor’s Note: Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday that celebrates and marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, began for Hebrew Year 5784 on Saturday, 7 October 2023 and ended on Sunday, 8 October 2023.

Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks, Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing (2023). Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Prometheus Dreaming, Rattle Poets Respond, Sequestrum, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets.