NEXT GEN JEWS

by Rob Okun

A new Jewish tradition is growing in those places where solidarity flourishes. Amid the ugliness and death, and as our institutions cleave to the mistaken idea that our safety comes from ever more brutal applications of state power, the future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. Our new Jewish tradition prioritizes truth-telling and justice, and in this way it is actually the old Jewish tradition, which has given us all the tools we’re using. —William Alden, The Nation, May 10, 2024. Photo: Jews calling for a cease-fire in Gaza demonstrate at Grand Central Station in New York City on October 27, 2023. (Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)

now comes a multigenerational exodus:

next gen jews leading us out of the

desert of fear where
too many in our ancient tribe
—hearts paralyzed by trauma—still 

cannot see 
the nakba as a catastrophe for
our semitic cousins

stifling next gen voices only strengthens resolve
shutting down encampments is a 
losing proposition:
love flourishes in these life camps and
 “justice, justice, thou shalt pursue” 
remains our north star
of david

with an outstretched hand 
fingers tightly wrap around 
the braided fringes hanging at
the ends of our meditation shawls
we hear the cries of our far flung 
family in diaspora

turning inward—to the work of tikkun olam: 
there is a jewish renewal unfolding
a new jewish agenda being birthed 
at street seders and shabbats 
in the rain 

no one, not netennotajew nor any jew—no 

matter how hard they squeeze their eyes 

wide shut—
can unsee the future 
blowing in the wind on campuses 
in the streets and in the hearts of all 
those following next gen jews out of egypt

Rob Okun is editor emeritus of Voice Male, a magazine which has been chronicling the profeminist men's movement since the mid-1980s. His commentaries and op-eds are syndicated by the Portland, Oregon-based Peace Voice. 

THE BETRAYAL OF TIKKUN OLAM

by Beth Heller

art by Nina Bonos

To repair the world, they said,

was our duty and our privilege
and the reason for our continued existence
 
Israel was supposed to be
the place where this work was embodied
and my body was put to use in its garden
 
I carried water in buckets
My 15 year old arms reaching toward trees
planted in the name of hope

We looked across the border
into barren desert and felt pride
And this was the mistake

This pride in green fields on one side
and desert on the other
We thought it meant they didn’t care

or couldn’t do the hard work of growing
We thought we had the right
and the power

And that THEY did not
And that THEY only wanted bombs 
and rage
 
This pride is the killer
the border, the dividing line 
between right and wrong

When all we had to do was step over 
a nonexistent line in the sand
drawn by meddlers and offer a hand
 
Now it is too late
The healing has flipped to genocide 
in no other name than power
The thing that was planted
was hate
on both sides of the fence
 
Tikkun Olam is for all of us
A responsibility and
a privilege

And the path is a walk
through a rain of blood
nurturing nothing

Same as it ever was
in this desert where humanity
has wandered far too long
 
Blame us
Blame them
Blame everyone

Or not, but walk
Walk that path 
towards oasis

The one fountain
contained in our bodies
everywhere

The same blood pumps through all of us
The same blood stains the ground
on either side of the fence

The same blood
calls out for 
peace

Beth Heller’s poetry has appeared in a variety of chapbooks and anthologies, including those of the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Houston Poetry Fest, Wild Word: Poets of the Gunnison Valley, and Fools Court Press, Houston, as well as newspapers and journals such as the Mountain Gazette, Fungi Magazine, and most recently and after a decades-long absence from public poeming, Medicine for Minds & Hearts: a MycoAnthology of poems inspired by a love of mushrooms, Fungi Press.  She moves around but is currently nested in Western North Carolina

SERMON FOR SPRING HOLIDAYS

by Catherine Gonick

Source: Image from NewVoices.org via Haggadot.com. Adapted from Dinah Winnick.

In a just and regenerative world

cooperation and honor

a given

 

no one would be made a slave

but we are all traffickers

 

                  Gloria

and violence would be only

the absence of good

but we’re all mass shooters

 

                  In excelsis

our souls

are returned to us pure

aach morning

 

                  Deo

and we repollute them

 

beggared

imaginations can’t be trusted

with much freedom

children must be taught to share

although adults

can’t do it

 

in the nineteen hundreds

sperm whales learned

to swim upwind

of sailing ships’ harpoons

but now can’t escape our noise

 

alone on rising

stolen seas

our Jonah spat out

floats on plastic

 

in our hopeful house

chametz is hunted

a beast sacrificed

another Passover feast prepared

 

we pray       tikkun olam

for whomever shall inherit     our Earth

                                   

 

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Silver Birch Press, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, and Dead of Winter. She works in a company that seeks to slow the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.