This is a multi-layered poem/text. It begins as a poem of witness, about one of the horrible photos of Palestinian men and boys stripped and bound and thrown into a truck to be hauled away. Then there is a counter-poem with phrases in Hebrew from all across Jewish textual traditions including Torah, Talmud, and documents from modern Israel. For each of the those phrases, arranged around the two central poems, are series of notes that don’t just translate but provide context, a passionate argument against the genocidal violence of the Israeli government that rises up from deep within Jewish tradition. The entire page is arranged as a page of Talmud, the set of Jewish texts which recorded the arguments that rabbis had back and forth for centuries. It is a form immediately recognizable to most (not all, but most) Jews, but you don’t have to have that immediate recognition to enter into the text. Honestly, it is a strange monster, this poem, its words and shape taking form as a container for my fury and my grief.

Elliott batTzedek is a bookseller, poet, and liturgist who lives in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, where her translation of Dance of the Lunatic by the Israeli lesbian writer Shez won the Robert Bly Translation prize, judged by Martha Collins. Elliott was chosen as an attendee for the inaugural conference for Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. Her poems and translations have been published in: American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, Lilith, I-70 Review, Hunger Mountain Review, Sakura Review, Apiary, Cahoodaloodaling, Naugatuck River Review, Poemeleon, Poetica, Philadelphia Stories, and a Split This Rock poem of the week. Her chapbook the enkindled coal of my tongue was published in January, 2017 by Wicked Banshee Press. A chapbook of translations from Shez, A Necklace of White Pearls, is forthcoming from Moonstone Press in 2024. She is the co-leader of Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah, which was founded in 2007 and serves as a liturgy lab for Jewish communities across the U.S.