I know many of us are very concerned about the ongoing violence in the Middle East, regardless of our political affiliations, and wish there was more that we could do to help.
I have been asked to participate in a benefit concert this Monday, August 7 for both Jewish and Arab/Muslim civilian victims of the current conflict in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza. All donations will go to the International Red Cross.
The concert will feature many of Boston’s top performing artists, including top-notch artists from Muslim/Arab and Jewish backgrounds, working together to try to be of some help to the innocent victims on both sides of this conflict. (I will be reading some poetry in Hebrew and English, and possibly singing, though I don’t know what the final program looks like yet.) There is more information here: the event will take place at Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay, on Monday night August 7 at 8pm.
Here is the English translation of a poem I will be reading, by Yehuda Amichai, a passionate Humanist and the greatest Modern Hebrew poet:
Wildpeace
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.