Festival of ‘Tabernacles’
And ‘Ingathering’
Season of
Temporary
Shelters
Set up in fields
At harvest time
This year
Reaping
The harvest of
Twelve months of
Destruction.

Burnt-out
Homes in
Shattered
Kibbutzim
Village-islands of
Collective
Life
Labour
Democracy
Their
Surviving
Battered
Inhabitants
Scattered
To live
Temporarily
Elsewhere.

And
In another
Elsewhere
Flimsy tents
Temporary
Shelters
In the rubble
Ruined
Homes
Schools
Hospitals
Open to the elements
Their battered inhabitants
Wanderers
In the wilderness of
Concrete and dust
Carrying their lives
On their backs
As they bear the pain of
Endless
Displacement.

And all this
Devastation
Defying
The ever-present
Gaze of
The Eternal
Summoned
By our hands
Grasping
Palm-branch
Willow
Myrtle
Fragrant etrog
And waving
Nature’s bounty
In all directions
East
South
West
North
Heavenwards
And towards the
Gasping
Blasted
Earth.