Lee Diamond – Damn It and the Lost Tribe of Israel
Damned if we do and damned if we don’t!
In the city of slaughter, Chaim Nachman Bialik declared our desolate status:
As we stood by as our wives and mothers and daughters were raped
By the Cossack beasts
We didn’t fight but we hid in the rafters and peeked
And when the ravage ended, we asked our Rabbis if our women were still pure to us?
Note: we asked the rabbis, not ourselves and not our women
Purity concerned us most.
Not the crime perpetrated against us—them
We must have sinned
And God must have punished us!
We waited for the rabbis answer
Waited and waited
This is our fate as Jews— to Wait
Yes we were the “Butt of the nations” as Pinsker stated
Gods will?
Our sins?
The rabbis deliberated and waited and waited
We were damned by all for our cowardice
And then we broke the chains crippling us
And asserted our primal scream
And shouted for the world to hear
We aren’t your butt damned world
We are the descendants of the Maccabees
And we will arise to relight the Menorah
And we stood together as an exceedingly great nation
And Maybe it was God at our side or back
Or maybe we had guts instead of butts
Or maybe we were tired of waiting
For the rabbis “hechsher”
What a nation ?
No longer peeping from the rafters
We stood firm against all odds
War after war–all for independence
And the war continues
And we continue to stand firm
No longer cowering before the new Cossacks
No butts about it
We have arisen to meet all foes
Be they in the halls of Europe
Be they knifers in the hills and valleys and plains
Be they BDSers
Or frightened Jews on college campuses
Afraid of their ethnicity, yet hardly Jewish
Or anti Semites who abound –and sneer and perhaps fear our ability to protect ourselves and no longer. Willing to be their butt!
So now we have power.
But now we are attacked for our ability to defend ourselves
You see when Jews defend themselves, it is referred to as “disproportionate’
When America, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia bomb an invisible enemy
Of their own
This is
BRAVERY
And medals are awarded
And the enemy lingers on
And tens upon tens of thousands die
As justice fails
No worry! For we will never return to the rafters or attics of fear
We are the children of the Maccabees
The Defending. Israeli Jews,
So let us be damned as we do—rather than be damned for our don’t
The Lost Tribe of Israel
A secular Israeli
Attended a synagogue
In the Great American diaspora
He was offered an Aliyah
Which he gladly accepted
The gabbai asked him his Hebrew name
Which was Amnon
So he declared himself: Amnon
And the gabbai retorted
“No, your Hebrew name!!!”
“Amnon” said Amnon
The gabbai was confused
He needed to know
His Jewish name
But Amnon’s name and self
Though secular, were
Jewish.
Where have we come to?
Secular Israelis who know their Jewish name
And being
And religious Jews who
Don’t understand that an IsraelI
Name and being are one/ not bifurcated
Whereas the gabbai expects bifurcation
Where have we come ?
Jews who are illiterate ?
The vast majority of the American
Jewish diaspora are illiterate
And Can’t read an Alef or a Bet
Where have we come when intermarriage
Is the rule, accepted by the majority
We must have a “big tent Judaism”
To move on, to survive?
Where have we come to when most people
Attending synagogue or JCC’s are not Jewish?
Where have we come to when the Jewishly ignorant
And part time Jews try to dictate Jewish life, politics
And lifestyles to the full time Secular Israeli Jews
Where have we come to when illiterate and ignorant
Liberal Jews criticize Israel and condemn us
For wars of defense of ourselves?
You don’t have to send us your sons and daughters
To wear our uniform
But where’s your humility
When you call us an aggressor ?
For fighting for our Jewish lives?
All that’s required is to at least be silent
When you cower in your safety as Jews
In your distant hiding places
And support those who hate you too.
And when you March with my enemy and yours
Do you March against your own government
When it bombs Isis in Syria and Iraq
And over-kills to defeat this common enemy?
Do you call for a boycott on your own country
For its sins of occupation of land since it’s very
Inception?
Or do you eat turkey on thanksgiving
To celebrate your conquests over the Native Americans on whose
Land you live?
And to add insult to injury
On they very day that a legendary Jewish hero
Dies
Eli Weisel z”l
You criticize this צדיק הדור this ל״ו nick
For loving Israel too much
Where have we come to when the tail
Tries to lead the vital horse as it gallops swiftly
Toward our future.
Perhaps we are actively bringing the messiah
While you wait
To those who would try to stop us
Note please —-you need us
Not the opposite
