Back to Issue Thirteen

 

Prayers Today in Israel by Karen Alkalay-Gut

Prayers Today in Israel

מחיה מתים ברחמים רבים

In His great mercy, He revives the dead,

 

Prayers shift their substance,

when the congregation is armed.

M-16s sling over folded tallitim,

ready for prayers, ready for battle

 

From the women’s section in the rear,

male backs are all I can perceive,

I mouth praise to the Lord

as I recall the flash of a girl

in a field of her friends’ corpses

begging to be released from life.

 

רופא חולים

healeth the sick,

 

The soldier before me at the pharmacy

shrugs his weapon back on his shoulder

as he takes his prescription out of his pocket

and hands it over the counter.

Mahmud examines the paper and says,

It must be painful, Dan, but maybe let’s try

a cream less extreme. Does it burn when…

They drop their voices and move away for me

so their consultation is not overheard.

 

ומתיר אסורים

frees the imprisoned,

 

I grasp my protest dog tag,

that says, Bring Them Home,

and want to say,

Let my people go.

 

ומקים אמונתו לישיני עפר

and fulfills His faith to those who sleep in the dust.

 

Resting by the Jordan River

eyeing the automatic baptism chair

that lowers the penitent into the waters

and revives the newly saved into a new life,

unused now while the rockets fall,

I long to bathe, soak my hair and spring up

enlightened. Instead, I fulfil my hunger

with the shawarma at the stand of Al-Babur,

until recently known as the gourmet restaurant

of the village of Um Il Fachem.