Editor’s note: With Passover approaching (Saturday, Apr 12 – Sunday, Apr 20), it is Frontpage’s honor and pleasure to share the poem below written by writer Therese Zrihen-Dvir. We wish all of our Jewish readers a Happy Passover.
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My Land
I loved you long before I met you, treading your sand with my brazen feet, gazing into your horizon, rinsing my face with the pure water of your springs…
I ate your fruit, which I found unsurpassed… Your honey, your milk… but above all, I admired the clarity of your light, your sunrises and the fire of your sunsets.
Every stone, every piece of fragments I come across tells me of your history, your adventures, your victories and defeats, and reminds me of the sound of the sword, the crackling of the fire that burned the temple and took away its wealth and heritage: two stone tablets on which Yahweh Himself, or according to another passage in Exodus, Moses inspired by Yahweh, engraved the Ten Commandments.
I loved you unconditionally and ventured out to seek you… I found you in David’s poems with his lyre and psalms… I recognized your justice in Solomon, your prophecies in Isaiah, your miracles in Ezekiel, your ruins in Jeremiah’s laments. Your laughter with Samson, armed with a donkey jawbone to drive out the Philistines, amuses me to this day!
Your glory and wealth never ceased to sparkle even in the darkness of our mourning.
Yet, this has never succeeded in tarnishing our love for you – a land kneaded with our blood and our fathers’ remnants.
Soon, we’ll celebrate our exit from Egypt that yet, perpetuates its hunting of us to this very day even in our most complacent dreams.
We’ll recall the miracles your people have known and forgotten a little too often…
But nothing can take away the ineffable joy of being part of you, our Land, and be so close to the Creator that we sometimes, feel we can touch Him with our fingers.
What is a piece of land, after all?
A roof, a garden, a field of wheat, a river… No, it’s more than that, since we’re all ready to irrigate it with our blood and preserve Abraham and Sarah’s bones in their vault and those of Joseph, who defied Pharaoh with his knowledge and righteousness.
We are here to stay forever. We prove it every day to ourselves and to others – those who keep trying to erase us from the face of earth…
Nothing can! Nothing will!
Nothing, because these piece of land, this sand, these bones, these ruins are all of us… together… for the eternity.
