Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 4

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Doikayt is a Yiddish word
central to Buddhist teaching:
"right here, right now."

Wait, that's wrong.
The definition said Bundist.
Labor unions, not zazen --

build better wherever we are.
Justice is the promised land
we may never reach.

But the mystics are right too.
When we're fully here, God
is in this place.

When I'm paying
continuous partial attention
to three different news apps

or biting back responses
to someone wrong on Facebook
I'm not really here.

But last night my son
danced with his double bass
and the headlines all fell away.

 

 

At shul the other night, someone mentioned doikayt, Yiddish for "hereness." I knew the word, but wanted to know more about its origins, so I resolved to look it up when I got home. I did, and promptly misread the first line of the definition. That's what sparked this poem. 

I love the idea of Buddhist doikayt, though.

For more on doikayt, and its origins in Yiddishist / diasporist labor circles, see Jewish Word | Doikayt: the Jewish Left is Here. For a more personal take, try this short instagram post from poet Aurora Levins Morales, including gorgeous art by Wendy Elisheva Somerson created for Morales' book Rimonim. 

I also love these words from poet Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz, "Doikayt means Jews enter coalitions wherever we are, across lines that might divide us, to work together for universal equality and justice."

That dovetails with something I've been thinking (and writing) about a lot lately: how do we build coalitions toward justice across lines that might divide us when we are so divided as a community around Israel / Palestine? 

(And, relatedly: when we are turned against each other, who benefits? When we are busy with anger at one another, what opportunities for tikkun do we miss?)

 

From the Depths - new from Bayit

Collaborating with members of Bayit's liturgical arts working group has become an integral part of my spiritual practice in recent years. As we brainstorm, create, workshop, revise, and polish new art and liturgy together, I feel more grounded in the now and also more ready for whatever is coming.

We just released a new collaborative collection for Pesach, and it moves me deeply. There's a lot of anxiety and grief here, which speaks from my heart (from all of our hearts.) There's also hope, to which I am clinging as fiercely as I know how. Maybe that's something you need this year too.

Here's one of the pieces I wrote for the offering:

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(I'll also enclose it below in plaintext for those who need it in that format -- I know the screencap of the slide isn't readable to everyone.)

You can find the whole collaboration here: From the Depths -- available, as always, both as a downloadable PDF and as slides suitable for screenshare. I hope something here speaks to you in a way that will enliven your seders this year.

 

Multitude

 

We are a mixed multitude: some frozen in trauma,

some burning with grief. Each of us carries

at least one image of a child's unjust death

seared into our hearts. How do we walk free?

 

Tell me the story again of how God said,

"My children are drowning and you sing praises?!"

Every human being is a child of God,

even the ones on the other side.

 

This year nobody's cup of joy is full.  

Our souls feel as fragile as matzah.

Even if we and our children and our children's children

aren't certain what freedom would feel like, 

 

maybe we can agree that this state of brokenness

isn't it. I want to believe we can get there from here.

Maybe the only way is as a mixed multitude

holding hope for each other until we can feel it again.

R. Rachel Barenblat

Poem beginning with a line from this morning's Duolingo Arabic lesson

 

There is no problem, I like to sleep.
When I'm sleeping, it's just dreams:

too many suitcases to carry, or
realizing I packed the wrong clothes

and nothing in this closet fits.
(This airport is too big, I can't find

the right gate, I forgot to turn in
the rental car...) The hum of anxiety

is constant, like a hybrid car singing
its quiet chord, but I know exactly

what I'm nervous about. Small potatoes.
Awake, the shadows are darker.

I know I can't control whether or not
this year's Haman is stoppable.

The news, and a glimmer of hope

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An image from The Blues Brothers. 

 

Two news stories are sitting in my consciousness side by side. One is Columbia University losing federal funding and the related plan to deport a Palestinian grad student activist who had a green card. As a Jew, I am deeply troubled by the chilling effects of removing funding from universities that allow certain kinds of protests. I'm even more appalled by the threat of deportation for one's political views. And doing that in our name, as though it made Jews safer? News flash: it does not.

The other story is about the rabbi who was disinvited from speaking at an anti-Nazi rally. (See also Cincinnati rabbi disinvited from rally against neo-Nazis over his support for Israel.) Rabbi Ari Jun believes "that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in some portion of their ancestral homeland." He also believes that Palestinians have that same right to self-determination; opposes settlements, the war in Gaza, and Netanyahu; and dreams of a two-state solution. 

As Rabbi Jun notes, his views are pretty mainstream in liberal Jewish communities, but the organizers of this rally decided he's not welcome. Here's a(nother) progressive organization deciding that a Jew who supports both Israelis and Palestinians is beyond the pale. This kind of thinking is all too common (see Adriana Leigh's I Will Not Hide My Judaism in Progressive Spaces). It makes me sad, it drives a wedge between allies, and it feels deeply counter to what I think the world most needs.

Here's the real kicker, in Rabbi Jun's words:

The topic on which I planned to speak was the importance of building broad, intersectional efforts to fight against the threats of Nazism and white supremacy, despite the differences that might otherwise exist in the groups invited to such coalitions.

The kind of coalitions I am speaking of aren't always comfortable for everyone around the table, but they work. You can���t fight back against existential threats by limiting the number of people who join you. You fight back, successfully, by living within the discomfort of finding allies for specific purposes, even if you know you do not agree with them on all things.

This feels so important to me in this moment of what the Guardian calls the crisis of Trump���s assault on the rule of law. This is an unprecedented time. Things are bad, and I fear they will get worse, for so many communities: for Jews, for Palestinians, for queer people, for people of color, for immigrants and refugees. We need coalition-building. We need to be able to stand together and support each other, even when we don't agree on everything, even when standing together is uncomfortable.

We need to be able to stand together against Nazis. I don't particularly want to stand with those who think either Israelis or Palestinians should be exiled from the land -- I think that's unrealistic, it's "unserious thinking," and it's the opposite of helpful. But in order to push back against Nazis I would gladly link arms with people who hold views I find disagreeable, because the threat of Nazism is too great. I'm disheartened that the organizers of this rally don't seem to share that principle. 

And we need to support the constitutional right to peacefully assemble and protest, even if those protests make us uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable with "From the river to the sea" and "we don't want no two states." But if someone can be deported for political views, then we're back to McCarthyism. There's a reason the ACLU stood up for the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie. No matter how objectionable some views might be, Jews should stand for the right to express them.

Neither of these is the way to combat actual antisemitism or support Jews in flourishing. 

*

Here's the good news I can offer today. On Sunday, a dozen people sat around a table at my synagogue and participated in an autobiographical comics workshop called Drawing Through Conflict, co-led by local Jewish comics artist Anna Moriarty Lev and art therapist Kaye Shaddock. It was part of an ongoing series of opportunities and events organized by a small group of congregants who believe in the importance of learning together about the Middle East even when we might deeply disagree. 

Around that table we did not all share the same views about, or experiences of, Israel and Palestine. Over the course of two hours, as drawing prompts took us deeper, we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable with each other. We wrote and drew and laughed and cried and trusted each other with our stories. Does this "solve" anything in the Middle East? Of course not. But does it have the capacity to impact our hearts, our connections, and our local community? Absolutely. And I believe that matters. 

 

Lifting up some history

The trailer for season two of High on the Hog. If you can't see the embedded video, it's here at Youtube.

 

I recently started rereading High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica Harris, which launched a Netflix series of the same name (about which I wrote a few years ago). Once I started rereading it, I remembered there's a second season of the show. In this moment when so many on the right are yelling about how much they hate DEI, I made a conscious choice to turn away from that discourse and to learn more about the roots of Black food and culture in this country.

In the first episode of the second season, "Food for the Journey," Serigne Mbaye serves a plate of akara, black-eyed-pea fritters with a palm oil sauce. He tells the story of visiting Gor��e Island (one of the grief-soaked places on African soil from which the slavers set sail.) As slaves were fattened for the treacherous journey to come, they were fed familiar black eyed peas and palm oil. He explains to the hosts of the show that the akara he serves now are a way of honoring that painful history. 

I think of the black-eyed pea fritter recipe I learned from Black Gay Jewish chef Michael Twitty, also a shout-out to the ancestors who brought these ingredients with them across the sea. (I remember the black-eyed pea fritters I ate in Ghana in 1999 outside a very long church service held in half a dozen tribal languages in addition to English.) And I think: refusing to teach or to honor the strength, perseverance, and wisdom of the African American community is so short-sighted and sad.

In another poignant scene, a gentleman named Elvin Shields talks about what it was like to be a sharecropper in the 1940s and 50s. Picking cotton. Growing what food they could. Having to rent equipment from the landowner in order to do their contractually-obligated labor. Having to buy food on credit from the plantation store, and then pay up when the cotton was sold. (Makes me think of today's prison laborers.) And then mechanization came, and they were told on no notice to leave.

All of this was decades after slavery was over. And yet the constricted circumstances, the limited foodstuffs made available at the plantation store, even eventually forced migration -- all of it was still there... right up until the beginning of what we now call the Civil Rights era. (And now it feels like we're fighting again for the same civil rights and human dignity I thought my forebears had secured.) It is both depressing and uplifting to realize how today's struggles dovetail with what came before.

I was also moved by Mr. Benjamin Gaines, Sr. (among the last of the Pullman porters), age 99. He tells a story about an encounter with a white patron who kicked him in the ass, and about how some of the white patrons called all of them "George" (as in George Pullman.) It was an erasure of their identity: a scant step above calling them "boy" (or worse.) He also reminisces about the food the Black chefs made for the staff, and how they had a magic touch that made it feel like home.

The history of human chattel slavery and the long, deep-rooted prejudices that followed makes me so angry and sad. Some elements remind me of the Jewish history that's in my bones and the prejudices we've experienced. I guess it makes sense that I try to understand racism through the lens of antisemitism, which is the hateful bigotry I know best. And -- I also want to honor the celebratory parts of this history. There is triumph here, and artistry, and honor, and beauty. That feels important.

I want to learn more of the history of how (many) white Americans treated African Americans -- and also how Black Americans thrived even amidst hardship, in neighborhoods planted on rocky or even poisoned soil. (Including in Texas.) As a Jewish American I want to come to grips with all of this. Not in a self-flagellating way, but in a way that takes responsibility for my nation's history and my own choices while also lifting up and learning from the beauty of African American wisdom and survival. 

I know a lot of people who have been struggling with feeling hopeless over the last month or so. This book and show are a good reminder that our forebears in the struggle toward justice faced profound difficulties and found a way to survive and even thrive. That might be some of the wisdom we most need right now. At least, it might be some of the wisdom that I most need right now. And I imagine I'm not alone. Anyway: I'm finding some spiritual uplift in watching High on the Hog.

Joy increases?

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Talmud says, ���������������������������� ���������� ������������������ ���������������������� -- "When Adar enters, joy increases." (Ta'anit 21a) Or maybe, "When Adar arrives, we increase our joy."

This may be easier said than done.

In recent years I've struggled with the injunction to rejoice during Adar. My mother died six years ago during Adar I. My father died three years ago during Adar II. (This year isn't a leap year, so we just have one Adar, which means their two yahrzeits are in even closer proximity.) "When Adar enters, joy increases" --? The last few years it's been more like, when Adar enters, stock up on yahrzeit candles.

I'm no longer actively grieving my parents' absence. The loss has become familiar, its edges softening over time. But there are less-personal, more-global reasons to feel like "joy increases" might be facile and tone-deaf. Purim's tale of an evil advisor intent on destroying the Jews for Mordechai's refusal to compromise his values lands differently in a time when many of us feel increasingly unsafe. 

For those of us who are trans or gender-nonconforming, for those of us who work as public servants, for those of us whose lives are connected with any of the many agencies that have already been slashed to ribbons, for those of us worrying about Ukraine, for those of us who are anxious about the apparent dismantling of the American government, this does not feel like a time for rejoicing.

And yet.

"Talmud doesn���t say to be joyful in Adar only in good years, because then we probably would never do it." So teaches R. Irwin Keller in his recent post Telling Purim. Talmud says, this is the time of year to grow in joy, period. Because our souls need it. Because we need to remember that redemption is possible. Because we need to learn to find hope even in a story where God's name doesn't appear.

Because February felt endless -- a terrible month of watching diversity programs, international aid, cancer research, staffing at national parks, Medicare and Medicaid, the Department of Education, and so much more decimated by a guy brandishing a chainsaw and boasting about what he's demolishing -- and it is time to turn away from marinating in grief and claim some agency to lift up our hearts.

Because Purim leads us toward Pesach, as one full moon leads to the next. And Pesach is our annual reminder that freedom from constriction is possible even if we can't begin to imagine how we'll get from here to there. I cannot begin to imagine how we'll get from here to there. But at Pesach as a people we take the spiritual leap into the unknown, and Adar is our spiritual onramp to that journey.

Maybe part of the way we reach freedom lies in Purim's reminder that like Esther, we have to speak out for the freedom and safety of others. Like Mordechai, we have to stand up for what's right, and refuse to bow to those who claim power unjustly. Our freedom and safety are always inextricably bound up with each others'... and this is far from the first time we've faced injustice as a people.

There can be joy in actively embracing our values. There can be joy in standing up for justice, and for the needs of those who are vulnerable, and for what we know is right. It is a defiant kind of joy. It is joy as an act of resistance. Joy that reminds us that no one can take away our humanity, our values, our capacity to care for each other. This is a kind of joy that can coexist with anger and sorrow.

"When Adar enters, joy increases." I'll admit that feels more than a little bit implausible this year. But I remind myself that this isn't the first time in Jewish history that we have struggled to access joy in the face of injustice: not even close. Claiming the capacity for joy and hope even in terrible times is one of our tradition's spiritual tools for surviving those times with our hearts and souls intact. 

 

Sanctuary: Terumah 5785 / 2025

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���������������� ���������������������� ���������������������� ���������������������������� �������������������� ������������ �������������������� �������������� ������������������������ �������������� ������������������ ������������������������������������������������������� �������� �������������������� ���������������������������� ����������������������

Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved��� And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them [or: within them].  (Ex. 25:2, 8)

This week in our ancestral story we begin building the Mishkan, a portable home for God. Torah will spend the next several weeks describing the blueprints for, and then the building of, this holy place for the divine Presence. Midrash regards the mishkan as not only a blueprint for the Temple but also a microcosm of the world, and teaches that in a cosmic sense God planned at the very beginning of creation that we would build it ��� for God���s sake, and also for our own.

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Some renderings of how the mishkan might have looked.

���Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell within them.��� In Hebrew the word used here, mishkan, literally means a dwelling-place for God. Shekhinah (the divine Presence) dwells in the mishkan (sanctuary) ��� those words share a root.  In English, the word sanctuary can mean both the physical structure (as in our synagogue sanctuary) and also a sense of safety and acceptance, as in ���I seek sanctuary.��� A sanctuary is both a sacred space, and a safe space. 

When we create sanctuary, God dwells within us. I think the inverse is also true: if we take sanctuary away ��� if we make someone unsafe; if we refuse them shelter and care ��� we are pushing God away. It is a fundamental tenet of Judaism that we are all made in the divine image and likeness. When we create a space where it���s safe to be who we are, we are making space for God. When it is unsafe to be our whole selves, God���s presence is diminished. 

For some of us, right now, a lot of places are increasingly unsafe. Both Charlotte Clymer and Erin Reed have been writing about the last month���s anti-trans executive orders, passports being confiscated, erasure of resources, and legislation to remove protection from discrimination. Standing by as civil rights protections for our trans siblings are removed goes against the grain of Jewish values and, as my friend R. Mike Moskowitz teaches, also against Jewish law. 

If these things impact you, you already know all of this and I am preaching to the proverbial choir. If they don���t impact you, you may not have thought much about them, or may not be aware of them. It���s easy not to feel the slings and arrows that are aimed at someone else. I���m inviting those of us who aren���t impacted by this specific form of prejudice to empathize with those of us who are ��� and, fueled by that empathy, to act. That���s what Judaism asks of us. 

If we want our community to be a mishkan, a dwelling-place for God*, then it has to be a safe dwelling place for God���s children in the infinite range of human diversity, including diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. (*Whatever God means to each of us, God far above or deep within. As always, if the ���G-word��� doesn���t speak to you, find one that does. Justice, Meaning, Truth, Integrity: all of these ask us to strengthen our Jewish values in these times.)

If we want our community to be a mishkan, a dwelling-place for God*, then it has to be a safe dwelling place for God���s children no matter where they come from. The Reform movement has been actively engaging in this work for decades. As Jews, we have very clear instructions on how to treat every immigrant and refugee. We are commanded to ���love the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.��� Torah tells us this 36 times: that���s how important this mitzvah is.

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This weekend has been designated as Refugee Shabbat by HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. HIAS builds its work on Torah���s teaching that we���re commanded to love the stranger because our people know the heart of the stranger. We���re commanded to care for the immigrant and the refugee because our people have been immigrants and refugees. This mitzvah links us back to the Exodus, which is the foundational story of who we are as a people.

In the last month, HIAS has joined the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements in challenging the decision to allow ICE to enter schools and houses of worship. The places where we learn and pray should be safe spaces for everyone. In welcoming immigrants and refugees we live out the Jewish value of hakhnasat orhim, welcoming the stranger, as exemplified by the patriarch Abraham whose tent was open on all sides in welcome.

Rhetoric suggesting that immigrants are ���invaders��� harms not only immigrant communities but the fabric of our country as a whole. (That rhetoric was also behind the massacre at Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. That synagogue was attacked because they are welcoming to immigrants and refugees.) And the scarcity mentality that says we can���t afford to help others is profoundly un-Jewish. In our tradition even those who receive tzedakah are also obligated to give. 

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Some renderings of the ark topped with two keruvim.

A few verses after the verse saying ���let them build Me a sanctuary that I might dwell within them,��� Torah describes a pair of golden keruvim ��� that���s a kind of winged angel. We���re instructed to make a pair of keruvim atop the ark, facing each other. Once they���re built, God���s voice will emerge from the space between them. I think this comes to remind us that we find God in relationship. We hear God when we listen into the relational space between us. 

Martin Buber taught that God is present when we relate to one another in an I/Thou way: treating the other human being as a sacred facet of God, just as we are. This is the opposite of dehumanization. When this is our way of being in the world, our obligations to each other are luminous and clear. Every immigrant and refugee and displaced person is a Thou, worthy of infinite care. So is every human being of every gender expression. So are all of us 

In the coming week, may we find God���s presence between and among and within us.

May we feel moved to give what we can, to do what we can, to create a home for God ��� which means creating safety for each other. 

And may we make space for God by working toward a community that���s a safe place for all.

 

I reached out to CBI members who are active in supporting immigrants locally, asking them for actions we could take in the new week, and here���s what they sent me:

Volunteer with Jewish Family Service of Western MA, Berkshire Immigrant Center, or BASIC.
Join Greylock Together's newly formed Immigrant Support action team which will be focusing on Northern Berkshire. 
Ask local schools, town boards, and elected officials what they are doing to support immigrants. (There are three relevant bills currently going before the MA legislature; member Wendy Penner can share more information if you���re interested.) 
If you have friends or neighbors who are immigrants, reach out to them. Tell them you are glad they are here, and let them know you want to find a way to affirm and support them, their loved ones, and the larger immigrant community.

 

And here are two suggested actions from HIAS:

Tell Congress: VOTE NO on Mass Deportation and Detention! - HIAS.org 
Tell Congress: We must resume critical humanitarian programs now! - HIAS.org 

You can find other action items at HIAS.org. 

 

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

I don't have words

This post is about grief and death and loss and children in Israel and Palestine. If these aren't subjects you can face right now, you might want to scroll on by and skip this one. Take care of yourself.

 

My heart keeps breaking for Kfir and Ariel, two Jewish children taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 at ages 9 months and 4 years. Their bodies were returned a few days ago, and forensics confirms that they died by their captors' hands. Everything in me rebels against the mental image of that horror.

I've spoken to so many Jews who feel alone in this. It's unfashionable to care about Jewish deaths, about Israeli deaths. Our hearts get stuck in our throats like a bone of grief every time we see a baby with ginger hair, and it feels like the rest of the world doesn't understand or notice or care.

That is an old groove, carved on our collective hearts by centuries of persecution and Jew-hatred, and it is easy to reinforce that groove now. I am trying to smooth away that groove because I don't want to live in it, but right now I feel like my skin is being sandpapered away, leaving my heart exposed.

There is no good way to make this transition, so I'll just say it bluntly: every Palestinian child killed during this war was someone's family, too. They shouldn't have gone through this either. The death of every child, the death of any child, is an entire world destroyed. Nothing about this is ok.

I know that someone will yell at me for mentioning the suffering of the wrong side. (No matter which side they think that is.) Someone will say, "It's not the same; how dare you mention their losses and ours in the same breath?" I am a mother with a tender heart. I feel all of it. I can't not grieve.

Ariel and Kfir should not have died. Ayman and Rimas, Palestinian children killed in the West Bank this week, should not have died. Children should be able to grow up into the whole of who they will become. Nobody's children should be at risk. This is not the way the world should be, for anyone. 

I don't think any of us should be yelling at each other about what or how we grieve. I wish we could give each other more grace. Living in grief has an impact on both body and soul, and we have all been living in grief for a long time now. Anyone who cares about anyone "over there" is living in grief.

I've been trying to write this post for days. Words usually come easily. Not now. I want a better world, a world of peace and safety for everyone: every Israeli and every Palestinian. I know that we are very, very far from the world as it should be. I can't find the right words. Only the cry of my heart.

���������� �������� �������� �������� ������ �������� �������� ����������������

 ������������ ������������ ���������������� ���������������� ������������������

 

 

Worth reading:

On hostages and broken hearts, R. Danya Ruttenberg, Life Is A Sacred Text
Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas Deserved A Better World, Lior Zaltzman, Kveller
Navigating through grief and hope for Gaza, Salena Tramel, New Lines magazine, written during the first brief ceasefire

New music for Rejoice / Fragile

A couple of years ago I wrote a pair of Sukkot poems, Fragile and Rejoice. In the manuscript for my next book of poetry, they're a two-part poem titled "Shekhinah says." You could read them as written in God's voice to us, or as written in a human voice to a human beloved. (Or both at once.)

In recent months composer Adam Green (who is also the music director at my synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires) wrote a musical setting of those two poems. And yesterday, at our belated Tu BiShvat concert, the two-movement piece was premiered by the CBI Choir. 

It's an incredible honor to have a composer write music to uplift my words. Melody and rhythm give them a whole new layer of meaning. I love that one piece feels wistful and soft, like watercolors or fog in the valleys -- and the other, written in 5/4, feels multilayered, surprising, like it ends too soon.

Every time we sing these poems, I'm hyperlinked to what I was feeling when I wrote them. I can call the exact feelings to mind and heart. And now the poems also have another layer, because I hear them in harmony! Adam also switched the order of the two poems, which (for me) subtly changes their arc.

When I wrote the poems, I was praying for a trajectory from fragility to rejoicing. I began with what's broken, and closed with the hope of wholeness. Adam's choice to put them in the other order makes an existential point: even within wholeness, we are fragile. But in that fragility, we are not alone.

The recording you'll hear, on the YouTube video embedded above, isn't a perfect studio recording. This was recorded live at our concert, which moved through the four seasons the way a Tu BiShvat seder does. (Here's the program as a google doc, in case you're curious what other pieces we sang.)

Making music with the CBI choir is one of my great joys. Singing in harmony connects me with God more immediately and wholly than anything else I know. I feel lucky that I get to sing with this ensemble, and that together we get to learn from and with Adam -- and savor the music he writes.

The sheet music is available for download at Adam's website, along with music for his setting of my Baruch She'amar poem, which we premiered last November. Let me know if you decide to sing either of these where you are -- words and music are both available under a Creative Commons license.

 

Green

When my angled knife cuts through
the air smells sharp and clean.
Shreds of cabbage pile up.
Fennel, apple, scallion, celery.
Lemons, olive oil, kosher salt.

I learned this as "Shabbat salad."
Searching for its origins, I find
salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese,
and another variation (same name)
on a Palestinian cooking blog.

File this alongside salat katzutz
(or salata falahiyeh, same thing,
the chopped one with the cucumbers) --
one of those foods everyone wants
to claim as ours. Someone

I don't know yelled at me
recently on Facebook that there's
"no standing together with evil,"
which is what he said "all of them"
are. I hear this from both sides.

I wish I could set a banquet with
no chairs empty. This is medicine:
like the first shoots of spring
that I believe with a perfect faith
(though it tarry) will someday come.

 

I learned this as Shabbat salad. See Shabbat Salad at Sivan's Kitchen (video and recipe).

Salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese. See salatet malfouf. See also A Jew Cooks Palestinian: Cabbage Salad Edition.

Salat katzutz / salata falahiyeh. See Salata Falahiyeh (Palestinian or Farmers Salad). In the Jewish Diaspora it's often called Israeli salad; in Israel it's usually either called ���������� ������������ / salat katzutz (chopped salad) or ���������� �������������� / salat aravi (Arab salad.) Its Arabic name is �������� ������������  salata falahiyeh.

With no chairs empty. See The Empty Shabbat Table.

I believe with a perfect faith. "In the coming of the Messiah. Though he tarry, nevertheless do I believe that he will come." From the prayer Ani Ma'amin, adapted in turn from Rambam (d. 1204), arising out of his commentary on mishnah (c. 200 CE.)

For more background: 

Anthony Bourdain Explains the Israel-Palestine Conflict Through Food, The Washington Post, 2013. Watch the episode of Parts Unknown here on YouTube, or read the transcript - though watching is more powerful. The second half of the episode in particular lands differently now than it did 12 years ago. 
Here's why Palestinians object to the term 'Israeli food', Reem Kassis in The Washington Post, 2020. All About Israeli Food (a response to the previous piece), Ilana K. Levinsky in The Times of Israel, 2022.
In a new war over eating Middle Eastern food, eating hummus and shawarma has become a political act, Andrew Silverstein in The Forward.  2023.

May all be fed, may all be nourished, may all be loved.