The King James version captures it best: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof” (Ps 137:1-2 KJV). No one who has read of Black families being ripped apart after having survived the middle passage will fail to see the deep kinship with Israel in our shared stories of trauma.
