Our series of ‘Urgent Voices’ continues with poet, playwright and educator Jacqueline Saphra, who reflects on the current crisis
The Reckoning
I am a poet, not a politician. I am an activist, not a strategist. Yet here I am, feeling the need to write this piece as a way getting to grips with an impossible problem.
A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to take part in a reading as part of the Tsitsit Jewish Fringe Festival. Poet Jill Abram invited five fellow Jewish poets to take part in what she dubbed The Minyanaires and afterwards, we all agreed with some elation, that it was like a coming out party for Jews.
I had a collection in process, my fifth, which was an exploration of Jewishness, homeland, belonging and joy. At the time, I was deep into researching my family history, considering my Jewish identity and British antisemitism, and drawing parallels with contemporary conflicts and displacements. This reading felt hugely validating and gave me the courage to delve deeper, go further and be less afraid of identifying as a British Jew with all the complications that implies, as I worked my way through iterations of the new book. To be honest, it all felt a bit hypothetical when I wrote (in ‘Anxious Jewish Poem’): “Keep your Jewish bag well packed … Accept your Jewish bread/unleavened; always be prepared to move.” I always understood that ancient hatred lurked beneath the surface, but part of me did not – or did not want to – believe that.
With the current Israel/Palestine conflict, all that has changed. It turns out everything I wrote about is happening. The prejudice is out in the open. It is in the streets. It is naked, raw and exposed; and so are Jewish people all over the world, as am I, with my collection, ‘Velvel’s Violin’, published earlier this year in July. It focuses on Jewish identity, displacement and, yes, joy. It uses the Jewish experience as a kind of prism through which to explore the nature of home and homeland, war, territory and conflict. But the reality is that I have now made myself identifiable through a simple google search as a Jew.
Since the events of 7 October and the bombings of Gaza and further carnage that have followed it, my reading with music for Tsitsit was cancelled due to security concerns, which is understandable. Another organisation approached as a replacement and said they would be happy to host it, but not under the umbrella of a Jewish festival. And so it begins. We all have more stories to tell from the past few weeks that are like this one or a lot worse.
Perhaps it was my book that led to some approaches, some profound conversations, some live, some on email, with Jewish friends and colleagues in the weeks following the Hamas massacre in October. Some of us are religious and observant, but most of us are secular. Many of us have friends and relatives in Israel. Suddenly, whatever our views on the Israeli war on Gaza, none of us feel safe in a literal, walking-the-streets-of-London way. Many of us don’t feel safe to express an opinion anymore. Many feel abandoned or ignored or even betrayed by people we have come to love and trust. None of us know where to go or who to go to with our doubts, questions and fears. Many of us feel as if we do not have a community or organisation, however peace-loving, in which we can find a home.
So I organised a ‘small and supportive’ Jewish gathering on a Sunday afternoon – 5 November as it happens, and to the background explosions of fireworks we sat in a circle and took turns to share our experiences and points of view and to listen with love and tolerance. It was a Jewish gathering, so naturally everyone brought food to share. It was funny how much food there was and we made a few jokes about that, but beneath the jokes I was thinking about the historical significance and symbolism of breaking bread together – sharing our food, sharing our stories.
Indeed, as one friend put it, ‘everyone has their story’ and each was different, whether we were poets, artists, the children of Holocaust survivors, the parents of young children, gay and Jewish, carers for elderly parents or mortally ill relatives or dealing with other, pressing issues in our lives. We were all so grateful to be in the room and to hear each other speak openly and with great courage. A couple of people said they had been ambivalent about coming at all. Issues around ‘passing’, safety, shame and confusion were omnipresent. But the word that came up most often was ‘reckoning’.
Whether we like it or not, we are being forced into a reckoning with ourselves and our relationship to the UK, to Israel and to the world. Those of us who have always felt distant from Israel and what it represents, even distant from our own identities as British Jews, suddenly find ourselves in the spotlight. Jewish premises are being attacked (recently in Glasgow angry demonstrators blockaded Marks and Spencer), Jewish schools have intermittently had to close, children in secular London schools are the targets of antisemitism, demonstrators are chanting ‘from the river to sea’ and worse. Ignorance and prejudice are smeared across social media and again the ancient hatred is rising. There is so much disinformation and polarisation. Huge numbers of my friends seem to feel the need to express a public opinion, usually ill-informed. Every organisation, arts organisations included, suddenly seems to feel obliged to come up with a ‘statement’, whatever their role in society. Those who have remained silent on so many terrors, horrors and conflicts feel the need to speak out about this one and usually in an unbalanced way. It is as if people who are not even connected with this struggle believe they have the answer; that there is some ultimate reality and truth in this complex historical conflict that finer minds than ours have tried and failed to untangle and resolve.
As Jews we feel frightened, besieged and targeted. Yet again there is nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. We need to reckon with ourselves and with the present moment, live with it, live through it and survive it. And I use the word ‘survive’ in both a literal and emotional sense. As I say in my poem: “However/ Jewish you are not, they won’t forget/ your Jewish children and your Jewish god.” We all know what happened to assimilated German Jews who thought they were integrated and immune before the Holocaust and each one of us carries the trauma of displacement and homelessness in our DNA. Right now, it feels to me as if all we have is each other. And for one afternoon we held a space together, listened, loved, tolerated our differences and felt accepted, validated and heard without judgement.
As the meeting closed, my husband Robin asked if I’d read ‘Anxious Jewish Poem’ and, reluctantly, I did. This was written in less volatile times, maybe 18 months ago. I have to tell you, I shocked myself. It was as if I was reading it for the first time and it took on new and terrifying resonance. Every line began to reverberate and clang like a warning bell. I was heard and that was good, and I was glad to be in the company of my thoughtful, empathic, emotionally intelligent friends and family. They restore my faith in humanity. Without them I would be truly lost.
Anxious Jewish Poem
Jewish Brits are quiet, mostly hiding
under hats and breathing lightly
eagerly inaudible in Jewish whispers
stretched and tuned to bashful British
as Jewish Deputies doff their kippot
and stand to sing for queen and country.
It's been a Jewish while since records of
a Jewish wave and you might say we're safe:
we pass for now, and some of us do not
observe, do not observe at all, but
Jewish who would trust the territory: its
Jewish folds and shifts, ancient slurs
that blur on, cringe and bleed through skin
of memory? Jewish history churns, red paint
spits the yids, the yids, Fagins, Shylocks, still
the Jewish money gags, nose jobs, sentries
at the gates. So keep your Jewish head down
and your Jewish bag well packed and when
push comes to Jewish shove, as has been proved
and proved again, my Jewish friends, however
Jewish you are not, they won't forget
your Jewish children and your Jewish god
your tarnished candlesticks, your stars,
your rusty mazeltovs, your Jewish books.
Never assume. Accept your Jewish bread
unleavened; always be prepared to move.
Jacqueline Saphra is an award-winning poet, playwright, editor and teacher (jacquelinesaphra.com). She will appear at our Fashion City: Poetry and Music at the Museum event at the Museum of London Docklands on Sunday 26 November. You can also see her at Burgh House on Sunday 19 November, when she’ll read from Velvel's Violin.