Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis wrote this poem about genocide on the eve of the High Holy Days earlier this year. He submitted it now as a reminder that “Never Again” should be pledged to halt the killings of unarmed Black men by police in New York and Ferguson, Mo., and many other cities across the United States.
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis was the spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But names will never harm me.
False, false, we Jews have learned.
We know graffiti, insults, sprayed over frightened souls.
Names materialized into lethal weapons
Words turned into swords
Epithets into machetes
“INYENSI,” so hateful a word
That Hutus used it to dehumanize trembling Tutsis;
“Inyensi,” the name for cockroaches, vermin, and lice.
This, the cursed word, translated
Into the extermination of 800,000 Tutsis
Within 100 days of Hutu predatory slaughter
April 1945
Survivors of Buchenwald scrawled two words
Handmade signs: “Never Again,” a global pledge.
Seared into penitent people of conscience:
Never again, the slaughter of innocents
Locked behind the gates of Hell.
Done? Not yet.
The scared oath violated 47 times since 1945,
A litany of a civilizations' broken covenant.
“Never Again” transformed into “Ever Again”
Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, The Congo,
Children, mothers, fathers, raped, tortured, abducted
in front of one another's eyes.
Yet, yet, with the same power
Words heal, repair, comfort.
Therefore, one word, our word of honor
That we will grasp their hands in ours
Protecting, pulling and pushing into safe havens.
Bread, books, medicine, hope.
Hearts demeaned — revivied, resilient, dreaming
One day their own doctors, nurses, teachers, poets.
On the eve of 5775:
May the children of courage and compassion, givers and receivers
Be a blessing so that both will thrive.
