Ancient Dreams Of Zion Poem by gershon hepner

Ancient Dreams Of Zion



By the Tigris’ and Euphrates’ ancient banks
remain eight Jews, the remnant of about
one hundred twenty thousand, broken ranks
of a community whose lights went out
when Israel as a state revived, and most
abandoned homes to which their ancestors
had been exiled when God’s house burned to toast,
observed by jeremiad litterateurs.

Ezekiel lived there, prophesying that
dead bones would live, returning to the land
that they’d been forced to leave, but most stood pat,
remaining despite Ezra’s stern demand
that they rebuild the temple in Jeru-
salem. The bones of those who still remain
will not revive, for they prefer to view
the rivers Ezra told them to disdain.

Yeah, by the waters some would sit and dream
of Zion long ago, but others laughed.
“Things aren’t as bad as they might seem! ”
they said, declaring all the prophets daft.
The ones who went back kept in mind
their God, and wrote great books and Psalms and Song
of Songs, deserting those who stayed behind,
who thought the ancient dreams of Zion wrong.


Stephen Farrell (“Baghdad Jews Have Become Fearful, ” NYT, June 1,2008) writes about the eight Jews who remain in Baghdad:

The tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel in Kifl, south of Baghdad, used to be a pilgrimage site for Jews. It is one of few traces that remain of a once-vibrant Jewish community in Iraq. A pogrom in 1941 and other traumas led to a sharp decline in the Jewish population. “I have no future here to stay.”Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon. The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago. Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith. They are scared even to publicize their exact number, which was recently estimated at seven by the Jewish Agency for Israel and at eight by one Christian cleric. That is not enough to read the Torah in public, if there were anywhere in public they would dare to read it, and too few to recite a proper Kaddish for the dead.

6/1/08

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