Writing poems can
sometimes be a way
of praying. The following
is my poetic prayer:
WINGS OF THE DOVE
Tell me, are the birds afraid
when rockets and missiles
assault the innocent sky?
Do fragments of clouds—
shattered by falling planes—
roam peacefully once more
above a tainted earth?
The earth is trembling.
Tell me, when will every man
on our round-faced planet
sit under his vine,
or under his fig tree,
or just under a clear blue sky—
free of man-made trespassers
poisoning the fragile air?
You cannot find an earth
as beautiful as this.
Tell me,
what about the promises,
still unkept, carried across
generations, from war to war—
like Olympic torches—in lyrics
of prayer-like peace songs,
sung in scores of languages
in lands tired of bloodshed?
When will hearts no longer
race in fear?
And, tell me, what on earth
can a grandmother do
but remember the promise
that we shall overcome,
and search the darkening skies
for the dove with her freshly
plucked olive branch?
Are the wings of the dove
broken?
What can a grandmother do
but object, and protest, and
imagine a big enough ark
to spare us all—
not just two of a kind—
from the floods threatening
to swallow up all the beauty?
What can a grandmother do
for this
blood-tinged pale blue dot
filled with our everything
but strive—regardless,
and hope against hope—in spite,
and dream on—even though,
and pray
for the offerings of peace?
In Remembrance
of 9-11
It was a crystal-clear morning—a
perfect fall day, with a seemingly
innocent blue sky. The
weekly seminar I was scheduled to
teach every Tuesday to psychology
interns started at 10 a.m. As soon
as I entered the room, I noticed unusually
somber faces. The tension
was palpable as the interns let me
know what was happening. I listened
in stunned disbelief. It took
me a few minutes to grasp what
they were saying. The magnitude
of the evolving disaster was hard
to even imagine. The disbelief soon
turned into panic: my daughter! She
worked at the time as an attorney
at the World Financial Center and
used to walk through the World
Trade Center daily on her way to
work. I tried to call, repeatedly, but
all cell phone activity was disrupted.
We were frantically looking for
her for hours. Yes, she was there…
Haunting images are still burned
into my memory: The horror of
comprehending what was going
on… Spending hours glued to
TV screens… The twin towers
billowing in smoke… People,
meticulously dressed in business
attire for what was supposed to
be a routine workday, jumping to
their deaths to escape the flames…
The shocking realization both
towers are gone, 2,996 (2,996!!!)
people lost their lives… Meeting
the grief-stricken parents whose
son, a wonderful young man, perished
without a trace, along with
the rest of his Cantor Fitzgerald
colleagues… Sleepless nights…
Praying… Looking for ways to
help… Volunteering to counsel
survivors… Supervising psychologists
in-training who volunteered…
Mobilizing bankers and insurance
people to help widows… And
throughout—incredulity that man
can still be wolf to man.,.
Seventeen years have passed
since that deadly September. Several
times during these years I made the
emotional trip to the National 9/11
Memorial and Museum. Time and
again, I was deeply touched by
the indelible images. The charred
remains, the “pools of absence” so
BY DR. NURIT ISRAELI
Photo by Eytan Kaufman who on 9-11 watched horrified through the
window of his Greenwich Village apartment
filled with void, the names of the
dead (so many names)—all evoked
intense feelings of grief. But I was
also repeatedly amazed by the
ways normality returned to a place
which had witnessed unspeakable
horrors. Around the memorial, I
noticed new projects, heard sounds
of construction, saw waves of business
people streaming in and out
of buildings, encountered visitors
from all over the world. A mixture
of loss and regeneration, fragility
and resilience, atrocities and heroic
acts—side by side. I experienced
that combination before when
visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau,
Theresienstadt, the Warsaw Ghetto,
Berlin and other memorials to historical,
man-made catastrophes:
feeling overwhelmed by grief but
also inspired by the human capacity
to recover, rebuild, start anew.
Seventeen years after planes
purposely crashed into towers
intended to kill and destroy, and
despite evidence to the contrary, I
cannot release the dream that we
shall somehow construct ways to
overcome. Memories of the 9/11
attack make me hold on even tighter
to the hope that, regardless of all
that divides us, we will find ways
to unite in our resolve to fight for
peace, freedom and justice for all.
Yes, even though…
6 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ September 2018