Rabbi Katy Allen
Written for Yom Kippur 5785, observed at Nobscot Scout Reservation, Sudbury, MA
Inspired by Eileh Ezkarah: These I Remember by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman
All these I remember and my heart breaks open with tears:
The millions of adults, children, and babies throughout history
who died because they were Jews
from Crusades to pogroms to the Shoah to Kfar Aza and Nirim,
together with so many others who died because of who they were,
from first peoples of this Nipmuc land on which we pray
to those of every continent and island across this vast planet
All these I remember and my heart breaks open with tears:
All those frontline peoples of inner cities and small island nations,
brown skinned people in massive monsoon floodplains
children and babies caught in raging wildfire or ongoing drought
elders and poor considered expendable
in deed if not in word,
all dead and dying from the ravages of climate chaos.
All these I remember and my heart breaks open with tears:
The millions of adults, children, and babies blown apart
by relentless warfare, fighting over land and territory
from Libya to Ukraine and Gaza to Columbia
and countless other countries,
All these I remember and my heart breaks open with tears:
Everywhere that beloved human beings are made faceless and inhuman
sacrificed to forces of greed, neglect, abandonment and blindness,
martyred by fear and hatred,
by looking the other way and desiring comfort,
by imagining of others as Other;
all these I remember and my heart breaks open with tears.
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