JAMES E. YOUNG
599
in his poem "Yizkor" before ending the litany with slaughtered Arab
children. Although the
Yizkar
blessing is recited on neither of the
ritual days of remembrance
(Yom Hasha'ah
and
Tisha Be'av)
recalling
national catastrophes, it has come through custom to be associated
with the dead of the Holocaust, primarily as an engraved icon on
Holocaust memorials and monuments .
Yizkar
([God] will remem–
ber) and
Zachar
(Remember!) have both become liturgical words for
remembering not just the dead, but by extension the era and cir–
cumstances in which loved ones have died. In his poetic transfigura–
tion of the
Yizkar
blessing, Tzvi Atzmon expands this latter sense to
include not the individual names of deceased loved ones (as would
be the tradition), but the larger, collective death of a people-and
then it's not just to remember the dead, or even that they have died,
but specifically how they died.
In Eretz Israel arose the J ewish people
Who were dispersed ...
Pursued and tortured and sold into slavery, and expelled
from France, Portugal, from England .. .
Raped , beaten , sacrificed ... , drowned .. .
Murde red in broad daylight, in the crusades, in the black
plague, in the revolutions of the cossacks, and in the
darkness of the inquisition.
Kidnapped , incarce rated , massacred, stoned
And defiled in pogroms, and cursed for murdering God
And for drinking children's blood .
And then, it is the death of children - the point of departure for
the other poets - that stops the poet's voice, which makes him recall
here again Bialik's lines, "Vengeance for the spilt blood of a child,!
the devil has not yet compiled." He catches himself, stutters and re–
peats :
And the revenge upon every small child will cry out.
And suddenly
He wakes up in the morning , sees
He wakes up in the morning, sees
Children who were shot when the sun rose
And real blood, it's not just a libel.
Arab children, without pity .
The murdered children simultaneously oppress the poet and inspire
him to remember them in the
Yizkar
prayer. That they are killed by
