WRITING
You Shall Love: V’Ahavta for Palestinian Liberation
You Shall Love: V’Ahavta for Palestinian Liberation
An Invocation for Growing the Love that is Already There
By Elana June Margolis
You shall LOVE
Palestinian Liberation
With all your heart With all your might With all your being
You shall speak of your love of Palestinian Liberation
When you lie down & when you RISE UP
When you are in the company of those who are eager to listen
And those who are uncomfortable
You shall speak of this love with your children & your elders & your lovers
with your colleagues & your neighbors & your Rabbis & your students & your boss
Your love shall be contagious, filling the heart of your community
Until it bursts open
And together, in the depths of the void of our broken heart
We shall speak, because the world is created through speech
and our words are seeds
and we are helping to seed Palestinian Liberation Right Now.
And because listening is the part of love that precedes speech,
You shall listen to the Torah of Palestinian Liberation
You shall SHMA with the ears of your heart
To the voices of Palestinians
You shall listen
And the truth will shatter you
And you shall be transformed
Because it is THAT kind of love
And because seeing is part of love,
You shall look with the eyes of your soul
Towards the genocide in Gaza, the pogroms in Sheikh Jarrah,
the terror in the West Bank
You shall see the ongoing Nakba and you shall not look away,
for you shall be filled with rage
Because rage is also part of love.
You shall withhold your dollars You shall mobilize your institutions You shall lay your body down You shall flood social media You shall march You shall weep You shall scream You shall pray You shall sing You shall dance You shall rest You shall release
You shall boycott You shall divest
You shall call for sanctions call your congresspeople call your parents
Call on Gxd
You shall transform harm into healing
You shall dream of a world without borders & prisons & militarism & settler-colonies
YOU shall LOVE
Palestinian Liberation like you love Gxd, because we are ALL part of Gxd
You shall LOVE
Palestinian Liberation as if it is your own, because IT IS your own
Because until all of us are free, none of us are free
Because just when we thought we were freeing Palestine,
we realized Palestine is freeing us
You shall LOVE
Palestinian Liberation because you shall love Jewish Liberation
Because you shall love liberation for all peoples
Because you shall include yourself when you say ALL
You shall LOVE Palestinian Liberation because loving Palestinian Liberation is the
Most. Jewish. Thing
you can possibly do
And the world is aching for us to remember who we are
And our Love is aching for Liberation
And the Time is NOW.
You Shall. You Do. You Will. You Are. You Bless. You Keep. You Shall.
Amein V’ Amein. Ken Y’hi Ratzon. May It Be So.
