Introduced by Arielle Angel
Since I began questioning my Zionism, I have frequently found myself in arguments with other Jews about Israel/Palestine. For me, the most frustrating thing about such arguments is the way we pretend they are rational. We act as if the terms of debate have been settled by “History,” as if we are dealing in facts, which are as accessible as common sense.
That we cannot agree not just on what was, but on what is—conditions that can be observed personally, if a Jew is so inclined—shows that this has never been about facts. It has always been about a story. The story of Zionism’s inevitability, its necessity, its fundamental rightness, is a powerful one, rooted as it is in the bottomless pain and absolute loss of genocide. On this foundation, other stories have been piled, stories that obscure, rationalize, and sanitize the brutal oppression of another people, in order to keep the original story—of our unique, enduring suffering, and hence our eternal entitlement—intact. And yet, as this argument about Zionism becomes increasingly (though not entirely) generational, with younger Jews inheriting an Israeli state that doesn’t square with our parents’ narrative, a new genre has emerged: the story of the moment when the old story breaks.
Tom Haviv’s new book of poetry, A Flag of No Nation, out now from Jewish Currents Press, is preoccupied with the origin story—the trauma-laden, pressurized conditions of its formation, the mysterious moment of its shattering, and the expansive possibilities that emerge in its wake. The son of an Israeli fighter pilot, and the grandson of activists in Istanbul’s underground Zionist youth movement, Haviv is all too aware that the story—like matter—cannot be destroyed, only refashioned. That though we cannot spare ourselves the pain, anger, and shame that accompany its collapse, this does not mean a break with our personal histories and identities, nor a negation of the experiences of those we love, but rather a reengagement on altered terms. Using a number of different modes—from allegory to oral history to the lyric poem—Haviv attempts to chart a path through the collective making and unmaking of the Zionist narrative to a proposed remaking in a post-Zionist context, declaring that process as valid and as rooted as the one that created and sustained the original Zionist myth.
“Ladder,” excerpted from A Flag of No Nation, explores that crucial hinge between the past story and future possibilities—the often terrifying, all-at-once instant when the story breaks, “like a / ladder / kicked down / from a window.” Since reading it, I have been more attentive to the way those around me recount this moment as it transpired in their own lives. The catalyst for this realization is almost never loud or dramatic: a stray comment, a flashbulb memory suddenly replayed in a different light. For me, it was the image of a couch, dragged up to a hilltop overlooking Gaza, where Israelis gathered in the summer of 2014 to cheer as they watched the bombs fall. “[U]nder no weight,” Haviv writes, the story breaks.
By now, I am well aware that the long, anguished arguments with loved ones cannot precipitate this kind of moment. It is born of something else entirely. To solve the mystery of this moment would be, in a sense, to solve the crisis—to open, finally, into a space of true healing and political imagination. What Haviv has given us in A Flag of No Nation is a map of this almost alchemical process, a necessary one if we’re ever to break through to something new.
I.
How does
a story break?
Not by
taking it
apart
(or dismantling it)
but by
telling and
retelling
and retelling.
The story
is a
bow
It is a string
It is a net
holding the weight
of fruit fallen
from old trees —
and it cannot hold.
I wake in a blanket
of sound & light
in a remote town where
the story of who owns what
the story of who took what
is told and retold
until the story breaks
on earshot
and the mind closes.
II.
You are
standing
in a field
the soil
wet with
heavy rain
that has
just passed
*
You are
on a train
to work
the book
creased
but not yet
opened
*
You are
flying
home
head on
window
*
You are
having
dinner
with an
old friend
*
You are
forming
the words
to tell
the same
story
and it
breaks
*
In the field
the story
returns to you
a star: broken–shining–incoherent–singing
in a language
you can’t identify
if it is
even in a language
known anywhere?
*
You are
talking
to a new
lover
and it breaks
*
It falls
falls
like a
ladder
kicked down
from a window
(whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent)
Do you
remember
where we
were both
left
standing?
*
You resist
the soldier
twists
your arms
your words
you yell
a word?
he yells
a word?
nothing builds
the story breaks
*
Your mother
tells you
a story
Before you
can make
out its
meaning
the story
breaks
III.
At what point
in its
telling
does a story —
break?
by teeth, by tongue, by gum, by mouth?
the accumulated facts
break
the whispered assurances
break
the down-bending apology
breaks
the incisive argument
breaks
in 1945 the Americans liberate
breaks
in 1948 we landed
breaks
the story began in
Istanbul
breaks
the story began in
Thessaloniki
breaks
Auschwitz
breaks
Córdoba
breaks
Gaza
breaks
Jerusalem
breaks
IV.
When it breaks
silence
fear / embarrassment
jealousy / anguish
the lie bends not
the lie fractures, is no longer pliant
breaks
we are here because
breaks
they behave this way because
breaks
they set fires
breaks
our destiny is to
breaks
we deserve this place
breaks
this is how one survives
breaks
this is how we learned to survive
breaks
this is why they hate us
breaks
this is just their culture
breaks
when the story you were told
becomes brittle
& breaks / barak / breaks / bracha
breaks
V.
The field
thickens
into a forest
the soldier is
leading you
out of the poem
He points ahead
over there
you will find nothing
no answers
to your questions
no richness lived in
no community
I suggest you go there
since it’s where I’m from too
home.
VI.
How long have you been telling this story?
The soldier presses.
Since childhood,
I say
They even told it
before
I was born
Why this story?
I am not the only one
the guilt
breaks
is it
faith
or is it
mute
fate?
Where are you from? M’efo atah?
The soldier asks.
[We walk further together | We feel each other’s heat]
VII.
You are speaking
to your lover
and the
words snap
at hinges
careless — you had
spoken again — that same
story — nothing altered
and under no weight
each word breaks
(if it is no longer
told, does it not break?
will it decompose?)
the life
breaks
the trust
breaks
the alibi
breaks
the carcass
breaks
(flies collect on grasshopper’s carapace,
grinding into grass
— the ant carries a smaller ant, raw material now, down.)
(the nation
breaks)
the good fight
breaks
the hysteria
breaks
the question
breaks
the answer
breaks
the friendship
breaks
the lust
breaks
the lesson
breaks
the curriculum
breaks
the poem
breaks
the school
breaks
the calculation
breaks
the cunning
breaks
the numbness
breaks
the numbers
break
the analysis
breaks
the power
breaks
the siege
breaks
the hand
breaks
the quiet
breaks
the threat
breaks
the treaty
breaks
the ceasefire
breaks
the call to prayer
breaks
the sabbath
breaks
the intention
breaks
the lineage
breaks
the history
breaks
the commitment
breaks
the covenant
breaks
the fear
breaks
the shame
breaks
the sorrow
breaks
the pity
breaks
the grief
breaks
the ladder
breaks
VIII.
Do they break in constellation?
(or something more violent:
nettles in a crown or
sky-weapon)
do they break, falling into
earth — crystals of
kindness — as they
are no longer being told
& told & told & told & told
(not untold)
we let grieving overtake us
we let out grief like rain
we let out grief like rain
into the ruin
that nourishes
the earth — and
lets new life come out gently
(slowly, slowly)
finally
the
land
sings as
we let broken
things be reclaimed by it.
Tom Haviv is a Brooklyn-based, Israeli-born writer, multimedia artist, and organizer. His debut book of poetry, A Flag of No Nation, was published by Jewish Currents Press. He is the founder of the Hamsa Flag Project, which intends to stimulate conversation about the future of Israel/Palestine, and he is the co-founder of Ayin Press.
