March 1, 2005
About the poems by Elliott batTzedek
The first piece, "Rebekah's Song to Light Sarah's Tent" is an invocation. It was written as a character study of Rebekah for a long piece I'm currently finishing which retells the biblical story of Jacob and Esau from Esau's point-of-view, and so challenges historical constructions of chosen-ness and power-over. In this work, the matrilineal, matrilocal traditions of Sarah as High Priestess are very much alive, although under siege. In Jewish legend, Sarah's tent glowed with an ever-present light, and a cloud/mist of divinity hung above it. This light went out when she died, but came back when her niece arrived from their homeland.
The second piece, a poem titled "Incest Dream #1," was originally written in the early 90's, but its essential fearful vision is just as true now, as most US citizens wander through their days, lulled by the media, unwilling to connect the social devastation at home, the devastation of wars abroad, and the poisoning of the planet to what their own government is doing.
The third piece is a glimpse of the alternative to the culture of war and destruction, in the description of one Saturday evening among so many at the Women's PeaceLand/Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in upstate New York, next to the Seneca Army Depot. As Suzanne Duarte discusses in her piece in your current issue, we must create alternatives as one way to stop the power that threatens to destroy us, and in this poem I try to capture what one small slice of this other world feels like.
As a small bio, I'm a Jewish lesbian writer who currently lives in Philadelphia. My poems, essays, reviews, and cartoons have been published in Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, off our backs, Sojourner, The Lesbian Review of Books and other local and national journals and newspapers, as well as in anthologies such as Lesbian Culture: An Anthology and Out of the Class Closet: Lesbians Write About Class. I spent several years deeply involved in the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (known commonly as Seneca Women's Peace Camp, for its location next to the Seneca Army Depot). Currently I work at a nonprofit dedicated to improving early childhood education in urban schools, and do organizing and education around Middle East Peace issues, most especially with Jewish anti-Occupation groups.